| Here we go again.. First issue with the post: "Blockchain is also the driving force behind cryptocurrencies, allowing Bitcoin owners to purchase drugs on the internet without the hassle of showing their identity." Let's see, there's this thing called _cash_ and you don't need an id to buy drugs with it as well. Weapons can be purchased easily with it. Hits can be put out on people with it. Basically, anything bad in the world anyone would want to do that requires a payment, can be done with cash. The biggest 'offender' in this - the US dollar. Next: "Put another way, blockchain is a database—one that is never backed up, grows forever, and takes minutes or hours to update a record. Sounds amazing!" Bullshit - in regard to backing up. Of course it doesn't need to be 'backed up'. It exists in its entirety across the globe, replicated on many thousands of machines, in many different countries. Hmmm, sounds like 'big replication' problem solved. (Marc Andreessen likes it anyway: https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/)
The fact is, it is amazing because it's been running like this for over a decade now with NO HACKS, no data breaches, no hiding of anything based on this scandal or the next. No one company owns it. No one government owns it. And it's worth billions of dollars (meh). It does sound amazing to me. "Blockchain should make your system more trustworthy, but it does the opposite. Blockchain pushes the burden of trust onto individuals adding transactions to the blockchain. This is how all distributed systems work. The burden of trust goes from a central entity to all participants. And this is the inherent problem with blockchain." Snooze, bullshit... It is a FACT nowadays that the centralization of the internet has been bad for it. Even the inventor of it has come out against it. Putting trust in a third party is never a good idea in my mind. Strong encryption exists and it empowers the individual to USE IT. When I make a bitcoin transaction, I sign that transaction as valid. Me. I don't need a bank or a government or any other third party to make this happen. This is lost on many people, but having the freedom to transact securely and encrypt YOUR data is about as important of a concept as there can be nowadays. There are many government and corporate entities that do not want you to have this capability (I'm looking at you 'Senator' Feinstein..). You may have to trust Apple to provide 'secure' environments to run your/others apps, but they are not working in your interests and will change course as soon as it suits their profits. Anyway, this is a stupid article, to be blunt. It's from someone who is rallying against the marketing of blockchain and instead of taking on those messages/issues/marketing directly, he falls into the same trap as the rest of the naysayers. If you talk to a _real_ blockchain/crypto developer/advocate, they will probably tell you this: "if you want to make a immutable, open, distributed transactional database that isn't blindingly fast, then using a blockchain that has cryptographically signed transactions might be a good idea.". Ethereum has taken this a step further with smart contracts, which, have more or less worked. But NO ONE I know or talk to on a day to day is saying use a blockchain for your app database needs. And anyone who does, does not know what they are talking about and should probably be fired from any development position they hold. What is happening right now in this space is the smart people have their heads down and are cranking on the next generation of tech that everyone will be using in 5-10 years. The smart investors see this as well and are all positioning themselves as we speak. I personally stopped working on _legacy_ tech last year and am 100% exclusive on crypto and blockchain products. I have already seen this movie before twice: the first episode was called the web, the second was called mobile. So, hate if you will but it won't change anything. The early adopter wave is at the end and we'll see more mass adoption in the coming years. Good luck! TLDR; stupid article, known inaccuracies, known typical trolling content. Move along.. |