[stevenleeg]

A notably omitted section: “use cases.”

Seriously, the whole blockchain industry reeks of technologists who don’t understand business needs and business people who don’t understand the technology. Having worked in the industry myself for long enough to hit this realization I’d highly recommmend others to steer clear and not try to base their career on this stuff.

Conflictingy, I do think it’s worth most programmers’ time to at least read up on how blockchains work, as it is certainly an interesting and worthwhile academic experience in applied cryptography.

[jraedisch]

What about the Bitcoin ecosystem? Same recommendation?

[olalonde]

I wouldn't say so. With all its warts, Bitcoin is an actual legitimate use case for "blockchain technology" (also worked and had a startup in the space). I'd personally recommend staying away from anything blockchain apart from the few cryptocurrencies that legitimately attempt to compete with Bitcoin (e.g. Ethereum).

[vertex-four]

Bitcoin at least technically solves a problem. It's also an ecological disaster, suffers from miner centralisation, and it's a hotbed for scams. You probably don't want to assume it'll continue to exist in future.

[tuesdayrain]

I'm curious how anyone believes Bitcoin could be forcibly brought out of existence when governments fail to prevent drugs or other type of crimes. Prohibition just doesn't work. A strictly better competitor might be the only thing that could kill Bitcoin and even then I think that would only reduce its market cap rather than outright kill it.

[vertex-four]

I don't think it'll be forcibly brought out of existence, I think people will simply stop using it as the hype dies down and people realise that it doesn't match up very favourably to alternatives for pretty much any purpose other than engaging in crimes. That is - there's no reason to do your Christmas shopping with Bitcoin, and lots of reasons not to.

The vast majority of activity in the Bitcoin market is pure speculation - very few people are actually buying things with it. Even the majority of people engaging in crimes are doing so with traditional methods of transferring money.