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Comment by zemvpferreira | Hacker News Reader

My girlfriend is (one of the many people) building a Blockchain-API-as-a-marketplace for commodities trading: https://www.vakt.com

It's amazing how many billions of dollars are still transacted via phone and paper records by organisations who ultimately have to rely on good faith to get oil from A to B (in possession of C and owned by Z). I can't imagine what it would take to verify a chain of actions taken a couple of years ago with the systems in place. Impossible.

I imagine other commodities are the same. I would never have guessed there's still so much efficiency to be gained in these huge, old-as-dirt markets. Technology, huh.

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All well and good but blockchain doesn’t invalidate the need for ‘good faith’, which is actually due diligence supported by rule of law.

Right, which is why "enterprise blockchain" generally means a bunch of people fumbling around with Ethereum/Solidity, failing to build anything more secure than a read-only SQL database, and inheriting all the bad characteristics of Bitcoin

Is there a word for "Creating a solution for a problem that doesn't exist?" The descriptive linguist in me thinks we can start calling that a blockchain.

Yup, blockchain still has yet to address the rules of society and the expectation to be able to force financial transactions by court order

I'm not sold on the ledger-as-single-source-of-truth notion either. Blockchain is a solid technological choice for critical transactions that need to stand up to independent verification, but it's certainly not the only one. If it makes enough of a difference to turn these markets digital faster, I'm happy.

What I like is this notion that there are still huge, opaque markets that are extremely costly to take part in. And that tech can whittle them down to be very fast, cheap and easy to participate in.

We pay inefficiency and arbitrage taxes on everything we produce and consume. How many cents out of a dollar I spend on bread go to someone whose only value in the process is manning a phone or providing working capital? The sooner those two go away, the better.

> We pay inefficiency and arbitrage taxes on everything we produce and consume. How many cents out of a dollar I spend on bread go to someone whose only value in the process is manning a phone or providing working capital? The sooner those two go away, the better.

Those inefficiency and arbitrage taxes will then be replaced with social security / ubi taxes, as fewer people are needed in the workforce.

Which is probably a good thing, but don't think that you're going to see any substantial savings in the cost of your goods. If it doesn't go in taxation (because it's a unique thing to a few companies), it'll just be additional profit capture for those at the top.

I’m very ok with that idea, personally. Let’s unemploy as many people as possible and pay them to be happy instead.

I'm not so sure money can buy happiness.

There is an amount of life fulfillment that comes from working, and many would likely start having mental health issues (as we are seeing with the Covid lockdowns)

Several people I’ve spoken to are in lockdown and still working 10 hour days. They’re definitely less happy than the ones that are receiving up to 80% pay to not work. Their work does not fill their lives with meaning or purpose, and instead prevents them from being able to actually spend their days as they please, as they remain confined to the 8am-6pm work schedule.

Chain of custody forms have existed for centuries.

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