
Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain - doener
https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100
======
Animats
Some big banks are gearing up to use a blockchain to track interbank
settlements.[1] But this isn't a coin, nor is there mining. It's simply a
shared ledger that can't be altered without cooperation between a majority of
the parties. All alterations are clearly visible to all parties, which is good
for auditing. Only big banks who have signed up for this have active nodes,
and they are not anonymous.

This is an alternative to setting up a neutral party for the purpose, such as
the Bank for International Settlements or Depository Trust Corporation. Those
organizations are expensive to run. It's a real shared ledger, but it's no
more than that.

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-banks/six-
big-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-banks/six-big-banks-
join-blockchain-digital-cash-settlement-project-idUSKCN1BB0UA)

~~~
ezoe
Since only the trustworthy bodies can join the party, they can do the job more
efficiently by not using any of the trendy blockchain which may technically
prevent the fraud but otherwise inefficient.

And since there are only banks can join the network, I doubt it can
technically prevent the fraud among banks because unlike public
cryptocurrencies, it does not give incentives to the banks to spend a lot of
computational power to the network. So any banks allowed to join can put
enough computation power than other banks combined and succeed the attack.

~~~
bottled_poe
This seems easy to solve though. Couldn’t they just modify the transaction
acceptance logic to require 100% agreement across the network?

~~~
girvo
At risk of breaking NDAs, this is exactly what is being done in deployments
I’ve worked on. Regulators also have nodes.

------
ThomPete
People always overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term.

Go to any country perhaps with the exception of Estonia and you will see that
digitalization was supposed to change governments for the better. Instead they
mostly have created very sporadic successes but a lot of failed implementation
sometimes even making it worse. Yet there is no doubt that in the long run
things are changing for the better.

The problem isn't the technology but the problems around legality and
implementation and who it disrupts.

There is however plenty of usages for blockchain just off the top of my head.

Digital Pokemon cards, 2nd hand ebooks market, 2nd hand digital assets market,
digital art certification, tracking of how money for NGO's are being spent and
of course as a gold standard for important deals done between large
organization and of course as a truly international wiretransfer system.

All these things will happen with new generations growing up and finding
natural uses for them.

~~~
mutteraloo
So 10-15 more years? In the meantime we can use blockchain/bitcoin to scam
money from grandmas, retired folks, and millenials. So they can hate us
technologists even more.

Oh, and cause global warming and destroy the planet. That way humans will
_have_ to come up with a non-government backed currency.

~~~
kindfellow92
I’m worth 13 million dollars because of crypto and I’ve diversified half...
tell me more about how Bitcoin is a scam. :)

~~~
oh_sigh
Im worth 16m because if the tulip bulbs I own.

Did you diversify into other crypto currencies? You are only worth anything
once you actually cash out into USD

~~~
kindfellow92
I diversified 6mm into index funds and bond funds on Vanguard :)

------
provost
Hopefully this thread will be different than all the others. Someone is likely
to appear here with a counterargument, which I'm looking forward to reading.

However, in addition to any counterarguments, please describe why standard
tech and/or a 3rd_party is insufficient for your proposed use-cases. This is
HackerNews after all, and we desire the deeply technical discussion and
context, not propaganda.

~~~
dreit1
I know this isn't an answer that you will like....but blockchain allows me to
invest in high risk investments that would typically only be allowed for
accredited investors. Having the shares/coins in a blockchain provides for
transparency and authenticity and makes legit companies act in a way that is
generally favorable for the small time investor

~~~
chadcmulligan
but isn't that just taking advantage of a (temporary) loop hole? The real
problem there imho is that for some reason the government has decided that oh
we need to step in and protect the unwise. Strangely this is by the same
people that say government shouldn't be involved in the financial markets.
There is no guarantee that having an ICO makes the investment any more bullet
proof.

~~~
dreit1
Entire industries can be built on regulatory loopholes, Uber and Lyft come to
mind.

