[spir]

I am someone who spends a great deal of my time reading about blockchain and attempting to separate hype from fundamentals.

There is a growing body of nuanced evidence that it's not the case that "it is scams on top of scams" and "the whole space is a joke".

(This isn't the same thing as saying "the price is going to the moon".)

I'm involved with https://augur.net. In a few years time, Augur will be the backbone of a new generation of entertainment, trading, and forecasting products. These products will have lower capital requirements as they effectively outsource the financial bits to Augur. Users of these products have self-sovereign control of their assets (ie. private keys; the emerging phrase for this is "non-custodial") which is a benefit over centralized alternatives.

Most products built on Augur will constitute a form of gambling, but unlike gambling on a dice roll, this gambling is more akin to trading stocks, with randomness and strategy.

Also, Vitalik Buterin tweeted yesterday on non-financial applications of blockchains https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/107215895799977164...

[nradov]

There is no such thing as "self sovereign".