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I mean, I have a passable understanding of it, but the first thing you have to answer is what you mean by blockchain technology and what features you actually want out of it. "Blockchains" as introduced by Bitcoin are actually a bunch of different technologies and techniques smashed together to solve a very edge-casey problem. There are certain parts you can pull out that actually provide real-world value but you're probably not going to end up with a "blockchain" as understood by the larger community.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:02
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I just finished divabot's book (Attack of the Fifty Foot Blockchain) which in its later chapters goes into detail on blockchain as a technology and how likely it is to resolve a problem that a traditional centralised database doesn't (spoiler: not very). It also gave me a few good laughs. Plus you could class it as a business expense!
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Feb 8, 2018 19:12
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ryde posted:I mean, I have a passable understanding of it, but the first thing you have to answer is what you mean by blockchain technology and what features you actually want out of it. Party Boat posted:I just finished divabot's book (Attack of the Fifty Foot Blockchain) which in its later chapters goes into detail on blockchain as a technology and how likely it is to resolve a problem that a traditional centralised database doesn't (spoiler: not very). It also gave me a few good laughs. Plus you could class it as a business expense!
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Feb 8, 2018 19:21
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Yuck Read Divabot's book if you want to read bullshit about cryptos, not if you want to be informed Like, I wouldn't try to answer "Could blockchain become something useful" from the book written by the guy that hates everything crypto and is sure its a dumb scam and reads / reposts 50 tweets a day from the buttcoin subbredit Good luck 
Ham Sandwiches fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Feb 8, 2018 |
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Feb 8, 2018 19:25
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Stupid bitcoin schadenfreude has my brain trained to get pleasure from watching the Dow drop even though, unlike bitcoin, sustained drops in the Dow would hurt me.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:29
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Yuck Please explain a viable application for blockchain/cryptocurrency that isn't already handled by existing technologies.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:33
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wilderthanmild posted:Stupid bitcoin schadenfreude has my brain trained to get pleasure from watching the Dow drop even though, unlike bitcoin, sustained drops in the Dow would hurt me. Dow drop = bad Bitcoin drop = hilarious remember this
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Feb 8, 2018 19:34
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Read Divabot's book if you want to read bullshit about cryptos, not if you want to be informed What would you have them read to become informed about blockchains then
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Feb 8, 2018 19:34
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Vargatron posted:Please explain a viable application for blockchain/cryptocurrency that isn't already handled by existing technologies. As you will see people now pay more money for bitcoins than they used to. Therefore
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Feb 8, 2018 19:35
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Vargatron posted:Please explain a viable application for blockchain/cryptocurrency that isn't already handled by existing technologies. It's a distributed database for peer to peer transactions, and that opens up new use cases. Whether you think that will turn out to be useful in the long run is up to you, pretending it's not different or that it couldn't be useful seems quite premature given that we're in the very early days of cryptos.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:35
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Ham Sandwiches posted:It's a distributed database for peer to peer transactions, and that opens up new use cases.[Citation Needed]
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Feb 8, 2018 19:37
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Ham Sandwiches posted:It's a distributed database for peer to peer transactions, and that opens up new use cases such as.... also this is njot the early days of "cryptos". on the other hand, cryptocurrencies have 9 years going for them. even the internet had some practical uses in 9 years.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:37
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InternetJunky posted:I understand blockchain to mean -- a trusted, distributed ledger. Any chance to can expand on the extra stuff that is included in the bitcoin blockchain tech? Trustless (non-permissioned) distributed ledger. Blockchains are fundamentally logs, but they are structured in such a way that you can verify whether each piece of the log is correct independently. If an entry is added to the blockchain saying that A sends money to B, you can verify that A had the proper credentials to send that money because you can verify that the transaction was signed by A's private key. You can also verify that the transaction is spending money that A has because you have the entire transaction history, and you can verify that your current state is directly derived from the previous state since each new block has hashes of the previous block. The proof of work system is on top of this. It seeks to solve the problem of "Which set of blocks should we be treating as the real state of the world and add transactions on top of" by basically voting on valid blocks. The voting comes in the form of applying hashing algorithm to spend real economic effort (basically, electricity). This disincentives non-cooperation because you have an economic stake in the system and raises bar for attacks. So going back to "Why would we need a blockchain?" since you're fundamentally building a log to replicate between databases, the answer is that you are in a situation where one or all of these features is an answer to a problem in your specific situation. The PoW hashing stuff is completely useless if you can establish a trust relationship between the entities that agree upon the "state of the world." The hashing/singing is useless if you own or process all the records.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:39
