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>However blockchain is also just such bad technology with no competitive use cases -- unlike herbal life products, you can't drink a blockchain ledger. The com

>However blockchain is also just such bad technology with no competitive use cases -- unlike herbal life products, you can't drink a blockchain ledger. The commodity which is called gold was indispensable in the ancient times. Metal vessels which cannot be oxidized were the best way to drink liquids, like water or wine. Pottery made out of clay is not ideal, because it's porous surface absorbs the wine taste, so when you put water in it, you taste the wine of the previous night. So, a commodity with an absolutely unique user case, tends to increase in price. Drinking water is a so frequent and fundamental human activity, that the best commodity for that user case, it follows that would be pretty expensive. Blockchain has a unique user case as well. It's purpose is to decrease the amount of spam in the internet, by making it more expensive. Is there any better way to stop spam, instead of making it more expensive? I would love to hear about it! Energy annotation of information, is the only way to go, if you ask me. Blockchain can be used by citizens to attest to ownership as well. This however is not a unique use case, government does that as well. One can easily imagine citizens chopping off the ownership of a house in 100.000 pieces for example, and putting that in the blockchain. You want to buy up a cup of coffee? Transfer the 1/100.000 of it to the coffee shop. Does the coffee shop wishes to track all their ownership they gained selling coffee? They wear their oculus headset, and they can keep track of all the points in the city in which they own a piece of it. Aside of these points, cryptocurrencies, exchanges and crypto are ridiculous, people should invest in something which they understand.

mjburgess 4y ago
I think the blockchain as a deliberately computationally expensive ledger is an interesting idea, and at least a plausible account of what resource could count as a commodity. It is certainly why BTC tends to have a implied floor around cost-to-mint; but that is more the psychology of its use. It's floor is zero, as with anything: whilst a token on a blockchain has no productive value below its (energy) cost-to-mint, that doesnt create buyers at any positive price. One issue is that I don't see deliberately making computation less efficient as something unique to blockchains: we can make present systems abitarily energy-intensive by adding hash-computation work to them. We dont need immutability and distribution to do that. However, I'm not sure in a world wish such high negative externalities on energy consumption, selling deliberately high energy cost computation is plausible. Unless spam can be shown to have similar externalities, as a problem, it's vastly less significant than our global energy crisis. Services which perform computation to reduce spam, almost certainly, perform far less than the blockchain alternative. Minting a coin for each YT video uploaded is a vastly inferior solution than: 1) YT charging for posting videos; 2) YT building & running anti-spam systems; 3) YT charging users for access to videos; 4) YT requiring users having to hash something before uploading, so costing them some energy, etc. Indeed, (1) solves all the problems in a vastly more efficient way for every person involed.
- emporas 4y ago
  Excellent points mjburgess! >I think the blockchain as a deliberately computationally expensive ledger is an interesting idea, and at least a plausible account of what resource could count as a commodity. That's exactly the idea. >It is certainly why BTC tends to have a implied floor around cost-to-mint; but that is more the psychology of its use. It's floor is zero, as with anything: whilst a token on a blockchain has no productive value below its (energy) cost-to-mint, that doesnt create buyers at any positive price. Yep, that's exactly it. BTC however has huge transaction fees which limits it's applicability as a spam prevention tool. Small comments in Quora, or Twitter cannot be annotated with 10 cents of a transaction fee, it is too expensive. >One issue is that I don't see deliberately making computation less efficient as something unique to blockchains: we can make present systems abitarily energy-intensive by adding hash-computation work to them. We dont need immutability and distribution to do that. At first glance, yes, we can create intentionally expensive computations without relying on a blockchain, that would serve the same purpose. In reality we cannot. Special computer hardware (ASICs) could generate much cheaper PoW annotations than general purpose computers, and sell it to spammers. Blockchain economic incentives ensure that ASICs will be used by the miners first and foremost. That one point is exactly the genius of Bitcoin. The competitive system of blockchain miners, ensures that over time the best hardware and programmers to create the most efficient PoW, will be bought/hired by the miners first. >However, I'm not sure in a world wish such high negative externalities on energy consumption, selling deliberately high energy cost computation is plausible. Unless spam can be shown to have similar externalities, as a problem, it's vastly less significant than our global energy crisis. That's a valid concern. However energy, and electricity more specifically, is dirt cheap and abundant in many places of the world, in which no human lives in a 100 mile radius. Solar panels in the middle of a desert for example. Time of the day plays a role as well. A significant amount of energy is wasted, just because humans don't consume that much energy, that time of the day. >Services which perform computation to reduce spam, almost certainly, perform far less than the blockchain alternative. Minting a coin for each YT video uploaded is a vastly inferior solution than: 1) YT charging for posting videos; 2) YT building & running anti-spam systems; 3) YT charging users for access to videos; 4) YT requiring users having to hash something before uploading, so costing them some energy, etc. Well, YT the video service could charge for every video uploaded less than a cent, let's say 0.1 or 0.01 dollars in Bitcoin, not BTC. Most video creators couldn't care less, if they pay 0.1 cent per video. Spammers however care a lot. In case someone uploads millions of videos, money suddenly start to add up. Tens of thousand of dollars for a spammer to pay, means he will stop spamming soon. Different charging methods could be implemented as well. Maybe charging a dollar for every 100MB of video is preferable. Charging methods could vary a lot. Reputation lists and trees, could create different charging methods as well. Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olkb7fYSyiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olkb7fYSyiI

