Yes, but it has to be worth the effort. The current fees are more than manageable. We are dealing with 8-10% inflation, paying a 0.5% or 1.5% transaction fee on infrequent transactions is nothing. And the cost will not go down to zero just because there are smart contracts involved. My point being, there has to be a real incentive and motivation to shift the goal posts. I do not see the financial incentives to make this large transition. To the contrary, I see way too much risk in this system via hacks, intrusions, rogue employees who embezzle funds and just poor integrations by the current crypto players that make shifting any of my funds into this space an absolute impossibility.
A lot of that looks promising on paper. But even the white papers blatantly omit the transaction costs that any of the technology integrators will be charging for their services to make this viable in real life. There will be tons of regulatory burdens imposed and each of them requires tons of humans to manage and all those cost will be passed on. If the blockchain space cannot even make crypto payments and transfers cheap and significantly more efficient than current fiat transfers then why should I trust they will be able to handle smart contracts at a feasible cost....
I hear exactly what you are saying. This is an almost identical argument that I had with people in the early 1990s about the Internet.
Nonsense. Nobody promised the internet will be free, we still pay to for access. However, it offered something that did not exist before, it solved a REAL WORLD problem, a global repository of information and data accessible by anyone with access privileges. The only promise so far in the blockchain space is lower cost. My real estate title transaction worked perfectly well and it was safe, notary publics were involved and I did not have to pay a cent to buy property other than my property transfer tax that will be imposed, smart contract or not. My bank transfers work, never lost a single cent ever. My direct deposits work. It just works. Hence there is nothing the blockchain can offer me to improve this. The only incentive to switch might be lower cost. But as I already mentioned why should I trust you or any anonymous poster who claims cost will be significantly reduced with smart contracts or blockchain technology if the current technology to transfer money on the blockchain is not much cheaper than any traditional means to transfer funds? I don't trust what people say, I trust what facts demonstrate and show. I see no significant cost reductions in this space so far. And I am sure what I shared about my concerns matches pretty much with what the huge majority is concerned with as well which will in the medium term limit any further adoption.
Very few people believed that at the time. I was there hard at work as a software developer on networking projects. You could barely convince anyone that it solved a real world problem. Your memory of the history of the Internet is skewed by the way the next 30 years turned out. The fact that so many people are insistent that blockchain can't solve real world problems is not a surprise. This is how technological innovations evolve. These same discussions have gone on for most of my life with the Internet, social media, wireless, smart phones, etc. Every. Single. Time. It starts with emphatic denials from those who are outside the space. Every. Time. And why would you ask if you should trust me?? Do your own research. I'm not expecting you to trust me at all and I'm not selling anything. You are on your own. lol.
Let me correct myself if I stated that I believe the blockchain cannot solve anything. It does solve problems. But those problems have been solved as I have shown you through multiple examples. The only other sales point here for me is cost reductions, and I can't see significant ones given what we are currently seeing with blockchain backed money transfers. And I do not concern myself with how every single dummy looks at new technology. I immediately bought into Amazon the moment they started selling books online. Then other products, then cloud computing, now if they can overcome the transport (last hop) problem then that will be another innovation that will push Amazon back up. Name me a single problem that has NOT yet been solved that the blockchain promises to tackle. Improvements or cost efficiencies do not count in regard to this question, I am asking about not yet tackled problems.
I agree with you on this point...it doesn't really offer much advantage over our current system to the baseline user to be seen as some quantum jump like it is touted. A global currency doesn't mean shit to most people who barely leave their city or state...not that crypto is even widely accepted at many places of business. Current transaction speed using credit/debit is plenty fast, AND...here is the kicker...my money at the bank is insured via FDIC. If my info gets stollen and transactions are made, I simply go to the bank and sign a few papers and money returned. Good luck getting the contents of your hacked wallet back from Radomir Petrovik in Serbia.
Elimination of counter party risk. You and I can now enter into a contract and I am mathematically guaranteed to receive what is stated in the contract. In the current financial system you have to be concerned that your counterparty is solvent. If Lehman fails then you will not get paid even though your options contract says you should be. In many cases we use 3rd party intermediaries to try and eliminate this risk but it only works until all things correlate. In 2008 correlations basically went to 1 and the current financial system failed. 100%. The only solution was to print money to ensure contracts did not fail.
I like your analogy, but remember no one made money on the internet base layer protocols either. So not an investment case for bitcoin.
Of course not. It was all open sourced and could be copied over and over all you wanted. Bitcoin supply is constrained.