I used variations of empire / world / etc markets in the past. Had a look the other day and most had exit-scammed or been busted.
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I used variations of empire / world / etc markets in the past. Had a look the other day and most had exit-scammed or been busted.
It's the trust in early technology. When it matures, it turns to shit. I remember subletting apartments via craigslist, unseen. There was a sense that we are all part of the same community, etc. Then the scammers moved in.
The same happened to me with bitcoin. I day traded when the price moved from 30 to 300 dollars. I wired money to and from an exchange. Just trusted that the money would get there. Today, I'd have to have an ID check, upload passport, etc.
Storm Fox
Trying the find the next noun to verb
Easy not the Smart Contract option. Smart Contracts are either too simple, to have so many contingencies that they become untestable.
Simple hypothetical.
Person A goes into a store and shoplifts 5 loaves of bread They have kids at home who are near enough starving.
Person B goes into a store and shoplifts 5 loaves of bread. They do it because their drunken mates dared them to.
So according to Smart Contracts, they get the same punishment.
Is that fair or just?
I've tried to google the thing but I have a sea of irrelvant results.
In any case, even I was wrong on that one assertion, it doesn't negate the substantive points that I made. A reminder.
- Under the current system, my understanding is that HMRC would try to recover via the legal system, probably involving baliffs. If they can't do that and the non-payer refuses to co-operate, then they'll try and get the non-payer imprisoned.
- With crypto, it's very similar, but they won't be able to sieze funds.
- With CBDCs, it's very dangerous, because the government has the option of just taxing people by just taking the money, then tell everone that they was right and if they don't like it, they can start expensive litigation - maybe that's something you would like, more work for lawyers?
It's also better than CBDCs by a country mile and I don't think I have to labour that point with anyone.
I don't claim cryptos can cure cancer, but there is only one thing that can take the wind out of the sails of a draconian CDBC - that's a decentralised economy that the government can't disrupt.
So crypto is shit because you've failed to understand it ... and even worse ... you failed to understand it because instead of doing a load of research on it, you tried to day trade it?
Crypto isn't the problem here.
There are two problems in this story:
- You.
- Dodgy exchanges (Not just in crypto, but in Forex and binary options)
Why would a smart contract be involved in any of that?
The main use for smart contracts are to enforce an agreement (normally involving money, but can involve NFTs and other tokenised assets) that one or more parties enter into. Since the smart contract is there to enforce the agreement between parties after one or more parties have made the ETH or tokenised assets available, it negates the need for any litigation as the smart contract enforces the agreement.
If you shoplift from someone, that's not an agreement that both parties involved went into!
I never said this tech could cure cancer, come to think of it, I never said it could negate the need for all litigation over night.
Also, many solutions don't involve smart contracts exclusivally. There's normally a friendly front end to it all in the form of a web3 DAPP and sometimes the smart contract needs data to base it's decision or decisions on.
Sometimes that data can come from an Oracle ... and the Oracle could entirely digital or it could have humans involved....
Sometimes the data is directly from humans.
That's a lot of flexibilty.
I'm glad you're happy...sorry happier!
DAOs are an excellent use case for trade unions!
Putting out a vote to members would be much quicker and less expensive, but UK union laws may need updating to accomdate that way of doing things.
Storm Fox
Trying the find the next noun to verb
Want to keep cash? A letter to your MP or the BoE won't help.
Only a decentralised economy will decentivise the withdrawl of cash by the BoE as part of an evil plan to entrap us all into CBDCs with no exit.
By the way, there will be a day when you pay that tenner using your visa card, for the backend settlement to happen over Ethereum.
That is already happening in the US with people who pay using their Crypto.com Visa card.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
I don't think the Pinkertons are going to give a shit if a union takes the form of a DAO or not. Hell, the DAO that takes the place of the Pinkertons could be even worse.
That's fair enough, but it's in the context of smart contracts being used for what they can be used for.
If a smart contract can enforce an agreement and all parties are happy with that and enter into that, then all parties concerned, never have to worry about the whole thing winding up in court.
I can actually give you a real world example of this.
In the world of crypto (And indeed in Forex), people can leverage a position.
A simple way to describe that is that I deposit 1 ETH worth say $2000 to borrow say $500 for example.
If I deposit my 1 ETH into a decentralised lending smart contract, it will give me $500 from the lending pool. Now if the price of ETH goes down to say $550 then I'm in trouble. The smart contract will sell my 1 ETH on a decentralised exchange liquidating it. The only way I can stop it, is to repay back some of the loan, by depositng say $100 into the smart contract.
So you see, the lenders know damn sure that the smart contract will sell my collateral if it plummets in value, so they have complete confidence to lend the USD to the lending pool.
Let's contrast that with a centralised exchange that provides the same service. We have NO WAY of knowing how they provide that service. Even if they were part of the FCA, there is still no guarantee that lenders will get their money back. The exchange as a normal business can go bust and then it's down to lawyers and administrators to recover the money for creditors. That is exactly what is going on with a firm called "Voyager" and another call "3AC".
