[zx2391]

I read a Blockchain book from O'Reilly in 2015, when it came out and it left me with the distinct impression that this "technology" is vaporous. It could do anything, yet, almost no examples to try out, let alone real-world successes.

Over time I witnessed many "new" things, and the ones which stick typically have a specific aura to them, like a 10x simplification, or speedup or reduction in "noise". These things are really rare; most things are incremental and that's good, too.

Blockchain did not seemed to have any of that.

PS. Merkle trees are super interesting and I use them daily (in git) - so all the tech ideas are certainly worth considering, it's just that they are not fit for the advertised purpose plus it has gotten an enormous drag on resources, for nothing.

PPS. I typically have an "tech instinct" to see new things, but I currently cannot really see anything that looks like a major tech shifts from the past. ML is incremental and despite its grande successes is mostly applied by the surveillance industry, which makes it much less attractive. Cloud seems much more profound and the whole apification of the world transformation - although I do not like the centralization, even if it is more economical. In general, the real revolutionary tool or technology does not need to sell itself, it is picked up by the weird and intelligent first, then trickles down to the masses (also: tech can be great w/o mainstream adoption, too - it just not a revolution then).

PPPS: Wild speculation: With 5G, everyone with a phone could host their business directly on their device, instead on other peoples servers. When phones hit a TB in storage, you can run your socnet with your friends - and you probably will, because mainstream money will have moved to something much more immersive, addictive, profitable like glasses, vr, ar.

[eightysixfour]

> PPPS: Wild speculation: With 5G, everyone with a phone could host their business directly on their device, instead on other peoples servers. When phones hit a TB in storage, you can run your socnet with your friends - and you probably will, because mainstream money will have moved to something much more immersive, addictive, profitable like glasses, vr, ar.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. The decrease in the cost in high performance phones, more storage, and high speed connectivity will make for some interesting social network opportunities where your device is the server and there's no/minimal intermediaries. You could bring back the Google Circle concept and cache things from your inner circle while accept that things in outer circles are ephemeral if the friends' device is off.

[qualudeheart]

Do you happen to have a source on the ML claim? I`d be interested in reading more about that issue.

[dadoge]

Tell that to people in Nigeria, Venezuela and Argentina that have no control over their money.

In Venezuela there is absolutely absurd inflation number there: like over 1,000%.

Argentina it’s over 30% each year for several years.

Bitcoin is a tool against oppressive governments

[hervature]

You should actually talk to people from those countries. The minority of them are doing anything substantial in crypto. Only those fortunate enough to transact with a foreign entity. The others use the much more robust system of bartering.

[jedberg]

Or just using black market USD or EUR.

[zx2391]

True, and people can use it today, that's for sure.

[rossjudson]

Sure, fantastic. Why should it be legal to exchange bitcoin for US$? Or euros?

[qualudeheart]

That sounds like a burden of proof shift. Why should that be illegal in the first place?

[rossjudson]

Because it's used to launder money for crime, destroy the environment, and supports the cringiest, most juvenile libertarian derp (thanks Krugman!) about freedom from the tyranny of money banking government taxes or whatever.

[qualudeheart]

Well, as Rothbardian I think that would be an acceptable cost even if it were empirically true enough to matter.