What are some interesting use cases of cryptocurrencies and NFTs? | Hacker News Reader

What are some interesting use cases of cryptocurrencies and NFTs?

6 pointsdhruval22 comments

I am sort of out of the loop on cryptocurrencies and related technology.

There seems to be a lot of fluff and marketing hype in the space and much of it is centered on making money. Conversely there are a lot of people who are writing if off due to the scams and bubbles in the space.

I am interested actual use cases for cryptocurrency based technology where it adds real value. I am aware of some for eg. censorship resistance, hyper inflation due to increasing money supply etc.

Appreciate any input. Thanks.

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As someone who absolutely hates Crypto:

It's basically a way around currency controls/trade/monetary restrictions in countries like Iran, Zimbabwe, Russia, China, and other problematic or failed states.

You can literally convert your local currency into energy to run your mining rig and create a fungible pseudo-currency that can be transferred to family/friends elsewhere and directly into dollars.

So there is always going to be a legitimate use for Crypto until it is banned. Even if its stupid speculative environment-destroying crypto-bro idiocy, there is a constant demand for it in these developing/failed state/evil regime states.

Just because the Iranian Rial is 0.000024 dollars on google, doesn't mean Iranians can actually get anywhere near that exchange rate in reality due to state controls. So while 1 Dollar = 42250.00 Rials right now, I know people who can't convert to dollars for less than 125,000 Rials, and typically 200,000 or more.

not a lot of real use cases, because most things you can do decentralized, you can do better centralized.

Like there were Steam items and other in-game items people could trade for real money long before NFTs.

One legitimate use where decentralized cryptocurrency is actually necessary is buying stuff on the black market. Like if you wanted to buy shrooms, even though they’re technically illegal there’s not really any harm, I imagine lots of people do so using Monero. But honestly this is so niche even if the entire black market was shut down it would be for the better, because Monero is also used for very bad (i.e. immoral) illegal stuff.

Maybe someone else can provide a legit use but this is the real problem i have with blockchain. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the technology, but there just aren’t many actual use cases besides scams and illegal money transfer.

Don't let the hype or naysayers distract you. Blockchain tech is a game changer, and you don't have to like crypto or have your life savings in it to benefit. Take real estate, for example. The amount of corruption in this industry is obvious, and a prime target for blockchain efficiencies. Title and license verification, along with fund distribution will streamline a very tedious process. Another thing that isn't mentioned much is fractionalization. Don't have the money for a down payment, but need exposure to a booming market? Blockchain makes that easy. Much like people can buy a few satoshi, it will soon be second nature to invest in part of a building or development, without saving up to buy the whole thing.

All the noise about scammers and volatility will never drown out the silent hum of smart money getting in while you are still worried about what the downsides are.

to invest in part of a building or development, without saving up to buy the whole thing.

People have been doing this for a very long time. No crypto or blockchain required.

I think there is a very important use-case for NFTs, and it got downranked to -4 in this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29745788

I'd rather see myself as a contrarian than an idiot.

Basically if you watch a movie or listen to some music, and it is just some copy you picked up from somewhere, how do you know who actually created it? You go to the first instance of it: and that may be found on a blockchain via its fingerprint.

Another way to look at it: if PG writes an essay and fingerprints it to the blockchain upon publication, you can trace it back to him, and at that point you can establish a relationship and give money, or whatever.

Artists can't control who copies or consumes their work, but they can leverage that they had it first, and timestamp it to themselves.

This actually sounds like a fairly good use-case. Enforced attribution (credits?) in the blockchain. But again, what’s stopping a malicious entity from making slight modifications to the source material and publishing it as their own?

Nothing, except the timestamp would indicate which was first. (I don't know, but I'm guessing, an NFT has a timestamp?)

They can publish it as their own, but will anyone see it if the creator send fans to collect their works from any and all sources of their own choosing? (eg a torrent file)

I'm trying to work out if it'll work for code as well.. what if you write a program and can then tally up whose code you used to help make it.. at that point you could donate (or pay) if you wanted to. An honesty system. Even users could pay and see where their funds will wind up.

Fair enough.

Something that attributes code back to the creator would be fantastic for OSS. I dread to imagine code tallies being used to gauge candidates

Yep. It could be gamed as well, creators donating/paying themselves to boost their own rankings. Like authors buying their own books to get on bestseller lists.

