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Re:The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme by arcticbull on Thursday December 09, 2021 @02:46PM (#29502006)
> There's a real possibility here that you're way overconfident and wrong and this overconfidence will blind you from a lot of interesting stuff that's going on.

I'm always open to that possibility, and I spend a lot of time learning about blockchain technology. And I've spent the last 10 years working in fintech. Of the commenters here, I probably have more context than most on both.

> Yeah - that's because that's ignoring the entire context of everything else required around that. The centralized systems, the manual trust, the integration problems between organizations. The sql update is not the issue.

Correct, centralization and trust represent massive efficiencies.

Banks trust each other or can trust a central intermediary which is again why NPP, RTP, FedNow, SEPA, FPA all work instantly, basically free, without blockchain. Whereas moving USDC-ETH between two accounts costs $25.

> Good for you - let's check back in 10yr.

It's been 14 years and yet we have nothing to show for it except a whole pile of used up Kazakh and Xinjiang coal - and some really ugly twitter avatars. But yes, I'll wait, I'm sure OP will deliver by 2031.

Re:The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme by fossuser on Thursday December 09, 2021 @03:10PM (#29502297)
The bitcoin whitepaper came out in 2009, Ethereum was 2015, a lot of the interesting stuff has been within the last two years.

You may be right in the end, but people with exposure to the industry at risk of disruption are often bad at recognizing it. See Ballmer at Microsoft mocking the iPhone, Blockbuster failing to adapt to Netflix, Borders failing to adapt to Kindle/Amazon etc.

That knowledge can provide context for accuracy, but it can also mislead or bias you against something that's changing rapidly.

> "Correct, centralization and trust represent massive efficiencies."

At a real cost. The web comparison would be decentralized underlying protocols vs. the centralized applications on top of them. "Web3" may allow a way to fix the things that lead to centralization at the application layer with UX that actually works. This is distinct from cryptocurrency, but there's some overlap. ETH cost should get reduced by ETH2 and sharding, the cost is representative of current transaction demand.

I'm not a crypto-anarchist, I think both systems will have complementary purposes. Programmable money is something new, knee-jerk dismissals of "it's all crime" are dumb imo.

Re:The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme by arcticbull on Thursday December 09, 2021 @03:49PM (#29502744)
> You may be right in the end, but people with exposure to the industry at risk of disruption are often bad at recognizing it. See Ballmer at Microsoft mocking the iPhone, Blockbuster failing to adapt to Netflix, Borders failing to adapt to Kindle/Amazon etc.

That's a lovely narrative except I work in fintechs exposed to crypto.

> ... That knowledge can provide context for accuracy, but it can also mislead or bias you against something that's changing rapidly.

And as I said I spend a lot of time researching so that I can have informed discussions.

> At a real cost. The web comparison would be decentralized underlying protocols vs. the centralized applications on top of them. "Web3" may allow a way to fix the things that lead to centralization at the application layer with UX that actually works.

The real cost of PoW blockchain is the electricity consumption and e-waste production of a country, and the cost of all blockchains is a system absolutely rife with corruption and scams.

You're just describing APIs, which we've had forever.