It's interesting how blockchain became so incredibly hyped though isn't it? Something to do with money (bitcoin) and some new technology perhaps? I wanted to f

It's interesting how blockchain became so incredibly hyped though isn't it? Something to do with money (bitcoin) and some new technology perhaps? I wanted to find out what was going on, so I literally applied for a bunch of blockchain jobs just so I can talk to these people on the phone to see what they're all about. I end up asking really basic questions like: "So why are you using a blockchain instead of a normal database?" or "What problem are you actually trying to solve?" It is actually embarrassing; I feel like I'm being abrasive on the phone by asking such truly basic questions, yet they always seem so startled by these kinds of questions and assume I'm somehow incredibly intelligent and perceptive to ask these basic questions. Generally what happens is as follows. Some business MBA type people watch a TED talk or read in the FT that blockchain is the next big thing, so they go out and look to hire "blockchain evangelists". Evangelists is the word they often use, and that sounds about right because it is just like a religion sometimes. Then I only end up talking to the business people about these projects, because that's all the people they have. I won't name them, but I've had conversations with huge firms or startups that both equally talk utter nonsense. One large firm told me that they're working on "permissionless and permissioned blockchains for everything from auditing to wine". While for a small startup I once asked: "why are you using a blockchain for this instead of just having a database?". The answer I got was "well... our customers aren't really technical people...". I told them perhaps they should look at something like Google's certificate transparency rather than blockchains, and they echoed back to me "Oh we are definitely looking at certificate transfer!" (Transfer, not transparency.) It's astonishing. To summarize, huge firms tend to have people who just want to get paid so they always say yes to whatever the clueless MBA person asks, while startups tend to mostly know it's bullshit but go along anyway because there is a lot of $$$ involved, particularly with ICOs.