
Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing - dotcoma
https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solution-for-almost-nothing/84495599980-95473476
======
Acrobatic_Road
Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship.

If you want to buy a 4chan pass, you'll find there is no option to pay in EUR
or USD. Cryptocurrency only. Is this because 4chan is operating an illegal
business? No. It's because they cannot process payments using the traditional
means.

Controversial websites get financially censored all the time. Here are a few
that come to mind: Kiwi Farms, Wikileaks, Backpage, 8chan, Bitchute, American
Renaissance. I'm sure other commentators can chime in with more. Calling
blockchains a solution to nothing is pretty offensive to the those who rely on
it to pay their expenses without another realistic option.

Not to mention, anonymous cryptocurrencies such as Monero protect both the
recipient -and- the sender from financial censorship. I wouldn't want to end
up on a public list or have my bank account closed for donating to a
controversial person or organization.

And Monero could not provide the excellent privacy that it does without a
distributed ledger authenticated by proof of work. When a Monero user spends
money, he randomly samples the blockchain until ten dummy transactions can be
found and combined with his real transaction in a construct called a ring
signature used to obscure the true sender. This only works because the user
can secure his own copy of the blockchain. If he had to ask someone else for
those dummy transactions, that someone else could use process of elimination
to identify the authentic transaction in the user's ring signature.

~~~
romanoderoma
> Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship.

Cash is still better

This argument comes up everytime blockchain are discussed, but I don't believe
it is true

I could theoretically pay 4chan using crypto money,but I argue this is not a
solution

First of all, it's not the straightforward, very few people on average can do
that on their own

It requires a computer with a connection, they are ubiquitous I understand it,
but it's still a very hard requirement

But most of all, what do I do with the crypto if the baker doesn't accept
them?

I have to change them into a fiat currency valid in my country and I have to
do it in my name (or the company name) because it's illegal to do it in some
other people name it's also illegal in many countries if you are a company use
a third party to shelter the origin of the money (you pay X who then donates
to WikiLeaks)

at that point we are back at square one

~~~
Acrobatic_Road
Don't get me wrong. Cash is great. But how do I quickly and securely do a long
distance transaction in cash? Do you except people to wait for the postal
service to deliver an envelope before they receive whatever they've payed for?

>It requires a computer with a connection, they are ubiquitous I understand
it, but it's still a very hard requirement

In your example you are paying 4chan. You already have a computer with an
internet connection.

>But most of all, what do I do with the crypto if the baker doesn't accept
them?

You could sell the cryptocurrency for cash using localbitcoins. Or you could
sell it for a gift card. Or you could anonymize the funds and give them to a
trusted party to sell at a KYC exchange. Then the cash is withdrawn from the
bank and delivered to your organization. As far as I'm aware, there isn't
anything illegal about this.

And of course, you could just spend the cryptocurrency as is if the merchant
accepts it.

~~~
godelski
> Do you except people to wait for the postal service to deliver an envelope
> before they receive whatever they've payed for?

To be fair, it might be quicker to verify cash payment by mail than a crypto
payment.

~~~
Acrobatic_Road
Definitely false. If you're using bitcoin and want to be uber-safe, then you
should wait for six 10-minute confirmations. That's an extreme example though.
In practice you can spend right after the first confirmation, which can be
seconds to minutes for other cryptocurrencies.

~~~
godelski
I think you missed the _joke_ about long verification times.

------
godelski
Looking at all the comments here I have a single response to most of them:
I'll call it a solution when it is implemented. You can talk all you want
about solutions to some of the (minor) problems addressed here (ignoring the
rest of the problems) but unless it is in use then the article's commentary
still stands. Unless it has a ton of users, the article's commentary still
stands. If you really do believe in block chain, prove us all wrong and
implement the changes.

~~~
andreskytt
Number mobility between Indian telecoms runs on private blockchain. AFAIK it
is live and actively used. BC solves a problem there because operating a
database for that scale would be very complicated. So every telco has their
own copy that get synced via a consensus mechanism and signed transactions

~~~
Lazare
> private blockchain

So a database?

> AFAIK it is live and actively used.

Most things people seem to think are running on blockchain tech turn out not
to be, so I'd be interested in any evidence here. Nonetheless.

> operating a database for that scale would be very complicated

They're already operating a database, so at most this is an argument that a
traditional database tech wouldn't work, except...

...this is only a few billion rows, at most, right? With minimal data? It
would totally, totally work. We're at a scale where a copy of "MySQL for
dummies" is going to explain everything you need to know here. A moderately
large number of people in this thread probably work for companies that have
traditional databases that work at a larger scale or with higher demands than
this.