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Ham Sandwiches posted:It's a distributed database for peer to peer transactions, and that opens up new use cases. you'd think a technology so disruptive would have made a little headway in 9 fuckin' years
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Feb 8, 2018 19:39
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Ham Sandwiches posted:It's a distributed database for peer to peer transactions, and that opens up new use cases. he didn't say it couldn't be useful, he wanted to know of an example where it could be useful, why is it so hard to list some use cases
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Feb 8, 2018 19:39
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Inept posted:What would you have them read to become informed about blockchains then Some source attempting to explain it, rather than debunk it. Here's a few that I think are decent A youtube nerd that you can watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9nUMvpT2rM This article (has videos too) shows an example blockchain transaction https://hackernoon.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-understanding-blockchain-and-cryptocurrencies-f37cf4c0043 Or if you like the TedX style https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k53LUZxUF50
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Feb 8, 2018 19:41
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Dairy Days posted:he didn't say it couldn't be useful, he wanted to know of an example where it could be useful, why is it so hard to list some use cases It's ham sandwich, look inside you'll know the answer.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:42
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The coin exchanges surely are a safe investment with words like "wildcat bank" and "criminally non-compliant with Patriot Act AML regs" starting to burble up. Homeland security surely wont get involved in international money laundering, right? If you have cash, coin or tether in an exchange that gets seized, youre SOL for everything. But this is cargo cult investing from gamblers so I look forward to it.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:43
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Dairy Days posted:he didn't say it couldn't be useful, he wanted to know of an example where it could be useful, why is it so hard to list some use cases I'm not sure where you read that in his post, it seemed like he was asking for an overview quote:Since I recently saw an email from my CIO talking about "exploring blockchain technology" I figured I'd better understand it a bit more, so I just spent far too long watching videos of smarmy nerds trying to espouse the virtues of the blockchain (they all seem to have the same talking points which is creepy and very suspect). Is there anyone in this thread that actually understands it beyond the powerpoint talking points? Where do you see him asking for a specific example of where it could be useful? I tried to answer the question he asked.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:46
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Ham Sandwiches posted:It's a distributed database for peer to peer transactions, and that opens up new use cases. I'm not pretending that it's not different. It is different. But what makes it more useful than already existing technologies? Basically the only actual application I've seen is cryptocurrency, which is completely unregulated and I don't see how it's better than actual "sovereign fiat" currencies that already exist. Why would you want to use currency that isn't backed by any tangible asset and has no consumer protections?
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Feb 8, 2018 19:46
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Vargatron posted:I'm not pretending that it's not different. It is different. But what makes it more useful than already existing technologies? I mean if you simply want to see potential uses for blockchain, you can look at the various promo guides from the fintech companies messing around with it like IBM / PWC https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/financial-services/fintech/bitcoin-blockchain-cryptocurrency.html They feel that there are automotive, fintech, voting, and health care related applications for blockchains. Again, whether you think that will come to pass or not is up to you, but these are the types of applications people are working on. Here is IBM's list: https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/use-cases/
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Feb 8, 2018 19:50
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Ham Sandwiches have you ever considered that the core of your entire argument, monetary value=worth, might be flawed? You've argued for so long and so much that you've clearly established that your core belief is that because cryptos have risen in value and that people buy them therefore the technology has merit and must be why people are buying them. Is it possible to you that the price has risen for no reason other than that people want to make money by having a price, in general, on anything, rise?
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Feb 8, 2018 19:51
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VictorianQueerLit posted:Ham Sandwiches have you ever considered that the core of your entire argument, monetary value=worth, might be flawed? Why is it that you're claiming that's my argument, and you've decided to express it for me, when that's not what I feel?
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Feb 8, 2018 19:51
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Ham Sandwiches posted:I mean if you simply want to see potential uses for blockchain, you can look at the various promo guides from the fintech companies messing around with it like IBM / PWC quote:Why would you want to use currency that isn't backed by any tangible asset and has no consumer protections? Can you please answer this specific question?
