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Comment by nsxwolf | Hacker News Reader

Is blockchain actually being used for anything that people are actually using? I've never had such an experience of dissonance about a technology that I hear about incessantly yet can't see a single application of in the wild. Apparently it is consuming all the world's electricity, making graphics cards impossibly expensive, yet... where is it? What is it doing?

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The blockchain is not what's responsible for all of the things you describe; rather, it's the dominant algorithm for psuedo-randomly distributing the ability to modify the block chain, called proof-of-work (namely Satoshi's version). There are other, just as computationally wasteful algos that try to be memory hard as opposed to cpu-hard (Cuckoo cycle PoW for example.

Lots of folks are working on different, less wasteful ways of making blockchains more resistant to attack - the most well-known of the alternatives being proof-of-stake which is essentially a betting scheme. It's a fascinating area of computing if you go beyond the hype over the BTC price.

Ok, but what are blockchains doing right now? Does my iPhone use them? Facebook? Small businesses? Tesla? My doctor? Who/what??

Lots of financial institutions and other businesses have been researching ways to replace systems with private blockchain technology [0]. This is just one of several business partnerships exploring ways to integrate the tech.

Unless you're buying/selling or paying for things with cryptocurrencies, then, no, you probably aren't encountering any blockchain tech right now.

[0]: https://entethalliance.org/members/

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