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Nah, only 95% of it. Look, there are plenty of technologists who are very into crypto. You can find lots of them here. But to many, it reeks of some long-revi

Nah, only 95% of it. Look, there are plenty of technologists who are very into crypto. You can find lots of them here. But to many, it reeks of some long-reviled parts of the tech scene: vaporware and marketing hype. And that's before you get into the astounding levels of fraud and waste. At this point, crypto is much more of a social phenomenon than a technological one. That's not a problem in itself. The issue is that foundation is one where legimately interesting technology is neither necessary nor sufficient to solve very many real-world problems, but the financialization at the core of it facilitates these collective delusions that it is. Everyone's LARPing the original dotcom bubble, but the world's entirely different. The dotcom bubble certainly had its crackpots, but it also had a lot of people who accurately saw that pervasive networking was going to unlock massive opportunity. But the low hanging fruit has been plucked over the past 25 years. Web3 people are trying to tell the world that a decentralized permissionless log is as the same magnitude of technological impact, and it simply isn't.

RC_ITR 4y ago
>Look, there are plenty of technologists who are very into crypto One of the reasons why everything about crypto is bad is because the technologists who are into it can tell you what the code does, but the "business people" who are into it can't tell you why this crypto use case couldn't/shouldn't be backed by a centralized database. Literally name a use case and I will tell you how a centralized database would be better. Even if the Internet boom of the late90's was full of grifters, at least most could explain why an email is better than a letter,
- SgtBastard 4y ago
  I’m anti-cryptocurrency (forget the tech, the economics make no sense) but the censorship resistance of a distributed ledger is surely stronger than a centralised database?
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    It's not clear that there is really much value in one of those - certainly net-net. The problem is that a blockchain can only trustlessly and verifiably encode things that are wholly represented on-chain. As soon as you bridge it to anything in the real world you're relying on some degree of trust, and trustlessness is all-or-nothing. That's why only proper un-backed-by-anything cryptocurrencies actually make any sense - they're wholly on-chain. On the other hand their value flails around wildly like a balloon you forgot to tie off and that limits their practical value to basically nothing. Their monetary policy is in the hands of some un-elected group of randos accountable only to their own enrichment. Stablecoins: who knows whether they're redeemable? You just have to trust the issuer and the legal system. They also get frozen all the time - Tether freezes more tokens than anyone and there's zero process and probably zero backing. Even Circle/USDC lied about their backing. Deeds on the blockchain: not your keys not your house? Ok, no thanks? If you have to rely on the court to have final say then the real world diverges from the chain and of course then why even have a chain? The iron law of blockchain is "if you think the blockchain is a good solution to any given problem you either don't know enough about the blockchain or you don't know enough about the problem." It's not clear they're anything more than a technological curiosity that's been coopted by anarchocapitalist libertarian grifters.
  - acdha 4y ago
    I think that depends on what people man by censorship resistance. A lot of times people talk about it like they can send money around without anyone preventing them but, as with real censorship, is the problem there prior restraint or after-the-fact consequences? Even in the worst countries, it's not that people can't speak but that they [rightly] fear the consequences if they do so — and blockchains are a terrible choice for anyone who needs to worry about an abusive government because you're leaving a public, irrevocable evidence trail for the prosecutors. This is also transitive, as we're seeing with Tornado Cash — yes, technically it's possible to transfer funds without government approval but even if you're comfortable with that risk it doesn't help you much if most legitimate businesses and exchanges stop