~~~
davidgerard
> Most things people seem to think are running on blockchain tech turn out not
> to be, so I'd be interested in any evidence here. Nonetheless.

There's a few such systems in production - in practice, they tend to use a
private Ethereum or Hyperledger as a back-end data store, and 100% of the use
case for using a blockchain for your private back-end data store is being able
to say "blockchain!" in the press release.

------
Animats
Bitcoin has lots of uses:

\- Getting money out of China. Buy into a mining consortium with yuan, get a
fraction of the bitcoins, sell outside China for dollars or euros. You're
manufacturing and exporting, which the government of China likes.

\- Extortion. The ransomware extortion business depends on Bitcoin.

\- Drugs. Delivered to your door in a plain wrapper.

~~~
alasdair_
>\- Drugs. Delivered to your door in a plain wrapper.

What are the transaction costs like on BTC these days? I'm surprised many
people still bother with BTC given the enormous costs I've seen.

~~~
kabacha
You don't pay in BTC for drugs though. Montero is usually preferred and
transactions are much cheaper and private.

~~~
zelly
It's not, the dominant currency on darknet is still Bitcoin. Even Litecoin is
more used than Monero. Criminals are stupid.

------
jjordan
Blockchain is easy to criticize. Hell, I've done it plenty and I worked in the
space full time for a good year and a half. But the problems that they're
trying to solve, decentralization, censorship resistance, sound money, true
democratic governance, etc. are hard ones to solve. Maybe it turns out that
they are inherently unsolvable for the foreseeable future. I think the promise
that a solution to some of these problems may exist is what drives curious
developers to keep pushing the envelope, because, much like fusion power, if
we eventually "get it", it'll change the world. Blockchain innovation is a lot
like that. Keep pushing.

~~~
Skunkleton
> But the problems that they're trying to solve, decentralization, censorship
> resistance, sound money, true democratic governance, etc.

Noble goals. Still, blockchains are inherently limited to the digital world.
No amount of digital freedom or security stops you from being oppressed by an
unjust government, or robbed at gunpoint.

Taking Bitcoin as an example, there have been many cases of bitcoins being
seized or stolen. The reasons behind these losses were much the same as the
reasons people lose fiat currency. Someone with authority came and took it.

Frankly, I don't really understand what there is to "get". You can create a
perfect system, but people have to operate within it. That means laws, and it
means ceding authority to regulation.

None of this is to say that I am not interested in blockchain tech, and am not
open to it as a solution. I just haven't seen a problem solved by it yet. I
would be happy to be proven wrong.

~~~
fossuser
I'm somewhat of a cautiously optimistic skeptic that finds the blockchain
stuff really interesting and potentially important (I've been playing with it
since 2010), but not super useful at the moment.

I think these are some of things people think about it:

\- Your country's financial system is unreliable or run by tyrants and the
currency is bad. It might be hard to get a stable currency. Moving income into
bitcoin could help you (people were doing this in Venezuela).

\- Your country was invaded and crossing the border requires you to interact
with corrupt guards that steal anything of value you try and get out. Putting
your wealth into a bitcoin wallet can allow you to escape with it intact if
you memorize your seed words (there was a story about someone in Ukraine that
did this crossing the border patrolled by Russian guards).

\- Bitcoin is deflationary, the coins are limited and scarce, but the currency
is divisible. This means they should hold value over time. Fiat currencies are
vulnerable to monetary policy of governments, bitcoin is less so. Bitcoin may
increase in value in part because other currencies are decreasing in value.

\- Ability to move money more easily than other deflationary assets like gold
(which have other problems). Universal currency across different governments
that can be converted into local currency.

All of this is primarily just BTC. I think there are other potential
interesting things with ability to have an audit log of immutable transactions
of a block chain generally. I think some of the other things are cool (urbit
is using ethereum for IDs), but a lot of the other things don't seem to have
much purpose beyond being cool. Faster transaction times? The strategy Dai
uses to stay pegged to 1 USD is neat.

~~~
TylerE
> \- Your country's financial system is unreliable or run by tyrants and the
> currency is bad. It might be hard to get a stable currency. Moving income
> into bitcoin could help you (people were doing this in Venezuela).