Cryptocurrencies are forcing govts to reexamine regulations that I argue are
generally favorable to massive institutions/ high net worth individuals and
unfavorable to the small timers

------
eksemplar
Maersk is using blockchain to validate container ownership claims.
Revolutionary tech in a world where crime meant the confirmation papers cost
more than the container to ship.

Several countries outside the west are moving to do registration of land
ownership on blockchain tech because their bureaucratic system is corrupt.

Banks have moved to cryptocurrencies for transfers. Sure it's not the
unregulated ones, but it's still block chain.

In government in Scandinavia we're doing various proofs of concepts on
blockchain. Because it cuts out the need for a legal "middle man" it has huge
potential even in less corrupt parts of the world. Everything from simple
paperwork to lock/key systems in elder apartments (don't know the English word
sorry) is being tested.

Blockchain is certainly full of scams, but it actually offers tremendous value
in enterprise, especially when you do any form of bureaucracy. The thing is
though, in this world 10 years is nothing. Just look at RPA, it's a tech from
before the internet and it's only now beginning to be applied in real world
situations that isn't cheating in a video game.

~~~
tom_mellior
> Several countries outside the west are moving to do registration of land
> ownership on blockchain tech because their bureaucratic system is corrupt.

Do you have a source for this? I can't imagine how it might work.

~~~
dozzie
Why not? Blockchain is a document timestamping system, which means its whole
purpose is to tell which of the two connected documents was issued earlier. As
such, it doesn't care if the document was subtracting a number from one
account and adding the same number to another account or if it was some text
telling who gets the ownership of a described plot.

In fact, this particular use is one of the few that blockchain is actually
good for (because it was designed as document timestamping), unlike stuff like
voting or databases.

~~~
tom_mellior
This is a particular use for a public database. The public database must be
writable (only) by the corrupt authorities. What _exactly_ does a blockchain
do to make the authorities non-corrupt here?

~~~
chipgap98
The data is stored on a decentralized database (many nodes). I buy my house
and am send the rights to that land on a blockchain. Only someone with the
private keys to my address/account/whatever could send that house to someone
else. The scale of the network should make it impossible for the database to
be corrupted.

The whole idea here is distributed trust

~~~
tom_mellior
> Only someone with the private keys to my address/account/whatever could send
> that house to someone else.

And that is exactly the opposite of what a land title database is. The
authorities must be able to transfer your house to your heirs if you die. The
authorities must be able to take away your deed in certain cases. The
authorities must be able to correct entries in the database. They must be able
to override things.

Land titles are worthless if they are not enforced by courts, and courts will
not enforce land titles in a database that has illegal entries.

~~~
eksemplar
> And that is exactly the opposite of what a land title database is.

It's exactly what it is where I live. When you purchase property both parties
log in with their state issued digital id to sign the transfer of ownership.

This isn't done by blockchain in Denmark, which means the nationstate owns and
operates the system with little openness. NOT a problem in one of the least
corrupt countries in the World, but it might as well have been done through
blockchain and in 20 years I imagine that it will.

~~~
tom_mellior
> It's exactly what it is where I live.

No. Yes, you can do it online, great. And yes, no other private person can
fraudulently do it in your name, also great. But it does not follow that it's
impossible to do it without your key; it _is_ possible, and it _must be_
possible, for the authorities.

Should the database be public for reading? Yes, absolutely. But you don't need
a blockchain for that.

------
adamnemecek
This article reminds me of Clifford Stolls 1995 article
[http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-
nirva...](http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-
nirvana-185306) In which he says how the promises of the internet have been
inflated.

Progress is generally on the exponential (or sigmoid) curve, so it’s slow at
first, but explosive later.

~~~
ttul
Similarly, during the late 1990s, people tried to make an internet version of
EVERYTHING, even when it made zero sense. That’s where we are with blockchain
today.

~~~
adamnemecek
Right. That’s how technology works.

But internet right now is undeniable. Block chain will be the same.

~~~
acdha
The internet was undeniable back then, too, which is a huge difference.
Millions of people used it for a ton of different purposes, so even though a
bunch of businesses were pricing below cost the customer demand was clear. In
contrast, nobody has come up for a legal use for bitcoin which many people
need and is better than the alternatives. Some of the other blockchain ideas
are more useful but again struggle to beat traditional PKI.

