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People significantly underestimate how much cost there is at certain points in the chain. Interbank transfers are very cheap. A lot of central banks have inves
by skippyboxedhero 4y ago
People significantly underestimate how much cost there is at certain points in the chain.
Interbank transfers are very cheap. A lot of central banks have invested heavily in payments systems too (the BoE is one, Faster is very good). But at certain other points, this technology could be very valuable. Two examples that occur to me immediately are pensions and fund administration.
Obviously, Ethereum goes beyond that with a more generalized VM. From what I have seen, this is a ludicrously inefficient way to perform computations. If that is wrong, then maybe there is more. But just blockchain alone will have a huge impact (if you look at back/middle-offices in banks/fund managers/pensions/insurance, I remember working in this area and going to one of the largest pension admins in my country...I remember vividly opening the door to the pig pen, and it was just a sea of people, 95% just responding to very basic customer queries/doing incredibly basic computation work and costing huge amounts of money...because, of course, there is no cost pressure from "customers"...a parallel that more people understand is US healthcare admin, huge inefficiencies, pension admin is like that).
We are not even at day one with this trend. I am sure people will find other applications after, but applying blockchain/distributed storage/distributed computing/whatever to back/middle office in finance will be huge. It also isn't really a question about whether it is going to happen...it will.
- Peleus 4y ago> I remember vividly opening the door to the pig pen, and it was just a sea of people, 95% just responding to very basic customer queries/doing incredibly basic computation work and costing huge amounts of money...because, of course, there is no cost pressure from "customers"...a parallel that more people understand is US healthcare admin, huge inefficiencies, pension admin is like that How does blockchain solve this? There are always people pushing generalized "it will be good for this" statements, yet they can never seem to give concrete examples of where blockchain would be a better solution than the current implementation.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoBlockchain solves it by making it so that all that goes away. In return if something fucks it up...well look at every crypto project that has ever crashed. I'm not being glib. That's the solution.
- Peleus 4y agoso that all that goes away All WHAT goes away? You're talking about hordes of people answering customer queries. How the hell does blockchain make that go away?
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoEliminate customer service touch points from your business.
- msbarnett 4y agoHow on earth do you imagine a blockchain makes customer support go away?
- kelseyfrog 4y agoThere's nothing to support. The block chains immutability means no takebacks. The phone line can just have a message on repeat "Sorry, nothing can be done. The Blockchain is the source of truth." Customers can then just hang up knowing that it's the real world that is wrong and not a thing on chain. This is blockchain realism at its finest.
- Peleus 4y agoFucking lol. I can just imagine a company sending a package to the wrong address. The customer rings the company to ask what's going on. "Sorry the blockchain is immutable, we can't change where your package is going, deal with it". Yes, blockchain totally solves all these problems... I worry if people are actually this delusional.
- heavenlyblue 4y ago> I worry if people are actually this delusional. Would it make you worry more or less if they are not delusional but just plainly not thinking?
- skippyboxedhero 4y agoBecause all of the operations that these people perform can be performed computationally (and the reason why they aren't now is not necessarily technological, all the technology exists to do this today but blockchain forces everyone to change all at once). It is already happening.