[f0e4c2f7]

Many people were about as blind to the internet then as they are to crypto now. If you Google news stories from then you get a lot of confused newscasters going "but what is internet?" Or people like Bill Gates trying with little success to explain it.[0]

In those early days where it was pretty much just irc and bbs's it was pretty hard to see any kind of value for most people.

I also remember a time when people would essentially complain about ".com" do you remember this? "Commercials. Billboards. Everybody has a dot com now!" That feels a bit like the complaining about Blockchain now to me and I tend to see it as a pretty good sign.

I don't actually know very much about blockchain / smart contract stuff. I've been digging into it lately because it seems like there could be something interesting there. If there is, I haven't really found it just yet.

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=gipL_CEw-fk

[tibbar]

It’s depressing, honestly. A few years ago I read a graduate textbook about Bitcoin as well as the original white paper and some papers about ethereum, etc. My main takeaway is that Bitcoin itself (although not all blockchain proposals) is a horrible medium for almost all useful products. The privacy properties are bad, it’s incredibly inefficient, and everyone ends up going to a middleman instead of interacting in a decentralized way as it is. Almost always, a regular database is what you want. The drumbeat of cries ‘let’s build X, but on a blockchain!’ rarely even make sense.

This is compounded by the fact that the people who promote Bitcoin the most in my personal circles are known to be experts in wishful thinking and outlandish claims about the world in general.

Having said that, smart contracts are actually really cool. In practice a bank is probably just as good in the developed world but — darn it, I want to make clever money programs too. Also, there are alt coins that have much better privacy preserving properties and superior (energy efficient) consensus algorithms so there are still reasons to be hyped. It’s just that most of the web3 stuff doesn’t seem to touch the actually interesting possibilities in favor of ‘go blockchain, Bitcoin to the moon!’

[thrwy_918]

>In those early days where it was pretty much just irc and bbs's it was pretty hard to see any kind of value for most people.

I don't agree that it was hard to understand the value of services like electronic mail, forums or text chat. People may have been confused about how these services worked, or how they could personally use such services. But in a world where the best way to contact someone far away was an expensive telephone call, it was easy to spend two minutes talking to someone and have them understand the value of cheap, near-instant text-based communication.

It's really hard to explain the value of "web3" in a two minute conversation because almost everything it lets you do is either i) something most people don't actually want to do, or ii) something people can already do in a much easier and user-friendly way

[ekanes]

I think a case can be made that Ticketmaster will be replaced (or replace itself) with blockchain tech that will eliminate scalpers. Visa and Mastercard will most likely be replaced or dramatically lower fees. Banks will be upended.

[gjulianm]

> I think a case can be made that Ticketmaster will be replaced (or replace itself) with blockchain tech that will eliminate scalpers.

Blockchain does not do too much to eliminate scalpers. One could easily make thousands of wallets, buy the tickets and then resell them. What stops scalpers is tickets tied to personal identity, and blockchain can't really tie wallets to personal identity without a central physical authority.

> Visa and Mastercard will most likely be replaced

Visa and Mastercard won't be replaced as long as cryptocurrencies do not provide fraud protection or chargebacks (that seems a little bit impossible given the irreversibility of crypto transactions) or credit lines that require less than 100% collateral.

[ekanes]

To eliminate scalpers, I don't need to know who's behind a wallet, I just need to look at the wallet and see it's a first-time buyer from me (Ticketmaster) or the performer. Either way, it can go to towards the back of the line. Someone who buys lots of tickets (and I can see they don't re-sell them!) moves to the front of the line. Happy venues, happy fans, happy performers!

For Visa: Smart contracts that hold the money for 30 days and a real-world interface for customer service (new companies will be borth to offer this I bet) will mean lower fees.

[gjulianm]

> Happy venues, happy fans, happy performers

Except for the fans that couldn’t get a ticket because it’s the first time they do and they go to the back of the line, or the ones that sold a ticket because they couldn’t attend and now they can’t buy tickets.

> Smart contracts that hold the money for 30 days and a real-world interface for customer service (new companies will be borth to offer this I bet) will mean lower fees.

Which means a 30-day payment lag for everyone and is far more prone to abuse if the client can unilaterally charge back any transaction. Also doesn’t help when credentials are stolen.

[ekanes]

No, the fans that don't get a ticket are just at the "new/unkown" part of the line. They cannot be worse off than now.

For the payment lag, that's what we have now with Visa/MC. No difference.

[terryf]

Ticketmaster - could be. Visa? Hell no. I want to get my money back if someone steals my cc data. And I have gotten it back! No such luck with crypto if I lose my private key.

[filleokus]

No method for eliminating scalping is easier/better to implement on the blockchain, compared to a regular old centralized Not-Ticketmaster saas.

The most obvious/safe method is also the most cumbersome: Require name/DOB when buying the tickets, do not allow changing it, and check everyone’s ID at the gate.

Further, it is probably in the interest of both the performer and Ticketmaster to allow “safe” scalping (like Ticketmaster Resale).

(Fixing Ticketmaster with Web3 is like fixing DRM on Steam with NFT’s…)

[ekanes]

> No method for eliminating scalping is easier/better to implement on the blockchain, compared to a regular old centralized Not-Ticketmaster saas.

I guess, except that it's centralized. So one can only build "reputation" with that one saas at a time. If I can show I'm a fan of XYZ band, any ticketing service can see that and treat me differently.

[brandonmenc]

> I think a case can be made that Ticketmaster will be replaced (or replace itself) with blockchain tech that will eliminate scalpers.

Why is this better?

Receipts on the blockchain is just another push toward purchases being "renting access" instead of "owning stuff I can resell anonymously."

I can think of very few transactions that I want permanent and signed and public. The fewer the better imo.

[ekanes]

> I can think of very few transactions that I want permanent and signed and public. The fewer the better imo.

For sure. That's a problem with public blockchains that we'll wrestle with soon enough. They are presented as being more private when in fact they are more public, and certainly once some big exchange is compromised someday.

I think we'll see more from private currencies like Monero, since they're kind of what bitcoin was marketed as. Cheap, private digital currency.