In the meantime, smart contracts and DeFi in general, just worked, with none of it's users having to worry about litigation. The worst thing to happen in DeFi was over-leveraged borrowers having their collateral liquidated ... and they all sat there and said to themselves "This is MY fault." - they won't be using leverage again in a hurry.
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Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
So you have to deposit 4x loan value to borrow funds? That is one inefficient pawn shop.
I didn't say 'crypto is shit'. I was referring to the 'trust' that goes to shit. In the early days of a new technology there is a community of 'trust' around it. People use it because people like them use it. Early adopters trust each other. I wasn't referring to the crypto principle of 'trust' in a blockchain transaction.
I actually have a solid understanding of the blockchain principles - though I am not up to date with the latest trends. I believe there is a good use case for it when proving ownership or copyright. And I think that the smart contract / ETH approach would work well for this. But not in the current state.
Re: day trading. I actually made a bunch of money, but like all trading, I realised I was just gambling. So got out.
And the 'problems in this story'.
'You'. Well that's just rude.
'Dodgy exchanges'. I wasn't using a dodgy exchange. They are still up and running - all these years later, There was no ID verification back then. No need to wave a passport in front of a camera. Remember those days?
q_w_e_r_t_y
You see an investment scam and I see divinity
"Even just the fact that you call them investments speaks to the way you see this as a capitalist function."
No, I dont, thats your projection. Investment is not just its time and directed attention. Money can buy other peoples time and attention, but in this case, the money is buying the time and attention of the robots, who then encourage others to invest their money. "Money" (ie tokens with a fiat value) are just proxies here.
Say I am in the US and want to pay $4k for an abortion, the abortion provider is sanctioned as a baby murdering terrorist, if I use a CBDC, it will be blocked and I am exposed as a person who tried to fund a terrorist entity.
If I pay with Bitcoin however, the government can see that someone has sent money to the clinics wallet, but unless that address is linked with my identity, they cannot tell who.
If I pay with Monero, the government cannot see when or if someone has sent money to the clinic's wallet.
Now, governments will want to know about all and every transaction to tax it, if it is a CBDC they can tax at source, because they own the protocol, but if it is paid with bitcoin or monero, they have to become more repressive to gain access to that, the only control they have is fiat on and off ramps. So less people off-ramp less money less frequently even if they are remaining perfectly tax complient, because the act of linking to the fiat system becomes a repressionary risk
Its not free. It costs energy. Blockchain energy is ultimately bitcoin (StakerOne will disagree with me here, as all eth maxis do, but I have a feeling the merge might not be as successful as expected in the longer term)
There is philosophy and sociology all over the crypto world. So, so much of it, its not dismissed at all.
No, I dont, thats your projection. Investment is not just its time and directed attention. Money can buy other peoples time and attention, but in this case, the money is buying the time and attention of the robots, who then encourage others to invest their money. "Money" (ie tokens with a fiat value) are just proxies here.
The reason you see a contradiction here is that you are equating "government" with "nation state". Once you seperate out those two things, it becomes much clearer. Crypto is borderless, it does not recognise nation-states, it has its own internal governance, that forms a government. In bitcoin, that is the bitcoin protocol, that taxes every person transacting on the bitcoin network, other tax mechanisms are available.
Say I am in the US and want to pay $4k for an abortion, the abortion provider is sanctioned as a baby murdering terrorist, if I use a CBDC, it will be blocked and I am exposed as a person who tried to fund a terrorist entity.
If I pay with Bitcoin however, the government can see that someone has sent money to the clinics wallet, but unless that address is linked with my identity, they cannot tell who.
If I pay with Monero, the government cannot see when or if someone has sent money to the clinic's wallet.
Now, governments will want to know about all and every transaction to tax it, if it is a CBDC they can tax at source, because they own the protocol, but if it is paid with bitcoin or monero, they have to become more repressive to gain access to that, the only control they have is fiat on and off ramps. So less people off-ramp less money less frequently even if they are remaining perfectly tax complient, because the act of linking to the fiat system becomes a repressionary risk
Oracles.
Nope. That was an example. You can borrow whatever you want - but the more you borrow, the bigger risk of liquidation if the market turns the wrong way - it's exactly the same as leverage in Forex, but is way more efficent and transparent. On a centralised exchange (of any description) the owners / operators of the exchange can see all the leverage positions ... and an insider could easily tilt the market on that exchange to force people into liquidation, so their collateral is sold at a bargain basement rate.
Now compare that to decentralised smart contract leverage - EVERYONE gets to see the highly leverage positions because those positions are on the blockchain - heck you can even run along to the lending pools and buy liquidated collateral on the cheap - everyone is on a level playing field, there's no one on the inside scamming the market.
