Comment by beager | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beager | Hacker News Reader

I would say, beyond technical understanding of blockchain as a technology, is the ability to discern what it is that founders/principals of the company and its customers believe your product and its capabilities to be. One of the issues with strongly-hyped technologies such as blockchain is that it will attract people who just want to leverage the hype, rather than build something novel that truly requires blockchain and necessarily benefits from it.

You should have the skill to always be asking:

1. Could this business be built without blockchain as a technology? (suitability of the technology for the use case)

2. Could this business succeed without blockchain as a feature? (hype filter)

Then beyond that, you need tremendous CS fundamentals, as well as pretty deep understanding of cryptography, distributed computing, networking, databases, application security, network security, information security.

You should also ask why you want to work at a blockchain startup.

> Could this business be built without blockchain as a technology?

And the answer is yes if and only if the business is lawful.

In other words, you never need the blockchain, unless you can't use the power of the law to enforce your contracts. Every. Single. Other. supposed use-case of the blockchain could be done by using a regular database and real-world contracts. Yes, even money (cf PayPal, Western Union, etc...).

But if you're doing something illegal, then you can't have contracts and the threat of a lawsuit to enforce them. This where the blockchain and Bitcoin in particular becomes useful.

>In other words, you never need the blockchain, unless you can't use the power of the law to enforce your contracts. Every. Single. Other. supposed use-case of the blockchain could be done by using a regular database and real-world contracts. Yes, even money (cf PayPal, Western Union, etc...).

Sure you don't "need" the blockchain to accomplish legacy X (LX), but what if blockchain X (BX) is 90% cheaper than LX (anything that avoids going to court will lead to massive cost savings)? A lot of the "known" use cases for blockchain tech involve squeezing out inefficiencies from the status quo. As with any new technology there could be additional applications unknown at this time unlocked as well.

If you don't trust the banks and the government (and their monetary policies) that doesn't mean that you are doing something illegal.

Of coure, it could turn into something illegal at some later point in time (like owning gold did).

Also the banks love blockchain technology because they don't like having to trust each other.

I don't normally advocate for this position, but to be fair to the discussion, the legality of the business may orthogonal to whether it's a good business idea (cf. Uber, Airbnb). But most importantly, it is incumbent upon the person who desires to work for a "blockchain startup" to decide if they want to inherit the burden of working for an "illegal" business.

There's plenty of use cases where you need to store data permanently and in the open, as well as use cases where you need data to be massively redundant.

To say that blockchains are only useful for unlawful activities is completely ridiculous and shows your negligible insight on the topic.

I remember the first blockchain startup that approached me. They spent 30 minutes explaining why Bitcoin was amazing and would destroy the banking industry and didn't explain what their startup was building at all.

That was an easy pass.

True story: I lived in Tokyo for a while and was once solicited for an interview at MtGox.

I ultimately turned it down because I didn't think this magical internet points fad was going to work out. But I regret it now. Yes, of course the business tanked sleazily, but had I allowed myself to educate myself and buy in (in both meanings of the phrase) to the BTC craze back when it had a two-digit price point… I could be a kajillionaire.

Then the floor drops out and you're back to zilch. Easy come, easy go.

Or you sell some at some point before then and diversify the investment.

>1. Could this business be built without blockchain as a technology?

For the vast majority of use cases, the answer to that question is 'yes'. I'd say recognizing this and avoiding the places using blockchain just because it's trendy should be a priority.

There is also a significant cases of:

1. The false disintermediation; when really they want to put themselves as the intermediary

2. This is so much better than what exists, we just need everyone to adopt it at once, in order to get the network effect that makes adopting it in the first place worthwhile.

3. We just need to solve this one problem to unlock the potential (insert HARD economic problem, that world has been failing to solve for last 30 years).

4. Just being bunch of nonsense, but who cares, with so much blind speculation we might come our rich as long as we scarper before the bubble bursts.

5. We just need these 3 miracles for success

6. Our solution is basically just the same as what exists, however we are really excited because we will implement it with blockchain!

Sounds like I hate the tech, I don't, just hate the bullshiters.

>Sounds like I hate the tech, I don't, just hate the bullshiters

This is my exact feeling in regards to blockchain. Bitcoin is fucking stupid, but blockchain does have uses - unfortunately there are a lot of bullshitters out there.

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