> Keeping track of an asset without a centralized authority?
Question was:
"And in what applications are blockchains superior to centralized applications?"
You really did not answer the question. What is the application where it is superior to track the asset without central authority? (I come up with criminal money transfers. I hope someone comes up with something else because I do not think that is too solid a foundation to build a sustainable technology...)
No fees to middlemen, enabling micro-payments at scale (obviously need to drastically reduce blockchain fees, but that is an area of active development). Elimination of charge-backs and a huge amount of fraud, especially in industries that have an abnormally high level of fraud. Borderless payments. The highest density of wealth storage ever invented. Completely different threat model for theft with its own pros and cons.
Everyone immediately jumps to the criminal aspects. The existing financial system has absolutely no problem handling all the crime, the blockchain did not invent money laundering.[0]
1) you pay fees to middleman to make a transaction.
2) micropayments are ridiculously slow and low volume compared to any other payment system.
3) We have all seen that chargeback are possible and already occurred, with the small side effect that also all the other legitimate transactions were rollbacked, as with the dao huge fuckup.
4) There are plenty of frauds involving bitcoins.
5) borderless payments have been possible for ages, and are not dependent on a Chinese network of miners.
1) They are pretty small for most cryptocurrencies.
2) This is false if you understand that Visa/MC do not settle instantly, rather 24-48 hours down the line and their instantaneous consumer network is not identical to that settlement layer. Similar to BTC's blockchain + Lightning network.
3) This is not really a thing outside of Ethereum, but yes, it was a very bad decision.
4) There are plenty of frauds using USD. Way more than BTC. Like, a lot.
5) I'm not sure what this random bit of racism against China has anything to do with anything, but the network's locations of nodes doesn't have much to do with nationality preference.
To clarify: Ethereum didn’t roll back any legitimate transactions (or any transactions at all) when restoring the DAO funds, which conflicts with the original #3 point you responded to.
Having the dev of the network reversing transactions makes a mockery of “decentralized” and “trust-less”.
More hilariously is that there is a branch of Ethereum that still contains the DAO hack transactions, Ethereum Classic . It’s generally assumed that that branch is run by the DAO hacker, which is kind of hilarious to me.
There are fees with bitcoin - the transactions that leave higher fees for the miners get processed quicker. If you don't include fees with your transaction it could take hours to be bundled into a verified block.
People, myself included, jump to the criminal aspects because those are the only real world applications that are currently creating value for Bitcoin "users" (vs. speculators). Getting around borders/currency controls is valuable because it's hard to do/illegal, and Bitcoin makes it easier.
The rest of the things you listed such as "highest density of wealth storage every invented" and "completely different threat model" are not use cases, and are not inherently good/bad, just different (and actually usually bad when optimizing for verification speed/efficiency and transaction clearance over chargebacks/fraud)
PS did you get hired into the crypto/blockchain world, or just more optimistic after doing research? I remember us being in agreement / you being skeptical about it before
> There are fees with bitcoin - the transactions that leave higher fees for the miners get processed quicker. If you don't include fees with your transaction it could take hours to be bundled into a verified block.
As I said, the fee issue is being worked on (scaling, layer 2 networks) but that's a potential of the technology.
> People, myself included, jump to the criminal aspects because those are the only real world applications that are currently creating value for Bitcoin "users"
I simply disagree, if you want me to enumerate all the use cases that aren't criminal I can, but google can help.
> The rest of the things you listed such as "highest density of wealth storage every invented" and "completely different threat model" are not use cases, and are not inherently good/bad, just different (and actually usually bad when optimizing for verification speed/efficiency and transaction clearance over chargebacks/fraud)
Yes, it is a different sort of tradeoff, that may be useful in some cases. It's novel.
> PS did you get hired into the crypto/blockchain world, or just more optimistic after doing research? I remember us being in agreement / you being skeptical about it before
I have posted a lot on cryptocurrency, I have been in the industry for a while, but I am not universally optimistic about all things crypto. But overall I am bullish.
>if you want me to enumerate all the use cases that aren't criminal I can.
Could you start with one? And I mean one that is obviously superior to centralized solutions? What are the measures that make blockchain superior in this use case and why a centralized solution can't achieve those measures? Why the tradeoffs in other measures are insignificant? Let's further assume that decentralization itself is not an acceptable measure.
Do you not see the value of censorship resistance?
There are billions of people in the world currently living under repressive governments. The world does not revolve around the western world with all of our privileged freedoms.
I already accepted that blockchain offers value in criminal money transfers. Obviously censorship resistance is criminal in repressive regimes. It just is a bit difficult in western world to sell a product whose only actual value proposition is criminal money transfer.
I think if you were the target (or initiator) of legal actions that don't involve criminality on your end but do involve discovery, you would think a lot differently about pseudonymous payments, and potentially encrypted communications. Speaking as someone involved in three active civil lawsuits, trust me when I say criminality is not the only reason to hide things. Being subjected to the discovery process where adversaries can uncover things about your personal life is an experience that will change most peoples' feelings about all things privacy.
> People, myself included, jump to the criminal aspects because those are the only real world applications that are currently creating value for Bitcoin "users" (vs. speculators). Getting around borders/currency controls is valuable because it's hard to do/illegal, and Bitcoin makes it easier.
This is definitely false. I buy a lot of things that are completely legal using cryptocurrency and find it to be pretty painless. I am a small-time miner and use the profits to buy computer gear from Newegg or resellers who want BTC and get a pretty huge discount on Amazon gear. I have zero problem spending all of my cryptocurrency on valid electronics if I desire.
So if you want to be safe from censorship, a decentralized Leger is better.
If you do not care about censorship resistance, then you should count yourself lucky and very privileged. There are billions of people in the world who are currently living under repressive governments.
It should also deflate as the economy grows. Wrt the problems of deflation, it may or may not cause some, but it doesn't really matter because people who don't want to participate in Bitcoin don't have to. They can still choose to use inflationary stores of value.
Deflationary "problems" are largely strawmen. We've never had such deflationary money systems to know how it plays out long term.
In the end, people still need to eat and drink, and they're going to pay to meet those needs no matter how much it costs them.
Most of the complaints about deflation are from the Keynesian economists, who for them, it is a major problem. How are they going to pay back all that interest they keep accumulating if people aren't continuously spending?
Question was:
"And in what applications are blockchains superior to centralized applications?"
You really did not answer the question. What is the application where it is superior to track the asset without central authority? (I come up with criminal money transfers. I hope someone comes up with something else because I do not think that is too solid a foundation to build a sustainable technology...)