Ask HN: Do you think ledger technology will have a massive impact on society?

4 points by fuqted 8 years ago | 8 comments

If so, what might that look like? If not, why not?

If humans capital is the most valuable asset on Earth then it's plain to see that the current economic system fails to allocate and attribute value in a way that best aligns with this reality. It would be the burden of the prevailing economic system to do so.

On one level, think Twitter and Snap being worth some $20+ Billion each despite making little to no money net net. What if they somehow pegged a token to their metrics, allowing them to remove a layer of abstraction and unlock value based on something closer to what really matters: the utility it provides people.

Is my head just in the clouds here? I'm looking for some friction.

kleer001 8 years ago |

None.

Because in the end humans are the weakest link in any system, computerized or otherwise. I don't mean that in a flippant way or sarcastically. We're error prone and forgetful, emotional and spiteful. IMHO no bit of technology (hardware, software, law, or culture) is going to usurp our born-in biases and write a new chapter of history. In broad strokes we're already repeating history for the umpteenth time.

dragonwriter 8 years ago |

Ledger technology has had a masdive impact on society, it's also very old.

But I think you are asking about blockchain technology, which is a different thing.

> What if they somehow pegged a token to their metrics, allowing them to remove a layer of abstraction and unlock value based on something closer to what really matters: the utility it provides people.

What makes you think any particular metric of theirs is a better measure of utility than stock price? If you've got a clearly-correct way to measure and aggregate utility, that's a bigger revolution than blockchain technology.

fuqted 8 years ago | |

Something I think is true that most people disagree with is that the importance of distributed-ledger technology is simply how it utilizes ledgers to create these tokens as an alternative to currency.

Stock prices are affected by metrics but the goal is to always monetize these metrics. Attributing a token to them turns them into an ends to monetization rather than just a means.

There's problems to solve going from there, but yeah I think going from unlockng value from users to unlocking value directly from use is a revolutionary shift.

quickthrower2 8 years ago |

The problem is pegging the token. It's a right old challenge pegging a crypto token to USD, let alone some company KPI, because the market decides what a thing is worth. And hype will push the price up, fear will crash it, and the underlying KPI might have something to do with the price, but probably not.

fuqted 8 years ago | |

Stocks seem to work well enough.

There's no way to control price to USD, but you can control tokens to metrics. To use bitcoin as an example, say I'm holding 1 bitcoin and the metrics go up n. That coin pops out x satoshi. Metrics go down n and I lose x satoshi.

Anyway, I clearly have no idea how it would work. But it clearly can work; people are willing to find these tokens valuable.

ohiovr 8 years ago |

It's the new math of money

extirpate 8 years ago |

Honestly? Not really.

The hype around cryptocurrencies reminds me a lot of the hype around the Wii when it came out. People called its motion controls revolutionary, and collectively hailed Nintendo for ushering in a new era of motion controls. Consumers who saw exciting early examples of work like Wii sports bought the Wii in droves.

All of it, in retrospect, was mostly for naught. The technology for motion controls, (if it could ever be implemented satisfactorily) just wasn’t “there” yet. Even if motion controls were there, game designers faced the issue that they had no idea what exactly to do with this exciting new interface, and mostly they settled on just taking motion and “throwing it in”, giving everyone a lot of games that didn’t need motion, especially not the hare-brained “waggle” variety on offer. In the end, a lot of token efforts were made, and some successes and good games were made, but at large, today people mostly agree that motion controls, as made for the Wii, were mostly disastrous and had no real use case.

Crypto currencies seem to have a similar issue of a solution created without a problem it was meant to solve. They also seem to be getting just as “thrown in” to otherwise standard existing products and service workflows, have tech that isn’t “there”, and otherwise do not seem to be meeting their hype. I expect the discussion around them to follow a similar pattern.

fuqted 8 years ago | |

Note: I'll refer to DTL as blockchain for ease of understanding Also note: I don't think all of these ledgers need to be validated distributedly in order to have the same kind of value

A lot of blockchain enthusiasts say the same thing about companies adopting the blockchain in an 'unched' way.

I'd say blockchains are more akin to AR/VR or AI in that they absolutely are valuable and they undoubtedly are the future, but the technology isn't there. The difference with blockchains is that, rather than the technology not being there, it's simply the innovation that isn't.

There is clearly a market ready and willing for adoption, and there always will be. That's just the power of 'cryptoeconomic incentive'.