------
mythrwy
Unsuitable parallels are the bread and butter of hypers and shills.

 _Just imagine it 's 1893 and no one can see how big cars are going to be.
Well this gizmo XYZ is just like cars were then! You'll wanna get in on this
now!_ And so this gets internalized and repeated to friends and family
regardless of objective merit. Because it sounds "truthy".

The parallels between blockchain and the Internet are similarly contrived.
They are different phenomenon and the line "X is like Y thus what happened to
X will happen to Y" doesn't have objective merit in this case near as I can
tell. (Apologies to the half a dozen or more posters who have probably posted
something to this effect on the thread).

The _potential_ uses for blockchain are much more limited than potential uses
for the Internet for instance. (And there are a number of other differences).

That being said I have no doubt there are uses for blockchain technology.
Making people rich with cryptocurrency for one. And hey, I'm all in favor.
Let's just don't get carried away with the parallels.

------
jackfoxy
The folks at [https://sweetbridge.com/](https://sweetbridge.com/) make a case
for supply chain being a natural fit. Some of the low hanging fruit here is
international trade between less developed countries, where settlement has to
be done in dollars, and independent truckers.

The thesis is that huge amounts of capital is tied up in invoice settlement
all along the supply chain. (And supply chain refers to every thing from the
dirt -- grown or mined -- all the way to the end consumer.) Settling invoices
on the blockchain would eliminate a huge amount of friction and open the
possibility of immediate low interest (or even no interest) loans on a
substantial amount of outstanding invoices.

~~~
Cyberdog
What about a blockchain/distributed ledger improves supply chains in ways that
a standard centralized database could not? Explain like I'm five.

~~~
meri_dian
I've been asking this exact question of blockchain enthusiasts and evangelists
for over a year now, and have never received a clear response.

I understand the difference between a distributed ledger and a database, but
in all use cases I've heard mentioned as ripe for blockchain derived
innovation, not once has a blockchain really been necessary or even an
improvement over a traditional database based solution.

To give you an idea of how buzzwordy this all is, my friend works in venture
capital and was trying to explain to me how blockchain was going to change the
world after he got back from a blockchain conference, saying that it would
"revolutionize VR/AR, AI, etc...", technologies that have absolutely nothing
to do with one another. I just laughed.

~~~
davidpatrick
Nothing to do with each other, in the way that internet protocols would have
nothing to do with how we purchase goods. Crypto creates a validated economy
in a VR/AR world. Digital goods have a certain tangibility with crypto inside
of a VR/AR environment, that creates true ownership.

------
atsjie
A solidity developer I spoke to a couple of times told me much the same as
this article. He believed in the blockchain as a concept; but its current
overall benefit to human society is meagre (and some might argue destructive).
This represents a first awkward phase for everyone.

We'll definitely see blockchain become dominant in a some or multiple fields
of business. When? Perhaps not for 20 years. Internet as we know it took
decades for it to fully develop and take off. We could get a crash before this
succes happens, the word "blockchain" and "cryptocurrency" might become toxic
for a while. Thinking of the 2000 IT bubble, so much money poured into any
crazy business proposal with "web" in it; and suddenly the music stopped.
Billions evaporated.

All the while I'll just be grabbing popcorn and hoping to sell my coins on
time ;-)

~~~
autokad
agree. I seen the same comparison between the internet and AI/Data science/ML.
a big bubble, everyone is 'doing it' but most are doing it wrong, and then a
big collapse. When the smoke clears, the ones that 'got it right' are the big
future titans, and the whole sector grows again.

------
kc1116
This reminds me of the reporter that asks Jeff Bezos in a sarcastic tone “So
your telling me Amazon will be bigger than Sears??”
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6cTjhzSgdwE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6cTjhzSgdwE)

~~~
nerfhammer
Doubly amusing because Sears was the Amazon of the 1900's.

------
svantana
There is one obvious use case where it's already in use: illegal trade. The
article mentions it as an aside but it's definitely not small business; if
half the world's drug, weapon and human trafficking trade were to happen in
bitcoin, it would justify the current exchange rate and then some. Of course,
that would force governments to outlaw the exchange services, which would make
bitcoin way less attractive to criminals and law-abiders alike. To me that
seems like the most plausible outcome of all this.

