[arcticbull]

It's always a pleasure though! :) I certainly learn a lot from y'all.

I should say, I freely acknowledge I don't have all the answers - clueless in some cases even, to borrow a turn of phrase. I find crypto fascinating, like many folks, from a technical perspective. I remain unconvinced about it's practical real-world applications.

[rojeee]

To back you up somewhat with a personal anecdote... I've been working in the blockchain World for about 8 years across crypto and enterprise blockchain as an engineer, researcher and more recently a product manager, and and have come to the conclusion that there are not really very many practical applications for crypto or enterprise blockchain.

For crypto, other than censorship resistance - which most people don't actually care about because they are lucky enough not to need it - it doesn't really offer anything useful. Most crypto projects are Rube Goldberg machines whereby the operators of these companies are re-hashing all the same things our ancestors did with money. Of course they are doing well at the moment because it's morphed into a get rich quick scheme. If there was no easy money to be made there would be little interest in it, just like there was back in 2010 when I started looking at Bitcoin.

Enterprise blockchain struggles because there's no actual need for blockchain elements like chains of provenance and smart contracts if the participants are fully identified and already have business relationships. "Blockchain" is a direct substitute for trusted third parties and good legal agreements and should only ever be used in circumstances where all other options are exhausted because the technology comes with so many bad trade-offs. Doesn't scale, very complicated, difficult to manage upgrades and versions, customers find it hard to understand, etc...

[secfirstmd]

What's your view on stuff like Sia and Filecoin? I agree with you about the lack of actual use for stuff like Bitcoin etc but the storage cost aspect of those two is interesting for sure.

[rglullis]

Not the parent, but my view on Filecoin hasn't changed since this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23015249

Early adopters are maybe going to profit something because of the money they got from the ICO and some VC, but the economics don't add up.

[rglullis]

> I remain unconvinced about it's practical real-world applications.

When your idea of "real-world" is one where all people have access to stable, robust and functional institutions, it's no surprise that you don't see the necessity of alternatives.

Consider it a privilege. And I don't mean it in a derogatory way.

[arcticbull]

Hardly. I just don't see it solving any problems for anyone in a country without robust financial institutions either, certainly not at scale.

[rglullis]

qualifying it with "certainly not at scale" tells me how far from the mark you are.

"Scale" is not the point. Independence and resilience is.

[fock]

if that's only for 10k libertarian tribes, then I guess it does a good job. Unfortunately the nice hardware and electricity grid actually needs a society to build and maintain. And these are much more people thank 10k libertarians.

Just because it still pops up and noone responds to it at all. How many transactions can bitcoin handle nowadays? And how much energy does it consume again for that?!

[rglullis]

> Unfortunately the nice hardware and electricity grid actually needs a society to build and maintain.

How much energy, money, human resources were spent already on research of, say, Fusion Energy? Has it produced anything close to being net-positive? Should we call it quits? Who gets to represent "society" to make such a call?

> How many transactions can bitcoin handle nowadays?

How many tons of cargo could the first airplanes carry?

Sorry for being flippant, but it gets tiring to get the same "argument" over and over and over again. Yeah, current implementation of the system is far from ideal. It needs work. It is being worked on. The fact that it is not it is the highest priority does not make undesirable. It just means that are other things that need to be worked on before we put more focus on these kind of optimizations.

[dsr_]

The first airplanes had a clear commercial advantage over other methods of transport: speed.

High-value, low-mass packages were transported by airplanes by 1911; by 1918 the USPS had an official air-mail service. That's fifteen years from the Wright Brothers' flight, and only ten years after the first flight of a full mile's distance.

So airplanes were economically a net positive 15 years after their invention. Chaum's ecash, which I think is reasonably comparable to the Kitty Hawk flight, was 25 years ago.

The primary use of Bitcoin that I encounter in my daily life is in ransom requests. If I want to make a legal million dollar payment, it's easier and safer to have the bank do it than to use cryptocoins. If I want to make a $20 payment, it's much easier and safer to use a credit card than cryptocoins. While I quote these extremes, everything [legal] in between is also easier and safer than cryptocurrency.

If the "things that need to be worked on before" don't include any of these cases, what do they include?