I feel I need to screenshot this. It demonstrates more succinctly than I could write an essay on, how much we are muddying up technology, and purpose / politics / ideals when we start discussing this area (Crypto currency etc)
How is a human institution in your mind "antithetical" to a technology? Is a government "antithetical" to 3rd normal form or airline antithetical to a b-tree? You are inserting a large number of undisclosed assumptions to even begin to make such a statement (whether aware of it or not).
>>if a central bank is ever offering you something blockchain it's probably a scam by means of sham decentralization.
I don't disagree with this... I just think it neatly extends fully to "if anybody is ever offering you something block chain" :-)
The fact a central bank is a "human institution" is irrelevant. The fact blockchain is a "technology" is also in itself irrelevant. The point is that each concept necessitates characteristics that are irreconcilable. Most importantly a central bank can not function without central authority. The defining property of the blockchain is the decentralization of authority. Authority can not be simultaneously centralized and decentralized, and so the blockchain and the central bank are antithetical concepts.
So "unaware assumptions" it is then.
I'm sorry if you perceive that as snarky (and not everyone that disagrees is a troll btw), but to me, decentralized authority is what some people perceive an important (if not zealous) use case. It is not the defining property of blockchain. There are many companies that are building distributed ledger with centralized authority. You may disagree with that use case. I feel it's lack of self awareness to think a valid and clearly implemented use case is somehow antithetical to a simple neutral well defined technology.
The fundamental innovation of the bitcoin protocol is how it made the blockchain, a traditionally centralized data structure invented in the early 1990s, a distributed append-only database using PoW consensus. It's incredibly inefficient, its unimaginable inefficiency is there to buy trust in a trustless peer-to-peer network. You're basically forcing every writer to cut down a pound of their own computational flesh to write to the database. How can this be necessary or useful in a trusted setting? why can you not rely on trust or traditional register-and-authenticate to write to the database?
You're either using PoW consensus or you're not. If you're, you're not a central authority (unless the blockchain is somehow not an authoritative state and you're simply using it as a fancy bulletin board), if you're not, then whatever you're doing is different from what everbody else have been calling 'blockchain' since 13 years and you're just inviting confusion by calling it that.
I'm an outsider laughing at the whole Blockchain brouhaha, have zero horse in any race. I'm just amused endlessly how any given individual strongly believes their perspective is the only valid one and all others are simply "wrong", and heretics to the one true religion I mean bitcoin I mean blockchain I mean Crypto currency (Note how people are switching which one we are talking about in the thread. Due to various assumptions of equivalence ). Everything in this thread has firmed up my perspective.
No, we're saying that modern usage of "blockchain", dating back 13 years, is specifically about distributed trustless append-only ledgers, which is only useful for distributed authoritative state. Crypto currencies just happen to be a really good application for distributed authoritative state. You can do trusty applications with trustless ledgers, but that would be pointless and needlessly wasteful. You can do a centralized 1990s blockchain, but calling it 'blockchain', though technically true, just smells of marketing hype.
>amused endlessly how any given individual strongly believes their perspective is the only valid one and all others are simply "wrong", and heretics to the one true religion
Snark.
>Note how people are switching which one we are talking about in the thread. Due to various assumptions of equivalence
People on HN probably don't need to be reminded by the entry level 101 stuff about the difference between bitcoin and the blockchain, so your point is just trivial hair splitting. Bitcoin is a special case of crypto currencies, which is enabled by PoW driven blockchains, which without PoW are just boring old data structures. People switch between them because they are a natural fit that exist for and because of each other, and anyone of them alone either don't make any sense or make little sense.
>Everything in this thread has firmed up my perspective.
I don't see why you're so proud that you have learned nothing, but anything that makes you happy I guess.
I also do not believe blockchain, bitcoin, and cryptocurrency are actually synonyms and easily interchangeable, in knowledgeable or not knowledgeable audiences. I do think they're deemed interchangeable for some subset of people, per my initial point, who believe them to be trivially synonymous; and who cannot themselves be educated or be opened minded enough or escape internal context to see how anybody else can possibly have a different perspective. Here, too, we have failed to reach each other, and I suppose to neither of our surprise either.
