I remember being at a blockchain for government event in 2018 and one of the speakers said "anywhere you use a database now, you could use blockchain". I think

I remember being at a blockchain for government event in 2018 and one of the speakers said "anywhere you use a database now, you could use blockchain". I think this was a great example of how people missed the point of how blockchain added value to bitcoin, got excited about the wrong things, and caused the boom/bust we saw: bitcoin replaced anti-counterfeit measures with the blockchain itself, and centralized transaction processing with distributed miners. It didnt replace a database, it used a decentralized database for a new purpose. Other new ways of using blockchain have clearly not emerged, but I feel like the rollercoaster of popularity came from people completely misunderstanding how it added value to cryptocurrency and looking for the wrong kind of applications. Distributed tasks (bitcoin is uber for transaction verification) are where it's at, not a database.