~~~
ThomPete
So basically like cash?

~~~
rtkwe
Cash at least requires a pretty large effort to securely and secretively move
large amounts.

~~~
ThomPete
Why would you need to move a large amount?

There are coke traces on something like 90% of US cash.

------
KirinDave
Github and the linux git repo are merkle trees with a variety of governance
controls.

I will die on this hill if I have to.

~~~
masterjack
That is actually fascinating. You could build a ledger on top of github,
transactions are push requests,there’d be a centralized party approving valid
push requests and merging forks, but following a standardized formula that
anyone can check and audit. Token ingress and egress are potentially hard to
do, but it would be a fun idea to develop.

------
pjc50
"Blockchain" the data structure probably will have some persistent uses.
"Proof of waste" on the other hand is like leaded petrol or cloroflurocarbons:
it certainly works, but the environmental downsides are going to have to
result in it being banned.

------
baxtr
Has anyone thought about this in terms of a hype cycle [1]? Basically, the
theory says that any new technology will be hyped at first and then falls into
a state of disillusionment, where all the hopes of the first phase are
shattered. Finally, when integration barriers etc are resolved the technology
picks up.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle)

------
pipio21
Personally I believe in blockchain, but not current blockchain.

Like anything it will take multiple steps and failing several times before it
works.

The perfect example is the internet, it was so wrong at the start, so ugly,
and so naive. But it was free and open. Everybody said "internet is the
future", and that created the dotcom bubble when everybody agreed and wanted
to profit from it.

I had friends at the time that got rich in the process, and I have friends
today that have gotten rich with bitcoins(they have already sold all of them).

At the end of course Internet was the future, but not "that Internet", it has
evolved a lot and will continue evolving.

With blockchain the same is happening: we have a tremendous bubble right now
that will be painful when it pops. But it will continue evolving into
something extremely useful in my opinion.

It will be no bitcoin, it will something else be easier to mine, with more
transactions, and so on...it will evolve over time learning from its errors,
like anything in the History of mankind.

~~~
Geee
I think you haven't been following the scene very closely.

There's already multiple solutions to these problems. Take a look at RaiBlocks
(raiblocks.net) for example, which has instantaneous zero-fee transactions
with very high throughput (hardware limited) without losing decentralization
or other security properties (not proven atm). RaiBlocks uses delegated proof-
of-stake with a block-lattice architecture.

Another example would be Cardano, which has the first provably secure proof-
of-stake protocol with same security guarantees as Bitcoin, and is also secure
in a scalable setting with blockchain sharding (as is planned in Ethereum
too). Proof-of-stake doesn't require energy to mine blocks and can be scalable
but is very hard to secure.

There's multiple other solutions as well, such as IOTA, Byteball, Steem,
BitShares and others which might be more centralized and less secure to
achieve scalability. Then there is Bitcoin Lightning Network almost ready, and
also MimbleWimble coming out soon ([http://grin-tech.org/](http://grin-
tech.org/)). Lots of things are certainly happening faster than you can
anticipate.

Additionally, there's projects like Enigma and Aion, which add scalability,
privacy and interoperability on top of existing blockchains. This territory
starts to get a bit complex for me.

------
crispinb
It has at least one psychological use. For many it is a vehicle of self-
deception, wherein they persuade themselves they are in the purportedly
honourable class of investors, connoting productive use of wealth. They must
understand somewhere underneath the fakery that they are speculators/gamblers.

------
DenisM
Here's a vague idea... How about a reputation ledger? My reputation will
accumulate over time, and people will trust me, simplifying some transactions.
For example I could rent a short-term stay at a lower rate because I am such a
nice fellow and will never mess anything up.

