or it could be that blockchains have limited usefulness outside the world of zero trust currency.
From a spade-a-spade point of view, blockchains are very slow,expensive and limited log database.
From a spade-a-spade point of view, blockchains are very slow,expensive and limited log database.
The main purpose of cryptocurrency is to replace the role of debt in our economy. The value of a cryptocurrency is determined by the economic value provided by entities which use that cryptocurrency as a medium of payment for goods and services. Because anyone can issue a cryptocurrency, the underlying tokens can behave like shares in a company.
Cryptocurrencies are better than shares in that they exist outside the laws of any single country. The ownership of tokens is not enforced by law, it is enforced by mathematics and your own ability to keep your passphrases secret.
Currencies have value only because governments force everyone to use them for paying taxes and welfare.
Your 'tokens-as-shares' vision is flawed, because at the end of the day it devolves into a million little barter schemes, and barter sucks. (As we discovered back in the bronze age.)
The only place where blockchain could provide a use is with smart contracts. If you've experienced buying or selling real estate, then you understand how insanely inefficient low-trust, high-value deals can be. Anything that removes this friction would be a great boon.
I used to think this but I don't anymore. Taxes are just one of multiple reasons why currencies have value. Some countries have no taxes and yet their currencies still have value.
>> Your 'tokens-as-shares' vision is flawed, because at the end of the day it devolves into a million little barter schemes
How is this different from the stock market? If you own shares of one company and you want to buy shares in a different company, you need to sell your existing shares for an intermediate currency first. It's a lot easier to do this using cryptocurrencies though (using Bitcoin as the intermediate).
Using tokens to pay for services is a proven concept; plane tickets, movie tickets, concert tickets, metal tokens for laundromats, food stamps, prepaid data quota for internet access... These are all tokens - the main difference is that they are issued by a central authority.
Cryptocurrencies open the door for universal services that have no central authority. They create an environment in which competitors can collaborate and mutually benefit through open source work.
I think you misunderstand how real estate contracts work.
Real estate contracts are more or less cut and paste, in fact you can generate them here: https://www.lawdepot.com/contracts/real-estate-purchase-agre...
The thing that takes the time is due diligence, finding and arranging money, and/or buyers. The actual contract is the easy part, unless you are putting in custom stuff.
Smart contracts are basically glorified escrow, but with no legal precedence. If something were to go wrong, and your smart contract doesn't complete properly, you'll still be going to court to carry out the remediation steps. Also, smart contract require mutual agreement to work properly, there is no over-riding system to mediate should things become undefined. (well, there could be, you need to program that in.)
The friction in high value deals is the due diligence. it doesn't matter if the contract is smart. Undoing a house move is expensive, having a contract where one party can terminate instantly without warning or redress is a dystopian nightmare.
if that were the case US Dollars would have no value in failed states.
There is nothing inherent in value, its down to consensus.
Git isn't write only, you can rebase. Its can't handle global consensus. You can read other peoples "world" and merge into yours, but it cannot aggregate the consensus and reject "illegitimate" change. You have two choices: "ours" or "theirs"
Write only? You can't read a blockchain? Does that mean bitcoin isn't a blockchain because of sites like www.blockchain.info ?
> & resistant to tampering, via global consensus.
Just don't allow pushes, only pull things. Voila, tamper resistance.