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> Blockchain is interesting but it’s been around for decades (it’s older than Bitcoin) It's dismissive comments like this that do a lot of the degrading of the

by Canada 4y ago

> Blockchain is interesting but it’s been around for decades (it’s older than Bitcoin) It's dismissive comments like this that do a lot of the degrading of the quality of any cryptocurrency conversation here. There wasn't anything like Bitcoin before Bitcoin. Love it, hate it, or indifferent to it, the consensus introduced by Satoshi was completely novel and has enabled a system behavior that was not possible before. I think what is ultimately behind the poor quality of discussion here is that too many participants are passionate about the social implications one way or the other, and so we always get a big flame war over those aspects where nothing new is said.

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
You can't disagree with the parent that blockchain is older than Bitcoin as it predates it by a few decades. However, you are right that what Satoshi did was novel: he used distributed blockchain for a digital currency. But again, outside of tech circles, nobody cared for almost a decade. I know as I personally mined some Bitcoins and then I lost the wallet with a broken hardrive but I didn't care. Only later, when "investors" entered the game, BTC became a mainstream phenomenon.
- Canada 4y ago
  Did you mean that I can or can't disagree that blockchains are older than Bitcoin? Would you agree that various things that use cryptography or merkle trees including git, certificate transparency, including hashes in logs to prevent tampering, or someone posting a hash in the New York Times a long time ago, are NOT "blockchain" in the sense that Satoshi used it in his whitepaper? Am I mistaken in my belief that the first time the word "blockchain" was used was in the Bitcoin whitepaper itself? As you did, I saw Bitcoin very early, and wrote it off because I didn't think it would go anywhere. I was wrong. The fact that it's still here more than 10 years later and it's worth so much is proof enough that Bitcoin and/or subsequent systems that are blockchains as Satoshi defined them actually do "matter" and that I was wrong to think it didn't back then.
  - orwin 4y ago
    if you believe that the world will become more and more digitalized (AR and VR, stuff like the metaverse), bitcoin-like blockchains absolutely matters. If you believe Saudi arabia is lying for decades about its oil stock and the EROI of gas and oil will continue to climb as fast in the next decade, stiffling production, bitcoin doesn't matter. The thing is, in the first case, i'll be employable at amazing rates, so cryptocoins as a monetary value, i don't really care. I like the idea of rock climbing and sailing with AR tools, but let's be honest, my pastimes do not involve digital assets (i do play some 4x games, but rarely more than two hours a week), only my work does, and i thus will only care for bitcoins if my work demands it. If you play games like MTG and other TCGs, maybe this can be of interest? In the second case, it really doesn't matter in the end, but i feel like being able to write C for a microcontroller will be more usefull than being able to write Solidity code. And tbh, i wrote a smart contract, it's just not that interesting. My dad's chicken coop door automation however, was usefull and interesting.

by Canada 4y ago

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

You can't disagree with the parent that blockchain is older than Bitcoin as it predates it by a few decades. However, you are right that what Satoshi did was novel: he used distributed blockchain for a digital currency. But again, outside of tech circles, nobody cared for almost a decade. I know as I personally mined some Bitcoins and then I lost the wallet with a broken hardrive but I didn't care. Only later, when "investors" entered the game, BTC became a mainstream phenomenon.

Canada 4y ago
Did you mean that I can or can't disagree that blockchains are older than Bitcoin? Would you agree that various things that use cryptography or merkle trees including git, certificate transparency, including hashes in logs to prevent tampering, or someone posting a hash in the New York Times a long time ago, are NOT "blockchain" in the sense that Satoshi used it in his whitepaper? Am I mistaken in my belief that the first time the word "blockchain" was used was in the Bitcoin whitepaper itself? As you did, I saw Bitcoin very early, and wrote it off because I didn't think it would go anywhere. I was wrong. The fact that it's still here more than 10 years later and it's worth so much is proof enough that Bitcoin and/or subsequent systems that are blockchains as Satoshi defined them actually do "matter" and that I was wrong to think it didn't back then.
- orwin 4y ago
  if you believe that the world will become more and more digitalized (AR and VR, stuff like the metaverse), bitcoin-like blockchains absolutely matters. If you believe Saudi arabia is lying for decades about its oil stock and the EROI of gas and oil will continue to climb as fast in the next decade, stiffling production, bitcoin doesn't matter. The thing is, in the first case, i'll be employable at amazing rates, so cryptocoins as a monetary value, i don't really care. I like the idea of rock climbing and sailing with AR tools, but let's be honest, my pastimes do not involve digital assets (i do play some 4x games, but rarely more than two hours a week), only my work does, and i thus will only care for bitcoins if my work demands it. If you play games like MTG and other TCGs, maybe this can be of interest? In the second case, it really doesn't matter in the end, but i feel like being able to write C for a microcontroller will be more usefull than being able to write Solidity code. And tbh, i wrote a smart contract, it's just not that interesting. My dad's chicken coop door automation however, was usefull and interesting.