Me: "Gee, maybe there are novel uses for new tools that people haven't thought of yet"
chance vought: "That's the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard of"
chance vought: "That's the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard of"
Yes, I always thought this was a strange idea. I think they're just talking about something that might be a better type of ledger. Notice that that's not always the case given tradeoffs of physical and digital ledgers (both have them).
@cosine I do think it’s a flawed idea (that many hold). I used to think that blockchain technology was an important technology too. Now I think it is only important for Bitcoin. I don’t think one can remove just one piece of bitcoin and repurpose it for something else: it all works together or not at all.
I absolutely agree that there are novel uses for bitcoin that we haven't thought of. Grid balancing being one that I think nobody predicted.
I just don't think blockchain property titles is one of those use cases, since the blockchain can't enforce anything except its own rules. The Namibian or South African governments wouldn't have been deterred from confiscating property, which I think proves my point that those particular use cases are DOA. The property exists outside of the blockchain, therefore is subject to physical reality, not mathematics.
Since that property cannot be logically secured, the abstraction of that property (token) has no value. If the native currency of the blockchain has no value, there is no security. Therefore the ledger doesn't need a blockchain or decentralization, because it doesn't supply extra security, but it does cost a lot of efficiency.
What is the one problem the world has? It isn't record keeping, distributed computing, file storage, alt-coin casino gambling, or any of these solutions looking for a problem. Its the money. Government being able to counterfeit money. It is the root of clown world. One country spent 2 decades in clown world, from 1920 to 1945...now the whole world is going through it. The solution is to starve the beast, and then no more clown world.
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Iv also though about it, banks can track your location patterns, lets say the government wants to assasinate you, they can tell that every Friday after pay day at +-18:00 you go to a particular store to buy something or you fill up your petrol tank at a certain petrol station after pay day, someone can wait for you and take you out or break into your house because they know you not home, corrupt bank staff can do this. That book sounds good.
They don't need an assassin or bullets. They can send a message to your bank, your brokerage account, anywhere you have wealth, and assassinate you electronically for no cost. How will you buy food? Pay your rent? You would be permanently dependent on the charity of others (unless you have bitcoin).
That was exactly my point
Definitely; just because it is "written in stone" doesn't mean people won't take something. It's nice to have a system of record that you at least know was written the way it was written. I didn't say that land titling will be the next Google or Facebook. It's just one idea.
Voting could be another system. If I enter my vote into a public blockchain, I can see that the world says I voted for who I actually voted. Of course that doesn't prevent a coup; just another idea.
Yes, with Bitcoin. Used successfully in Guatemala, after a previous fraudulent election.
Bitcoin Audible • Chat_104 - Immutable Democracy with Carlino • Listen on Fountain
"You eliminate 99% of the attack surface to a single moment in time, which is the beginning. And when you do that, would-be attackers are forced to take risks and make mistakes. You know, when someone is planning on doing election fraud, this doesn't mean that it's impossible for them to do it...
You eliminate 99% of the attack surface to a single moment in time, which is the beginning. And when you do that, would-be attackers are forced to take risks and make mistakes. You know, when someone is planning on doing election fraud, this doesn't mean that it's impossible for them to do it. But it narrows the window so much that they are likely going to mess up. And when they mess up, you catch them." ~ Carlino
When people usually talk about alternative bitcoin "utility" they often mean NFTs, trash tokens, and "jpegs on the blockchain." But what if there really is another utility, one that doesn't suffer the damaging externalities and is closer to the core of what the timechain really is? Could Bitcoin protect the integrity of national elections? Diving into groundbreaking case study from Guatemala, we explore this idea with Carlino. Can this revolutionary approach be applied globally to ensure transparent and tamper-proof democratic processes?
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Moar memes?
Of course property is subject to physical reality and how you account for it doesn't change that. So yes if the government decides to confiscate your property or their is a war and foreign troops confiscate your property there is nothing that can be done. Such is nature of property. Every asset has its own risks.
You are missing the point its about efficiency and reducing friction (transaction time and costs). If ownership of property can easily be verified on a blockchain making property title disputes less likely, it makes it faster to settle a property transaction, it can be possible to reduce the workload of conveyancers thus bringing down their fees. So yes its a net efficiency gain to the economy. In the same way that sending email was an efficiency gain compared to sending paper mail.
How would the government confiscate your bitcoin?
That depends if they know you own the Bitcoin or not. If they know you own the bitcoin they can threaten you with jail time if you refuse to hand over the Bitcoin.
Besides Bitcoin like other forms of money is ultimately an abstraction, if everybody only wanted to own Bitcoin and nobody wanted to own real assets such as businesses, real estate, stocks etc then the economy would be worth very little and so would Bitcoin. Bitcoin is just a representation of the real wealth produced by society, if there is no wealth then Bitcoin is worthless.
Good Shepard went off topic (in regards to my post and your post). Because you originally posted about how blockchain is not useful for property transactions and I rebutted that it is because it makes the transaction process more efficient. Then Good Shepard replied with a point about confiscation of Bitcoin which had nothing to do with the point I was making. Because the discussion wasn't about whether property is a worthwhile asset to own or not. The discussion was about whether Blockchain could improve the process of property transactions and ownership which I believe it would.
