[cbozeman]

I also struggle to understand how the users of HN don't see, what I think is to any thinking person, the clear advantages of values of blockchain systems.

Immutable ledgers with permanently recorded and inalterable activity make many issues with not only fiat currency desirable, but the applications into other areas are, quite honestly, limited only by the imagination of those who develop the technology further.

[tibbar]

But in practice, what new applications does this actually unlock? When do you need to cut out the middleman to this extent? For serious transactions you typically want a reputable middleman who is licensed and insured and accountable to the justice system. Blockchain sounds good, except that now you lose all of those legal and financial guarantees and have to track everything yourself. And everything you do is probably now public, too.

I don’t think this is a failure of imagination as much as a sober awareness of the many problems with blockchain. I will say that some alt coins have much better privacy properties so hey, there could be more to all this in a few years.

[ehnto]

> but the applications into other areas are, quite honestly, limited only by the imagination of those who develop the technology further.

Could you offer some examples? I keep seeing this as some kind of new frontier of functionality and yet not a single answer to anyone asking for useful applications built on blockchains that aren't currency.

[cslarson]

Not just currency but pretty much all financial services. I have blockchain based assets and have used an Ethereum based service to borrow against them to help buy a house. Tokens are an almost unimaginably large and general concept and will be applied to many things (real work assets, stocks, loyalty programs, etc.) and provide much more flexibility for how they are used, distributed and exchanged. DAOs are organizational structures that are built, generally, off of token based membership. This is also a huge landscape for social coordination.

A lot of this is just new, though. So explaining like this can only go so far and ultimately it must be experienced, like the original web in the 90s.

[rasguanabana]

I don’t clearly see how it’s ground-breaking. Non-repudiation could be achieved long before blockchain, because we have cryptography and can sign stuff.

[cslarson]

Yes you can get pretty far just signing stuff but without general availability of those attestations you are quite limited.

That's a reasonable way to describe programmable blockchain - availability for these attestations.