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Comment by russnes | Hacker News Reader

The blockchain is the solution to a specific problem Bitcoin has, so when people and businesses were saying "we like blockchain but not Bitcoin", it just didn't make any sense.

The problem is how to be able to synchronize an ever-growing database across an unlimited number of peers, and the answer is "through chunks we call blocks".

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Blocks are not needed to sync a growing transation database, as exemplified with Mimblewimble blockchains, whose sync just downloads the UTXO set and list of all transaction kernels.

Correct. Blockchains are for validation not data storage

This, blockchain is crypto and crypto is blockchain. It is a clever way to bypass a central authority and trust the crowd.

No, thank you, I'd rather put my trust in elected officials who are at least answerable to the people than to an anonymous crowd.

You can store things that aren’t money on a blockchain.

If you think a distributed mutually-distrustful ledger is useful but shouldn’t be used for money, the statement “we like blockchain but not Bitcoin” makes sense.

I’m not a fan of crypto currencies and markets, but is there not a use case for a distributed ledger? It is my understanding that that’s all a blockchain really is.

The thing is you can't have a decentralized ledger without a native currency. Without a native currency, you lose the mechanism that secures the ledger (mining).

All those international companies already using internal blockchains for all kinds of stuff tend to disagree.

There are.

There are however extremely few use cases for an immutable distributed ledger, which is sadly the other property blockchains have.

There are simply too many cases when there are legal requirements to be able to delete data. DMCA, GDPR, Right-to-be-forgotten, anti-terror-laws, anti-libel laws, and so on.

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