[sph]

I agree that the blockchain is an outstanding achievement in software engineering.

It's a distributed, cryptographically secure, decentralised append-only log. It's a data structure that would have a lot of potential in real-world applications, e.g. auditing public institutions, defending against falsifiability, etc. it provides an impartial proof-of-time, which is huge.

Bitcoin might live or die, but blockchains and digital currencies based on it are here to stay.