Proper crypto is trustless. If you have to trust any one individual or company then you're doing it all wrong.
Sorry if I did come across a bit rude, but I was correct, you're the problem (or at least was), not the blockchain.
Yes it would. Many people don't understand that it was deliberate by design that an NFT is a unique token that can point to one or more media resources on the internet (preferably the IPFS) - that's it. It's for eco-system developers to build on top of that using smart contracts, DAPPS and oracles and whatever else they need to get the job done.
I don't need to know about how the insurance industry works, I'm not working on an insurance related project.
You keep working off the assumption that any and all blockchain solutions can only work without human beings to be succesful. - that isn't the case, however blockchain projects will always try to cut out humans whenever they can, just like any conventional IT project would.
Whether you like it or not. Machines are more reliable than humans and aren't clouded by emotions.
You say you understand human behaviour, then you are familiar with racism, sexism, homphobia, islamophobia etc, you know, discrimination.
Smart contracts and DAPPS don't discriminate against protected charactaristics because they aren't aware of them.
Sorry, but I will trust a smart contract that are enforced by thousands of computers over a human being that things I'm satan walking the Earth because I'm from a demographic that they secretly despise.
Absolutely. That's the principle of a blockchain transaction.
We live in a society, though, that depends on trusting each other. Every time I touch a card for a pint of beer, I am trusting that the beer will be drinkable, and the pub is trusting that they'll get my five pounds.
As the crypto world has evolved, trust between participants has slipped away. And, while the smart contract that will execute my token transfer is immutable and approved by multiple nodes in the network (trusted?) - unless I wrote the code for that smart contract myself, I can't be sure that it's going to do what I am told it will. Power is in the hands of the exchanges and facilitators of the transactions. The people who write the code that makes it all work.
Edit: Okay, I'm guessing a little about how a smart contract is constructed. I realise that the data it contains is essentially a hash of strings and not executable. An example of erroneous smart contract behaviour might be pointing a NFT to a hijacked domain. The contract is executed and the transaction recorded, but the identity is busted (points to the wrong resource).
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Only because there isn't a business case to make such a scenario trustless.
But while we are on the subject - if all the inventory is on the blockchain, if it turned out the beer was dangerous for human consumption and started to make people ill, then at least the authorties can check where all the suspected bad beer is without picking up the phone.
Storm Fox
Trying the find the next noun to verb
So to get a contract in this brave new world you need a lawyer for the legal bits and a software coder to create the contract, then a new job of Lawyer/Tester to test the code and check the code matches what has been agreed.
Maybe in the world of CBDCs controlled by the government.
It's quite hard for a government to disrupt a DAO. They would actually have to get human infiltrators involved.
Storm Fox
Trying the find the next noun to verb
Yay an actual use case.
Would the beer inventory be on a public blockchain? Or would the authorities have some god access to everyone's distribution systems.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
So blockchains have some utility in certain logistics contexts.
And,
Um,
That's it.
Colour me meh.
And,
Um,
That's it.
Colour me meh.
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
The point here is that from your example you have to temporarily give up your (larger) asset in order to get the loan of some other asset (like a pawn shop). So here you've got a theoretical $2k in Ethereum v $500USD. I guess in some instances you could just about come up with a scenario where someone has enough faith in the growth of the market that they might just about see a case to not just sell a quarter of the Ethereum and use the resulting USD but it's a pretty niche case and not very relevant where loans are either unsecured or secured against an actual item that someone needs to use in the meantime (ie a car or a house).
Nope. Smart contracts are enforcing a set of rules defined in code, leaving zero chance of litigation, therefore you don't need to be a lawyer to test it.
Lawyers are only ever consoluted for an opinion on the actual legallity of the project itself.
A lot of contexts and an awful lot of use cases. And a lot of utility, especially if you value transparency and fairness.
I'll make a bold statement that I've already made. Smart contract based blockchains, especially ones like Ethereum - are the most important and useful invention since the internet and the world wide web.
I genuily believe that.
The internet is a brilliant invention. It won't cure cancer, but you can bet, it's been heavily involved allowing humanity to exchange the data needed to create products that help cure such illness.
Storm Fox
Trying the find the next noun to verb
Good point. So we are back to whether the government has access to the data and has a god Token.
Plus you will still need trust in it being reported and trust the landlord will action the request.
So instead of Beer let's say it's biscuits.
So Mcvities has a bad batch. Looks on their inventory and see a load went to Bookers*. Not a problem now anyway that will be noted and traced.
Now a person who owns a local store buys a carton. Do they have to have the infrastructure to receive warnings? If so that is another business cost and time checking. You can set up alerts from the Food Standards Agency now, so the time may not be more.
Plus they would still need to actually action the request.
For the end user to check then you would need to track each packet in which case there are huge privacy issues as well as computing and storage costs for McVities.
*Bookers is a business-to-business food wholesaler
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