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I would take any article like this with a grain of salt. There is not a lot of useful or technical information here, and I believe it is more designed as click
by craigc 9y ago
I would take any article like this with a grain of salt. There is not a lot of useful or technical information here, and I believe it is more designed as click bait and FUD to create shock value and hurt the public sentiment about Blockchain technology and investing in crypto currencies.
That said, on the flip side, a lot of people have been considering Blockchain as some kind of magic solution to all of the world’s problems, and that is also very far from reality. If it takes an article in Reuters for people to realize this than so be it.
I have believed for a while that Blockchain technology in the context that many big companies refer to it is not very useful. Usually these are the same people who claim that Bitcoin is useless and Blockchain technology is where the real value is. I think they are either mistaken or misinformed.
In my opinion, anyone who plans to build a centrally controlled Blockchain is making a mistake. Even if the data is signed/hashed and distributed, it only takes one bad actor inside the organization who has access to the nodes to alter the Blockchain by performing a 51% attack (changing the transaction data on more than half of the nodes). Therefore the entire idea of a Blockchain being immutable is thrown out the window. You would be much better off using an open source database like MySQL or Postgres or Mongo. Blockchains are expensive to run and operate and are extremely slow.
However, the idea that Blockchains are a solution in search of a problem that the article suggests is also a bit misleading. I think it’s more likely that these companies are trying to find solutions for things that aren’t problems in the first place which isn’t the fault of Blockchain technology itself. I feel pretty strongly that blockchains have already solved a few problems.
- They solve the double spending problem (the idea that the same tokens can be spent more than once)
- They allow people to store value without depending on any third party (such as a bank)
- They remove all the intermediaries required for sending payments/data from one person to another.
- They make it cheaper and faster to send any amount of money to anyone in the world
To me, those are all transformative properties of blockchains, and anyone who overlooks them is somewhat missing the point. That said, in order to check off all these bullet points, you need to have a peer to peer, decentralized network where peers are rewarded with crypto currencies for securing the network, not just a few servers running inside of a company as a replacement for a centralized database.
Will there be good Blockchain applications outside of crypto currencies? I’m not sure, but to me, there is nothing wrong with that. If, in the future, banks and cash become obsolete and everyone stores their money on their own secure, digital wallets, then I would say that Blockchain technology changed the world for the better.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago> I would take any article like this with a grain of salt. There is not a lot of useful or technical information here, and I believe it is more designed as click bait and FUD to create shock value and hurt the public sentiment about Blockchain technology and investing in crypto currencies. There's a wave of this sentiment lately— which is funny timing. Goldman Sachs apparently will have an operational cryptocurrency trading desk by the end of June.[0] The TSX is slated to have a cryptocurrency brokerage desk with backing of the Bank of Montreal over the coming months sometime as well.[1] This came out days after BMO blocked all cryptocurrency purchases with consumer credit and debit cards.[2] The more cynical side of me wants to guess that they're trying to establish a gatekeeping initiative. Knock everybody about, then when they want back in they have to come through you. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/goldman-is-said-to-be-building-a-cryptocurrency-trading-desk https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/goldman-i... [1] https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/tmxs-shorcan-announces-cryptocurrency-initiatives-677670313.html https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/tmxs-shorcan-announces... [2] http://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/bmo-stops-allowing-credit-and-debit-cards-for-cryptocurrency-purchases http://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/bmo-stops...
- craigc 9y agoThat’s a pretty interesting perspective. I have definitely been thinking for a while that they are trying to drive the general public out so that they can accumulate more for cheaper, but I never considered the idea that they want you to use THEIR tools. It actually makes a lot of sense cause the SEC has also been going pretty hard lately to try to shut down trading of tokens that had ICOs and to make life difficult for current exchanges. I have always believed that Wall Street does not like the fact that the regular public got first stab at crypto currencies, and they didn’t. This could be their way to try to rectify that.