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Comment by Judgmentality | Hacker News Reader

I think many people don't even consider bitcoin successful. I still see it as a solution looking for a problem, personally. It's not actually anonymous, it doesn't scale for transactions, it's still not used or even understood by the vast majority of people.

I've yet to hear of the killer app for blockchain technology.

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If bitcoin is a long term store of value, it doesn't need to scale.

For the same reasons a person wouldn't expect a 401k to work like a debit card.

(((((:

That's not how bitcoin was marketed in the early days. And I don't trust it even remotely as a long term store of value.

The marketing pivoted to "long term value" and all the BTC-hypers started acting like it was a huge success thanks to moving the goalposts.

Well, dynamite and machinegun were meant to end all wars. How things turn ut is not up to the original creator.

I mean the price is still incredibly volatile compared to say gold, silver, Government bonds etc.

I don't get how it can be a good long term store of value with that level of volatility?

Bitcoin as "long term store of value" is just a framing invented years ago to pivot BTC into a more theoretically unassailable position imo. _Because_ it failed to truly transformatively deliver on the more immediate things people hoped it would (anonymity, currency, etc)

I want to add that it's hilarious to me that "long term store of value"'s value proposition is as fiat as the USD :)

Honestly maybe more so

Distributed identity / self-sovereign identity is a good use-case that blockchains are perfect for imho. But that solution is quite complex hindering its adoption.

"But that solution is quite complex hindering its adoption."

Generally inventions solve problems by making them simpler, for this to be a valuable invention it would need to be simpler and less hackable to use than log-in with google/FB/github. I can still recover my google account if I forget my password, and don't have a reset setup. What aspect of distributed identity/ self-sovereing identity do customers care about? how does blockchain simplify this for them?

Unfortunately one of the requirements of a good identity system is that it should keep personal data secret from parties who do not need it. This means that blockchains on their own aren't a good fit, since by design they share all information with all parties.

Having said that, BrightID uses a blockchain and seems like an idea worth exploring.

https://www.brightid.org/whitepaper

One interesting use case I’ve heard about (for blockchain) is supply chain verification / provenance. Does anyone with more knowledge or experience have insights on this one?

It doesn't help here any more than existing solutions. How exactly is a distributed collection of blockchain miners meant to validate (e.g.) a sensor that is being used to show that a shipment of chilled meat was always at 3'c or cooler? Answer: they can't. The only part of a blockchain that helps verification/provenance is its append-only nature, and that feature is widely available with much simpler mechanisms.

Yes. If you trust someone not to manipulate the sensor (or whatever you use to go from physical world to digital), then you might as well trust them not to manipulate the Excel sheet collecting all the data.

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