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Comment by dbasedweeb | Hacker News Reader

My kneejerk reaction is fury, but actually reading the article suggests another reaction should dominate, namely disinterest.

According to a spokesperson from Hunter Energy, it expects roughly 5% of the energy from the power plant will be used for blockchain related processes.

Ironically, it’s just a coal plant reopening with a touch of Blockchain hype, but really has almost nothing to do With Blockchain tech. At this point I wouldn’t be shocked to find “Blockchain enabled!” on peanut butter.

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Actually, it may not be too many years before peanut butter, breakfast cereals, and many items found in grocery stores have a "blockchain certified" logo and QR code, or something along those lines. One of the interesting non-currency applications of blockchain tech is "track and trace" for the food and beverage industries: you could scan the code (with an appropriate app, of course) and find a complete history of transport and processing steps for every ingredient in a food/bev product, all the way back to the farms.

I’ll build you this today with a “database”.

It's difficult, because a network of suppliers and processors can go very deep and involve a great number of branches: a batch (or "lot") of red peppers from a farm could be split up and shipped, via various shippers, to a variety of manufacturers for quite different purposes. Getting everyone coordinated to use a central database is... difficult. Instead big market movers (think Walmart, Kroger, et al.) can say: "look, if you want to do business with us, then you and all your suppliers and their processors and suppliers in turn, and so on, need to transact lot and batch numbers and related info into this distributed ledger thingy, which we will all be a part of running [think industry-specific Hyperledger (or similar) application, not the Bitcoin or Ethereum blockhains per se]. The data transacted has to conform to certain ISO standards. If the data's not there, all the way back to origin, we'll stop doing business with you. You have 5 years to get ready. Get started."

Why does that need to be decentralised? Why not just have a chain of signatures uploaded to a database run by a state body or private company?

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