5 ms·

Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

17 points by pwaai 9y ago

tromp 9y ago
> If you brought Bitcoin's transaction volume up to Visa's it would be using as much electricity as the rest of the world put together. Nope; that's not how it works. Bitcoin's energy use scales not with the block size but with the value of the block reward. If bitcoin prices rise, more hash power will be applied to compete for it. And when the reward halves, many mining outfits become unprofitable and will be turned off.
- _up 9y ago
  Bitcoins transaction volume is capped, because of the block size limit. So rising the transaction volume isn't even possible. At least not without Miners aggreeing to a fork. This is also why the prices are so high. Miners have an incentive to not change block size because they earn much more money if their product (transaction spots in the block) is scarce.
  - chrisco255 9y ago
    It still stands that the transactions themselves aren't what are costing energy. I do think the miners incentive to keep fees high is a perverse side effect of the system. In this respect it's healthy that hard forks and altcoins are present to put competitive pressure on BTC core to evolve. Lightning network, if implemented, should do much to improve the situation.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Worse, the transaction rate decreases as the data size of each transaction increases, and the data size increases as more transactions are done.
arisAlexis 9y ago
among the gazillion uses timestamping is one of them and pretty important
sincerely 9y ago
On mobile but the original essay (https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...) has definitely appeared on HN before
- bcbrown 9y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571
nimchimpsky 9y ago
The ASX is implementing a distributed ledger via Blythe Masters company, here ya go http://www.digitalasset.com/about http://www.digitalasset.com/about People probably said there no use for the internet. The head of the patent office said circa ~1900 that everything that could be invented had already been invented.

17 points by pwaai 9y ago

> If you brought Bitcoin's transaction volume up to Visa's it would be using as much electricity as the rest of the world put together. Nope; that's not how it works. Bitcoin's energy use scales not with the block size but with the value of the block reward. If bitcoin prices rise, more hash power will be applied to compete for it. And when the reward halves, many mining outfits become unprofitable and will be turned off.

_up 9y ago
Bitcoins transaction volume is capped, because of the block size limit. So rising the transaction volume isn't even possible. At least not without Miners aggreeing to a fork. This is also why the prices are so high. Miners have an incentive to not change block size because they earn much more money if their product (transaction spots in the block) is scarce.
- chrisco255 9y ago
  It still stands that the transactions themselves aren't what are costing energy. I do think the miners incentive to keep fees high is a perverse side effect of the system. In this respect it's healthy that hard forks and altcoins are present to put competitive pressure on BTC core to evolve. Lightning network, if implemented, should do much to improve the situation.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Worse, the transaction rate decreases as the data size of each transaction increases, and the data size increases as more transactions are done.

arisAlexis 9y ago

among the gazillion uses timestamping is one of them and pretty important

sincerely 9y ago

On mobile but the original essay (https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...) has definitely appeared on HN before

bcbrown 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571

nimchimpsky 9y ago

The ASX is implementing a distributed ledger via Blythe Masters company, here ya go http://www.digitalasset.com/about http://www.digitalasset.com/about People probably said there no use for the internet. The head of the patent office said circa ~1900 that everything that could be invented had already been invented.