
Developing Blockchain Use Cases for CMU Coin - ArtWomb
https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/azj/cmucoin/
======
outside1234
This is the exact opposite of how you should go about product market fit and
is an anti-pattern that they are teaching students.

If they were doing this the right way, they would identify problems that exist
that existing currency does not address and then work back to how they can
solve them, which might include a blockchain based currency.

But not the opposite approach.

That said, can't wait for the students to come up with applications like
"buying drugs" and "paying for kegs when you are underaged".

~~~
Isamu
They are teaching them about blockchain applications specifically. This isn't
about market fit.

They appear to be attacking the VERY widespread problem of people applying a
blockchain solution where it doesn't necessarily add value. What does a
blockchain solution buy you? What doesn't it do for you? Do you really
understand what it does and does not do?

Given a student's proposed application, you could critique it based on whether
the properties of a blockchain solution provide something unique that couldn't
be provided easily with other approaches.

~~~
wrs
The interesting thing will be whether any proposed applications would survive
the critique. Perhaps the whole plan is to have the students learn that there
are almost no sensible applications! (Is the CS department participating to
generate alternative implementations for comparison?)

------
DonHopkins
CMU and other schools with blockchain courses should be teaching about the
ethics and legal penalties and ecological consequences of running blockchain
pyramid schemes and scams, instead of teaching students how to hype,
evangelize, and retroactively contrive use cases for existing Ponzi schemes
like CMU Coin. The world already has more than enough Bitcoin shills.
Universities don't need to be pumping and dumping more of them out.

David Gerard's book "Attack of the 50 Foot BlockChain: Bitcoin, Blockchain,
Ethereum & Smart Contracts" would be an excellent down-to-earth textbook for a
realistic course about blockchain.

[https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/book/](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/book/)

>Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: The Book

>“A sober riposte to all the upbeat forecasts about cryptocurrency” — New York
Review of Books

>“A very convincing takedown of the whole phenomenon” — BBC News

[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3165196](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3165196)

>An experimental new Internet-based form of money is created that anyone can
generate at home; people build frightening firetrap computers full of video
cards, putting out so much heat that one operator is hospitalised with
heatstroke and brain damage. A young physics student starts a revolutionary
new marketplace immune to State coercion; he ends up ordering hits on people
because they might threaten his great experiment, and is jailed for life
without parole. Fully automated contractual systems are proposed to make
business and the law work better; the contracts people actually write are
unregulated penny stock offerings whose fine print literally states that you
are buying nothing of any value. The biggest crowdfunding in history attracts
$150 million on the promise that it will embody the steadfast iron will of
unstoppable code; upon release it is immediately hacked, and $50 million is
stolen. How did we get here? David Gerard covers the origins and history of
Bitcoin to the present day, the other cryptocurrencies it spawned including
Ethereum, the ICO craze and the 2017 crypto bubble, and the attempts to apply
blockchains and smart contracts to business. Plus a case study on blockchains
in the music industry. Bitcoin and blockchains are not a technology story, but
a psychology story. Remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it almost
certainly is.

[https://www.infoq.com/articles/Attack-50ft-Blockchain-
Review...](https://www.infoq.com/articles/Attack-50ft-Blockchain-Review/)

>Key Takeaways

>The book discusses Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrencies in economic and
social terms, rather than purely technical

>It discusses various Bitcoin case studies, including Mt Gox and the Silk Road

>Bitcoin mining is no longer decentralised but is instead controlled by a
small group of miners that control a large majority of the hash power

>The book concludes with a detailed examination of the possible use of
blockchain for rights management in the music industry

>David Gerard's 2017 book, "Attack of the 50ft Blockchain" is an in-depth look
at the cryptocurrency space.

>The book takes a straightforwardly skeptical angle, and is explicitly
intended as a non-technical overview. Rather than focus on details of
cryptography and code that describe how a cryptocurrency or a blockchain
works, the book discusses the phenomena that have emerged as part of the rise
of Bitcoin and blockchain. This includes things such as the anonymous founder,
Satoshi Nakamoto, the multiple high-profile failures of Bitcoin exchanges, as
well as clear examples of human folly, fraud and unconstrained greed.

[https://cmichel.io/book-review-attack-of-the-50-ft-
blockchai...](https://cmichel.io/book-review-attack-of-the-50-ft-blockchain/)

>Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart
Contracts by David Gerard is a book that summarizes every important event
around bitcoin, including the dozens of scams, hacked exchanges, and the false
promises of blockchain technology. Everyone that is hyped about this
technology should read this book to get his excitement levels back to normal.
It’s written really well and understandable while still being technically
correct. It’s unintentionally funny most of the time and explains things in a
dry humor that I really enjoyed.

