Please send more money for my blockchain research, I’ve already burned through the first few grants.
Meanwhile, quantum computing will solve all of these problems, everywhere, all at the same time.
Art Fully
1 year ago
People want anonymity and hope to get it from crypto. The government(s) will never allow this. The paper dollar is still a better product. Trillions are out there. Half of US currency circulates outside the US and can’t be tracked by the US government. That’s why 70% of the US currency is in 100 dollar bills. Governments will only allow private crypto if they can use it to de-anonymize currency. Other non-token blockchain schemes suffer a similar flaw: they would allow governments unprecedented transparency into private sector business. Such transparency would be bound to become a tool for totalitarians. The “digital dollar”, of course, has exactly that purpose.
KidHorn
1 year ago
Blockchain is a solution looking for a problem. Just because something uses new technology, doesn’t mean it’s better than the old technology it’s supposed to replace.
StukiMoi
1 year ago
The whole, and entire, purpose of “blockchain”, is distributed recording of “truth.” In order to prevent any one (or N) party(parties) from gaining monopoly on deciding what is true and not, then using it to their advantage by robbing others.
Unless a Maersk blockchain gains an army, and a set of supranational courts, able to overrule local governments wrt who owns what of physical goods in transit, the whole exercise was nothing more than trivially pointless to begin with.
The sole and only reason this nonsense was even undertaken; was that we live in a world where NO spoils go to people and organizations competent enough to create ANY value (by now emphasis NO and ANY). With all of it instead going to those who play along with the redistributionary central banks whose mechanism for redistribution is asset pumping. Hence, the project was started, because “valuations” were high for what was then the latest hype, namely “blockchain”/”crypto.” Now, that hype has dwindled, hence mindless “valuations” by the society of undifferentiated rank retards on Fed welfare collectively referred to as “investors” and “the markets” are no longer so high. Hence, the project is cancelled. That’s all. Just as “That’s all” for everything in the undifferentiated, illiterate dystopia collectively referred to as The West.
LostNOregon
1 year ago
I remember several years ago when people first started saying “blockchain”. I was working in Product Compliance where we had to chase our Conflict Minerals (Sn, Ta, W, and Au) back to the hole in the ground they came from. Everyone started saying that blockchain would give us a seamless chain of custody all the way to the miner. Good so far.
Then downstream customers and OEMs started hinting that we needed to share our complete supply chain with them, which we regarded as IP. Also, we did want customers using our conflict-free supply chain and handing it to a lower cost supplier and just saying “Here. Buy from these guys and I will put you in as our supplier. “
The problem is that you can’t be too transparent to your customers, as they will use that information to drive you out of business.
“The
problem is that you can’t be too transparent to your customers, as they
will use that information to drive you out of business.”
The same can be said of Governments.
vanderlyn
1 year ago
what is everyone’s take on NFTs ? i think they will be around a long long time. another medium for art, is all it really is, with many advantages, too.
I don’t get NFTs as ‘art’ much myself, but then again I can say that about the desire to collect anything in general. Gaming industry alone will ensure they’re here to stay. Secondary markets for in-game items for games like World of Warcraft, etc, will be huge.
Many other use cases once the legal framework is setup for it too:
My favorite NFTs are kilo bars with a mint stamp and serial number.
The serial number makes them NF.
FlyNavy1
1 year ago
Learned more about blockchain in one article than three before it. Problem is, blockchain itself is like trying to invest in the internet. There’s no “there” there.
Maximus_Minimus
1 year ago
Off the top of my head, a document system would require the following components.
3. Document signature system. Requires authority to generate and distribute public/private keys.
4. Distribution and storage system. Contractual parties should see each others documents while the competing parties shouldn’t.
5. Contract enforcement, requires each jurisdiction to implement relevant laws.
Nothing to do with blockchain so far.
Six000mileyear
1 year ago
And how many employees will IBM lay off?
Corvinus
1 year ago
I’m not sure how a project can be cancelled if there was a savings of 20% in documentation and 40% better shipping times unless there was an increase in overall maintenance and/or operating costs that got left out of the marketing materials. Blockchain will have its uses but will it change the world? Who knows? Nobody does really.
Either they couldn’t get enough companies to use it to cover the operating costs.
Or more the energy cost was higher than the savings in documentation and shipping times.
It’s not clear who was covering those energy costs. It’s possible IBM was doing it as a loss leader to attract companies to use the technology but could not covert them into paying customers (ie cover the energy costs).
It seems to me that the solution to managing international trade/transactions in an era when trust/authenticating are issues, is some sort of global database with levels of encryption and validation. Of course, this assumes that the global database can avoid sanctions levied by rogue nations.
Now, whether this is blockchain-based, or an extension of Phil Zimmerman’s PGP encryption with public and private keys (no mining required), I have no idea. However, I do know that blockchain is a buzz-word used by the techno-scenti. IMHO, buzzwords and jumping on trendy bandwagons generally do NOT make good corporate strategies.