You know what unstable governments in the middle of a revolution don't have?
Reliable power and internet.

> Your country was invaded and crossing the border requires you to interact
> with corrupt guards that steal anything of value you try and get out.
> Putting your wealth into a bitcoin wallet can allow you to escape with it
> intact if you memorize your seed words (there was a story about someone in
> Ukraine that did this crossing the border patrolled by Russian guards).

Sounds like a great way to get rubber hosed to death.

> Bitcoin is deflationary, the coins are limited and scarce, but the currency
> is divisible. This means they should hold value over time. Fiat currencies
> are vulnerable to monetary policy of governments, bitcoin is less so.
> Bitcoin may increase in value in part because other currencies are
> decreasing in value.

Deflationary, for consumers, is bad. I am also not convinced bitcoin in nearly
divisible enough to actually be world currency. (And that's ignoring the fact
that it would need something like 7 orders of magnitude improvement in
throughput)

~~~
fossuser
> You know what unstable governments in the middle of a revolution don't have?
> Reliable power and internet.

It's reliable enough actually (people are currently doing this). You also
don't need it up all the time to move value into BTC.

> Sounds like a great way to get rubber hosed to death.

There isn't a way for them to tell that you've done this, and in the case in
the Ukraine it allowed him to get out with his wealth intact:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why-b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why-
bitcoin-is-a-silent-protest-against-corrupt-governments-
everywhere/#188214803542)

> Deflationary, for consumers, is bad. I am also not convinced bitcoin in
> nearly divisible enough to actually be world currency. (And that's ignoring
> the fact that it would need something like 7 orders of magnitude improvement
> in throughput)

I don't think it'll be used for frequent transactions unless they actually can
fix the time/throughput issues, but that doesn't mean it's useless. There
could potentially be a future where you move BTC to some other currency with
faster transaction times in smaller amounts for immediate or frequent use.

Just because a lot of blockchain tech is filled with people running ICO pump
and dump scams, speculators, and an enormous amount of bullshit in general
doesn't mean there isn't also some cool stuff going on too. There's a lot of
nonsense, but there are also some real current applications, and I think, some
real future potential.

------
dk8996
I'm really surprised by how uneducated most of HN are about blockchain. This
means we're still early. Few big things that are coming out of blockchain;

1) ICO - a way to raise money in a distributed manner outside the traditional
financial system (think Banks and VCs).

2) Defi - a way to borrow and lend (and much more) outside the traditional
financial system. One example, Banks get as much as 16-20% return on your
depoiste -- you might see 1% of that. Defi solves that by removing the Bank
and you can capture all of that yield. You can lend literally with a click of
a button and see returns with every mined block. Take the money back any time
you want.

3) Governance - there is a big social benefit if we figure out all the edge
cases and the correct implementation. Many benefits in voting, real-world
governance, and open source (what to work on next, what gets funding).

4) Many many Comp. Sci. and Cryptology advances; see byzantine general
problem, zero-knowledge proof, and many more. Just one example of a company
doing lots of research:
[https://iohk.io/en/research/library/](https://iohk.io/en/research/library/)

~~~
arkadiyt
What is an ICO really - just a company minting tokens for people that they can
exchange for something. They're not using any of the properties of blockchain,
and no one is running nodes except for the company itself. They should just
sell digital tokens via traditional ecommerce methods - nothing about ICOs
depends on or takes advantage of being on a blockchain.

~~~
ahdeanz
They're literally using the blockchain to distribute the tokens.

~~~
mad182
Wrong. They are using blockchain to generate hype. Internally it might as well
be an Excel spreadsheet instead of blockchain and it wouldn't make a
difference to the end user.

------
saurabhnanda
Honest question. When someone says the blockchain can be used for anything
OTHER than financial transactions, for example - supply chain, health records,
etc. what is the actual underlying data that will be stored on the blockchain?

When it comes to a quasi-banking or quasi-wallet system, I find it easy to
visualize that the blockchain holds accounts with balances, and there are
transactions which move money between accounts. Blockchain's decentralization
and write-only properties help because no single entity can make your money
disappear, and no entity can rollback a transaction.

What is going on with other use-cases of blockchain? What does a supply-chain
system actually store on the blockchain? The SKU list? The price of SKUs? The
stock level of each SKU in each warehouse? What?

