The most obvious stupid scam ever conceived and they actually managed to hook a bunch of actual corporations

Square Enix, Nickelodeon, Coke, KFC, and more fell for this shit while regular people were laughing about how obvious a con it was.

Really puts into question the capitalist myth of the genius entrepreneur and the idea that these corporate types are rich because they are smart or deserving in some way.

  • ennemi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The real kicker is that there are plenty of good theoretical applications for blockchain technology and all we get are shitty investment commodities and grifts

    The technology never gets employed to a productive end because the entrepreneurs are in charge of deploying it

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      there are plenty of good theoretical applications for blockchain technology

      This is not true. Distributed ledgers allow for consensus without trust. That is it. Every other application of them is just a slower database. So pretty much all they are good for is digital money, but digital money with a hard throughput limit and no backing from any government. The rush to use them for anything and everything violates the most basic principles of good computer engineering, and there’s a very good reason no one has created anything worthwhile with them besides money that can be used for crime.

      • captcha [any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        git is a blockchain without a consensus model. Once you remove the artificial scarcity component of blockchains the are extremely useful.

      • ennemi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Distributed ledgers allow for consensus without trust. That is it.

        That’s like saying asymmetric cryptography only allows for trust irrespective of medium. We still deployed it everywhere because it turns out that’s useful in countless ways. Blockchains are also not necessarily public, and generally most of the shit they get from leftists has more to do with stupid wasteful consensus mechanisms than anything to do with the principle of a fancy networked Merkle tree itself.

        In the end it’s just another mathematical guarantee and we can do better than “concept is related to bad people and is therefore bad”

        edit : Also worth noting that PKI was a huge gold rush when it started and still to this day lots of companies make utter bank on the sole basis that their certificate chains are trusted by default in your browser

          • ennemi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Completely fair. I’m mostly interested in what it can do for distributed computing and inter-organizational trust and most of that is being done outside flashy VC circles and not getting much media coverage. Naturally anything that allows organizing outside of bougie government institutions is good up to and including crime money

      • Owl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Even this is overselling blockchains, to be honest. There are a variety of far cheaper ways to do distributed trustless consensus, for example CRDTs. You can even run a CRDT-based ledger if you’re willing for people to have negative balance. The only thing a blockchain adds is an incredibly expensive clock mechanism to slow the transactions down enough that they can prevent double-spend and enforce positive balances.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Most supposed use cases besides crime money involve needlessly spreading out a calculation (of a picture of a monkey or whatever) so many more computers have to verify the same calculation as a stupidly unnecessary waste of electricity that also dumps more carbon in the air. And the crime money also does that but dae le drugs amirite stop-posting-amogus

      • ennemi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Man what the fuck am I doing on hexbear. Even the most inconsequential disagreements turn into this sort of bullshit, without fail

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          The sort of bullshit like pointing out that blockchain technology has a massive carbon footprint and drastically increases the electricity costs of whatever it ostensibly replaced?

          • ennemi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            No that’s pretty much on the money, but it’s also a problem with proof-of-work consensus algorithms specifically

            I don’t know I guess it’s just exhausting how everybody has to have a crazy out-there opinion about every fucking thing in or outside their spheres of competence and just loads up that shit with twitter irony like it’s free salad at a salad bar

            • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              bullshit

              crazy out-there opinion

              loads up that shit with twitter irony

              That isn’t a generous reading of easily found and irrefutable information about the consequences of blockchain technology.

                • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Yes, you can. Is there another use case outside of that? You may not like the way I phrased it, but it was a valid point, not “bullshit crazy out there opinion loaded with twitter irony” as you put it. If you can say your opinion that way I can certainly say mine my way.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        If you want to burn the planet down faster, doing computations on a blockchain multiples the electricity costs and the carbon dumping!