Tron's CEO Wants To Use Blockchain Games and BitTorrent To Decentralize the Internet (venturebeat.com)

From a report: Last summer, Justin Sun, the 28-year-old CEO of Tron acquired BitTorrent, the 15-year-old file-sharing company that is one of the biggest decentralized networks in existence for $140 million. He wanted to take advantage of blockchain, the decentralized ledger that is both secure and transparent, and combine it with the decentralized file-sharing app, offering crypto rewards to those who share their computers for file sharing. And this week, Sun appeared on stage with former basketball star Kobe Bryant at the NiTron Summit, which drew more than 1,000 attendees. Tron has also created a $100 million fund to convince game developers to make games that use Tron's protocol and its TRX cryptocurrency. The promise is to create a crypto network that is both fast -- at 2,000 transactions per second -- and reliable.

I interviewed Sun backstage at the NiTron Summit, where he said he wanted his company to become the major blockchain platform that could one day be the decentralized alternative to the centralized internet networks of Google, Facebook, and Apple. But to make that happen, Sun has to get mainstream people like the 100 million BitTorrent users to trust cryptocurrency, even after a coin market slide that has wiped out billions in value, including taking Tron's TRX market value down from near $20 billion to $1.6 billion today.

Comments

Greetings, programs!

[drinkypoo]

That's a big door

Fortunately for him, most people are stupid

[raymorris]

> But to make that happen, Sun has to get mainstream people like the 100 million BitTorrent users to trust cryptocurrency, even after a coin market slide that has wiped out billions in value, including taking Tron's TRX market value down from near $20 billion to $1.6 billion today.

Getting most people to trust cryptocurrency isn't going to happen, unless you assume most people are stupid. Fortunately for him, it seems most people are indeed stupid. Just watch the mindless herds of millions of drones the first Tuesday of November.

Re: Fortunately for him, most people are stupid

[raymorris]

> Please explain to me the exact way that our current money system works

Okay:
https://www.class-central.com/...

> and why it is better than crypto currency!

Money is defined as a) a store of value and b) a medium of exchange.

Store of value means I can put $2,000 in the bank today in order to pay my mortgage next month. Crypto faux-currency doesn't do that. You put aside a Randomcoin today, no telling what value it'll have next month, if any.

Medium of exchange means you can advertise your services at $25/hour, or sell tables at $100/table, and then someone who wants a table goes to work, earns $100, and uses it to buy a table from you. *coin doesn't work that way. Something that costs 0.5BTC this morning (actually $1,700) may very well cost 0.7BTC tonight (still $1,700).

Re: Fortunately for him, most people are stupid

[Desler]

Please explain to me the exact way that our current money system works and why it is better than crypto currency!

I can walk into any store and buy goods and services with "fiat" currency whilst your buttcoins can not.

Re:Fortunately for him, most people are stupid

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Getting most people to trust cryptocurrency isn't going to happen, unless you assume most people are stupid. Fortunately for him, it seems most people are indeed stupid. Just watch the mindless herds of millions of drones the first Tuesday of November.

Or just watch the people that keep using their shitty ad, and malware ridden Torrent clients, when there are much better free options.

Re: Fortunately for him, most people are stupid

[Kjella]

hahahhahahahaha
Fiat currencies have and do shit themselves regularly. Entire countries are essentially bankrupt because of them. (...) See Greece for a recent example of a shitfest gone wrong.

You need to do less drugs. The Greek government was close to bankrupt because they took up huge loans and couldn't pay them back, but their currency is the Euro and has been rock solid. Their only "problem" was that they couldn't print free money...

Re: Fortunately for him, most people are stupid

[Kjella]

Money is defined as a) a store of value and b) a medium of exchange. (...) Medium of exchange means you can advertise your services at $25/hour, or sell tables at $100/table, and then someone who wants a table goes to work, earns $100, and uses it to buy a table from you. *coin doesn't work that way. Something that costs 0.5BTC this morning (actually $1,700) may very well cost 0.7BTC tonight (still $1,700).