Because my reputation has direct monetary value I would be hesitant to mess it
up by being a dick, unless for a very big gain. The counter-parties will know
the value of my reputation as well as the total value of outstanding
liabilities against my reputation, so they will not give me any resources
worth more than my current reputation capacity.

This has nothing to do with mining or coins, just an immutable public ledger.
For all I care every notary public will be given a right to sign a block in
the ledger, and collectively they will establish consensus.

Yelp on steroids, basically.

~~~
prodtorok
sounds like a dystopia.

~~~
DenisM
Well, worse case you shed your identity and start from zero, which is where
you are now.

~~~
_mhr_
If the hash function were based on your DNA (proof-of-life), that would make
shedding your identity significantly more difficult.

------
tarikjn
1\. Blockchain technology could be theoretically used to secure elections.

Some example usage: When people register to vote, assist them with setting a
key pair and allow them to enter their public key with their registration.
They could then verify how their vote was counted after the election.

Not sure if it would be superior to paper voting still as it could then be
used to buy votes, but maybe there are some narrow applications, or a multi-
sig approach where someone could know, but not prove it is their vote without
the help of a third party. It is still better than current electronic-voting
in this scenario.

As a side note, there is definitely a use for public key registration
associated with government identification as it would solve ID theft for good.

2\. It could also be used for public records and secure/lower cost for chain
of custody applications.

~~~
tehlike
For 1: Do you need blockchain at all? Or do you need public/private key
signing?

~~~
tarikjn
Where would you register all the votes and verify the counts? The blockchain
would help secure that database from an actor targeting votes of people not
likely to verify their votes.

~~~
M2Ys4U
Being able to (trivially) verify votes sounds like a recipe for buying votes
and/or intimidating voters to me.

Inefficiency in voting technology is a feature, not a bug. Pencil on paper is
the best system we have for precisely this reason.

~~~
tarikjn
Yes, I agree with all that and pointed it out in my first answer.

------
malux85
I have a product built on blockchain, it has real, paying customers. It was
not funded through an ICO and we do not have our own coin.

Https://hydrachain.io/

~~~
chadcmulligan
a tl;dr on what it is might be helpful? I'm afraid I don't quite understand
what your product is after looking at the web site.

~~~
malux85
I know it’s not very good explanation, the site was put up quickly before we
pitched to a large government contract and it was aimed at them and not a
casual reader.

New site coming soon with examples and a demo.

It’s a generic asset management platform - so one current use case is tracking
the movement of goods through a supply chain, and also recording transactional
history in an industry that is currently full of corruption and tax avoiders.
Having an immutable transaction record that’s publicly visible is the correct
usage of blockchain and it solves this problem very well. We are talking about
amounts that are so large, this system will likely be regulated by the
government.

Another current use case is tracking physical (and very valuable) assets -
again the use case is an immutable pubic record.

The immutability is key - sure you could Store this data in a database, but
the problems we are solving are the fact that when you have a single entity
running a database then at a certain level of wealth you’re practically
guaranteed corruption or unethical behaviour. This is the reason we use
blockchain - blockchain has a good use case for avoiding the corruption that
massive centralised systems are often plagued with

------
jnsaff2
I used to work for these guys [https://guardtime.com](https://guardtime.com) .
They do keyless digital signatures/timestamps based on block chain way before
bitcoin and are quite useful.

~~~
wslh
I think you are in a position to add something to this discussion: have they
found added value in the distributed ledger ecosystem?

~~~
jnsaff2
Well they issue timestamps/signatures at a rate up to 2^64/second without PKI
to provide tamper evident guarantees for data integrity. Their ledger is
public and based on universally accepted proofs/primitives. Is it distributed,
I suppose no, is it a good use for blockchain I’d say yes.

------
Agebor
Talking about distributed ledgers, blockchains is kind of misleading.

Fundamentally, this technology implements distributed trust. You can put some
information there and it will remain, forever. Everyone can see that this data
(and hence, some event in the world) is there, was created at particular time
by a particular person. You can tell someone: "Hey, I did X and you can see it
here".

Sure, it's slow as hell now, but look forward 10 years.

What if people in year e.g. 1000CE suddenly got telepathy (internet) and
ability to persist each other's thoughts? How would that change their society?

------
WhitneyLand
There are countless examples where a promising innovation, or even a seemingly
useless but novel result became important at a much later date than 10 years.

Even the Internet was criticized by some after 10 years for failing to live up
to “change everything” hype, and it’s true it hadn’t really close to doing so
at the time. Some companies like Blockbuster Video weren’t a bit concerned for
quite a while.

To me the current state of blockchain applications doesn’t tell us much about
what it’s ultimate utility will end up being.