------
fouc
> But isn’t it strange that you won all those awards, even though you aren’t
> actually using the blockchain?

Kinda like all those AI startups that aren't actually using AI.

~~~
dylan604
Artificial Artificial Intelligence?

~~~
jethro_tell
We're working on the air for our start up. In the mean time the interns are
matching stuff in spread sheets.

~~~
rudiv
So your analysis has been created by neural nets?

------
Sargos
An article about blockchain where the thesis is that it doesn't solve any
problems and it doesn't even mention Ethereum? This article is extremely
poorly researched (maybe on purpose) and reads like clickbait.

~~~
graeme
Could you elaborate on what problems Ethereum has solve? Genuinely curious, as
I shared this article’s preconceptions.

~~~
Sargos
I wrote this below but copying here as it's hard to write a huge comment
twice.

That's a long article itself but this might be a good starting point:
[https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-
cases/](https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/) Consensys is run by an
Ethereum co-founder and one of the most prestigious organizations in this
space, so that page might seem intimidating but it's good, factual
information.

Ethereum allows for the usage of unique and real items in the digital world.
Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just
ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. A bit of money is unique and can't be
copied and thus is real and useful in ways previously digital information
wasn't.

You can own a digital object or digital representation of a real object and
use it on the internet. God's Unchained is a collectible card game like Magic
the Gathering where the cards are digital, the rare cards are provably rare,
and the players can trade the cards on any market out there or even take out
loans on their valuable extra rare cards. This concept applies to many things
including cars, houses, collectible fashion apparel, and anything else that
there needs to be only one of.

DeFi is already re-creating all of the capabilities of the existing financial
system but built on neutral and fair rules where no one person or company can
arbitrarily change them and you always keep fully control of your assets.

There's too much to write but there is something here and it's worth reading
about it with an open mind as it's very likely going to be important in a
decade or so.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
> Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just
> ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies.

Ah, yes, that was Amazon's mistake. Accepting Internet money has meant that
I've been able to just email them photocopies of the same money over and over.
Hahaha, it has been the perfect crime. I hope Amazon never embrances Ethereum
and I can keep getting free merchandise forever.

~~~
ric2b
I get the joke but you don't send Amazon money, you just tell someone else
(after multiple third-parties and fees) to let them take some of the money you
store with them.

It's not at all like handing someone some cash, I never "signed up" to my
local grocery store and I don't need to login to make a purchase, I can just
hand them some cash.

------
peteretep
Can we add Graph Databases to the list of things that are kinda cool but with
very limited applications too?

~~~
mgraczyk
Facebook's entire backend is built on a graph database.

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/tao-
the-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/tao-the-power-of-
the-graph/10151525983993920/)

~~~
peteretep
Yes. Social networks and categorising artistic output both seems like great
uses and then ... very little else.

------
fossuser
The Correspondent is such a huge disappointment.

I contributed to the start because they pitched themselves as 'unbreaking
news', instead they're just another weak publication writing bad articles with
catchy headlines (of which this is a good example).

Persuasion is everything The Correspondent was supposed to be and isn't:
[https://www.persuasion.community/](https://www.persuasion.community/)

If you want to actually learn more about bitcoin, I'm part way through this
and it's really good: [https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-
Technologies-C...](https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-Technologies-
Comprehensive-Introduction/dp/0691171696/)

------
kordlessagain
The 402 response code in HTTP might be a useful thing to "hook up" to
Lightning, which itself is useful because of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Having fast micropayments payments running on data requests is useful for a
wide variety of cloud applications, including but not limited to data transfer
costs and queries to machine learning models, all without the need for "users"
on the systems being accessed.

The way I'd put it is that the killer use case for Bitcoin is yet to come,
which doesn't make it a solution for nothing, but more like a solution before
its time.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402)

~~~
zelly
For a regular user to use Lightning, they would have to run an always-online
instance of lnd--a very memory-intensive Go program that also requires a
Bitcoin fullnode (300GB) or the experimental Neutrino light node either of
which also has to be always-online. The average internet user has never typed
a bash command so this is a pipe dream. Or you could have the alternative
which is to push people onto centralized Lightning-like (but better, more
polished) services run by the likes of JP Morgan. (It's my suspicion that
focusing hype on Lightning instead of scaling Bitcoin Core was a way to
sabotage it in favor of paid services of a certain company that most Bitcoin
developers are employed by but I digress.) Micropayments in general is a bad
idea which the market has rejected time and time again. If you really want to
do something like that, just do it the same way all billing works, add it up
and notify the user with an invoice at the end of the month or year. That
could be integrated into browsers without being tied to a specific payment
method or forcing payment. I don't even want to imagine how rich hackers would
get if every web browser had a code path that transferred real money.

