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Comment by rantwasp | Hacker News Reader

“People fear what they don't understand and hate what they can't conquer.”

Bitcoin itself may end up being worthless or being a fortune. The block-chain technology is the revolutionary part that is here to stay and will only continue to grow in the future.

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Don't invest in what you don't understand is the #1 rule of investing. If you jump off the deep end without knowing what's at the bottom, you are at a high risk of losing what you put in. New technology always comes with this risk. That's kind of why most don't touch crypto - its far too technically complex for them to even comprehend the risks.

If you've followed crypto and blockchain for long enough though, you realize that the risks are high and the value is low. It's a shitty technology, and a shitty investment. The cryptoverse is filled with volatility, no real-world "thing" to tie value back to, and scams upon scams.

Blockchain is an innefficient, energy-guzzling excuse for a database. Oh but you forgot its decentralized So what? Most applications don't need decentralization - it makes them inefficient and slow. Why do you think the general trend of the world has been centralization into hubs, cities, and services? Here's a nice refuter of the blockchain hype:

http://doyouneedablockchain.com/

And of course, the classic:

https://twitter.com/vgcerf/status/1019987651301081089

it’s okay to not see the potential.

blockchain is more than a distributed database. in a distributed database someone is still in charge and can make decisions unilaterally about how the data is altered.

in blockchain you have a bunch of entities that can transact with each other with zero trust and without the need of a central authority. that is the truly innovative aspect of the blockchain and what sets it apart.

No, no, no! That's the whole reason behind why it sucks... you can't trust it! You have to verify every record on that chain by yourself, and if you make a mistake in a transaction or other operation there is no court or process that can give you restitution. Its also very inefficient (massively slow) compared to a distributed database, while functionally doing the same thing. There are barely any use cases where you don't want central authority and you want distributed storage... centralized databases are always going to be more efficient and convenient. If you want to use a inefficient, crappy excuse for a database be my guest.

not sure if you’re a troll, but that’s the reason why you trust it. you can actually verify every transaction that happened on the chain.

the way this is done is not unlike any system that uses event sourcing (including the distributed databases that you worship).

here is a killer use case for blockchain: supply chain management with a lot of entities and lack of trust. smart contracts are a thing.

also, there are blockchain implementation that are really performant (don’t get stuck on bitcoin)

> supply chain management with a lot of entities and lack of trust.

This tells me you know zero about supply chain management.

hmm. if you ever had to deal with a supply chain and understand all the moving parts you cannot make the argument above with a straight face.

Oh, and would you mind explaining to us your experience with supply chain management?

I'm not going to dox myself, but if you want to learn more about it, here are a few pointers:

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/operations/articles/bl...

https://hbr.org/2020/05/building-a-transparent-supply-chain

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/blockchain-suppl...

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