~~~
Barrin92
> There are countless examples where a promising innovation, or even a
> seemingly useless but novel result became important at a much later date
> than 10 years.

While that might be true, that doesn't mean that a lack of success actually
indicates success. That'd be a useless tautology.

More importantly, earlier innovations that took their time usually at least
had a clear proposition of value. When electricity was introduced it took
decades before businesses had adjusted their manufacturing and supply lines to
the new technology, but everybody could trivially see that powering things
remotely and sending information over long distances is pretty darn useful.

There is no such hypothetical justification for blockchain technology, or at
least there isn't in many cases were people rabidly keep advocating for it.

As the author points out, in many fields the blockhain technology is less
energy efficient, slower, and provides the opposite of what most customers
want.

That is

~~~
WhitneyLand
Of course I agree it doesn’t indicate success, I assume you understand I was
only making the weaker claim, that lack of success at 10 years doesn’t set any
ceiling on ultimate success.

Just saying it’s not unprecedented as other concepts have, however unlikely,
eventually found success, and there are maybe a few parallels with basic
research. Some computer science has come out of all of this already, some of
which might be pieces to a puzzle we can’t entirely see yet.

------
darcys22
As much as everyone hates ICO's. They make equity funding rediculously easy.

~~~
linkmotif
That’s ridiculous.

------
moonlighter
IBM has a blockchain platform [1] and BlueMix APIs [2] available.

[1] [https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/](https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/) [2]
[https://console.bluemix.net/catalog/services/blockchain](https://console.bluemix.net/catalog/services/blockchain)

