[mightybyte]

Passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc are old outdated technology that can't go away fast enough. They're unfixably insecure...identifying yourself to someone by giving your secret identifying information to them immediately allows them to impersonate you! We've had the technology to fix this problem for close to 50 years now: public-key cryptography. We can't get to a password-less world fast enough IMO.

I know a lot of HN doesn't have much use for blockchain, but if there's one thing that blockchain has done for the world it's been to substantially spur the use and development of public-key auth systems, especially on the UX front. This is because it had no choice. If you try to use an inherently broken password auth system for completely decentralized digital currency, it will immediately descend into unusable chaos because of the vulnerability. Traditional finance (credit cards), government identification systems (social security), etc have so much existing infrastructure that innovating in this area is hugely costly and slow, but it's absolutely the direction we need to go.

[yakubin]

I’d think SSH (indirectly: git) and TLS would be more widespread applications of public key cryptography.

[krageon]

TLS, yes definitely. SSH/git, no probably not - most people do not use these things.

[yakubin]

Still more than blockchain.

[LopovJack]

What you are talking about? I reset user's forgotten passwords daily. People can't remember simplest of passwords and you can easily ask them to give you their passwords if you are persuasive enough. Human brain is weakest link not passwords, credit card numbers or social security numbers. They are just fine and will be for a long time.