~~~
ric2b
I use Lightning with an app on my phone (Eclair) and I don't need an always
online node, that's just not how LN is designed. As long as the app can sync
once every 2-weeks I'm completely safe.

------
ccortes
>And it would be a lot less complicated if you trusted someone to manage your
data (a bank, for instance).

It must be nice living somewhere where you can trust banks

------
vaibhawc
I would rather believe a word on this by an investor/entrepreneur or a
tinkerer like that kid instead of Journalist. Tech journalism is more crappy
than blockchain/bitcoin hype market.

------
luhn
This article really hits the nail on the head: All these problems blockchain
are supposed to solve are problems of coordination. And you don't need
blockchain for that, you need buy-in.

~~~
ASlave2Gravity
Very true. We need to show the world how to do that! Got any ideas!?

------
tehranifar
It's been a good solution for authentic digital arts! Check out
[https://knownorigin.io/](https://knownorigin.io/)
[https://superrare.co/](https://superrare.co/) There are also virtual worlds
to see the art in
[https://www.cryptovoxels.com/](https://www.cryptovoxels.com/)

~~~
Rotten194
Yay, we can reproduce the worst part of physical art on the internet now...
art is interesting because it's art, not because rich people can speculate on
it. In an ideal world everyone could have a Monet on their wall. With digital
art, that's possible. Why the heck do we want to change that?

~~~
tomcam
My experience with Monets is drastically different IRL than digitally. Did not
care for Monet until I saw the water lilies museum in France.

------
xg15
My personal theory is that most of the hype around "Blockchain technology" is
simply an aftereffect of the valuation spike Bitcoin went though in
2017/2018\. That was the point were Bitcoin reached the public consciousness
and people realized you could make money with it.

To do so you have to convince _others_ to sink their money into the sector,
hence all the grandiose proposals, opaque jargon and solutions is search of
problems...

------
stagas
> I have never heard of a bank simply taking money from someone’s account. If
> a bank did something like that, they would be hauled into court in no time
> and lose their license. Technically it’s possible; legally, it’s a death
> sentence.

 _cough_ Cyprus.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%932013_Cypriot_fina...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%932013_Cypriot_financial_crisis)

------
quotz
Millions of citizens from countries that have abusive governments would
disagree with this. Its digital gold. In Yugoslavia where I am from
originally, gold was banned, and that was the case too in Romania during
dictatorship times. People were smuggling gold to preserve their means of
survival, and being seen carrying gold would result in one being killed by a
firing squad or jailed. BTC doesn’t have that problem