------
kens
As a serious question, is there a service (other than the blockchain) that
provides a public, timestamped, immutable database? For applications such as
putting supply chain data on the blockchain, I assume there's an easier
service to use, but I couldn't think offhand of what would be a replacement.

~~~
lordnacho
Something close enough is perhaps proofofexistence.com

Pretty simple idea, you hash a any document and you get a blockchained stamp
of that hash.

Now you can prove to anyone that the document (eg contract) existed at that
time.

------
gersh
It seems useful as way to keep records in poor or very corrupt countries
without stable institutions. For example, if you don't have a very stable
government, it seems like it is a good solution for keeping property records
or storing voting records. It also seems like an alternative for creating
universal financial records without requiring the same level of regulation.
Fundamentally, the technology is disrupting the way government functions.
However, if we live in countries with stable, existing governmental
institutions it may be hard to fully understand the disruptive potential.

------
drdeadringer
Recently I saw a question asking if there were any social impact projects
going on that were using blockchain technologies.

I have no idea how blockchain technologies can apply to social impact
projects; all I could come up with was verifying that my donated can of soup
made it into the hands of Homeless Joe via a verifiable route, but I don't
know how much I'd need that. I trust that the soup kitchen [or whatever]
directly feeds people, and if I didn't I'd be volunteering up front as well or
not even bother at all.

Perhaps again I just haven't applied my imagination to it.

------
anigbrowl
Don't forget that lasers were a solution in search of a problem for ages.
Blockchain's potential uses are great, but they have to overcome the deficit
of (maybe) lack of privacy and (usually) big and busy ledgers - traffic you'd
probably rather not have going constantly, but if you outsource it to a local
specialist you're defeating the purpose.What blockchain needs is an
application where privacy doesn't matter but depth and resolution do. I wonder
if it secretly longs to be united with mapping applications.

------
sremani
Distributed Ledgers have real application, blockchains are one way of solving
them. DLT 2.0 like hash graphs and DAGs are interesting, but Blockchain is the
whats in "production" thus far.

------
meri_dian
Blockchain may have some legitimate uses in which it's an improvement over a
traditional centralized database, but they are very few and niche. It would be
silly to say blockchain has no use, but I can't help but laugh at people who
talk about it being "the next Internet"

------
pedalpete
This reminds me of the naysayers from the early internet, and I think we can
look at each stage of the internet's growth with these same glasses.

1) email: it will never replace the post-office. You can only send text. Oh,
ok, they've added images now, well, its' too slow for most people to download
them, and now I've got all this spam. We use it in our company, but it isn't
really for consumers. Oh, then hotmail...

2) You're not going to buy things online. The shipping costs will be too high.
The logistics are all wrong. Will you trust an online shop with your credit
card?? No way! This e-commerce thing is dead in the water. Sure, you point to
the 'growth', but it's equal to "the proportion of US GDP comprised by
toothpick sales"

3) Blogs?? Seriously. We're a news agency. We pay professional journalists to
research and write compelling stories. Can you trust some random person in
their basement writing a blog? Sorry, no contest. Blogs can't compete with
major media companies.

4) Music downloads? Why would you spend 20 minutes downloading a song
ILLEGALLY?? Where are you going to get it from. We'll stop all of this. CDs
are the way forward. Oh, this internet thing has just destroyed our business
model, iTunes to the rescue. But now people want to stream music. No they
don't internet speed isn't fast enough to stream, and people want to own
music, this music streaming thing isn't going anywhere!

5) Video? You've got to be kidding. Oh, that youtube thing is fine for
weirdo's who want to make video's for their friends, but people will keep
going to movies and paying for cable. The quality isn't good enough, and they
don't have the great content. This internet thing isn't going anyway.

6) Rent someone's apartment online? Are you nuts! I'm not going to let some
crazy person stay in my place, and I'm not going to stay in somebody else's.
These internet people are crazy. Our hotel business is just fine. In fact, I
think we should increase prices and start charging people hidden fees like
"resort charges"...

7) Get in a stranger's car? A stranger that I found online!!??? Look, when I
was a kid, my parents had two rules. Don't talk to strangers, and never get in
a strangers car. Now you're telling me to go online, find a stranger and get
in their car! This is madness. Just get in a cab! They'll take you where you
want to go and you can trust them!

Please add your own "this is going nowhere" stories, I'm keen to see what else
is out there, there are TONS.

The blockchain may use the internet as an underlying protocol, but it is as
disruptive to the finance industry as Napster was to music, AirBnB to hotels,
Uber/Lyft (please come to Australia Lyft) was to cabs, Amazon to retail, etc.
etc.

The difference being, that blockchain is an open technology that is enabling
this disruption, rather than a single company.

~~~
hanselot
This whole crypto thing is a bubble. You will see it fall and never recover.
No, not like the other 7000 times it crashed by more than 40%, no this time it
will be impossible to recover, because people can't inherently value something
that doesn't exist. Here use this paper I got from a place I pay to keep my
money for me instead.

~~~
hanselot
Just try to get your money out of crypto! You will see, one day one of the big
guys is going to sell all his coins and cause a market crash from which it
won't recover. Then you are going to be glad to have this gold-backed paper
(Oh wait, don't try and test that last part).

------
GuB-42
The blockchain is not just a support for currency, it is a decentralized
ledger. A bit like git, but more secure.

A use case that doesn't involve currency is product tracking.

------
Balkie
I would love to re read this post and Comments in 2-5 years and see which
large corporations have been replaced or have adopted blockchain/tangle
technology

------
blueprint
Is it ok if I reply without reading the article if the title is able to be
proven patently false? That is... unless we're bending word definitions... :-P

~~~
emodendroket
Probably, because you'd miss the author's point: other than currency
speculation and buying illegal goods there is no compelling use case for the
Blockchain. Crowing about BTC appreciation like Bitcoin lovers like to do
doesn't disprove the thesis.

------
angel_j
"Sixty years in, nobody has come up with a use for linked lists."