Another interesting use case for NFTs is tickets, if you issue tickets for an event at $10 and they end up at $100, at least the issuer can collect a bonus on every subsequent sale... isn't that how OpenSea works?

So a ticket could be auctioned first, and then more is made by the issuer on post-auction sales. It's also very public, so the performer has better information about their worth in the market.

So yeah, digital goods and tickets... that's where it's at for me.

So I almost disagreed with your post in the sense that no consumer would check a block chain to determine ownership.

However your last paragraph is actually meaningful. Yes, it provides a way for digital assets to be time stamped. And that has value, not for consumers but for creative.

Narrow your use case to the creator rather than the consumer and you have a worthwhile point.

Of course right now it means little, I could basically NFT my neighbors digital art, before he does, and thus "prove" I had it first.

However, assuming this catches on, having a common way of time stamping copyright materials has significant value.

>> no consumer would check a block chain to determine ownership

Your browser or media player could check ownership metadata. You could donate a fixed amount per month to the most used sites or creators, or whatever you decide.

The web is free, but what's say $5 a month for a better experience paid straight to creators to run alongside uBlock Origin? More useful than paying $2000 for a useless NFT monkey with one leg.

I think the number of people who would care about the NFT of the meta-data is basically 0% for some definition of 0. That's a straight up solution looking for a problem.

And if you want to donate direct to creators, then Patreon already exists. And again, the % of people using that is a rounding error. Useful to be sure, but it shows that only the tinyest fraction of consumers are prepared to pay for that kind of content.

For more quality content we pay streaming services and they pay the creators for us (Netflix et al).

Between youtube red, Patreon, Netflix etc i have plenty of ways to pay creators - no NFT required.

Regarding Netflix, if they gave away all their content for free. At some point people would want more, and then they can raise money on the promise (and delivery) of new content based on prior works. As long as people pay the right person, they can expect to get more. Perhaps an NFT can facilitate this. Some people will free-ride and lurk, but so what?!

https://www.weargustin.com/store - they presell all their clothes before production. That should be adapted to content.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/PledgeMusic - it died in 2019 - perhaps it could be recreated around crypto and NFTs.

There aren't any. Whatever you can do with NFTs you can do with vanilla cryptography without the overhead of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mechanisms.

There is heaps of hype. I’d suggest trying to read up on the actual technology, but even then there’s new terminology. Anyway, I think NFTs have a good chance of being used to represent real world items in digital systems. So things like supply chain tracking, property ownership certification, ownership of anything eg rare collectibles I think block chain has the potential to play a middle man role in communication between parties that needs to be recorded and accessible to all. Things like parties to a law suit sharing discovery, contract negotiation amendments, collaboration on any docs between parties etc

Crypto is a lot more convenient and faster than most multinational wallet for me. At least in my region, it could take a week just to cash out my dollars from Paypal while on crypto I consider 1 day slow. That's not considering Paypal's tendency to cancel your withdrawal for suspicious reason and cut your balances for it.

Before anyone calls me a launderer, I only make 20-200 dollars doing freelances.

> I am interested actual use cases for cryptocurrency based technology where it adds real value.

Blockchain domains like ENS [0] are the only valid use-case for NFTs. For example: [1]. Everything else that is a image/video/audio NFT is a scam. That is what they don't tell you about NFTs.

> I am aware of some for eg. censorship resistance, hyper inflation due to increasing money supply etc.

As for payments, you will find that this article shows you a use-case for cross-border payments [2] some of the potential blockchain technology behind it [3] and its use for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). [4][5][6][7]

All of the above is not hype and are long term valid use-cases for cryptocurrencies and NFTs that exist today.

[0] https://ens.domains/

[1] https://www.skiff.org/updates/skiff-ens

[2] https://theintercept.com/2022/01/19/crypto-afghanistan-sanct...

[3] https://ir.moneygram.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...

[4] https://resources.stellar.org/stellar-for-cbdcs

[5] https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-joins-the-digital-pound-f...

[6] https://ripple.com/insights/bhutan-advances-financial-inclus...

[7] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-...

Decorating your metaverse home/office with unique artworks you own and brag about them

I'm screwing around with a micro trader (less than a dollar each) that will surely lose money but I came across one that sounded neat:

XYO decentralized network of devices that anonymously collect and validate geospatial data

Money laundering

good way to burn a battery down for capacity testing, aaaand... ... ...thats all there is

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