~~~
zucker42
Can't they just ban you from making connections to known Bitcoin nodes at the
network level, or use a Honeypot to detect when you access Bitcoin specific
services?

~~~
kikimora
No they cannot because it is a decentralized system. Whenever they try people
would quickly post tin of material how to access bitcoin over TOR/VPN. And
since it is money people do care to learn these things to be able to transact
freely.

------
BTCOG
This is very straight forward in that the blockchain was invented by Satoshi
Nakamoto to solve the Byzantine General's Problem, double-spending, and a
decentralized ledger. We can go much deeper into what Bitcoin can do, but all
other chains wishing to do other things this guy mentions always were a cheap
piggy back on Bitcoin.

I'm here to tell you Bitcoin works, and does not need anything else. Bitcoin
is not slow like many folks will tell you all day long, either. Bitcoin does
not have high fees, either. Bitcoin is very sound "money," and not a great
currency. If someone wishes to transfer money to someone else anywhere in the
world, they simply tailor their fee to be low, and they send it for 40-60
cents and understand that it will confirm over the next day. (Yes, the mempool
surges during times of heavy use, and yes it may take a little while longer,
but just the same, millions of dollars can be sent with no third party for
under $1 fee) The time itself for this does not really matter, as this could
never be done prior to Bitcoin. Ask those sending money home to the
Philippines or folks who are unbanked how many days a wire transfer takes, and
how many third parties take a massive chunk in fees. Nobody controls your
money in Bitcoin, and nobody takes a fee. (Nobody is taking your money from a
BTC fee, the paltry amount is paying into the system to keep the miners
mining)

It's nothing else beyond this, and nothing else is needed. Anyone can argue
about this endlessly but Bitcoin solved it's problem it was designed for, and
all else is just garbage tacked on by other people trying to strike it rich.

I have used Bitcoin regularly since 2011. I have purchased real, legal goods
from folks in other countries over forums in escrow that could not be done
otherwise without incurring very large fees. I've paid 30 people
simultaneously with one multisend transaction, and one fee.

Everything else is irrelevant. Bitcoin is revolutionary. Just Bitcoin. It
works and it works very well. You can continue to beat around the bush and
apply fetishism all day, and Bitcoin still works the way it was intended.

------
skinnyasianboi
A year ago I might have upvoted the post but after reading like 60% of it it
felt very biased and I couldn't finish it. Disclaimer I'm also biased. A few
things that I was missing: no mention of smart contracts(?), no mention of
inflation and countries/banks that you can't trust your money and transactions
doesn't have to take 7minutes-7days. For example in my experience a
transaction on the Tron network goes quicker than a debit card transaction.
But a valid reason was the massive energy consumption and I hope we will solve
that with e.g. fusion energy.

------
aww_dang
Who here is actually using blockchain as a developer?

I'd like to hear from people who have actually created solutions, not
speculation about potential use cases or price action.

------
Causality1
It's the evolution of buzzwords. Back in the day people used buzzwords that
were nonspecific enough you could apply them to almost any solution. Synergy,
paradigm, leverage, etc. Today's buzzwords have very specific meanings but are
flexible enough you can convince people they're the solution to any problem.
Blockchain, AI, machine learning, etc.

------
nojvek
Blockchain is based on Merkle trees and well, merkle trees definitely made
their impact via git and other immutable log structures.

Blockchain is cool datastructure as an immutable log with proof work where
integrity can be verified in a distributed manner by multiple parties.

It’s like quantum computers. Heavily hyped but only useful for a specialized
set of problems.

------
peterthehacker
Bitcoin has a large (100M+) user base (or at least it seems like it) but I
can’t think of another blockchain app that has reached that level. Ethereum is
more like a framework or platform as I understand it so I don’t think it
counts in the same way.

Besides bitcoin are there any other blockchain apps that have large user
bases?

~~~
seibelj
Ethereum has more transactions per week that bitcoin by a large margin. Most
new projects are built on Ethereum.

------
ajcodez
Saifedean Ammous writes pretty convincingly how a fixed money supply would be
a good thing. I don’t know of any other unique benefit. It will be interesting
to see how it plays out with nation states and diminishing block rewards. I’m
holding a little bit just in case.

~~~
tomcam
We had a solution to that problem for thousands of years: gold.

~~~
ric2b
Sort of, new gold mines keep showing up and if asteroid mining takes off it's
really going to push gold value down by a lot.

------
cheez
Responding to title only: of course, but the things it _is_ a solution for
will be world changing.

~~~
peteretep
When will they be world changing? I have a client who insists on paying me in
crypto and the whole thing is dramatically more expensive and complicated than
using TransferWise with a 10,000x increased risk that someone fat fingers
something and the money disappears into the ether forever

~~~
cheez
My opinion is that it's like tcp/ip, new plumbing (ethereum). So expect
protocols and apps to be built on top of it, similar to HTTP and browsers. You
just need one killer app to make all the hype worth it.

That killer app might be elections or possibly decentralized trading of
electronic assets like stock ownership.

------
aaron695
Blockchain is good for LARPing.

And if you think LARPing is pathetic then that's on you. While you go to your
billion dollar church or watch your billion dollar sport or analyse your
String theory or do your medieval sword fights in dress-up at castles.

------
LukeEF
Cryptographic stamps on hash chains to understand who made specific entries to
a layered & immutable database is super useful. I don't know who needs to hear
that as it isn't blockchain, but it borrows the best ideas!

------
kobasa
I just want to say I'm shocked a community who's supposed to be as
technologically adept as HN still "doesn't get it". I have no intention or
interest in changing anyone's mind...if you know, you know.

------
ThePowerOfDirge
Quadratic voting might be useful

[https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html](https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html)

------
dotcoma
Funny how this post went from #1 on the homepage to #22 in a couple of
minutes...

