
Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain - tosh
https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100
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qubex
I really dislike bitcoin (and most of the first-generation cryptocurrencies)
for a lot of reasons (as an economist, I consider a deflationary, fixed-supply
currency noxious). But the blockchain is rather fascinating. People seem to
not realise what it is, generally speaking. And what it is, is this: _a
distributed manner of manufacturing scarcity of information_ in our day and
age of infinitely duplicable data. It’s basically a distributed DRM system.

~~~
AboutTheWhisles
> as an economist, I consider a deflationary, fixed-supply currency noxious

I would think that as an economist, you would know better than try to dictate
what people in a large system should do and focus more on the incentives that
drive them.

The part that people who talk about the negatives of a fixed supply currency
don't understand is that what economists thank people should do isn't going to
come in to play. All else being equal, if someone can choose between a
currency that inflates and one that doesn't, why would they choose one that
will be stripping their value away? Inflationary currencies benefit only one
party - the one that gets to create the money out of nothing.

Inflation is good for countries that can't control their spending and need to
hide it behind eroding the value of people's wages. It is poor for anyone
saving the currency for liquidity or anyone whos pay is denominated in it.

~~~
karthikvellanki
If you lived in a deflationary regime, what incentive would you have to work?
You'd rather just sit on your wealth and do nothing. There would be no
economic output.

~~~
AboutTheWhisles
You do realize that the current monetary system has only really been in place
for about 45 years right? The world ran on gold for hundreds of years and
somehow people still managed to find the motivation to work without someone
printing off the money they use.

(Also most inflation pragmatically comes in the form of fractional reserve
banking)

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detaro
Dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571)

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patrickg_zill
One proposed use is for real estate data registration. You put the individual
entries of ownership changes etc. on the blockchain, as prior historical data
should be immutable. Then going forward you enter new data as it comes in.
When you want ti do a title search, you just go through the changes for that
address.

~~~
tdb7893
The thing to me is that you should still need a third party to arbitrate
disputes and get the system to function (you can't implement all the weird
edge cases of laws) so it wouldn't be trustless and shouldn't require a
blockchain.

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woodandsteel
From what I have read of the history of technology, when a radical new
technology is invented, it usually takes 20 or more years before people figure
out how to put it to profitable commercial use.

