[jodrellblank]

This https://youtu.be/8CAafjodkyE?t=104 is a recent thing I found mind blowing; 2020 iPhone can do on-device image processing and object recognition and speak a description of what the camera sees. Just quietly a builtin feature.

2010 iPhone, I was mind-blown by the Word Lens app which could do OCR on text in the camera feed, translate the words into another language, and overlay the results on the image in near-realtime. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/12/20/word.lens.ipho...

These are tasks I had never seen any computer do in any circumstances, things which would be unthinkable on a Java MIDP Blackberry from 2005, or a Pentium II desktop from 1997. Compare this to the wearable augmented reality devices Professor Steve Mann was building through the 80s and 90s[1] and this "describing the image" is so so far ahead in so many ways - processing power, imaging quality, battery life, storage space, size, weight, convenience, reliability, it's just mindblowingly better, neural networks and fast chips and solid state storage is a step change in a way that "faster" isn't enough to really convey.

Google tells me "Derivatives have a long history in the United States, dating back to the founding of the Chicago Board of Trade in 1848.", you're telling me people are doing that but with blockchain, why is that interesting at all, why mind blowing?

[1] http://cyborganthropology.com/Steve_Mann

[Dwolb]

Personally the reason it blows my mind is because it’s now permissionless to craft a unique structured product or derivatives protocol, deploy it globally, and anyone on the planet can participate in that market.

It’s fully customizable and accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

[mikeg8]

Call me old fashioned my I prefer regulations in the markets I participate in. I still fail to see how “permissionless market creation”, while impressive, actually solves a problem. Where is the demand coming from, besides people in tech??

[jodrellblank]

In what way "permissionless"? In the way "the government has agreed that they can be unregulated financial products" or in the way "hopefully it can evade government financial regulation"? or in some other way?

[Dwolb]

Sure there’s definitely US-centric issues given the current regulations in place.

But it’s permissionless in that if the financial markets don’t support a structured product you or your community needs, you can create and deploy it yourselves with instant global accessibility.

[jodrellblank]

Why could you not do that with a few webservers in 2001?

[Dwolb]

You could (Matt Levine talks about his ExcelCoin he tracks in a spreadsheet), but with the rise of AMMs [1] (and SSOV’s) it’s easier to make the market in the DeFi space.

[1] https://medium.com/dragonfly-research/what-explains-the-rise...

[SanJacobs]

Evasion of regulation. Not just from governments, however. From anybody who wants to control people without consent.

[jodrellblank]

That feels like saying stealing food is a permissionless new way to get food. And I'm not at all convinced that the governments of the world could not regulate blockchains, or their use, if they wanted - either in ways like outlawing it, or auditing / regulating / taxing companies which use it, or pressuring insurance companies to put limits against insurance cover, or numerous other ways.

[baby]

That’s not a great argument. It’s like comparing the invention of tcp with the iphone. They’re just two different technologies. If you’re interested in learning there are many resources, but it’s too easy to criticize something by looking at its cover.

[jodrellblank]

And if you told me there was a new "TDP/JP" which is like packet switching but much slower and more energy hungry, and it was blowing your mind, and I asked why, and all you could say was "do your own research", I don't think I would do any research about that either.

Money obsessed people moving money around in ways that seem manipulative and gambling feels like a negative influence on the world.