3 ms·

Does cryptocurrency have any useful use cases?

gumby 3y ago
No. I have smart friends who continue to pursue distributed blockchain (to use neutral language) and we talk a lot about why it’s “great.” In the end the only justification boils down to “it’s decentralized” (annd I’m only looking for upsides; forget talking about the downsides). I’ve been a huge fan of end-to-end decentralization for decades but I also recognize its limits. There are lots of chip vendors and board manufacturers and anybody can make their own computer if they want, but in the end there are only a few ppl who make laptops. And they are dethroned from time to time, which is good. Another problem is non-repudiation. The great thing about studying computer science (or math) is that if you want you can ignore I/O which is messy. But the reality is that if you send a wire to the wrong person, or execute a trade of the wrong number of bonds, the bank can often quickly call the counterparty and unwind it. Because humans make mistakes. In short, the math is interesting, but it all ends there. BTW there’s nothing wrong with Merkel trees; the system we’re building has every sensor sight it’s data before uploading; every upload is signed as it arrives, making data forgery impossibly difficult. But that conventional blockchain use case doesn’t need all the rest of the encrustation of “crypto”, but we have to avoid using the polluted term “blockchain” — it excites the wrong people and turns away the right ones. (For the same reason we say “we don’t use any AI at all, just plain old machine learning”).
- arlort 3y ago
  > distributed blockchain (to use neutral language) Personally I tend to use "distributed ledger" when I want to talk about the exceedingly few actually interesting use cases / technical innovations in the general area
janandonly 3y ago
Micropayments and remittance are a both huge and still growing use cases. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544612322006560 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15446... https://www.gbgplc.com/en/blog/bitpesa-evolution-of-payments-in-africa/ https://www.gbgplc.com/en/blog/bitpesa-evolution-of-payments...
latchkey 3y ago
My favorite comment on HN that answers your question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410
yieldcrv 3y ago
entertainment sector is huge

No. I have smart friends who continue to pursue distributed blockchain (to use neutral language) and we talk a lot about why it’s “great.” In the end the only justification boils down to “it’s decentralized” (annd I’m only looking for upsides; forget talking about the downsides). I’ve been a huge fan of end-to-end decentralization for decades but I also recognize its limits. There are lots of chip vendors and board manufacturers and anybody can make their own computer if they want, but in the end there are only a few ppl who make laptops. And they are dethroned from time to time, which is good. Another problem is non-repudiation. The great thing about studying computer science (or math) is that if you want you can ignore I/O which is messy. But the reality is that if you send a wire to the wrong person, or execute a trade of the wrong number of bonds, the bank can often quickly call the counterparty and unwind it. Because humans make mistakes. In short, the math is interesting, but it all ends there. BTW there’s nothing wrong with Merkel trees; the system we’re building has every sensor sight it’s data before uploading; every upload is signed as it arrives, making data forgery impossibly difficult. But that conventional blockchain use case doesn’t need all the rest of the encrustation of “crypto”, but we have to avoid using the polluted term “blockchain” — it excites the wrong people and turns away the right ones. (For the same reason we say “we don’t use any AI at all, just plain old machine learning”).

arlort 3y ago
> distributed blockchain (to use neutral language) Personally I tend to use "distributed ledger" when I want to talk about the exceedingly few actually interesting use cases / technical innovations in the general area

janandonly 3y ago

Micropayments and remittance are a both huge and still growing use cases. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544612322006560 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15446... https://www.gbgplc.com/en/blog/bitpesa-evolution-of-payments-in-africa/ https://www.gbgplc.com/en/blog/bitpesa-evolution-of-payments...

latchkey 3y ago

My favorite comment on HN that answers your question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410

yieldcrv 3y ago

entertainment sector is huge