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The idea of a public ledger, where any public record can be kept without the need of a central authority certainly has value. The fact that current tech solutio

The idea of a public ledger, where any public record can be kept without the need of a central authority certainly has value. The fact that current tech solutions are not efficient, and thus expensive, should not hide that value. Instead of going through offshoots trying to find the killer app, I'd much prefer to see cryptocurrency tech evolve in order to bring costs down. Take the base use case of keeping "bank account" records and run with it until it works (as of now, it does not). Out of the viable -- for my definition of viable -- cryptocurrencies out there, the only one I see moving in the right direction is Ethereum. They are taking their sweet time, though. If a killer use case is needed, think micropayments: The ability to pay 0.1¢ to listen to a song, paying directly to the artist.

UncleMeat 5y ago
Micropayments have been available in various forms well before BTC was a thing and they never took off. Micropayments also necessitate L2 solutions more than almost any other feature using blockchains since fees are nontrivial at that level even on rarely used chains.
simonw 5y ago
> The idea of a public ledger, where any public record can be kept without the need of a central authority certainly has value. Based on what we've learned over the past few years, I'm not sure I believe that any more. Without a central authority, there's no way to be confident that anything is "true". Partly because it's impossible to correct mistakes. So you get NFTs of stolen art, because there's no authority to verify it. You get ideas to "put real estate deeds on the blockchain" with no answer to the question "what if someone loses their private key?" The only information that can reliably be handheld by such a blockchain is information that entirely exists within that blockchain - so account balances, but effectively nothing else.
- malermeister 5y ago
  This! The lack of a central authority to fix things is an anti-feature sold as a feature to libertarian-minded folks. Even account balances are a bad idea to do on the block chain. Ever had to dispute a credit card charge when you dealt with a sketchy vendor? Well too bad, all sales are final now in this new immutable world.

UncleMeat 5y ago

Micropayments have been available in various forms well before BTC was a thing and they never took off. Micropayments also necessitate L2 solutions more than almost any other feature using blockchains since fees are nontrivial at that level even on rarely used chains.

simonw 5y ago

> The idea of a public ledger, where any public record can be kept without the need of a central authority certainly has value. Based on what we've learned over the past few years, I'm not sure I believe that any more. Without a central authority, there's no way to be confident that anything is "true". Partly because it's impossible to correct mistakes. So you get NFTs of stolen art, because there's no authority to verify it. You get ideas to "put real estate deeds on the blockchain" with no answer to the question "what if someone loses their private key?" The only information that can reliably be handheld by such a blockchain is information that entirely exists within that blockchain - so account balances, but effectively nothing else.

malermeister 5y ago
This! The lack of a central authority to fix things is an anti-feature sold as a feature to libertarian-minded folks. Even account balances are a bad idea to do on the block chain. Ever had to dispute a credit card charge when you dealt with a sketchy vendor? Well too bad, all sales are final now in this new immutable world.