Jacko wrote:
That’s entirely reasonable. Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin invention feels like the internet did 40 years ago (when, correspondingly, the Internet Protocol was about 10 years old)
I think Bitcoin is more like FidoNet 40 years ago. I think blockchain technologies will eventually prove useful as a means of exchange, but I don’t think it will be that particular implementation (Bitcoin) that will be it, just like FidoNet wasn’t the communications technology that made it. Amongst some of the issues BTC has, it has very much become not a currency but a means of speculation, and I don’t think it’ll ever be sufficiently stable to the point that it will gain widespread adoption.
A few places have tried to use it as currency (e.g. the Thirsty Pigeon pub, about 7 minutes bike ride from where I sit right now) but abandoned it – when you have to still pay your beer supplier in GBP, it’s helpful to have a currency that won’t lose half its value overnight because speculators got cold feet (and one truism about BTC prices is the derivative of the booms is of a much lower magnitude than the derivative of the crashes).
Blockchain as a technology is not a means of exchange.
It is a technology that enables to create a ledger in which it is so difficult to change entries which have been written once, that there is no economically viable case to do so. Not more, not less.
A common misconception is, that blockchain makes sure, that information in this ledger are actually correct. Not at all. All it does is, that it makes sure that it is not changed later on. To a very large extend, blockchain is nothing else than the electronic version of text craved in stone plates.
This property qualifies it for some special application: To have people/an organization that you don‘t fully trust to write a ledger. Perfect application could be a triplog for an airframe: If we had it in a blockchain, it would not be necessarily correct, but it is protected against the „I want to sell my plane and therefore I tune the flightlog“ kind of fraud. As soon as you enter a trip you can not delete it (economically).
To use it as a means of value exchange, you need to add 2 important mechanisms that act outside of the blockchain: A) A mechanism for parties to agree on transfer of value and to translate this transfer into a ledger entry for the blockchain and b) a mechanism to make sure that only „correct“ entries are actually put in the blockchain.
All major weaknesses of Bitcoin do not attack the blockchain as such (this is secure) but are always targeting b). So technically they do not take something away from you, but they manage to get an „incorrect“ transaction in the ledger, that transfer these funds to you. (so talking about money, they do not break in the safe but make the teller give you the money)
Attakcs on the Bitcoin blockchain itself will only be possible when we see a step change in computing power, so that the assumption „history can not economically be changed“ no longer holds true.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Perfect application could be a triplog for an airframe
After all the american way of maintenance tracking. You have the logbook which is very difficult to change as you would have to redo the entire thing with entries done by multiple persons. On the other hand it would be very easy to remove some papers from a German L-Akte.
For example German tax office seems to use a kind of blockchain for cash registers. Each receipt contains a signature which seems to sign all previous transactions. Every customers gets such a receipt with the signature thus making it impossible to change the transaction history as a single paper receipt in the hands of the tax office could already prove the fraud.
Sebastian_G wrote:
For example German tax office seems to use a kind of blockchain for cash registers.
They could, but the technology they actually use is much simpler:
The so called “TSE-signature” just says (amongst other things not so relevant here) how many other receipts have been printed by this device. So with a single receipt in their hands, the tax authority knows how many other receipts have been issued before that, but not the value of these receipts.
Technology wise this is not implemented by a blockchain, but by a “trusted device” that is mandatory in each register and can not be easily manipulated.
So what tax authorities actually do if they have the suspicion that a shop owner avoids taxes, they place somebody in front of the shop for a day to count how many customers go in and out and then compare it with the (certified) number of receipts that have been printed this day.
But yes: A Blockchain would be an even better technology for this application as it could also securely store the transaction value. I guess it hasn’t been around when the TSE-solution has been designed…
A tweet from yesterday’s Swahili Times:
Ili kukamilisha muamala wa TZS milioni 1, jumla ya gharama ya makato ni TZS 31,800.
