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What about triple entry accounting requires the blockchain? Or how does triple entry accounting benefit from being on the blockchain? Or a distributed ledger in

What about triple entry accounting requires the blockchain? Or how does triple entry accounting benefit from being on the blockchain? Or a distributed ledger in general? The shitty book keeping you encountered will always be cheaper, faster, and easier than the “better” alternative. The people like SBF with a black hole of excel nonsense as their “accounting system” aren’t going to be persuaded to take up triple entry accounting— on the Blockchain or otherwise.

strangattractor 4y ago
I don't think is does - but exposing too much data is a problem. The block chain can be public and still maintain a certain anonymity. If people see a lot of money going into a particular wallet they can ask the city to clarify where/why the money if being spent. It might be nice to see exactly how money is being spent for schools (payroll, facilities etc) for example. Block chain seem made for such a thing is all.
digitaltrees 4y ago
I am not aware of any other triple entry accounting system or proposal other than the block chain ecosystem. But I have been a crypto curmudgeon and skeptic so I don’t follow it closely. Honestly it was the only idea that didn’t make me throw up a little when I would talk to crypto fans. It was my little tactic to find common ground. Excel may be cheaper and faster for companies but governments care about legitimacy and could probably end up forcing implementation. So imagine that instead of county deed offices that have physical books dating back hundreds of years with title info, they had a blockchain ledger then the third party systems the evolved on top to make title transfer lowers friction will technically not being a true legal transfer could have a middle ground where the transaction has the certainty and legitimacy of a public record and the low friction of a digital transaction rather than physically having to go to each county to record the transaction. Similarly all large banks now have to submit stress tests to the federal reserve and one of the hardest things to do is trace asset transfers and liabilities to get at contagion risk. If regulators were smart they would mandate a blockchain or time series database so that unwinding transactions didn’t have to happen through junior attorney and bankers manual review of transfers in bankruptcy court.
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  I still don't understand why this is better on a blockchain than a database. Transactions are harder to do, they take longer, they're massively more inefficient, etc. And what do we gain from this? Blockchains are not immutable (as we've seen), they're usually controlled by a single entity or group of entities (as we've seen), they're public but in a bad way - as soon as the connection between a person and a key is revealed, that person's entire transaction history is revealed. And so on. I know that "all these problems are being solved" but you could solve them all in an instant by just using a database and having sufficient oversight over who gets to manage it. I don't understand the enthusiasm to use a blockchain here (or anywhere)
  - PKop 4y ago
    3rd party trust and central point of failure. I don't agree that we've seen Bitcoin be controlled by a single entity or that anyone has power to modify it against the will of market. I would argue the things you don't see a need for are necessary, if not sufficient, to have a sufficiently decentralized ledger. Network effect might be the other ingredient.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      > I don't agree that we've seen Bitcoin be controlled by a single entity or that anyone has power to modify it against the will of market. I can say the same things of Visa? If the point is that economic incentives are what keep miners honest, what do you think keeps Visa honest? (I'll tell you as soon as they start doing things that don't follow the rules, their market cap will plummet)
    - marcus_holmes 4y ago
      We've had solutions to trust problems for centuries, and they work well. Central point of failure argument seems moot - there are simple architectures to solve this for databases.
  - streb-lo 4y ago
    Blockchain also only works the way people intend in entirely digital domains. As soon as you tie it to real-world assets it's no different than an Excel sheet because you must validate everything manually anyways.
RC_ITR 4y ago
Everyone loves cryptography and the chain of blocks structure because they are good things Neither of those things are the defining feature of cryptocurrencies, decentralization is. Decentralization is one of the most pointless endeavors in technology, because it's so hard to scale anything decentralized (case in point, how expensive on-chain BTC/ETH transactions are).
- lhl 4y ago
  No one cares about decentralization until there's a centralization failure, then those people are glad there's an alternative that others have been toiling away for for years, like with Twitter and the Fediverse. The entire Internet is built on various levels/degrees of decentralization, and while there are performance costs, it's still usually cheaper than the alternative in the long term.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    > No one cares about decentralization until there's a centralization failure It’s so wild to hear this, when, actually let’s just count some decentralized failures. 1) Remember when Solana just turned off? I bet you do since it happens so often. (I know, it’s the miners fault; crypto can never fail, only be failed) 2)Remember when Bitcoin hard forked 8+ times and many of those forks suffered 51% attacks due to lack of interest? If decentralization were good, then why does everyone centralize on the original chain? > The entire Internet is built on various levels/degrees of decentralization, and while there are performance costs, it's still usually cheaper than the alternative in the long term. Explain to me how many machines running at under 100% capacity is cheaper. Why does the cloud exist if that’s the case?

