The Blockchain Is the Internet of Money | Hacker News Reader

The Blockchain Is the Internet of Money

wsj.com

37 pointspetethomas9 comments

Hello, I've started Awesome Blockchains [1]. The idea is to collect samples (and recipes) on how to build your own blockchains (from scratch) in JavaScript, Ruby, and friends. [1] https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains

Two contrasting headlines side by side on HN today.

The WSJ says Blockchain is the Internet of Money

The Economist says Bitcoin is fiat.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15315813

They are two different things. A Blockchain is the internet of money but some tokens and crypto-currencies are not backed by anything else than trust which could mean they could be seen as fiat currencies.

The reason why the Economist is wrong is that the writer doesn't understand how mining and block issuance work so he doesn't see a reward token as a proof of work. PoW is the exact opposite of fiat because you don't have to trust the miner, you can check that he's done actual work to get that coin issued to him.

To bypass paywall, no facebook account needed, drop into console or a bookmark (HN formatting weird, zerobin text there anyway):

javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.l...;

alternative:

https://zerobin.net/?9b41630b08e38f96#FAC6oUt+oqX9fwxhamtom+...

The bitcoin blockchain is a crappy database that's incredibly secure because it's backed by an amazing amount of irreversible thermodynamic energy. Anything you put into it is there forever, even quantum computing couldn't undo anything a few hours old. That's all the public needs to know.

These articles are a bit tiring, despite being an aficionado somewhat keen for a blockchain winter.

http://archive.is/5g3EU

What's a blockchain winter?

The analogy is to nuclear winter (life after a hypothetical nuclear world war) or AI winter (after the fall of the Soviet Union led to decreased military-funded spending on AI).

Bold title.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com