The Metaverse

[vimothy]

I just think he has an axe to grind against an incredibly technical industry, where the devil is often in the details and its very easy to over-generalize from a pro- and anti- perspective.

it's not a question of it being technical im a software developer with a qualification in economics (specialising in monetary econ, from the uni of bolton, btw) my issue with it is in the details

 

[Clinamenic]

But even then, would you not say blockchain is practically a field unto itself, what with all the idiosyncratic terminology and jargon? Certainly having economics and comp-sci expertise gives you a better understanding of some of the antecedent discourse, but beyond that it gets quite singular.

 

[Clinamenic]

Consensus mechanisms, layer-2s, smart contracts, LP farming, synthetic tokens, NFTs, DAOs, oracles, etc.

 

[vimothy]

well that's quite notable isnt it

 

[vimothy]

what it reminds me of is precisely the alphabet soup of securities that everyone was promoting just prior to the crisis in 2008

 

[Clinamenic]

what it reminds me of is precisely the alphabet soup of securities that everyone was promoting just prior to the crisis in 2008

Securitization of sub-prime mortgages, etc. Yes, while I don't know nearly as much about that, I'd agree, from what I understand. I'd say its a major contributing factor to ongoing bubble conditions in crypto.

 

[vimothy]

is no one else getting the feeling of deja vu?

 

[Clinamenic]

I think plenty of people are. There was already a near total crash in crypto, and there have been sharp ones since. People in the space have been forewarning about a crypto winter for a while now, as if its always on the horizon.

 

[vimothy]

This is wrong however.there are really smart people working in the space. People who want to do good things, "slay moloch" etc etc.

whose entire purpose as far as the scammers are concerned is literally to validate the existence of the marketplace so that the scammers can continue to scam

 

[vimothy]

See pic related in one of my earlier replies. traditional finance has no programmatic way of ensuring computational integrity. Even regulation etc could be automated and done via zero knowledge proofs. At a high level, "costs" are associated with the need for trust

what is "computational integrity" and why should anyone care about it?

 

[Clinamenic]

what is "computational integrity" and why should anyone care about it?

It's being considered a new possible thing to ground economic value in, almost like a digital utility of sorts. Being able to leverage algorithmically-guaranteed truth as a basis for businesses and social institutions.

I guess the idea there is that the work being done by computers in these networks could be relied on, to some degree, as a basis of value for digital industry to built upon.

 

[vimothy]

To be more concrete, we can think of loans in defi. CDP's and loans can all be transparently verified as having sufficient collateral and and in good standing. In grad fi this infor is locked away, it's much more opaque.

but this is like the sales pitch for CDOs or anything. in practice how is this tech used?

 

[Clinamenic]

It's being considered a new possible thing to ground economic value in, almost like a digital utility of sorts. Being able to leverage algorithmically-guaranteed truth as a basis for businesses and social institutions.

I guess the idea there is that the work being done by computers in these networks could be relied on, to some degree, as a basis of value for digital industry to built upon.

But as far as I know, these arguments could be made for the existing internet infrastructure, with the computational work that servers are doing being a sort of economic basis.

 

[Clinamenic]

but this is like the sales pitch for CDOs or anything. in practice how is this tech used?

I can speak from experience taking out loans on crypto lending platforms. You deposit collateral and you are instantly issued a loan, with a loan to value ratio that depends on the volatility of the asset being collateralized. BTC for example has a 40% LTV on the platform I use, last I checked.

To get access to the collateral, the outstanding loan needs to be repaid. This can be done incrementally.

 

[vimothy]

It's being considered a new possible thing to ground economic value in, almost like a digital utility of sorts. Being able to leverage algorithmically-guaranteed truth as a basis for businesses and social institutions.

I guess the idea there is that the work being done by computers in these networks could be relied on, to some degree, as a basis of value for digital industry to built upon.

it's obviously completely unnecessary bc the entire internet already exists. again, it's just bs to suck in vc

 

[Clinamenic]

I can speak from experience taking out loans on crypto lending platforms. You deposit collateral and you are instantly issued a loan, with a loan to value ratio that depends on the volatility of the asset being collateralized. BTC for example has a 40% LTV on the platform I use, last I checked.

To get access to the collateral, the outstanding loan needs to be repaid. This can be done incrementally.

No credit score necessary, in this case.

But directly auditing the wallets of lending platforms can be tricky, as apparently centralized platforms like this have pooled wallets for a bunch of users, which makes tracking funds complicated.You'd have to reach out to the platform for them to disclose KYC info about their users.

 

[Clinamenic]

it's obviously completely unnecessary bc the entire internet already exists. again, it's just bs to suck in vc

But with blockchain anyone can audit the whole database, provided the blockchain in question is publicly visible, like Bitcoin. i.e. you don't need to take the word of a firm that operates a private database, or else rely on the verdict of professional auditors.

 

[vimothy]

I can speak from experience taking out loans on crypto lending platforms. You deposit collateral and you are instantly issued a loan, with a loan to value ratio that depends on the volatility of the asset being collateralized. BTC for example has a 40% LTV on the platform I use, last I checked.

To get access to the collateral, the outstanding loan needs to be repaid. This can be done incrementally.

this pure bubble behaviour. why would you care about this? are you personally a hedge fund? do you want to be one?

 

[Clinamenic]

this pure bubble behaviour. why would you care about this? are you personally a hedge fund? do you want to be one?

I'm not interested in taking out loans to put myself in leveraged positions, like many others are (hence bubble conditions, high liquidation rates due to high volatility). But I may end up doing something like this down the line, if the assets have appreciated significantly enough for me to take out a loan, to realize their value, without having to sell them.

 

[Clinamenic]

Another reason this is a good arrangement is that it is user agnostic, eliminating most of the bias in loan issuance.