Merkel is the previous chancelor of Germany, Merkle is a computer scientist ;)

Hash trees are a part of blockchains, but not the entire thing. This is kinda like saying acupuncture isn’t bullshit because needles are useful in real medicine as well.

So, instead of my bank sending money to your bank, I use my bank to send money to a bitcoin broker, then I send the bitcoin, and then their broker sends money to their bank, adding two more middlemen.

Almost every single non-theoretical problem that blockchains solve is something we’ve already solved. And most of the problems you could solve with a blockchains are severely limited by data-size limitations.

It would be amazing if I could decentrally store, say, a movie or videogame on a blockchain. Then, I could sell access tokens, would the owners could resell as they wanted. That’s a GREAT way to use blockchain tech, because people would always have access, and they could use or sell the keys as they wanted. It doens’t work though, because in the real world, that movie doesn’t fit on the blockchain, it’ll just be a link the a secondary source, and the whole thing falls apart.

And that’s really the problem. Blockchains have a lot of nifty uses, but it almost always immediately falls apart around the edges, where it touches on non-blockchain tech, or, even worse, physical objects.

Also, when I try to scam someone using my bankaccount, my bank goes “Uhhh, please show us that this isn’t a scam”. My bitcoin wallet doesn’t care.

Well, you can’t do fractional-reserve banking with bitcoin (or any other coin I know of), so in that way, a “run” on a bitcoin can only ever exhaust the supply. lending out more than you have requires trust, and that’s not available in a blockchain structure.

On the other hand, fractional reserve banking is the foundation of all modern financial systems, so it’s not really a thing we’re going to scrap.

It would be useful for things like deeds and contracts. Instead of having a bank hold it and provide proof you could store it on the blockchain. There are a handful of good uses for it, but it’s generally not useful for the stuff most people think it would be.

Well, yes but no.

There’s a lot of problems with blockchain deeds, and one of the big ones is confirming the first owner. What’s to prevent me from minting a smart-contract that says I own your house? Or that I own a house that doesn’t even exist? In the real world, we’ve solved those problems (and MANY more) with notaries and central registration systems. At the interchange of digital-ownership and real-world, physical assets, you’re always going to need a trusted party to verify that the two match. And at that point, you don’t need the blockchain at all.

I mean, it’s not like the guy has much work to do.

Does it at least take a long time, thereby not entirely ruining my analogy?

We’re all in better Ask Lemmy on .world

Probably the thing about a lemy.ml admin doxing some random user some 25 times. Which is VERY not ok.

You can never stop all import, sanctions only make it harder and more expensive, not impossible.

There’s very little you can do to stop a guy with a truck full of stuff from driving across an empty border with a friendly-ish country.

Well, the first 27 didn’t work, but maybe the 28th will do the trick!

Hedging is done in many different ways. One of the easiest, that requires zero insight is a future hedge.

Say I hold 1000 shares worth 5 bucks each in company Bob. If the price goes up, that’s great, but I’ll need to replace my car in three years, and I’ll need at least 3000 bucks for that.

So, I’m going to spend some money now on buying an option in 2 years 11 months to sell 1000 shares for 3 bucks per share. That way, if Bob company completely collapses, I’ll always have at minimum 3000 bucks.

Of course, those options cost money to buy, so I’ll have to pay to reduce my risk, but I don’t need any real insight into the market to use this kind of hedge.

Hedging isn’t about ensuring gains, it’s about reducing losses.

The classic non-stock example is the apple farmer. Apple trees take a long time to grow, years before they produce any significant amount of apples.

Suppose I plant an orchard of the new Awesome Amy Apple trees. I’m betting those will really take off in two years, so they’ll be really profitable. But since these apples are my entire income, and I’d rather not eat an entirely apple-based diet by then, I’m going to hedge my investment. I’m giving up some profit to reduce my risks.

I’m making a contract to sell half my apples for, say, 20 dollars per bucket. Now, they might be worth 40, but they might also be completely worthless if the Perfect Pete Apple becomes more popular. So I’m giving up some potential profit in exchange for certainty by hedging.

Another type of hedge would be me planting 75% Awesome Amy, and 25% Perfect Pete. I’m still assuming the alliteration will win the day, but by spreading my investment around, I’m reducing my risk.

To translate this to the stock market, the first examples would be to buy options for the future. The second example is simply spreading your investments.

The sewage treatment is not built to handle that kind of stuff.

They’re also not built to handle it in the US, but lower standards solve that problem pretty handily

you now know that they are willing to abandon anyone they claim to protect.

I don’t think you feel irony here for anyone who is, say, LGBTQ, PoC, Ukranianian, Female or poor.

You should now know that their words are meaningless

Well… That could immediately be applied to anyone who helps get conservatives elected as well, wouldn’t you say? Only to a much greater degree, since the people hurt are much more numerous.

I guess so, but why so huge? Modern riding gloves are really short.

Why the weirdly huge gloves? They definitely don’t help you shoot.

I didn’t know there were any Hawks still in use. The Patriot has been around for 30 years now…

But what about the Meriadoc Falcon?