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Blockchain is a very inconvenient database, for sure, but there is a good reason Bitcoin uses it. It had to solve to double spend problem and create a trustless

Blockchain is a very inconvenient database, for sure, but there is a good reason Bitcoin uses it. It had to solve to double spend problem and create a trustless p2p digital cash, while being censorship resistant and having no central authority. Some people around a decade ago started using blockchain for everything where a SQLite db would have been better, because blockchain was the buzzword around that time, and they were charlatans who wanted funding and hype, or signal how cutting edge they are (kind of how the last two years everybody became an AI company). It doesn’t mean that Bitcoin using blockchain is stupid.

CaptainZapp 10mo ago
> and they were charlatans who wanted funding and hype, or signal how cutting edge they are Interesting that those same hucksters and shysters who spread the gospel of the blockchain immediately jumped on th AI bandwaggon when this was the shiny new thing. Or, maybe, 40 years working in IT turned me slightly cynical.
- JojoFatsani 10mo ago
  LLM has more tangible benefits for companies and consumers. If you mentioned NFTs though you’d be spot on
  - culi 10mo ago
    > According to new projections published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in December, by 2028 more than half of the electricity going to data centers will be used for AI. At that point, AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households. https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energ... We're currently all subsidizing the AI industry. When we solve the energy problem then we can talk about potential benefits of LLMs
- colinhb 10mo ago
  Skipped the metaverse, slotted between the two
- FabHK 10mo ago
  > spread the gospel of the blockchain immediately jumped on th AI bandwaggon There were also a few months of super conductors, don't forget :-)
dreamcompiler 10mo ago
It's stupid because blockchains don't scale. In most other respects they're quite clever.
- Seattle3503 10mo ago
  In theory a L2 network coukd solve the scaling problem, but every time I've looked at L2 solutions theve had terrible UX.
  - sroerick 10mo ago
    I thought it was interesting that BSV seemed to scale just fine, and you could also store entire files on it, including JSON, HTML or even music or videos. This seemed like an amazing innovation to me, made even more amazing by the fact that it was, by all accounts, the original protocol. You could do some pretty amazing stuff with it, for example store a SPA on chain and then store individual posts on chain, and have the SPA read the app. Unfortunately, the ecosystem was completely greed focused, and nobody is interested in technological advancement in the slightest.
    - aeternum 10mo ago
      >BSV seemed to scale just fine, and you could also store entire files on it, including JSON, HTML or even music or videos This doesn't pass the sniff test. Everyone must store the full blockchain in order to verify it. So to run a full node you would have to store everyone's JSON, HTML, music, videos. Full mirroring for every node in a distributed system is about as close as you can get to the definition of doesn't scale.
      - FabHK 10mo ago
        Indeed. Bitcoin's blockchain grows with a laughable 3kB/s, yet is an unwieldy 700 GB. A blockchain that allowed you store one song per second would be hundreds of TB before long. There are other architectures for that sort of thing for a reason.
pfortuny 10mo ago
It may be money, but it is definitely not cash. Cash is completely anonymous, BTC is not.
- Ekaros 10mo ago
  Cash is not completely anonymous, but hard enough and not enough parties track it. Bills are serialized and you could take photos of coins and likely identify them based on scratch patterns. Still, whole thing is saved by not enough people actually tracking it to that level. And on other side, BTC tracks every single transaction ever. Which is also detriment, that is we keep everything stored forever in lot of places... Which kind seems massive waste.
  - pfortuny 10mo ago
    Point taken about anonymity. However, its design (that of cash) is theoretically anonymous, it is reality which gets in the way. BTC, on the other hand, is "just" a huge ledger of transactions with giver and receiver perfectly "identified" (in a unique way, albeit just pseudonymous) and preserved forever. Also, as you point out, BTC is a massive waste of resources and storage space.
    - copirate 10mo ago
      > giver and receiver perfectly "identified" (in a unique way, albeit just pseudonymous) Not perfectly. A lot of heuristics are needed to link a unique owner to multiple transactions. With bitcoin, it's recommended to use a new address for every transaction so, for example, in a basic transaction, it's not so easy to identify which output is the recipient and which is the change. And there's Monero that tries to hide these links a lot more.
  - throw101010 10mo ago
    Which is why higher layers like the Lightning Network, Rootstock, Liquid offer to not store everything on chain and offer speed/features Bitcoin natively can't while resting on the higher security model of their base layer.

