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Been there (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 15 points 1 day ago (16 children)

I remember when in my undergrad almost my entire class spent their entire second year learning about blockchain and attending events related to it, and I was proud of myself for playing videogames all day instead. Nobody even talks about blockchain anymore. It's a waste of compute, and most things built on top of it are a grift. There must be some useful cases, but none I can think of. Maybe someone with more experience in Industry can.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 day ago (5 children)

    This might be controversial but hear me out:

    The idea of an international independent currency that can be made use of anonymously and therefore not controlled by anyone is a great idea.

    Most smaller coins are just scams, reimplementing the same protocols that earlier schemes did and eventually adopting a clear pump & dump characteristic.

    However, I personally believe that bigger coins like etherium that don't fold as quickly and stick around are genuinely a good idea.

    Moreover, there's use cases where transactions are tracked for different systems, for example tracking an interconnected energy grid and usage of households.

    And then you also have to consider that block-chains themselves can just be used to keep a fulsome record of something, with the main goal of decentralizing control over that record. I'm sure there will be quite a few use cases for it that make more sense and it's quite a shame the stigma of crypto got attached to it.

    If you wanna learn more about how block chains are actually researched, you have to dive into academic publications, but then you will find out scientists have a very different vision for this technology which is way more useful. And for the sake of actual science, I hope they don't get buried under the stigma of crypto, because oftentimes these are just very smart people with lots of passion for something that they genuinely see value in.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    First of all, it's not guaranteed that it'll say "not controlled by anyone". For example the arms race of something like bitcoin mining leads to mining becoming unprofitable to anyone not building massive mining farms. The efficiency of mining leads to bigger control over the proof of work so there's a natural centralization of control happening with proof of work. And proof of stake isn't saving anyone either because that just opens the door to a different kind of centralization of control. Give it another 50 years and currencies like etherium will also be centralized. With all of the negatives and none of the benefits of centralization.

    And that's the other point, I don't think an internationally independent currency is that great of an idea. At least I don't think it's better than a currency with a central authority. For example central authorities manage the inflation (or in case of crypto currencies the deflation) of the currency to keep is stable and usable. Central authority also keeps oversight of illegal activities, the lack of that oversight is why crypto is popular with the black market. You also get certain consumer-protections which you're unlikely to get with crypto because there's no authority to enforce them, for example if your account gets hacked or stolen you're fucked while banks would freeze your account and reverse transactions. And of course there's taxation, which I can't imagine how that would even happen with crypto.

    I'm not saying blockchain itself is a useless technology, but I have don't believe it's usable as a currency. I also have some serious reservations in its use elsewhere because I have a hard time imagining where it would be better than a traditional database solution.

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  • [–] 4 points 23 hours ago* (3 children)

    Yes, a centralized currency can have consumer protections. What about the flip side, protection from the central bank? A central bank can restore your balance under fraud, they can also fraudulently steal your balance. Central banks also get to dictate who/what you get to spend your money on. Which is why blockchain is popular with those who oppose fascists. The government doesn’t like Wikileaks, well, they get to block payments.

    Countries manage currencies for their own ends, not for the benefit on its citizens. Plus, how much violence is the central bank willing to inflict to fulfill its ends? Your whole post ignores the long history of truly awful behavior from governments in order to keep the power of money under their control.

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  • [–] 3 points 22 hours ago* (2 children)

    What about the flip side, protection from the central bank? A central bank can restore your balance under fraud, they can also fraudulently steal your balance.

    I'll make a very simple argument here, don't elect corrupt officials who use institutions meant to work for you against you. You may not like that argument and that's fine because I'm not here to argue that argument. Instead we're going to discuss what is you argument when the centralized cabal of your blockchain currency steals your balance? Outside of forking the chain and hoping it gets accepted you've got nothing. You don't get to choose who takes over and you have no way of holding them accountable.

    Before you claim this is impossible go look up Steem. That chain got hard forked into Steem and Hive and of the two Steem, which experienced a hostile takeover, is doing better than Hive, the community fork. People who opposed Steem got cut from the chain. Now, if crypto was a real currency for the sake of stability one of the two forks would have to be chosen (otherwise you end up with fork after fork), who is to say your money won't just get wiped because you ended up on the wrong side of the fork? Who is going to give you that money back? The same way your money gets wiped whatever transaction you want to do can also get wiped if whoever controls the chain decides so.

    And I'll reiterate. My point wasn't that FIAT currencies are the best thing ever, my point was that they're better than the blockchain alternative because you end up with all the bad of the FIAT currency with none of the good.

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  • [–] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 child)

    It is easy to claim don’t elect corrupt officials except governments all around the world are corrupt. Government corruption is the common outcome, not a rare occurrence.

    If a blockchain gets forked people who held coins before the fork now have coins in both forks. Your story involves a fundamental misunderstanding.

    Yeah, no.

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  • [–] 1 point 16 hours ago

    Excellent reading comprehension on your part.

    It is easy to claim don’t elect corrupt officials except governments all around the world are corrupt. Government corruption is the common outcome, not a rare occurrence.

    Now what did I say about that? Oh right:

    You may not like that argument and that’s fine because I’m not here to argue that argument. Instead we’re going to discuss what is you argument when the centralized cabal of your blockchain currency steals your balance?

    What else did you have?

    If a blockchain gets forked people who held coins before the fork now have coins in both forks. Your story involves a fundamental misunderstanding.

    Hmm, seems like I also addressed that.

    People who opposed Steem got cut from the chain.

    I wonder what I meant by that? Could it be that it means the people who opposed Steem had their entire balance wiped from the Steem side of the fork? Well, with your impeccable logic that clearly can't be the case, clearly people doubled their coins and in doing so doubled their money. I wonder why all the scam coins haven't figured out your infinite money glitch, just fork it to double the coins and double the worth?

    Or you know, alternatively, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (5 children)

    Yeah, Blockchain is really the prime example of a solution looking for a problem. Everything you can do with Blockchain can be easier done using less ressources with other techniques. It sounds fine on paper, and as you said there might be some esoteric use for it someday in the future.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (4 children)

    If the blockchain already exists and used the resources yes it was horrible. But what really is the argument to say it's bad to use the one already generated. You don't have to use any more resources to make it. Essentially copy paste of a prime number that was already found right? Maybe I don't understand how they work well enough

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  • [–] -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

    The problem with blockchain is that everything you can do with it can also be done with a good database. In the case of crypto, it also means that you have to download THE ENTIRE THING SINCE IT STARTED if you want to run a full node capable of validating transactions. The Bitcoin Blockchain was - as of September 2025 - 674GB in size, adding a gigabyte every few days, meaning it is probably around 750GB today, stored on every single full node - what a waste of space. Databases are a lot more flexible in that regard.

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  • [–] -2 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

    And a centralized database can be modified at will by whoever controls it. Just because you place no value on a distributed ledger that is censorship and fraud resistant doesn’t mean that configuration has no value. Centralized currencies are secured with violence. Blockchains are secured with math.

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  • [–] 3 points 22 hours ago (1 child)

    You can also apply cryptographic functions to make sure database entries are not modified - this is then an issue of transparency and not centralization.

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  • [–] -4 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

    Proud to be ignorant and play video games rather than learn. Perhaps if you actually got an education you’d know better.

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  • [–] 2 points 18 hours ago* (1 child)

    You missed the context that they were proud to avoid learning about a technology that ended up being a waste of time. I imagine they would have preferred going to class and learning about something real, it sounds like they just skipped the blockchain stuff. They're flexing about being more prescient than most of his peers (and professors!), and they're not wrong. 90% of strategy is knowing what not to do.

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