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Comment by nikolay | Hacker News Reader

It's, in fact, getting less popular outside of speculation - it's only practical use. Most articles and news are about blockchain technology gaining adoption, not Bitcoin per se, which is obsolete already. What's getting popular is Ethereum, and Ripple which is a far more superior platform with real potential but not as lucrative for speculation.

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The "Blockchain" hype is totally being carried by the hype in cryptos, though. And it is hype - there's endless hypothetical proposals, and endless bare excuses for an ICO, and endless pilot programmes that IBM's managed to sell someone on, but there's about 0 being put into production use.

>> but there's about 0 being put into production use

Daimler for example is currently using Blockchain to manage a 100 million Euro loan [1]. They will still use their old tech (faxes and lots of beaurocracy) in parallel on this deal since is there is much at stake, obviously. But it is a nice experiment that will certainly inspire others, if successful.

[1] https://www.daimler.com/investors/refinancing/blockchain.htm...

Literally the subheading on that page:

> Joint pilot project

Hey now. It's also useful for buying drugs.

Drugs and child porn - sure, but that's still a niche. Plus, people finally realized that Bitcoin payments are quasi-anonymous, and the conspiracy theory that CIA/NSA created Bitcoin to catch crooks now makes more sense than ever.

It does use the eliptical curve encryption with nsa magic numbers iirc

[Citation please]

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