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Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thisisbrians on Friday January 28, 2022 @05:25PM (#30121295)
Your assessment of affairs is drenched in obvious bias. The downsides of these new technologies get plenty of airtime (your post included), but completely fail to acknowledge the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many). Why was there no similar outcry from the technology community over the invention and proliferation of machine learning? It can be used for good or evil (there are plenty of cases of the latter that I'm sure the crowd can think of). It's extremely early days for groundbreaking technologies that have a lot of potential beyond the obvious scams we can all point to. We shouldn't banish a technology merely because it has the potential to harm (almost all technology does). What we should do is educate folks so they can decide whether they want to participate for themselves, rather than telling them how to think.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by scott_s on Friday January 28, 2022 @05:37PM (#30121425)
BitCoin is 13 years old. The blockchain is not a new technology, and it is not extremely early days. We have over a decade of people trying to use blockchain and cryptocurrencies to solve real problems - and not just from startups, but also from large, international tech companies with research divisions. They have tried to use blockchain to solve real problems, and they have failed.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by spopejoy on Saturday January 29, 2022 @09:30PM (#30133258)
Bitcoin is also a laughably primitive blockchain, and Ethereum is holding back potential applications with it's innumerable flaws. You're right that "it's not early" as crypto hasn't been able to progress as fast as other tech because it's being hampered by its own success, in the time-honored worse-is-better tradition.

Blockchains are unusual tech in that it's strangely hard to upgrade them. In 2017-18 it was a common belief that some Bitcoin fork would "win" and become the "real Bitcoin", under the moniker "it's not the network, it's the ledger". Turns out it _is_ the network AND the ledger, unfortunately.

However, I maintain that the technology is still _immature_ and in that sense "it's still early": there is still some extremely low-hanging fruit in scalability, safe computing and cryptography that Bitcoin/Eth can't touch. BTC and ETH can absolutely be dethroned with better tech just like other giants that seemed unstoppable at the time.

Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thisisbrians on Friday January 28, 2022 @08:36PM (#30122871)
The transistor is 13 years old. The transistor is not a new technology...
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by scott_s on Friday January 28, 2022 @10:51PM (#30123611)
The transistor was invented in 1947. By 1960, 13 years later, transistors had replaced vacuum tubes as the dominant technology for electronics.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thisisbrians on Saturday January 29, 2022 @12:27PM (#30128250)
Yes, and then the internet took another 20+ years.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by scott_s on Saturday January 29, 2022 @03:56PM (#30130353)
You made an implicit argument: it took a similar amount of time (13 years) after the invention of the transistor for them to be used to solve real problems. That is clearly wrong. What argument are you trying to make now?
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thrwn_frthr_awy on Friday January 28, 2022 @05:37PM (#30121421)
> the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many)

Not trying to troll, but can you explain some of them? Not in the abstract, but in end-user/product terms.

Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thisisbrians on Friday January 28, 2022 @08:33PM (#30122854)
My favorite example of late is http://royal.io. You can purchase a token (NFT) that represents fractional ownership in the licensing rights of a musician's song or album, and also comes along with other perks (such as free or discounted merch and concert tickets). The proceeds from the NFT sales help fund the artist's project, and then you participate in the upside by receiving a share of royalties for holding the token.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thrwn_frthr_awy on Friday January 28, 2022 @09:30PM (#30123198)
Thanks for the reply. Royal looks interesting, but I may be missing why an NFT is needed for this. Fractional ownership was existed for a long time before crypto. What does the part NFT provide?
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by spopejoy on Saturday January 29, 2022 @09:22PM (#30133205)
NFT for this use-case provides

- the uncorruptible chain of custody. While it's well known for decades that "just a database" would solve ASCAP/BMI robbing countless artists because "it's too hard to track them down", they're not going to do it. A royalty is meaningless if there's no mechanism to enforce it, and an autonomous one is simply superior. If you're then going to say "but I could do that with XYZ" then now the rhetorical burden is yours to explain to me why it NEVER caught on.

- fractional ownership is a doodad, but a particularly hard doodad to set up, especially alongside a royalty mechanism. Once again "but you can do that with" -- what? A Delaware corp? With specialized technology? Some combination of buggy lambdas on AWS? And _how_ are you going to offer this to artists and still make money?