Also I just wanted to point out the logical conclusion of the argument (by taking the argument to its extreme) that if you think Bitcoin is the only asset worth owning because you believe it to be non-confiscatable (governments have already seized Bitcoin from Silk Road and other illicit people/networks so it can be confiscated under the right circumstances) and you believe everything else will be confiscated then the Bitcoin won't be worth anything if everything else is confiscated.
Where Bitcoin is worthwhile is if you live in a country that turns into another Venezuela while the rest of the world is still functional. That is indeed a highly important use case and a great reason to own Bitcoin. If the whole world turns into Venezuela or assets get confiscated willy nilly worldwide then Bitcoin won't be worth much.
See my previous post on why it isn’t useful as a record for anything except money.
TLDR:
1) No security, because no economic incentive.
2) Less efficient - if there is no security, why pretend you have security and pretend there is decentralization, when there is none. Just have a centralized database with backups. 1000x cheaper and more efficient.
3) If you want immutability “on a blockchain”, use Bitcoin. There is no need for a shitcoin scam token to put “x” on a blockchain. You can write any data you want to Bitcoin, if it’s valuable enough. 600 exahashes of computing power securing it. 20,000 nodes on clearnet, probably 100,000 or more on Tor…
Saving 2% on real estate transactions is not the cancer that is eating the world. Broken money is the problem that needs a solution.
As for property rights: it won’t be everywhere all at once. It will be in some places and not others. That’s what makes Bitcoin so valuable . Places with few property rights, like Africa, have no real economy. Places with the most rights have the best economies.
TLDR:
1) No security, because no economic incentive.
2) Less efficient - if there is no security, why pretend you have security and pretend there is decentralization, when there is none. Just have a centralized database with backups. 1000x cheaper and more efficient.
3) If you want immutability “on a blockchain”, use Bitcoin. There is no need for a shitcoin scam token to put “x” on a blockchain. You can write any data you want to Bitcoin, if it’s valuable enough. 600 exahashes of computing power securing it. 20,000 nodes on clearnet, probably 100,000 or more on Tor…
Saving 2% on real estate transactions is not the cancer that is eating the world. Broken money is the problem that needs a solution.
As for property rights: it won’t be everywhere all at once. It will be in some places and not others. That’s what makes Bitcoin so valuable . Places with few property rights, like Africa, have no real economy. Places with the most rights have the best economies.
They could put me in jail then when I come out my bitcoin would still be in my account they cant touch it,a good example of this is John Mcaffe, he was in 11 different jail in 9 different countries, no government was able to touch his money, when he came out he was still rich, a normal bank account the government can freeze and take the assets.
I dont think anyone ever said a peeson shouldnt have any other assets, you can still have a business and houses etc I still want that even cash and internet payments I will still use them.
The biggest Bitcoin users from what I heard is USA not Venezuela, the country we live in makes no difference, you could move countries and travel your current location is not forever.
If the government is able to successfully tie you to your Bitcoin wallet address, it doesn't matter if you withhold your pass phrase/keys from them. They can simply ensure that your address is blacklisted from every exchange in perpetuity. In that case, yes, your Bitcoin will sit safely in your wallet forever - but you will be unable to access or exchange it for any other currency. It's basically like if you had a stash of millions of dollars of cash and gold, and instead of allowing the government to confiscate it, you stuffed it all in a safe and dumped it in the middle of the ocean. Did you successfully prevent the government from stealing your assets? Sure. But in the process you can't access them, either. I wouldn't exactly call that a win. This is also a good time to point out that all Bitcoin transactions are public by design. There is zero privacy on the Bitcoin network, and every single transaction that's ever been made on the Bitcoin blockchain is publicly available and can be easily tracked by sufficiently interested parties (i.e. the government).
JayR
Heritage
Couldn't you still sell it to a friend P2P-style? Or spend it on goods/services?
Exactly…people with superior money will not need to exchange it first for inferior money. People in Zimbabwe, or Argentina, rarely need to exchange dollars for the local dogpoop currency, dollars are happily accepted.
There are plenty of ways to break the KYC trail…collaborative transactions, lightning, and p2p exchange.
All transactions are public. They could see where your Bitcoin went and also blacklist that address. No one would want to risk transacting with someone who was blacklisted.
This is why the whole argument about Bitcoin being an asset out of reach of government persecution is totally nonsensical. Anyone making that claim is either ignorant of the public nature of the Bitcoin blockchain, or is woefully insouciant in regard to the power and reach of a sufficiently motivated government. It is particularly easy for governments to crack down on anything related to banking, finance and currency, as they already have vast control and influence in these areas. It's true that governments cannot kill Bitcoin outright, but they could make it so prohibitively difficult and essentially pointless to use that there would be no reason to own it. And they could do this overnight if they so chose.
Honestly, at this point I believe that the only reason Bitcoin is still allowed to exist (especially given the massive fraud taking place with Tether, and the entire nature of USD stablecoins, which are blatant tools for tax evasion and money laundering) is because the U.S. government itself (and perhaps other governments) are using it to move money around off the books for various shady purposes (i.e. Ukraine payoffs, laundering CIA drug money, funding various black ops outside of congressional oversight).