accepting tokens traceable to some kind of block-list. The thing blockchains _can_ be better at than a classic SQL database is tamper-evidence, but that's also possible with less overhead using classic PKI and/or Merkle trees. Using trusted third-parties to sign things could be better if something came to a court or other public form because then you'd be able to have some institutional weight rather than random internet strangers: “My filing record was signed by the USPTO and their signature was notarized by the DPMA before the date when the other party claimed…” sounds better than having to explain to a court why it's unlikely that you were able to suborn miners to favor your transaction.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    A "censorship resistant" blockchain versus real-world legal systems sounds like the old "immovable object versus unstoppable force" ponderable. Except the legal system doesn't have to go after the blockchain per se, they go after the users who still have to have some way to access the value in it. Maybe, with absolute perfect OpSec, you can use a "censorship resistant blockchain" to finance your ($politically_unpopular_activity), but it's going to be very difficult to get mainstream users involved in a platform that could become increasingly radioactive. Eventually it becomes a legal death spiral-- as mainstream opportunities leave the network, so does the legal fig leaf for participation.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    >censorship resistance of a distributed ledger is surely stronger than a centralised database People bring this up a lot. 1) In practice, blockchains get censored and edited all the time when mistakes happen. 2) I don't see the advantage vs. a publicly readable database that a distributed set of users can archive in a cryptographically secure way. Again, blockchain's main failure point is that it does what centralized databases (which can be cryptographically secure, some even are!) do, but it takes 200x more effort to do it.
- koolba 4y ago
  > Literally name a use case and I will tell you how a centralized database would be better. Money laundering, purchasing illegal substances, or paying ransom.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    I would much rather have a centralized database to take the heat from me in all those scenarios! The advantage crypto has is that noone will set up that centralized database (because it would be stupid too!).
- jedberg 4y ago
  I buy and sell NFTs that represent fractional ownership in real estate. Well technically they represent ownership in an LLC that owns the real estate. Governance is done via votes of the token holders. There is a company that facilitates the transactions, but they don't hold or manage the real estate. This type of investing has long been done on paper, but the blockchain makes it much more liquid. Selling your fractional ownership in a property was onerous at best, and took a long time and a lot of fees. Now it's just sending a token to someone else in exchange for money (fiat or crypto). Another advantage is that it doesn't matter if the facilitator goes out of business, because all the ownership records are on a public blockchain instead of their secret central database. I generally agree with you, A LOT of crypto is crap and could be better solved with a central database. But there are valid use cases.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    That "sending a token"? Unenforceable and still need to be backed up by, you know, an actual paper contract in the real world. Also, this comment nails it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002963
    - jedberg 4y ago
      The piece of paper (the LLC formation that owns the house) literally says “whoever has control of these tokens owns this LLC in proportion to how many tokens they have”. And yes it’s backed by a paper contract. That’s why I’m ok with it. But it’s still gives me liquidity and ownership security I couldn’t get with a central database.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        > the LLC formation that owns the house > backed by a paper contract So.... What's the point of blockchain in this case? Other than "hey, we have blockchain"? > But it’s still gives me liquidity and ownership security What gives you ownership security is the paper contract, not some bytes in some database.
      - 4y ago
arcticbull 4y ago
95% is a scam and 5% is the worlds slowest and least efficient database.