------
sebleon
Wikileaks is possible because of the blockchain. No question that the world
has been changed by this kind of organization.

I’m happy that the cartel of financial institutions can no longer shut folks
out arbitrarily, looking forward to seeing what else is made possible by the
blockchain.

------
wslh
I think the author is right with the current state of the affairs and the
insane pumped hype but he misses the core issues serious engineers and
researchers want to solve.

First, private blockchains is a misleading term since they don't share the
core innovation behind Bitcoin: solving (under certain assumptions) the double
spend/transaction problem in a decentralized way. This is the start of a
series of computer science innovations playing with game theory, cryptography,
politics, and finances. The nature of public blockchains makes it difficult,
if not impossible, to significantly scale and speed up them (without losing
some of its original features).

Second, the core ideas behind private blockchains predates Bitcoin. Nick
Szabo’s smart contracts concept is from 1994 [1] and if we go back in time we
can find the AMIX project in 1988 [2][3]. The focus of these ideas is having a
way to specify and plug contracts between different entities. Ad-hoc APIs are
the natural solution for this problem but in the future there can be ways to
quickly specify interactions and agreements with smart contracts.

Also ideas of log immutability can be traced back to a 1995 Spanish article
titled “VCR y PEO, dos protocolos criptográficos simples” [4]. Bruce Schneier
also published similar works in 1997 with Automatic Event-Stream Notorization
Using Digital Signatures and in 1998 as “Cryptographic Support for Secure Logs
on Untrusted Machines” [5].

Regarding private blockchains/distributed ledgers performance, the top
achievement is 80000 tps using BFT-SMaRt consensus with an security tolerance
of <50% crash faults and <33% malicious [6].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_contract#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_contract#History)

[2] [http://erights.org/smart-contracts/index.html](http://erights.org/smart-
contracts/index.html)

[3] [http://erights.org/smart-
contracts/history/index.html](http://erights.org/smart-
contracts/history/index.html)

[4]
[https://www.coresecurity.com/system/files/publications/2016/...](https://www.coresecurity.com/system/files/publications/2016/05/2Protocolos.pdf)

[5] [https://www.schneier.com/academic/paperfiles/paper-secure-
lo...](https://www.schneier.com/academic/paperfiles/paper-secure-logs.pdf)

[6] [https://github.com/bft-smart/library](https://github.com/bft-
smart/library)

------
olfactory
This article is generally why I'm optimistic about Bitcoin and blockchain in
general. A reasonably well-informed person can have all the facts and yet
still not get it.

------
etr-strike
Sure, if you don’t consider a decentralized and trustless currency a use. If
you don’t consider a store of value a use. If you don’t consider a public
ledger of transactions a use. If you don’t consider programmable money a use.
If you don’t consider permissionless payments a use. If you don’t consider a
financial system wich never close a use. If you don’t consider instant
payments a use. Then sure, no use has been found.

------
LoSboccacc
land claims

~~~
LoSboccacc
seriously what's wrong with this community?

------
arisAlexis
amazing how wrong this article is

------
Namecoin_Dammit
[https://namecoin.org/](https://namecoin.org/)

~~~
hanselot
I was just wondering why blockchain doesn't get used to manage government data
on citizens. One immutable record of a person with all the metadata stored in
sidechains.

~~~
ssijak
Yeah, government is sure first to get on a hyper new tech. In the US alone you
got like XYZ ways to count votes on elections in different counties, most of
which are decades or more old.

------
PatchMonkey
What a crock. This is why Medium, as a news source _sucks_. Literally anyone
can say literally anything.

Im no bitcoin fanboy either. Bail out, leave the bankers with the bill as
revenge for 2008.

It was the wrong application of a brilliant idea - a democratically-
distributed, obifuscated DNS replacement for secured communications like TOR
seems more applicable than the whims of an unregulated currency.

But this author doesnt see food-sourcing happening. This author doesn't see
banks adapting the blockchain for their own internal uses to protect sensitive
info. Or anything else you might find in google.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This is why Medium, as a news source sucks.

Medium isn't a news source, any more than, say, blogspot or LiveJournal is.

