
Man Who Introduced Millions to Bitcoin Says Blockchain Is a Bust - virtualwhys
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-18/man-who-introduced-millions-to-bitcoin-says-blockchain-is-a-bust
======
smaps
> “Blockchains are a pain to work with,” wrote Thomas, the chief technology
> officer of Ripple Labs.

One thing to note is that he works for Ripple Labs, which created another
protocol that is similar to Bitcoin/anything blockchain based... so it's
pretty much a competitor calling their competition a bust.

~~~
throwaway1974
Its worse than that he scammed many people with Ripple in past, then he
proceeded to rebrand as Stellar (and somehow suckered in the guys from Stripe
who are being very qiuet about it now) and is repeating the same steps as
before.

~~~
vhpoet
talking about a wrong dude :)

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wyldfire
> “In a blockchain like ethereum, everyone has to think the same,” he said. He
> plugs Ripple’s Interledger Protocol at the end, describing it as a more
> flexible and individualized way to send or receive payments.

It's a quid-pro-quo. Journalist gets their headline, Thomas gets his asset
pumped.

~~~
Angostura
You seem to be suggesting that his core argument is only worthy as headline-
bait. I thought it was quite an interesting critique.

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kyledrake
I'm already seeing people pile in here to call Stefan Thomas a business
scammer and "a competitor calling his competition a bust" and whatever, so
it's worth mentioning here that Stefan pioneered using Bitcoin with
Javascript, and the most popular wallets in the world still use what he helped
create today: [http://bitcoinjs.org](http://bitcoinjs.org)

Please have respect for the idea that his opinions on Blockchains aren't just
biased in connection with his work and possessing of no technocratic merit. If
you don't at least give him that, he will have received neither money nor
respect for his hard work that definitely improved the Bitcoin space (because
he sure wasn't getting paid to work on BitcoinJS).

~~~
smaps
That is a good point to add! With my comment "a competitor calling his
competition a bust" I just wanted to make sure people took what he said with a
grain of salt. If you hadn't read up on Bitcoin/blockchains/Ripple before it
could be easily overlooked.

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karma_vaccum123
Blockchains are so far really only effective at attracting venture capital to
startups.

We're at the end of the mobile tech cycle, people are desperate for a new
investment theme. IoT and blockchain are showing up everywhere but it feels
like a contrived attempt to start another cycle.

Remember "push" technology and B2B exchanges? Two other keywords that popped
up in contrived efforts to start new tech cycles after the first .com
implosion.

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xyzzy4
Blockchains are only useful when you need a decentralized system where nobody
trusts anyone else, and where different actors need to be pseudonymous.
Otherwise there are far simpler solutions.

~~~
catalinbraescu
Could you please give a few examples of such simpler solutions?

~~~
xyzzy4
Server - client architecture, using IP addresses instead of using
public/private keys, etc.

~~~
catalinbraescu
Then the own employees can change the ledger (for example).

I thought your claim was serious.

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dikaiosune
I hear echoes of [https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-
moving/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/). The
argument that open protocols become effectively static after adoption is
compelling, but I wonder if perhaps we can do better.

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TazeTSchnitzel
> “Blockchain, the ledger software that makes the digital currency possible”

Huh? The blockchain is a name for a feature of the Bitcoin protocol. It's not
a piece of software and it's not a proper noun.

But you'd be forgiven for not knowing that, given the constant hype about
“blockchains” these days and their use as a hammer to try and hit every
imagined nail. There's also a company named after it, which _is_ a proper
noun.

The blockchain, incidentally, is not mentioned in the Bitcoin white paper,[0]
which refers to a “proof-of-work chain”. “Blockchain”, as a word, was merely
internal jargon to refer to Bitcoin's specific implementation of this concept.

[0] [https://www.bitcoin.com/bitcoin.pdf](https://www.bitcoin.com/bitcoin.pdf)

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cloudjacker
Interesting how influential some people are. What should have been an
offhanded reddit comment is an article on Bloomberg.

