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Bullshit. My bank changed the terms and conditions on my savings account. The changes were published to a webpage I never visit. They emptied the account. My recourse? Zilch.
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It’s anonymous, but not private. There is a public record of your wallet, but no way to trace that wallet to you.
And there are shady ways to “scramble” transactions.
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Yeah. I think this article is out-dated. The mention of crypto industries being worth $300m seems like a very old number. The Crypto market cap is 1,000 times that size currently.
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The “ledger” use case is actually a mixed bag at best.
Insuring data integrity is hardly a trivial problem, even if the threat model is just the universe’s dark entropic imperatives; worse if hostile actors are potentially involved; but blockchains only provide novel benefits in that area in the specific case of a reasonably distributed collection of mutually untrusting and non-authoritative actors. If the collection isn’t distributed whoever can win the 50% problem actually owns the data; and if the actors aren’t mutually untrusted you have all the various options related to classic “trust the trusted guy; and audit him periodically” approaches.
If you want some buzzword compliance you certainly can run a pet blockchain for largely internal use and (best case) it might be better than usual just because the people who would do such a thing are incidentally interested in data integrity; but it’s pretty much just a stupendously computationally expensive database.
Perhaps worse for the tracking-real-world use cases, though, is that, fundamentally, a blockchain can only enshrine what it is provided in a shiny cryptographic layer of authority. Errors or deliberately falsifications in? Duly baked in to the authoritative record. This is a problem the cryptocurrency applications sidestep because only the transactions that occur are relevant, the tokens being moved around are meaningless abstractions created in order to be shuffled around. If you want the cryptographically secure objects to correspond with real world objects (as you generally do for logistics, supply chain, authenticity validation, etc.) suddenly all the usual attacks aimed at disrupting the perfect agreement between the map and the terrain come back; and pretty much all of them work just as well as they do against any other record-keeping system. If the container of goods that the token is supposed to represent ‘falls off the back of a truck’ the fact that the journey of its crypto-counterpart from one wallet to another is safe and secure is unhelpful.
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The principle criminal utility seems to be in that it’s suitable for electronic transfer (unlike good, honest, small unmarked bills); but doesn’t have a payment processor who gets all sniffy unless you are a properly high-rolling criminal.
It’s not so much that they care about distributed-ledger-something-something; it’s that encryption ransom notes that instruct the victim to remit to a paypal account don’t really work very well.
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bitcoin, arguably the only successful blockchain application
I mean, I guess it depends on your definition of “successful.” They successfully created a more environmentally destructive version of tulip mania, for sure.
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This seems like an old article (I mean… who’s been to a conference this year?)
Proof of Work is an energy intensive and slow way to process data, and is being phased out. Bitcoin will always be PoW, and it’s too established and trustless to be replaced as the “gold” of cryptocurrency.
Almost all new projects are Proof of Stake. Where you can set up a node or validator, and provide your reserves of that coin as “stake” in the blockchain. You give 0.1% of your supply as collateral. If you behave dishonestly, then you lose the collateral and also don’t earn any rewards.
(I don’t own any, just using it as an example), but there’s STORJ which offers cloud storage on the blockchain as proof of stake. Companies with large servers can dedicate unused space to the STORJ cloud storage network, and be paid in the token for the use. If they save the tokens in their wallet and “stake” them on the blockchain, they will then earn staking rewards as well (5-6% annually)
The blockchain protects user data, as data is split between many different servers and encrypted. Users pay in STORJ for the data consumption.
There are also a number of new credit blockchains popping up. Lenders provide liquidity and earn rewards. Borrowers provide collateral which is lost if they default. Interest rates are determined by the autonomous network.
And there are non-fungible tokens. Where each token is unique and irreplaceable. Enjin has partnered with Minecraft to use their non-fungible token to make items in Minecraft that are discrete. This will be a major development in online gaming. Not only to share special items (damage to weapons in COD, unique enhancements, etc.), but also to identify cheaters.
Again. I believe this article was written around 3 years ago at the last bull run on Bitcoin. At that time the hype was all about having a new coin and getting in earlier than anyone else. The main complaints in the article about no valid use cases is much less valid now.
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Regions bank once counted two of my withdrawals out of chronological order so they could charge me three overdraft fees. I think it was Chase that caught a class-action (and lost) for doing the exact same thing about a year later. Didn’t get me my money back, and didn’t even cost them as much as the profited from doing it.
I even sat there for 30 minutes and made the guy watch me read the 65 page, 10 point font contract they gave me for just opening an account. I gave up on page 20 or so when I got to the bit about “we reserve the right to change this contract at any time” (no notice, and they don’t publish diffs).
Banks absolutely take money out of your account arbitrarily. They CAN be trusted to do the scummiest thing they can get away with every time.
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Until there is, of course… One slip-up and that entire transaction history is tied to you.
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Yes, agreed. My comment was more about: there’s nothing in the Blockchain/wallet address that can tie it to you.
I definitely wasn’t encouraging nefarious use!
I’m not so sure… if you’re really interested in “how things work” blockchain might be one where you want to skip. However it’s something that will continue to drive innovation in user-facing applications because of arbitrary barriers set by other centralized authorities. Perhaps you’ll start to notice the apps you use a few years from now have a few more privacy features, or the transaction fees in paypal disappear or are reduced from 3% to 0.3%. The scalability and trustworthiness of the whole system blends well with long-term use scenarios. As your services, apps and interconnected life begins to rely on a non-database system, they’ll tend to stick with it over time and improve their already familiar core services with newer features.
Perhaps it’s best the consumer stick to reading and learning about the capabilities of blockchain apps and demand their service and app providers to ship their software with these capabilities.
oh good, we want to be sure to buy at the top
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I like how blockchain protects my account from fraud with FDIC insurance. Not one person has lost money from any malfeasance.
Because it’s not money.
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The market cap of all cryptocurrency is around 1/8 the size of Tesla. Tesla is not even on the S&P 500.
The market cap of Gold is about 40 times larger than Bitcoin.
I understand what you mean. Buying Bitcoin in a pandemic is a weird one… but this is not the top.
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it’s like those motivational-speaker conventions where the sales pitch is also the product
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BitShare?
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wasn’t there a study that said blockchain usage growing at its current rate will incinerate the earth within a decade? I could be wrong on the particulars…
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it’s a serious vulnerability in the basic fabric of modern civilization when any effort to make technology more sensible and efficient can be eaten up by speculative schemes that promise imaginary wealth while turning real wealth into waste heat and carbon dioxide
EDIT: after writing this I realized it also describes suburban real estate development
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