CaptainZapp 10mo ago

> and they were charlatans who wanted funding and hype, or signal how cutting edge they are Interesting that those same hucksters and shysters who spread the gospel of the blockchain immediately jumped on th AI bandwaggon when this was the shiny new thing. Or, maybe, 40 years working in IT turned me slightly cynical.

JojoFatsani 10mo ago
LLM has more tangible benefits for companies and consumers. If you mentioned NFTs though you’d be spot on
- culi 10mo ago
  > According to new projections published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in December, by 2028 more than half of the electricity going to data centers will be used for AI. At that point, AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households. https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energ... We're currently all subsidizing the AI industry. When we solve the energy problem then we can talk about potential benefits of LLMs
colinhb 10mo ago
Skipped the metaverse, slotted between the two
FabHK 10mo ago
> spread the gospel of the blockchain immediately jumped on th AI bandwaggon There were also a few months of super conductors, don't forget :-)

dreamcompiler 10mo ago

It's stupid because blockchains don't scale. In most other respects they're quite clever.

Seattle3503 10mo ago
In theory a L2 network coukd solve the scaling problem, but every time I've looked at L2 solutions theve had terrible UX.
- sroerick 10mo ago
  I thought it was interesting that BSV seemed to scale just fine, and you could also store entire files on it, including JSON, HTML or even music or videos. This seemed like an amazing innovation to me, made even more amazing by the fact that it was, by all accounts, the original protocol. You could do some pretty amazing stuff with it, for example store a SPA on chain and then store individual posts on chain, and have the SPA read the app. Unfortunately, the ecosystem was completely greed focused, and nobody is interested in technological advancement in the slightest.
  - aeternum 10mo ago
    >BSV seemed to scale just fine, and you could also store entire files on it, including JSON, HTML or even music or videos This doesn't pass the sniff test. Everyone must store the full blockchain in order to verify it. So to run a full node you would have to store everyone's JSON, HTML, music, videos. Full mirroring for every node in a distributed system is about as close as you can get to the definition of doesn't scale.
    - FabHK 10mo ago
      Indeed. Bitcoin's blockchain grows with a laughable 3kB/s, yet is an unwieldy 700 GB. A blockchain that allowed you store one song per second would be hundreds of TB before long. There are other architectures for that sort of thing for a reason.

pfortuny 10mo ago

It may be money, but it is definitely not cash. Cash is completely anonymous, BTC is not.

Ekaros 10mo ago
Cash is not completely anonymous, but hard enough and not enough parties track it. Bills are serialized and you could take photos of coins and likely identify them based on scratch patterns. Still, whole thing is saved by not enough people actually tracking it to that level. And on other side, BTC tracks every single transaction ever. Which is also detriment, that is we keep everything stored forever in lot of places... Which kind seems massive waste.
- pfortuny 10mo ago
  Point taken about anonymity. However, its design (that of cash) is theoretically anonymous, it is reality which gets in the way. BTC, on the other hand, is "just" a huge ledger of transactions with giver and receiver perfectly "identified" (in a unique way, albeit just pseudonymous) and preserved forever. Also, as you point out, BTC is a massive waste of resources and storage space.
  - copirate 10mo ago
    > giver and receiver perfectly "identified" (in a unique way, albeit just pseudonymous) Not perfectly. A lot of heuristics are needed to link a unique owner to multiple transactions. With bitcoin, it's recommended to use a new address for every transaction so, for example, in a basic transaction, it's not so easy to identify which output is the recipient and which is the change. And there's Monero that tries to hide these links a lot more.
- throw101010 10mo ago
  Which is why higher layers like the Lightning Network, Rootstock, Liquid offer to not store everything on chain and offer speed/features Bitcoin natively can't while resting on the higher security model of their base layer.