4 ms·

This begs the question: then what is the “killer app” for blockchain and smart contract technologies? Has it simply not surfaced yet?

bfuller 4y ago
I'd put my money on it. How long did it take for us to go from DARPA experiments to iPhone and 80 year olds on facebook?
- igorkraw 4y ago
  The difference is that the arpanet and later the internet were amazingly useful from day 1. In a sense we can applaud the cryptobros for funding basic research in cryptography and distributed systems, but as an investment or innovation, they are failures.
fullshark 4y ago
Killer app = illegal transactions, that's the only reason someone would want to avoid banks / contracts / lawyers.
- sschueller 4y ago
  You mean like a cash transfer?
- topranks 4y ago
  Yeah and it’s not a “killer app” like Lotus 123 was an improvement on paper accounts. It’s a shitty way to do it. No criminal would ever use crypto if <insert legal payment frameworks> were accessible to them.
Kinrany 4y ago
Bitcoin transfers are faster and cheaper than SWIFT. Of course you also need to go through p2p on both sides and the volatility is a problem, but both of these are tolerable depending on circumstances.
- davidgerard 4y ago
  only as long as you have no interest in interfacing to actual money at either end. Then the bitcoin approach basically sucks. If crypto was better and cheaper for remittances, then Western Union would already be using it - they've certainly been experimenting with it for most of a decade. Companies can be stick-in-the-muds, but not that much of stick-in-the-muds.
  - smaryjerry 4y ago
    Some crypto are actually better but with the caveat that they are only better if you keep it in the crypto ecosystem. Trading in and out of fiat currency is probably the biggest hurdle for crypto. Going in and out of crypto comes with massive fees if using a trusted exchange, headaches in accounting (in two monetary systems) and calculating fiat taxes, it’s slow, and adds inefficiency. For example, you may accept bitcoin for your product but now you need to pay one of your suppliers who doesn’t accept bitcoin - convert what you received to dollars, calculate a gain/loss on the change in value of bitcoin from the time you sold your product to the time you are converting it to dollars, pay a fee on converting, and finally you need all the same fiat accounts, credit, etc to then pay your supplier. It’s completely inefficient. In a new country that only used bitcoin or another crypto, you eliminate internal volatility completely because everything is priced in crypto in a closed self sustaining economy. Cryptos are not as volatile against each other as they are against fiat, after established. All of the volatility problems crypto has are exactly because people view it as an investment vehicle, in theory a currency shouldn’t fluctuate itself, it should just measure value of other items in a consistent way. There are many reasons one of the feds two main goals is price stability, both the prices going up and down can hurt the economy in different ways. Had bitcoins and other prices been able to remain stable rather than deflating however many thousand percent then the ecosystem would have been much more robust by now. I know your thinking stable coins do that, but I’d argue stable coins are just an extension of fiat but allowing a non-government entity to print money, and the only stable coins worthwhile are those backed by fiat bank accounts holding ever single dollar and not allowing the company to use customer funds or accounts as collateral to make their own decisions but without the regulation of a typical bank.
topranks 4y ago
It’s been 13 years already. Give it a rest.

bfuller 4y ago

I'd put my money on it. How long did it take for us to go from DARPA experiments to iPhone and 80 year olds on facebook?

igorkraw 4y ago
The difference is that the arpanet and later the internet were amazingly useful from day 1. In a sense we can applaud the cryptobros for funding basic research in cryptography and distributed systems, but as an investment or innovation, they are failures.

fullshark 4y ago

Killer app = illegal transactions, that's the only reason someone would want to avoid banks / contracts / lawyers.

sschueller 4y ago
You mean like a cash transfer?
topranks 4y ago
Yeah and it’s not a “killer app” like Lotus 123 was an improvement on paper accounts. It’s a shitty way to do it. No criminal would ever use crypto if <insert legal payment frameworks> were accessible to them.

Kinrany 4y ago

Bitcoin transfers are faster and cheaper than SWIFT. Of course you also need to go through p2p on both sides and the volatility is a problem, but both of these are tolerable depending on circumstances.

davidgerard 4y ago
only as long as you have no interest in interfacing to actual money at either end. Then the bitcoin approach basically sucks. If crypto was better and cheaper for remittances, then Western Union would already be using it - they've certainly been experimenting with it for most of a decade. Companies can be stick-in-the-muds, but not that much of stick-in-the-muds.
- smaryjerry 4y ago
  Some crypto are actually better but with the caveat that they are only better if you keep it in the crypto ecosystem. Trading in and out of fiat currency is probably the biggest hurdle for crypto. Going in and out of crypto comes with massive fees if using a trusted exchange, headaches in accounting (in two monetary systems) and calculating fiat taxes, it’s slow, and adds inefficiency. For example, you may accept bitcoin for your product but now you need to pay one of your suppliers who doesn’t accept bitcoin - convert what you received to dollars, calculate a gain/loss on the change in value of bitcoin from the time you sold your product to the time you are converting it to dollars, pay a fee on converting, and finally you need all the same fiat accounts, credit, etc to then pay your supplier. It’s completely inefficient. In a new country that only used bitcoin or another crypto, you eliminate internal volatility completely because everything is priced in crypto in a closed self sustaining economy. Cryptos are not as volatile against each other as they are against fiat, after established. All of the volatility problems crypto has are exactly because people view it as an investment vehicle, in theory a currency shouldn’t fluctuate itself, it should just measure value of other items in a consistent way. There are many reasons one of the feds two main goals is price stability, both the prices going up and down can hurt the economy in different ways. Had bitcoins and other prices been able to remain stable rather than deflating however many thousand percent then the ecosystem would have been much more robust by now. I know your thinking stable coins do that, but I’d argue stable coins are just an extension of fiat but allowing a non-government entity to print money, and the only stable coins worthwhile are those backed by fiat bank accounts holding ever single dollar and not allowing the company to use customer funds or accounts as collateral to make their own decisions but without the regulation of a typical bank.

topranks 4y ago

It’s been 13 years already. Give it a rest.