------
mbrodersen
Blockchain, the solution for getting funding from ignorant investors.

------
dang
Recent and related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24181586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24181586)

------
danschumann
The block chain is what? An array of objects? The real tech is deciding who
gets to push to the array. So, it's just about permissions. How do you know
who to trust in a crowd? Assuming the crowd is more trustworthy than a
centralized authority. "Power corrupts", yadda yadda, centralized power is
certainly corrupting, but so is dark money that can be used for drugs, human
trafficking, etc.

I guess it depends which is the larger evil where you come from, the
government or the criminals, whether to trust the central or the decentric
authority.

------
kikimora
Surprised to see so much misunderstanding here. “Byzantine fault tolerant
consensus” problems have been solved with a trusted party since many many
centuries. Entire modern monetary system is based on a trusted party - a
central bank. Blockchain provides a way to remove trusted party out of
equation. One can argue that existing system just works, why would you want to
change something that works? Answer is simple - it does not work in many
countries and trusted parties/authorities abuse their powers, sometimes in a
ways that is not so easy to see.

First application of a blockchain is digital money which is free from a
central authority. Here is real world scenario that happened in so many
places. Your domestic currency is crushing, has lost 30% of it value already
and is about to loose another 80%. You want to by US dollars and save what is
left but you cannot because government temporary prohibited purchase of a
foreign currency. I’m thinking about Russia, Belorussia, Venezuela and many
many others.

Political activists get blocked by a banking system all the time. For example
in Russia there is a “list of terrorists”, people on this list excluded form
the banking system. This list probably has some terrorists in it but it also
has quite a few activists in it as well. You can go to a protest, grabbed by a
police and next day find yourself out of the banking system.

Decentralized money is at least partially a solution to issues arising form an
authority abusing it powers as cryptocurrency cannot be blocked so easily. It
does not have to be used much, it just has to be around.

Second blockchain application is smart contracts to simplify value transfer.
For example shares offerings - when a company sells it shares to a bunch of
investors. It often happens outside of an exchange, without IPO (search for
Reg-A, Reg-D offerings). In this process a bank holds investor money until
offering completes and a “transfer agent” hold stock in the name of an
investor after. Bank and transfer agent are there only because of trust
issues, someone has to guarantee that investor pays and receives shares.
Investor cannot directly hand over cash to a company because it can fail to
pay or company can fail to deliver it shares and then they will have to spend
time and money in court. Both bank and transfer agent take their commission
just because they trusted and licensed to hold value during and after
transaction. These commissions are not small, a bank may take few percents for
organizing an offering.

Shares can be issued on a blockchain and a smart contract can govern entire
value transfer starting from escrow, to enforcing offering conditions and then
to transfer of shares and money to counter parties. You can imagine banks
might not be happy about loosing their profits but competition in democratic
countries slowly but surely drives process in a right direction.

Similar examples arise all the time in international trade, trade clearing,
interbank relationships, etc, etc. blockchain is a solution to all of this but
maybe we need another financial crisis (when “trusted parties” became not so
trusted) to speed up it adoption.

------
centimeter
There are precisely two legitimately useful applications of the blockchain
data structure that have been invented:

1\. Money 2\. Zooko's Triangle

Your prior should be that anything else is some kind of delusion or scam.

~~~
drpixie
And the cost of bitcoin has naturally been inflating to the cost of the power
needed to do the mining ... so the whole thing looks a lot like a bubble,
great if you got in and out early, bad news for everyone else.

~~~
rdbell
Are you arguing that price chases hash rate instead of hash rate chasing
price?

------
biolurker1
Been a while since a denialist article appeared here. It is in stark contrasts
with governments, nasdaq,banks, people using etc and many others. But hey the
right to say computers are worthless is always there

~~~
tomcam
And yet you didn’t provide a single example contradicting the articles thesis.

~~~
biolurker1
Again, China usa and eu governments are using it to deploy digital currencies.
Nasdaq plans to build the new financial infra on blockchain. What do you need
Jesus to come down and tell you it has value as technology?

------
ultramundane8
According to this article:

Blockchain, big data, cloud computing, AI, and magic are roughly equivalent.

Don't waste your time reading it even if blockchain is weak.

------
kumarvvr
As a distributed ledger, that does not require a consolidated authority, it
has the potential to have many uses.

Many think blockchain as a synonym for BitCoin and the like, while the central
technology seems to be the distributed ledger.