NFT for royalties just makes sense. It's no wonder it's not making anywhere near the money that art NFTs do -- but that's art: you'd have to look far and wide to find a more contemptible and corrupted marketplace than fine art. It's no wonder they like crypto :)

Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thisisbrians on Saturday January 29, 2022 @12:24PM (#30128212)
Where else can you go purchase the rights to the work of an artist you like as a consumer?
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by scott_s on Friday January 28, 2022 @10:56PM (#30123642)
You’ve described a share in a private company. Not only do you not need an NFT for that, using an NFT provides you no additional guarantees.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by exdsq on Friday January 28, 2022 @11:56PM (#30123915)
Cool! How would you like to open a private company and manage that, including accounts and taxes, for every song?
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by cuteboy19 on Saturday January 29, 2022 @09:00AM (#30126329)
An NFT is just a receipt, it doesn't do any of the above. It's only better than a paper receipt in that it can be transmitted electronically.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by scott_s on Saturday January 29, 2022 @08:50AM (#30126249)
NFTs don’t do that for you. The company linked still has to do that.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by TimJRobinson on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @05:49AM (#30160909)
NFTs can absolutely do that. They're programmable tokens that can be coded to do anything.

When people purchase songs though the smart contract, part of the value can be automatically sent to the wallet of the person who owns the NFT that corresponds to that song.

The problem is most people, even on here still think NFTs are just some dumb pointer.

Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by scott_s on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @04:02PM (#30184026)
You're begging the question; you are assuming all transactions will happen on chain. That's not reasonable. Most transactions will happen with normal currency, using normal means. This company then needs to track all of that and do the distribution on chain.

And if they only allow people to compensate artists through cryptocurrency, then it's not viable for artists.

Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thisisbrians on Saturday January 29, 2022 @12:25PM (#30128231)
Please point me to a musician who has created a private company and sold shares in order to compensate investors for royalties from their work.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by scott_s on Saturday January 29, 2022 @03:51PM (#30130302)
That’s beside the point. This company does not need NFTs to do it.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by cuteboy19 on Friday January 28, 2022 @07:56PM (#30122617)
As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. Unfortunately, most people buy crypto on exchanges so the idea of decentralised, uncensorable etc are really oversold
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by riskneutral on Saturday January 29, 2022 @04:04AM (#30124926)
> As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto.

I sort of agree with this assessment. I think it depends on what you mean by useful. Unfortunately, the only real-world, practical use of Monero is money laundering. I wouldn't want to trade a currency or work on a technology whose best use case is helping violent drug cartels conduct their financial transactions.

Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thrwn_frthr_awy on Friday January 28, 2022 @08:01PM (#30122649)
Can you explain that more? I'm not familiar with Monero. What apps couldn't be made without it?
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by exdsq on Saturday January 29, 2022 @12:00AM (#30123933)
Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. It obfuscates transactions while keeping the technical perks of a decentralized ledger.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thrwn_frthr_awy on Saturday January 29, 2022 @02:57AM (#30124631)
Thank you. Would it correct to compare it to using cash in person, but online?
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by exdsq on Saturday January 29, 2022 @11:40AM (#30127716)
Yes! It’s a currency that’s probably closest to peoples intuitive ideas of what a cryptocurrency is. It absolutely can be used for criminal transactions but people who are very pro-privacy also argue for it.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by cuteboy19 on Saturday January 29, 2022 @09:01AM (#30126334)
Yes, it is the international cash for drug dealers and the like
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thisisbrians on Friday January 28, 2022 @08:47PM (#30122930)
Perhaps an even more germane example for the crowd would be the use of blockchain to manage cap tables: https://balajis.com/mirrortable/
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by thrwn_frthr_awy on Friday January 28, 2022 @09:32PM (#30123214)
Maybe I'm just too old, but I just don't understand what stuff like this is saying:

> A mirrortable is a way to take a legally compliant cap table held in a system like Carta and mirror it on the blockchain. It consists of an on-chain smart contract and a bidirectional interface that syncs changes made on-chain to the off-chain cap table and vice versa. In this it is similar to a stablecoin, which similarly links an on-chain asset like USDC to a legally compliant set of off-chain USD bank accounts.

Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by exdsq on Friday January 28, 2022 @11:58PM (#30123923)
It's basically saying the cap table is held 'offline', that is off of the blockchain, in a legally compliant digital place. There is then a copy of that cap table on the blockchain with a smart contract - an API if you will - to modify the cap table on the blockchain, which will then update the legally compliant one or vice versa. Not sure what the perks are here, but that's what it is.
Re:Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against bl... by sib301 on Friday January 28, 2022 @10:15PM (#30123443)
Why is this useful? I assume it is, but I don’t know why…