No, actually that's just repeating the first point. Medium of exchange refers to being a universally accepted token of value, unlike a barter economy where you need to find someone who has what you want to barter with. Volatility during transactions is annoying but not really that big a deal because the value goes both up and down, like if you keep working for $25/hour buying $100 tables then on average it'll take four hours. If you're doing it just once it might take two or eight hours if the crypto-coin is booming/tanking that day, but if you're doing it every week you'll be pretty close to $5200 worth of tables for $5200 worth of work after a year. It's no more magic than a farmer who has good crops and bad crops, you should probably add lost crops too because the risk a coin will suddenly crash and burn. You just need the financial buffer to deal with the variation.

Re: Fortunately for him, most people are stupid

[cavreader]

One reason? FDIC Second Reason? Fraud protection.

Re: Fortunately for him, most people are stupid

[golgotha007]

>> Something that costs 0.5BTC this morning (actually $1,700) may very well cost 0.7BTC tonight (still $1,700).

As with any new currency, volatility is likely to happen until exchanges and trading stabilizes it. In this area of a brand new technology acting as a currency or asset, where it is completely decentralized and has no borders, it's likely to be volatile for awhile before becoming stable. Also, keep in mind that your thinking is relative to what a seller is expecting: if a seller is expecting dollars, then pay in dollars; if in euros, then pay in euros; if in bitcoin, then pay in bitcoin. If you don't pay a seller what they're expecting, then there's likely to be a difference in value as a result - sometimes small, sometimes large.

>> Getting most people to trust cryptocurrency isn't going to happen, unless you assume most people are stupid. Fortunately for him, it seems most people are indeed stupid.

The sad part about your post is that you're calling people "stupid" for getting involved, either financially or other. Either you don't understand the technology itself or you're angry because you feel that you've missed some kind of boat where you could have quintupled your dollars. You need to think larger than this.

I highly recommend that you spend some time checking out these resources:
https://lopp.net/bitcoin.html

Once smart phones reach a lower price point ($10 or less), we can expect the 2.8 billion 'un-banked' people in the world to enter global financial markets using some form of crypto currency. Think of the prosperity that will spread across third world nations as a result.

Re: Fortunately for him, most people are stupid

[Excelcia]

Please explain to me the exact way that our current money system works and why it is better than crypto currency!

Sure. Our current currency system doesn't involve first intentionally wasting a valuable resource (electricity) for no better reason than to make the cost of issuing a unit of currency high enough that the world isn't flooded with them.

Whoever thought that was sustainable enough that they would make money on it deserves the crippling losses that have occurred and the rest that are coming.

Tron's CEO Wants To ... Decentralize the Internet

[grep -v '.*' *]

The promise is to create a crypto network that is both fast -- at 2,000 transactions per second -- and reliable

First you get it fast and then you get it right - right??

Not happening

[DontBeAMoran]

TRX tokens are simply tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. I will never trust Ethereum after the bullshit they pulled, more than once too.

Also drones and electrical vehicles

[aglider]

Why not?
All buzzwords in a single marketing claim!

Blockchain

[DaMattster]

It's just becoming an overused, overhyped term by CEOs (an even CIOs) who neither understand nor use it correctly.

Lack of decentralization is not a technical issue

[godrik]

Internet is a decentralized platform. It is currently centralized (minitel 2.0 kind of thing) not because of technical problems. It is easy to run your own blog, your own webserver, etc..
The problem is mostly social. Device makers are allowed to keep their platform closed. So if you want something iPhone compatible, it pretty much has to play ball with Apple; and if they don't like it you are screwed. But the issue of running stuff on the iPhone is not a technical issue, but a social (legal) one. It is legal for Apple to shutdown any attempt at opening the iPhone.

Similarly, one can only play PS4 games online on Sony's platform. It is not that we don't have the technical knowledge to make PS4 online games compatible with Xbox's, PC's, or smartphone's. The fundamental problem is social: Sony can force you to play through their network alone and can mess with you if you don't play ball.

I could go on for other platforms, but that is typically where the centralization actually comes from.

Blockchain already uses Bittorrent

[Deliveranc3]

This is just a dumb article. I'm stupider for having read it.