However, with anything distributed, the network is only as good as it's
participants. Which means, when thinking long term, it fails to give
confidence in the system, because who knows, 20 years from now, will there by
any participants in the distributed ledger?

------
programmarchy
Ctrl+F proof of stake. Author didn’t do much homework. Just retreading the
same criticisms about energy consumption and this-could-just-be-a-postgres-db-
hosted-on-cloud-megacorp.

Crypto is a bubble but it’s also a space solving difficult problems that will
shape how the world transacts. It’s volatile because it’s difficult and hard
to understand, but that doesn’t mean there’s no value.

------
spir
This article is misinformed. The past two years have seen a Cambrian explosion
of apps on ethereum.

financial apps on ethereum \- [https://defipulse.com/](https://defipulse.com/)
\- [https://uniswap.info/home](https://uniswap.info/home) \-
[https://compound.finance/](https://compound.finance/) \-
[https://nexusmutual.io/](https://nexusmutual.io/) \-
[https://bloom.co/](https://bloom.co/) \- [https://baseline-
protocol.org](https://baseline-protocol.org) \-
[https://augur2.eth.link/](https://augur2.eth.link/)

non-financial apps on ethereum \- [https://audius.org/](https://audius.org/)
\- [https://ens.domains/](https://ens.domains/) \-
[https://decentraland.org/](https://decentraland.org/)

popular newsletter -
[https://weekinethereumnews.com/](https://weekinethereumnews.com/)

~~~
Skunkleton
I looked through a few of those, and I struggle to see how those are superior
to traditional solutions to the same problems. Care to enlighten me?

~~~
capnorange
open source, permissionless, programmable, trustless, unstoppable.

~~~
ac29
open source: not exclusive to blockchain

permissionless: seems to be code for "lets you do things that are illegal"

programmable: not exclusive to blockchain

trustless: also attracts those that are untrustworthy (scammers, etc)

unstoppable: seems to also be code for "lets you do things that are illegal",
and im sure the various people who are in prison and/or under investigation
for their various blockchain related crimes would disagree with how
"unstoppable" it really is

~~~
kls
So just to be clear illegal does not mean immoral. Lets assume that tomorrow a
percentage of nations decided to revoke wealth and confiscate wealth. They
could pass laws and make what they are doing legal and evasion of it illegal.
While it would be legal for them to do so, it would be immoral as it is
basically theft, and one would not be immoral to try to protect the wealth
that they have worked for and amassed by illegal activities such as trying to
get that wealth out of the country via digital currency before fleeing.

Let's take the Nazi's for example, because they are always the generic
personification of an evil government. Had digital currencies existed in that
time, it would not have been immoral for the Jews to transitional all of their
wealth into digital currencies ahead of trying to flee Germany, though it
would have certainly been illegal by German laws against the jews.

------
onelastjob
This author is way behind the times. Bitcoin is obsolete. Nano (nano.org) is
what the author should be looking at as the future of p2p digital currency.
Nano transactions are feeless and take under 1 second, fully confirmed. If you
send 1 Nano the recipient receives 1 Nano. There is no mining involved so it
is green and it is decentralized. These features make microtransactions
possible. You could use it to pay a fraction of a sent to stream a song or
read an article. Or us it to log in to websites. Npass is doing both.
[https://npass.dev/npass](https://npass.dev/npass) Robocash is using Nano to
prevent robocalls. [https://www.myrobocash.com/](https://www.myrobocash.com/)

Smart contract coins like Ethereum will have tons of uses, especially for
digital goods. You could easily cut escrow.com (and all escrow fees) out of
the process of transferring domain names (and other digital goods) with smart
contracts if a domain registrar got with the times.

~~~
ac29
I'm not sure a cryptocurrency that has lost ~95% of its value in the past
couple years is a good counterexample to this article.

~~~
aww_dang
Valuation isn't necessarily a measure of utility. Usually it is correlated
with hype and marketing.

Most people interested in cryptocurrencies have little to no interest in
actual use cases. Investors simply want the price to go up. This is usually
criticized as a "greater fool" investment strategy.

The article speaks to this. If there is any value in an cryptocurrency, it is
up to the developers to divine it. Investors will eventually find a price
equilibrium, but for now the ecosystem seems driven by hype, buzzwords, pozi-
dapps and bubbles. NANO doesn't have any of that.