No itβs not. A blockchain can be used in a way that only specific central authorities can add to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain#Private_blockchains
It's not human institution vs technology, it's the very structure of central banking vs decentral banking. It's the concepts themselves that are antithetical.
-Edit I couldn't remember the word, but I believe the term that applies here is 'diametrically opposed'
But the main benefit that blockchain provides is a way to decentralize a network, it's quite inefficient from a performance standpoint. So to use it for anything other than that is a waste (at least currently). Centralized currencies are better than decentralized ones performance wise, and I don't predict that will change anytime in the near future.
To quote Eldenwrong's perfect comment here "You can use a rock as a spoon but that just makes you retarded"
Hense blockchain currencies (the ones that aren't scams ofc) are decentralized by their nature, since that's the only draw to using that method.
Because of the Pareto distribution this should fail at some point, but with the innumerable amount of new currencies coming into existence, that shouldn't be a problem.
Central banks are institutions that are trusted and cooperate with trusted institutions.
In general as long as you have a mechanism to establish trust-based consensus by relying on people or a government there is really no advantage by using a blockhain and a huge number of disadvantages.
That's hilariously incorrect. You should revisit this comment later this year.
f a l s e
As I said before on what is really going on, both the crypto maximalists and the crypto skeptics are going to be very disappointed in achieving their unobtainable and extreme goals.
[0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-...
[1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210922005878/en/Roy...
From Wikipedia A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a state or formal monetary union, and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base.
Assuming you read the entire press releases, so the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan as I previously mentioned [0], and the National Bank of Ukraine' NBU' mentioned in the press release and is part of the pilot program [2] are not central banks?
What does this say here? [0]
The Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan is the central bank of Bhutan...
The National Bank of Ukraine is the central bank of Ukraine...
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) selected the distributed ledger technology, in particular the private version of the Stellar protocol, to study opportunities of issuing e-hryvnia and to carry out the Pilot Project.
So the claim 'No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain.' is still false. I think there is a strange sense of denial with the commenter who created that unfounded and baseless absolute claim.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Monetary_Authority_of_Bh...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bank_of_Ukraine
[2] https://bank.gov.ua/admin_uploads/article/Analytical+Report+...
[3] https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2021/mr-21-30.html
I see. So after you realised your absolute claim was refuted, you set out moving the goalposts to create another absolute claim, yet that is still wrong again.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is using a blockchain for their e-Naira CBDC and that has already launched many months ago. [0] So even when you tried moving the goalposts, your claim has still been refuted once again!
> There is no plan to actually use a blockchain for anything beyond speculation, money laundering, criminality, and scams.
So Moneygram is not a reputable organisation using a blockchain? [1] Perhaps Stripe isn't either [2] who's first partner with crypto payouts is Twitter. Maybe that is why they both waited for regulatory clarity before using these technologies?
This is the problem of having very absolutist statements and creating sweeping claims as you have done. It forces you to move the goal posts on your original claims, create fallacies and do whatever to dodge counter questions.
[0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitt-develops-afric...
[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/moneygram-launches-...
[2] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto
That is not my point and no one is arguing that the use case for blockchains in CBDCs was 'decentralized' or 'decentralization' in the first place and none of the evidences I've shown ever said that. Why do you think that in my first reply to your false claim on blockchains not being used in CBDCs, one of the sources explicitly says that it was '...Using Private Blockchain' [0]?
My whole point was towards your original false claims such as:
> > No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain.
> > Every reputable organization that rolled out a pilot project did nothing afterwards.
So interestingly you have proved my last point after you yourself realised that your claims were refuted with no counter refutation and zero counter evidence towards my replies or even answering any of my other questions which suggests that you are simply trying to escape and avoid the discussion.
What is the point of screaming unfounded and absolute claims and then having to end up running away or dodging other question(s) after someone refutes them in front of you?