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While perhaps not worded particularly well, I think there's a point to what Tim is saying. In many conferences targeted at non-technical people and investors,

While perhaps not worded particularly well, I think there's a point to what Tim is saying. In many conferences targeted at non-technical people and investors, block-chain is often touted as some sort of magic wand. Financial transactions, record of provenance, and other problems were solved before block chain with centralized databases, and then digital signatures, etc. When these problems come up in a more traditional domain, centralized approach often works just fine and there's no need to make it more complex.

sneak 9y ago
> In many conferences targeted at non-technical people, block-chain is often touted as some sort of magic wand that will solve problems without discussing how. cf. "the web", "ecommerce", "p2p", "social media", et c. it's a tool, and a damn useful one, that enables some things no tools did before. that's it, and that's all of it.
- acdha 9y ago
  All of those had immediate real world uses. What activity which normal people do has seen a blockchain offer significant improvements over previous practice?
  - davidgerard 9y ago
    Buying illegal drugs. That's literally it. I'm writing a book on this. (Nearly finished! Probably!) I have read thousands of pages of the worst PDF whitepapers you can imagine. I have looked all over to see if there's a "there" there. As far as I can tell: 1. The only thing blockchain does in practice that anything else can't is decentralised cryptocurrencies. 2. The only thing decentralised cryptocurrencies do in practice that ActualMoney doesn't is markets for illicit goods and services. note the "in practice" - it's had eight years of "possibilities", by now I think we can look at what it's done. also, 3. the decentralisation isn't permanent - Proof of Work benefits from economies of scale, meaning mining recentralises, and this is exactly what happened from the FPGA era on. The usual business proposition for Blockchain(tm) is supply chain management. Blockchain doesn't solve any of the actual problems (bad data - it turns out that crooks don't put careful documentation of violations into the data, and bribe local inspectors and adjudicators) but does offer a monopoly position to the company defining the blockchain in question.
  - sneak 9y ago
    Accounting. Log integrity. Property records and registries. Chains of custody. Title transfers. Auditing. Securities settlement.
- acdha 9y ago
  All of those had immediate real world uses. What activity which normal people do has seen a blockchain offer significant improvements over previous practice?

sneak 9y ago

> In many conferences targeted at non-technical people, block-chain is often touted as some sort of magic wand that will solve problems without discussing how. cf. "the web", "ecommerce", "p2p", "social media", et c. it's a tool, and a damn useful one, that enables some things no tools did before. that's it, and that's all of it.

acdha 9y ago
All of those had immediate real world uses. What activity which normal people do has seen a blockchain offer significant improvements over previous practice?
- davidgerard 9y ago
  Buying illegal drugs. That's literally it. I'm writing a book on this. (Nearly finished! Probably!) I have read thousands of pages of the worst PDF whitepapers you can imagine. I have looked all over to see if there's a "there" there. As far as I can tell: 1. The only thing blockchain does in practice that anything else can't is decentralised cryptocurrencies. 2. The only thing decentralised cryptocurrencies do in practice that ActualMoney doesn't is markets for illicit goods and services. note the "in practice" - it's had eight years of "possibilities", by now I think we can look at what it's done. also, 3. the decentralisation isn't permanent - Proof of Work benefits from economies of scale, meaning mining recentralises, and this is exactly what happened from the FPGA era on. The usual business proposition for Blockchain(tm) is supply chain management. Blockchain doesn't solve any of the actual problems (bad data - it turns out that crooks don't put careful documentation of violations into the data, and bribe local inspectors and adjudicators) but does offer a monopoly position to the company defining the blockchain in question.
- sneak 9y ago
  Accounting. Log integrity. Property records and registries. Chains of custody. Title transfers. Auditing. Securities settlement.
acdha 9y ago
All of those had immediate real world uses. What activity which normal people do has seen a blockchain offer significant improvements over previous practice?