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Feb 8, 2018 19:54
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Why is it that you're claiming that's my argument, and you've decided to express it for me, when that's not what I feel? That is your argument. You've laid it out over thousands of posts over a period of months. Whenever pressed you fall back on the monetary value of bitcoin rising and how goons were wrong about that as your 100% unassailable foundational opinion that isn't up for debate. The entire start of your reign as resident true believer started by squawking the price of the monetary value of bitcoins to people. The vast majority of your posts are about the monetary value. You believe that the monetary value of cryptocurrencies has proven their worth. All of your justification of the worth of the technologies stems from the fact that you think they can be justified because of the rise of their monetary value. You have been challenged on this repeatedly and always fall back on that one singular point. So is it possible that you could be wrong and that cryptocurrencies have no actual worth despite being worth money since there are plausible reasons people would buy them that have nothing to do with their conceptual worth?
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Feb 8, 2018 19:57
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Vargatron posted:Can you please answer this specific question? Like we're heading back into the "What's the point of cryptos at all argument" that I'd really rather not have. I prefer commenting on stuff that's happening and not so much where posters ask me to convince them that cryptos aren't a useless scam because guess what, I'm probably not going to charge your opinion.
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Feb 8, 2018 19:59
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VictorianQueerLit posted:That is your argument. You've laid it out over thousands of posts over a period of months. Whenever pressed you fall back on the monetary value of bitcoin rising and how goons were wrong about that as your 100% unassailable foundational opinion that isn't up for debate. The entire start of your reign as resident true believer started by squawking the price of the monetary value of bitcoins to people. The vast majority of your posts are about the monetary value. I don't know how to respond to this false narrative you've built up about what I supposedly believe or have been saying, so I don't think we can have the discussion you want here. I believe that cryptos are not a scam or a ponzi meant to defraud people, that they're an emerging technology that offers some interesting alternatives to traditional currency. I felt that warning people off of them 100% pre emptively with the assumption that they would crash or their money get stolen was actually a harm on the reader, because it pretended to know the future when the reality is, none of us know.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:01
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I think I've made it clear that I think blockchain is useless but it doesn't even matter. Discussions about the usefulness of blockchain don't belong in bitcoin or altcoin speculation threads because this isn't how software development, procurement, or ownership works. There are no licensing fees for blockchain and you can't invest in it. If a company leverages it to dominate a market they will be 100% privately owned. I've thought about making this effort post each time blockchain gets brought up and it seems topical now so here goes. I'm a principal SWE for a software company with ~100 employees and ~15 developers. We compete with 8 other companies in a relatively niche health care market you've never heard of, but we also have the best product (objectively). Our main purpose is integrating the vast network of applications in a hospital or clinic, and our product is backed by a database - either local or remote, and remote databases offer features for redundancy, high availability, and replication. All modern database platforms provide these solutions. The amount of times the word "blockchain" has been uttered in conversations among our team or in a sales cycle with prospects is literally zero. Part of what I do is evaluate libraries that we include in our product. In the past this has meant evaluating things like LiteDb and SQLite for internal file based databases. Most recently it was evaluating charting libraries. The underlying technology (i.e. "blockchain") is a completely unimportant trait in the procurement process. Does it have the features I need. How does it scale with more, denser data. How does it look. How expensive is it to develop against, and so on. I don't care why it does or doesn't scale; I'm not going to send them an email telling them to use an html canvas to improve performance. We evaluate the product and pick the best one. This is also how our product is evaluated by the hospitals that buy us (or our competition). Not once have we lost a sale because we forgot to use a buzzword like big data, machine learning, or blockchain in the sales process. Buzzwords like cloud support do matter because each product in the market has a different strategy and it's a feature, not an implementation detail. So let's loop that back to blockchain. Ham Sandwiches, this is not new technology. The white paper has been around for a decade. Microsoft and Oracle have read it and decided it offered nothing to improve their offerings. If it could have been used to vastly improve any software products on the market, or to create an entirely new category of software that solves problems in a novel way, it would have been. Software companies are very eager to be the first to market with new solutions.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:02
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Like we're heading back into the "What's the point of cryptos at all argument" that I'd really rather not have. I prefer commenting on stuff that's happening and not so much where posters ask me to convince them that cryptos aren't a useless scam because guess what, I'm probably not going to charge your opinion. Well evidently you're not open to changing or examining your position. I hold my opinion of crypto because I looked into it and decided that it wasn't viable as either a currency or an investment opportunity. I'm willing to change that opinion if there were facts that proved otherwise. How much money have you actually made in crypto? Can you tell me what your investment outlook will look like in 3-5 years? What will you do if an exchange folds and all of a sudden 30% of your money just disappears? So excuse me if I'm sounding antagonistic towards crypto. People have invested money in crypto, lost it, and will never be able to recover that. Live have been changed by stupidity or malfeasance.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:03