PapaDave
1 year ago
Anything that requires worldwide collaboration is likely to fail in most cases. Whether its competitors, or nations refusing to cooperate. But there are exceptions. Occasionally, we can agree on worldwide standards.
I agree that blockchain will find many uses. But I am unwilling to invest in any of them. Too much uncertainty.
Webej
1 year ago
INTEROPERABILITY
This is the problem that has dogged all new technologies.
Nobody decided to go with the Bell system, or Microsoft Word, or TCP/IP … they did so because everybody else is using it.
What’s the point of a better telephone system if the one has millions of subscribers and yours has ten?
History proves that organic (market) solutions generally fail to come about.
Usually some trust (technology standards committee) representing the most important market parties decides on some compromise model/standards that everybody accepts because they don’t have much choice without interoperability. True of the internet, email, WiFi, ethernet, etc. Even meters and kilos.
One of the most important aspects for interoperability is separation of well-defined service layers and interfaces between them … otherwise you are locked into monolithic technology stacks controlled by monopolistic parties. For block chain to succeed, it will need to split up the services rendered. Introduction of EPD (Electronic Patient Dossiers) faced the same problems for decades with competing models that could not interoperate … you need to split up various aspects of the problem and implement (less than ideal) interfaces.
Free markets are a fetish and free market theorists have confused chaos with freedom. Chaos because there isn’t any such thing as total freedom in the temporal and human universe. That’s why you can’t walk into a theater and yell fire! What we should strive for is more than adequate demand in the hands of every individual without inflation which would result in true economic flowingness. So long as the private banks have a monopolistic paradigm on the creation and distribution of new money, namely Debt Only they will be able to
1) dominate 95-99% of the general populace and virtually every business model except themselves and
2) continue to alternately goose and strangle the economy in which they will always rise like a Phoenix even after their own folly has caused recession/depression like we saw in 2008.
Aren’t you guys tired of their monopoly powers? Or are your mind filters still in rigid control of your thinking?
“Free markets are a fetish and free market theorists have confused chaos with freedom.”
I’m no proponent of Laissez-faire, I just see the humor of the cries for deregulation at a time when deregulation gave us the sub-prime crisis, from the right back ten years ago coming back to haunt us all.
Color me Independent, too much or too little of anything is a bad thing.
Very good. Now all someone like you needs to do is raise their level of analysis from theoretics to operant concept/paradighmatic analysis. Virtually all of the supposed reform theorists on the left and the right have the area of the problem well surrounded, namely “money, debt and banks” as Steve Keen has said. This blog post and thread prove that as it is all about blockchain, i.e. money. Now all that’s needed is to discover the new operant concept and how to most efficaciously apply it to finance and the rest of the economy….and we’ll have a genuine paradigm change. I’ve done that in my book.
Precisely. The trick is to realize that benevolence is an aspect of the natural philosophical concept/experience of grace. Love is universally recognized as the superlative spiritual/psychological value. The experience of grace is nothing more and certainly nothing less than love in personal action…or viz any temporal universe system…policy. Love and its active form grace/graciousness are the pinnacle concepts of wisdom. If you don’t think wisdom (the integrative impulse and mindset) and its applied concepts apply to the economic, monetary and political systems you’re (not you personally) an idiot and/or an almost 2000 year long unconsciously acculturated westerner who does Finance’s dominating bidding by not applying Monetary Gifting (an aspect of grace) to the economy and money system.
No. Many standards have come about after spontaneous attempts to settle on a scheme failed.
Many came about through cooperation between competitors without any government intervention.
It does require a degree of coercion, but that typically comes from market power instead of government.
In other cases, like having your grid at 110V 60Hz or getting the railroad tracks to use the same gauge, government force has been necessary.
I would say it is more like creating a market (with competitors free to join in) where the market cannot grow without better conditions. Even tomato markets work in terms of conditions like common currencies, number system, weights, etc. USB and SCSI would not have grown without everybody adopting common standards/connectors (without government mandates).
“One of the most important aspects for interoperability is separation of
well-defined service layers and interfaces between them … otherwise
you are locked into monolithic technology stacks controlled by
monopolistic parties. For block chain to succeed, it will need to split
up the services rendered.”
Pretty incredible that without realizing it, you precisely articulated what is considered one of the fundamental characteristics of Ethereum and what (currently) differentiates it from basically every other public blockchain out there. Not saying that it’s anywhere close to what it needs to be or even that they’ll succeed long-term (it might be an impossible task), but you pretty much nailed the ‘ideal’ there.
problem is that you can’t be too transparent to your customers, as they
will use that information to drive you out of business.”
well-defined service layers and interfaces between them … otherwise
you are locked into monolithic technology stacks controlled by
monopolistic parties. For block chain to succeed, it will need to split
up the services rendered.”