RC_ITR 4y ago

>Look, there are plenty of technologists who are very into crypto One of the reasons why everything about crypto is bad is because the technologists who are into it can tell you what the code does, but the "business people" who are into it can't tell you why this crypto use case couldn't/shouldn't be backed by a centralized database. Literally name a use case and I will tell you how a centralized database would be better. Even if the Internet boom of the late90's was full of grifters, at least most could explain why an email is better than a letter,

SgtBastard 4y ago
I’m anti-cryptocurrency (forget the tech, the economics make no sense) but the censorship resistance of a distributed ledger is surely stronger than a centralised database?
- arcticbull 4y ago
  It's not clear that there is really much value in one of those - certainly net-net. The problem is that a blockchain can only trustlessly and verifiably encode things that are wholly represented on-chain. As soon as you bridge it to anything in the real world you're relying on some degree of trust, and trustlessness is all-or-nothing. That's why only proper un-backed-by-anything cryptocurrencies actually make any sense - they're wholly on-chain. On the other hand their value flails around wildly like a balloon you forgot to tie off and that limits their practical value to basically nothing. Their monetary policy is in the hands of some un-elected group of randos accountable only to their own enrichment. Stablecoins: who knows whether they're redeemable? You just have to trust the issuer and the legal system. They also get frozen all the time - Tether freezes more tokens than anyone and there's zero process and probably zero backing. Even Circle/USDC lied about their backing. Deeds on the blockchain: not your keys not your house? Ok, no thanks? If you have to rely on the court to have final say then the real world diverges from the chain and of course then why even have a chain? The iron law of blockchain is "if you think the blockchain is a good solution to any given problem you either don't know enough about the blockchain or you don't know enough about the problem." It's not clear they're anything more than a technological curiosity that's been coopted by anarchocapitalist libertarian grifters.
- acdha 4y ago
  I think that depends on what people man by censorship resistance. A lot of times people talk about it like they can send money around without anyone preventing them but, as with real censorship, is the problem there prior restraint or after-the-fact consequences? Even in the worst countries, it's not that people can't speak but that they [rightly] fear the consequences if they do so — and blockchains are a terrible choice for anyone who needs to worry about an abusive government because you're leaving a public, irrevocable evidence trail for the prosecutors. This is also transitive, as we're seeing with Tornado Cash — yes, technically it's possible to transfer funds without government approval but even if you're comfortable with that risk it doesn't help you much if most legitimate businesses and exchanges stop accepting tokens traceable to some kind of block-list. The thing blockchains _can_ be better at than a classic SQL database is tamper-evidence, but that's also possible with less overhead using classic PKI and/or Merkle trees. Using trusted third-parties to sign things could be better if something came to a court or other public form because then you'd be able to have some institutional weight rather than random internet strangers: “My filing record was signed by the USPTO and their signature was notarized by the DPMA before the date when the other party claimed…” sounds better than having to explain to a court why it's unlikely that you were able to suborn miners to favor your transaction.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  A "censorship resistant" blockchain versus real-world legal systems sounds like the old "immovable object versus unstoppable force" ponderable. Except the legal system doesn't have to go after the blockchain per se, they go after the users who still have to have some way to access the value in it. Maybe, with absolute perfect OpSec, you can use a "censorship resistant blockchain" to finance your ($politically_unpopular_activity), but it's going to be very difficult to get mainstream users involved in a platform that could become increasingly radioactive. Eventually it becomes a legal death spiral-- as mainstream opportunities leave the network, so does the legal fig leaf for participation.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  >censorship resistance of a distributed ledger is surely stronger than a centralised database People bring this up a lot. 1) In practice, blockchains get censored and edited all the time when mistakes happen. 2) I don't see the advantage vs. a publicly readable database that a distributed set of users can archive in a cryptographically secure way. Again, blockchain's main failure point is that it does what centralized databases (which can be cryptographically secure, some even are!) do, but it takes 200x more effort to do it.
koolba 4y ago
> Literally name a use case and I will tell you how a centralized database would be better. Money laundering, purchasing illegal substances, or paying ransom.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  I would much rather have a centralized database to take the heat from me in all those scenarios! The advantage crypto has is that noone will set up that centralized database (because it would be stupid too!).
jedberg 4y ago
I buy and sell NFTs that represent fractional ownership in real estate. Well technically they represent ownership in an LLC that owns the real estate. Governance is done via votes of the token holders. There is a company that facilitates the transactions, but they don't hold or manage the real estate. This type of investing has long been done on paper, but the blockchain makes it much more liquid. Selling your fractional ownership in a property was onerous at best, and took a long time and a lot of fees. Now it's just sending a token to someone else in exchange for money (fiat or crypto). Another advantage is that it doesn't matter if the facilitator goes out of business, because all the ownership records are on a public blockchain instead of their secret central database. I generally agree with you, A LOT of crypto is crap and could be better solved with a central database. But there are valid use cases.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  That "sending a token"? Unenforceable and still need to be backed up by, you know, an actual paper contract in the real world. Also, this comment nails it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002963
  - jedberg 4y ago
    The piece of paper (the LLC formation that owns the house) literally says “whoever has control of these tokens owns this LLC in proportion to how many tokens they have”. And yes it’s backed by a paper contract. That’s why I’m ok with it. But it’s still gives me liquidity and ownership security I couldn’t get with a central database.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      > the LLC formation that owns the house > backed by a paper contract So.... What's the point of blockchain in this case? Other than "hey, we have blockchain"? > But it’s still gives me liquidity and ownership security What gives you ownership security is the paper contract, not some bytes in some database.
    - 4y ago

arcticbull 4y ago

95% is a scam and 5% is the worlds slowest and least efficient database.