1. Gharama ya kutuma TZS 1M kwa wakala ni TZS 14,900
2. Gharama ya kutoa TZS 1M ni TZS 16,90
Rough translation for people who never lived in East Africa: “In order to send and receive 1 mil Tsh ($431.31) via mobile money service in Tanzania, a total fee of Tsh 31800 ($13.72) must be paid”
Perhaps we “little europeans” in our crumbling economic citadel should look at RoW before saying that fiat money transfer is free.
And even here in fortress Europe, when something looks free it’s either because we already paid for it or because we are the product. 
So first some truth: The price for sending 1 Mio. TZS via the Vodacom m-pesa service to another registered customer is 3.500 TZS – if the payment is to a merchant merchant, it’s only 500 TZS.
Plus: Who said that transfer of money is free. It has been said, that the cost for electronic transfer of money is orders of magnitude lower than the cost of btc transactions. That has nothing to do with the fees a bank might charge.
And by the way: What is the total fee for transferring 0.005 btc from one mobile to another mobile in Tanzania?
So first some truth: The price for sending 1 Mio. TZS via the Vodacom m-pesa service to another registered customer is 3.500 TZS – if the payment is to a merchant merchant, it’s only 500 TZS.
So both parties have to pay monthly fees to Vodacom? 
Like we do to UBS or Sparkasse.
Plus: Who said that transfer of money is free. It has been said, that the cost for electronic transfer of money is orders of magnitude lower than the cost of btc transactions. That has nothing to do with the fees a bank might charge.
I disagree. The bank’s total cost of operating is reflected in the totality of the fees which it charges. When I transfer money from my Sparkasse account the bank does not levy a specific charge for the transaction. They just trouser all of the (depreciating) money in my account, lend some of it to someone else for interest, and charge me every couple of months for “maintaining” my account.
And by the way: What is the total fee for transferring 0.005 btc from one mobile to another mobile in Tanzania?
About 0.00000001 BTC (or “free” if you buy, install and operate an Umbrel node). And sure, it’s all for geeks and techno-junkies at the moment. A bit like having to install a Winsock in Windows 3.x to join a Usenet discussion 30 years ago.
Bitcoin and its micropayment and smart contract layers still have room for a lot of development. Whether that development happens, and leads to mass adoption, is a matter of conjecture – a gamble, if you like. Some people think BTC will just burst into a trillion dollars of thin air. Others see potential. A “bubble” is a bull market in which we don’t have a position.
Jacko wrote:
About 0.00000001 BTC (or “free” if you buy, install and operate an Umbrel node). And sure, it’s all for geeks and techno-junkies at the moment. A bit like having to install a Winsock in Windows 3.x to join a Usenet discussion 30 years ago.
Sorry, that is untrue up to the point of conscious deception.
You compare the fee for a professionally run service that is under the banking regulation and therefore needs to fulfill lots of rules with the cost of some home grown solution where you need to buy and run hardware, need an always on internet connection, etc. (and fees and cost are substantially different things)
Exchanging money is for free (also in Tanzania): You just have to meet that other person and hand him some bills. That easy. No computer needed at all, no electricity, etc. There is no free way to exchange btc.
Jacko wrote:
The bank’s total cost of operating is reflected in the totality of the fees which it charges.
Interesting: Why does it seem obvious to you that with a bank you need to look at the total operating cost, while for btc. you only look at the particular cost of transferring a btc (that just seems to be there without the cost of getting it) with an infrastructure you magically own (w/o a cost to acquire, setup and operate it) to somebody that magically owns the very same infrastructure as well?
If you wanted to send me 0.0001btc today, the total cost for this transaction (if we would find a way at all to make it happen) would be multiple hundred EUR (even if I only ask for the hourly rate of an average carpenter in Germany). Transferring the same value using the m-pesa service you mentioned would be orders of magnitude cheaper.
I got a small windfall and put it into BTC. Remind me in 10 years.