Et Tu Slashdot.

Decentralize the Internet?

[fustakrakich]

Please! You can't do that until you find a way around the ISP. Google and Facebook are nothing. They can't cut your wire.

Re:Decentralize control, then it becomes interesti

[Desler]

Was that supposed to sound inightful?

Why oh why...

[101percent]

Why do people think you can just buy a company then revolutionize the internet?

Re:Why oh why...

[SuricouRaven]

Because it's happened before. Single companies have revolutionised the internet. Google did search better than anyone had before, Microsoft developed operating systems that made it possible for anyone to use a computer without months of training, facebook took the established idea of a journal website and advanced it into social networking. Billions of dollars were made, the the internet was revolutionised. Those were different times though, and it is not so easy these days. The internet is no longer experiencing an explosive growth and the creation of untapped markets, where the right idea at the right time could change everything.

I could have made that more clear

[raymorris]

I didn't do a great job of making my point clear.

> Medium of exchange refers to being a universally accepted token of value, unlike a barter economy where you need to find someone who has what you want to barter with.

Right, universally accepted value. The key words being "accept" and "value". Meaning most people (universally) will say "I'll _accept_ 20Money for this item I'm selling". Most people don't in any way accept *coin, or even appear to accept it. Those that appear to don't accept *coin at a certain _value_. Some online stores use a payment servicer that processes via *coin, but the _value_ they offer to _accept_ is "$20 worth of *coin". The _value_ they put on it is denominated in US dollars.

Re:I could have made that more clear

[jezwel]

I didn't do a great job of making my point clear.

> Medium of exchange refers to being a universally accepted token of value, unlike a barter economy where you need to find someone who has what you want to barter with.

Right, universally accepted value. The key words being "accept" and "value". Meaning most people (universally) will say "I'll _accept_ 20Money for this item I'm selling". Most people don't in any way accept *coin, or even appear to accept it. Those that appear to don't accept *coin at a certain _value_. Some online stores use a payment servicer that processes via *coin, but the _value_ they offer to _accept_ is "$20 worth of *coin". The _value_ they put on it is denominated in US dollars.

There is no "universally accepted" token of value - the medium of exchange for goods is defined by the currency accepted by the service provider.
Luckily there are numerous places that will exchange your freedom dollars for whatever is accepted locally, whether that is Yen, Rubles, unmovable massive stones, barrels of crude oil (ok maybe not this one), US$, or Bitcoin.

The primary difference is that Bitcoin is not a popular currency for local use, so not many services are priced using it.

Re:Lack of decentralization is not a technical iss

[SuricouRaven]

It's always been semi-centralised. I think you have the problem wrong though. It's discovery. The vast amount of data on the internet is just too much to handle without aggregation and curation services, and those are where much of the centralisation now lies. If I post a video on my own website, no-one is going to see it - but if I put it on youtube, people will. Even if people had a properly decentralised hosting platform like bittorrent or IPFS to store data, it'd still need centralised services to find it, and those will be subject to the usual economy of scale effect: No-one wants to use a social service which has no users on it. The bigger they get, the more useful they are, so naturally one or two platforms will rise to total dominance.

Why this is now needed

[AHuxley]

A fan, user, supporter can ensure more of their funding gets direct to a project, game, software they want to support.
Without the party political ability of a CC company, payment platform, online payment system to block/ban/report a payment.
That a payment network wants to take 10% to 30% of the money sent.

The p2p part allows data to move around the world out needing a digital distribution company with political considerations to approve the content.
The internet is free again without the CoC, politics and virtue signalling of a few payment systems, CC, digital distribution networks.

Users help other users network the content they like.
Creators get more support direct for users.

Universal within a certain economy (compare comic

[raymorris]

Universal in this sense means within a certain economy, such as the US. Compare Marvel universe, DC universe.

Everybody in the US either a) has to pay taxes or b) buys things frim someone who has to pay taxes, so everybody has a need for dollars.

Re:Nope.

[o_ferguson]

Yeah doing business under multiple pseudonyms is always a surefire indicator that everything's on the up-and-up.