>However, it sometimes reads too negative and is too bitcoin and smart
contract coins specific, therefore ignoring other aspects of cryptocurrencies
which often have a real use case. For example, it doesn’t talk at all about
privacy coins (Monero / ZCash), Storage Coins (STORJ / Siacoin / Filecoin),
social communities with rewards (STEEM), RIPPLE, etc. That being said, I agree
with the sentiment that for most of the projects nowadays the blockchain isn’t
even needed, and would arguably work better in a centralized way. Blockchain
has just become a new buzzword to get investors interested.

~~~
Acrobatic_Road
David Gerard presents himself differently in his book than how he acts in real
life. In the words of Brendan Eich, David is a "real piece of work".

For the record, we are taking about the guy who created the Bitcoin article on
RationalWiki back in 2011.

PROOF:
[https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Bitcoin&oldid=819...](https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Bitcoin&oldid=819359)

He's also an admin on Wikipedia and claims to be a "subject matter expert" on
cryptocurrency which he uses to get around his obvious conflict of interest.

Here's what he had to say about Ethereum:

>I believe Ethereum's codebase is based on the Bitcoin codebase (though I
don't have a cite), so it's a fork of that (as most altcoins are).
Hypothetically you could do blockchain software that wasn't, but that's not
relevant here. The actual blockchain generated from this is separate - David
Gerard (talk) 12:10, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, a real subject matter expert who can't be bothered to do two minutes of
research.

Stay away from this clown.

~~~
DonHopkins
Since you mention it, and you see fit to call people names like "clown", I'll
point out that Brendan Eich is a "real piece of work" too, you know. He's
never rationally explained what motivated him to donate his money to destroy
other people's marriages. At least "clowns" don't treat other people as less
than human, and spend their own money to destroy and prevent other people's
loving marriages, and pay for TV ads lying about and demonizing them.

------
seibelj
Ah, that time of day when a blockchain article makes HN front page and the
same critiques of a $100 billion asset being completely worthless get made.
Then after commenting, they go back to their jobs data mining children
watching videos, or selling more banner ads, or whatever...

~~~
DonHopkins
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/five-charged-
alleged-722-mi...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/five-charged-
alleged-722-million-cryptocurrency-ponzi-scheme-n1099511)

LOS ANGELES — Five men were charged Tuesday in connection with what federal
prosecutors called a lucrative cryptocurrency scheme that fleeced investors
out of $722 million in a business model that one of the defendants described
as built "on the backs of idiots," according to court documents.

~~~
seibelj
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/20/danske-
bank...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/20/danske-bank-money-
laundering-is-biggest-scandal-in-europe-european-commission)

Danske Bank money laundering 'is biggest scandal in Europe'

Lars Løkke Rasmussen said he was outraged at the scale of the money-laundering
operation at Danske’s Estonian branch. An independent investigation published
on Wednesday found that 15,000 customers were involved in suspicious
transactions.

“The fact that Denmark has been at the centre of a money laundering of this
size is frankly quite horrible,” Rasmussen told reporters at the European
Union meeting in Salzburg. The bank’s chief executive Thomas Borgen resigned
on Wednesday but Rasmussen said: “The case does not end with this.”

~~~
DonHopkins
Are you saying they should have been using Bitcoin if they wanted to launder
money?

~~~
seibelj
You link to an article about a few conmen using blockchain to fleece money as
if to critique the entire industry, so I linked to a $400 billion laundering
operation done right under the nose of EU regulators - the scale of that one
crime dwarfing the entire market cap of crypto.

Someone using a tool for malice does not mean we outlaw the tool.

~~~
DonHopkins
How did you jump to the wild conclusion that I was calling for outlawing
bitcoin? That's pretty paranoid and presumptuous of you -- I must have touched
a nerve. And your "whataboutism" example of conventional fraud certainly
doesn't justify Bitcoin fraud.

There are already laws on the books against fraud. My point is that Bitcoin
investors are idiots, and that CMU shouldn't be teaching their students to run
Ponzai schemes and break existing laws by taking advantage of idiots. I'm not
calling for outlawing idiocy. They got what they deserved.

~~~
seibelj
> I must have touched a nerve.

> My point is that Bitcoin investors are idiots, and that CMU shouldn't be
> teaching their students to run Ponzai schemes and break existing laws by
> taking advantage of idiots.

You are all over the place, can't make heads or tails of what you are saying,
clearly you are illogical and I will no longer respond.

~~~
DonHopkins
It's really quite simple to understand, you don't have to pretend to be
confused to avoid addressing the point. Here's what you did:

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