strangattractor 4y ago

I don't think is does - but exposing too much data is a problem. The block chain can be public and still maintain a certain anonymity. If people see a lot of money going into a particular wallet they can ask the city to clarify where/why the money if being spent. It might be nice to see exactly how money is being spent for schools (payroll, facilities etc) for example. Block chain seem made for such a thing is all.

digitaltrees 4y ago

I am not aware of any other triple entry accounting system or proposal other than the block chain ecosystem. But I have been a crypto curmudgeon and skeptic so I don’t follow it closely. Honestly it was the only idea that didn’t make me throw up a little when I would talk to crypto fans. It was my little tactic to find common ground. Excel may be cheaper and faster for companies but governments care about legitimacy and could probably end up forcing implementation. So imagine that instead of county deed offices that have physical books dating back hundreds of years with title info, they had a blockchain ledger then the third party systems the evolved on top to make title transfer lowers friction will technically not being a true legal transfer could have a middle ground where the transaction has the certainty and legitimacy of a public record and the low friction of a digital transaction rather than physically having to go to each county to record the transaction. Similarly all large banks now have to submit stress tests to the federal reserve and one of the hardest things to do is trace asset transfers and liabilities to get at contagion risk. If regulators were smart they would mandate a blockchain or time series database so that unwinding transactions didn’t have to happen through junior attorney and bankers manual review of transfers in bankruptcy court.

marcus_holmes 4y ago
I still don't understand why this is better on a blockchain than a database. Transactions are harder to do, they take longer, they're massively more inefficient, etc. And what do we gain from this? Blockchains are not immutable (as we've seen), they're usually controlled by a single entity or group of entities (as we've seen), they're public but in a bad way - as soon as the connection between a person and a key is revealed, that person's entire transaction history is revealed. And so on. I know that "all these problems are being solved" but you could solve them all in an instant by just using a database and having sufficient oversight over who gets to manage it. I don't understand the enthusiasm to use a blockchain here (or anywhere)
- PKop 4y ago
  3rd party trust and central point of failure. I don't agree that we've seen Bitcoin be controlled by a single entity or that anyone has power to modify it against the will of market. I would argue the things you don't see a need for are necessary, if not sufficient, to have a sufficiently decentralized ledger. Network effect might be the other ingredient.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    > I don't agree that we've seen Bitcoin be controlled by a single entity or that anyone has power to modify it against the will of market. I can say the same things of Visa? If the point is that economic incentives are what keep miners honest, what do you think keeps Visa honest? (I'll tell you as soon as they start doing things that don't follow the rules, their market cap will plummet)
  - marcus_holmes 4y ago
    We've had solutions to trust problems for centuries, and they work well. Central point of failure argument seems moot - there are simple architectures to solve this for databases.
- streb-lo 4y ago
  Blockchain also only works the way people intend in entirely digital domains. As soon as you tie it to real-world assets it's no different than an Excel sheet because you must validate everything manually anyways.

RC_ITR 4y ago

Everyone loves cryptography and the chain of blocks structure because they are good things Neither of those things are the defining feature of cryptocurrencies, decentralization is. Decentralization is one of the most pointless endeavors in technology, because it's so hard to scale anything decentralized (case in point, how expensive on-chain BTC/ETH transactions are).

lhl 4y ago
No one cares about decentralization until there's a centralization failure, then those people are glad there's an alternative that others have been toiling away for for years, like with Twitter and the Fediverse. The entire Internet is built on various levels/degrees of decentralization, and while there are performance costs, it's still usually cheaper than the alternative in the long term.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  > No one cares about decentralization until there's a centralization failure It’s so wild to hear this, when, actually let’s just count some decentralized failures. 1) Remember when Solana just turned off? I bet you do since it happens so often. (I know, it’s the miners fault; crypto can never fail, only be failed) 2)Remember when Bitcoin hard forked 8+ times and many of those forks suffered 51% attacks due to lack of interest? If decentralization were good, then why does everyone centralize on the original chain? > The entire Internet is built on various levels/degrees of decentralization, and while there are performance costs, it's still usually cheaper than the alternative in the long term. Explain to me how many machines running at under 100% capacity is cheaper. Why does the cloud exist if that’s the case?