mjburgess 4y ago

I think the blockchain as a deliberately computationally expensive ledger is an interesting idea, and at least a plausible account of what resource could count as a commodity. It is certainly why BTC tends to have a implied floor around cost-to-mint; but that is more the psychology of its use. It's floor is zero, as with anything: whilst a token on a blockchain has no productive value below its (energy) cost-to-mint, that doesnt create buyers at any positive price. One issue is that I don't see deliberately making computation less efficient as something unique to blockchains: we can make present systems abitarily energy-intensive by adding hash-computation work to them. We dont need immutability and distribution to do that. However, I'm not sure in a world wish such high negative externalities on energy consumption, selling deliberately high energy cost computation is plausible. Unless spam can be shown to have similar externalities, as a problem, it's vastly less significant than our global energy crisis. Services which perform computation to reduce spam, almost certainly, perform far less than the blockchain alternative. Minting a coin for each YT video uploaded is a vastly inferior solution than: 1) YT charging for posting videos; 2) YT building & running anti-spam systems; 3) YT charging users for access to videos; 4) YT requiring users having to hash something before uploading, so costing them some energy, etc. Indeed, (1) solves all the problems in a vastly more efficient way for every person involed.

emporas 4y ago
Excellent points mjburgess! >I think the blockchain as a deliberately computationally expensive ledger is an interesting idea, and at least a plausible account of what resource could count as a commodity. That's exactly the idea. >It is certainly why BTC tends to have a implied floor around cost-to-mint; but that is more the psychology of its use. It's floor is zero, as with anything: whilst a token on a blockchain has no productive value below its (energy) cost-to-mint, that doesnt create buyers at any positive price. Yep, that's exactly it. BTC however has huge transaction fees which limits it's applicability as a spam prevention tool. Small comments in Quora, or Twitter cannot be annotated with 10 cents of a transaction fee, it is too expensive. >One issue is that I don't see deliberately making computation less efficient as something unique to blockchains: we can make present systems abitarily energy-intensive by adding hash-computation work to them. We dont need immutability and distribution to do that. At first glance, yes, we can create intentionally expensive computations without relying on a blockchain, that would serve the same purpose. In reality we cannot. Special computer hardware (ASICs) could generate much cheaper PoW annotations than general purpose computers, and sell it to spammers. Blockchain economic incentives ensure that ASICs will be used by the miners first and foremost. That one point is exactly the genius of Bitcoin. The competitive system of blockchain miners, ensures that over time the best hardware and programmers to create the most efficient PoW, will be bought/hired by the miners first. >However, I'm not sure in a world wish such high negative externalities on energy consumption, selling deliberately high energy cost computation is plausible. Unless spam can be shown to have similar externalities, as a problem, it's vastly less significant than our global energy crisis. That's a valid concern. However energy, and electricity more specifically, is dirt cheap and abundant in many places of the world, in which no human lives in a 100 mile radius. Solar panels in the middle of a desert for example. Time of the day plays a role as well. A significant amount of energy is wasted, just because humans don't consume that much energy, that time of the day. >Services which perform computation to reduce spam, almost certainly, perform far less than the blockchain alternative. Minting a coin for each YT video uploaded is a vastly inferior solution than: 1) YT charging for posting videos; 2) YT building & running anti-spam systems; 3) YT charging users for access to videos; 4) YT requiring users having to hash something before uploading, so costing them some energy, etc. Well, YT the video service could charge for every video uploaded less than a cent, let's say 0.1 or 0.01 dollars in Bitcoin, not BTC. Most video creators couldn't care less, if they pay 0.1 cent per video. Spammers however care a lot. In case someone uploads millions of videos, money suddenly start to add up. Tens of thousand of dollars for a spammer to pay, means he will stop spamming soon. Different charging methods could be implemented as well. Maybe charging a dollar for every 100MB of video is preferable. Charging methods could vary a lot. Reputation lists and trees, could create different charging methods as well. Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olkb7fYSyiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olkb7fYSyiI