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Ham Sandwiches posted:I don't know how to respond to this false narrative you've built up about what I supposedly believe or have been saying, so I don't think we can have the discussion you want here. So no, it isn't possible to you that cryptocurrencies have no worth as a concept and are only worth their ability to generate money for people that have them.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:04
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Vargatron posted:Well evidently you're not open to changing or examining your position. I hold my opinion of crypto because I looked into it and decided that it wasn't viable as either a currency or an investment opportunity. I'm willing to change that opinion if there were facts that proved otherwise. That's fine, you're entitled to your beliefs and to live your life accordingly. Presumably others have the same luxury, even if they draw different conclusions.  In the same way that I won't spend time worrying about the money you might not make, I think it's silly that you stress over people choosing to engage in an activity you don't.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:05
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I know the future. It involves agents, raids and indictments with a side of shellshocked greater fools. International money laundering regulations are nothing to handwave off. HODLers are hanged men and the insiders must know it. The institutional money knows it. Cant get coins or cash from an exchange thats been seized by INTERPOL.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:07
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Ham Sandwiches posted:I felt that warning people off of them 100% pre emptively [...] when the reality is, none of us know. i.e. don't put money in this because no one knows what will end up being a scam or not in this huge bubble. You can look forward to (possible) technological advances without throwing money at a random ICO with a bullshit whitepaper. Advising against investing in these is solid advice. I'd say the same to a person asking if they should invest $500 in their friend's restaurant who "really likes ethical farm-to-table food".
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Feb 8, 2018 20:07
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VictorianQueerLit posted:So no, it isn't possible to you that cryptocurrencies have no worth as a concept and are only worth their ability to generate money for people that have them. Why call it now? Is there some urgency? Time is on our side here, and the answer will become eminently clear over time. Right now, at this moment in GBS, we have to declare that cryptos are not only worthless but will remain so in perpetuity? That was the part that I disagreed with from the start.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:08
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BTW decentralized databases predate bitcoin and there are many of them that have nothing to do with cryptocurrency. Even if you want to argue that those type of databases are useful, it doesn't mean anything for bitcoin.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:08
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Inept posted:i.e. don't put money in this because no one knows what will end up being a scam or not in this huge bubble. You can look forward to (possible) technological advances without throwing money at a random ICO with a bullshit whitepaper. Advising against investing in these is solid advice. I'd say the same to a person asking if they should invest $500 in their friend's restaurant who "really likes ethical farm-to-table food". So that may be a good example of the differences in thinking. If a friend asked me the same question I'd say "I think it's fine if someone wants to invest $500 in their friend's restaurant, it might be a fun experience, or it might work out, and it's $500. Don't use you rent check though. Be prepared to think less of that person."
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Feb 8, 2018 20:09
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Ham Sandwiches posted:In the same way that I won't spend time worrying about the money you might not make, I think it's silly that you stress over people choosing to engage in an activity you don't. Why do you think it's silly to worry about a thing that many people engage in that you believe is actively harmful? I'm not asking you whether you think Bitcoin is harmful or not, but rather why you think people shouldn't care about mass engagement in a new activity.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:10
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Ham Sandwiches posted:That's fine, you're entitled to your beliefs and to live your life accordingly. Presumably others have the same luxury, even if they draw different conclusions. You assume that certain "activities" only affect an individual. When you're talking about financial and currency systems, the actions you partake in affects others.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:12
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There Bias Two posted:Why do you think it's silly to worry about a thing that many people engage in that you believe is actively harmful? I'm not asking you whether you think Bitcoin is harmful or not, but rather why you think people shouldn't care about mass engagement in a new activity. I think it would be cool if there was more experimentation and less judgement in general. We live in uncertain times, things are changing very rapidly with tech and the world. If people want to plant their virtual claims in the crypto gold rush, I think that's ok. I also think it's ok choosing not to do it because you think it's dumb. But spending months / years mocking and jeering people who are dipping their toe in a new thing for being loving idiots, again, seems odd to me.
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Feb 8, 2018 20:13
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Buying cryptocurrencies is not investing in blockchain technology holy loving poo poo
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Feb 8, 2018 20:14
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