[chuckcode]

I'm a little surprised that the author is missing the critical innovation of crypto which is digital trust and observability. Sure it is easy to make an argument that one cryptocurrency or another is a bubble, but don't underestimate the importance of being able to distribute work and verify trust at scale.

Just look at how git has transformed software development by mapping code to a hash. Or how DNS + SSL has transformed how people trust and transact online. Is the scalable future one where people and organizations trust their data to the cloud or other 3rd parties with no way to verify integrity?

Do people think that the future of human agreements is signatures on little pieces of paper managed by courts and lawyers? Personally I think it will be digital. Given it is digital, do you think there will be some "centralized database" run by government or a commercial entity that can be trusted as single point of failure? Personally I sure hope that there is some way to distribute and verify data integrity even if it isn't full blown proof of work. I'd sure prefer something more like git where I can see if two branches are the same even from different sources.

[anon9001]

You're exactly right.

Reading this article and the other HN comments, it makes me think our community is aging and becoming stuck in old ways of thinking.

It's surprising and disappointing to see it happen to this group, but I guess it's inevitable.

[AlotOfReading]

That sounds like regular old cryptography, which I don't think anyone would argue isn't important. It's a very different discussion than "crypto" a.k.a cryptocurrencies.

[chuckcode]

Author is making an argument against any blockchain or distributed ledger. To quote from article. "Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime."

I'd like to see people look past the noise of cryptocurrencies to see how important digital trust and new applications of cryptography will be as we try to scale the ability of humans to work together effectively at scale.

[vesinisa]

So, can you name one single successful application of blockchain in the real world? Apart from crime.

I believe this is exactly the point of the author - there's lots of handwavy bubblebabble about this technology, but we're now well into the second decade of blockchain/distributed ledgers, and yet to see one single non-criminal real world application.

[chuckcode]

I'd argue that git is a distributed blockchain that has been pretty impactful, it just doesn't use proof of work for validation.

If it needs to be a company Ripple uses blockchain to help companies move currency safely around the globe. (https://ripple.com/)

[anon9001]

It's hard to believe $2.6T worth of crypto is all for criminal applications. Maybe you've overlooked something.

[vesinisa]

From just before the dot-com bubble burst to when it had fully deflated, the tech stocks had lost some $5T of stock market valuation - in 2002 dollars. So no, it's completely feasible that there is $2.6T of hot air speculative investment in cryptos. In fact, considering how divorced from practical and technical reality all of the proposed crypto schemes so far have been, that sounds like a low estimate.

There is some value in providing shadow banking to the global criminal underworld, but I don't think it will be the next technological revolution.

[exdsq]

Which is dumb because he works on a digital coin on a distributed ledger

[yawniek]

Thats all true but still there is the hard to deny fact that a federated trust based system is more efficient. See tls in web. With all the flaws it works remarkably well.