https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100
Let’s start 2018 by spreading joy and happiness.
People need to read about blockchain and its uses. See below a terrible example of someone who has decided to discuss the blockchain, without understanding distributed ledgers.
- Payments and banking
Saying people don’t need to transact in btc because they can do it in usd (and for global transfers there’s already institutions like visa, paypal or western union) is a huge “fuck you” to people who suffer from the terrible fate of living abroad that need to send money to their families. I’m sure those people don’t mind paying around 20% in fees. It’s fine. Makes sense for sending money globally, right?
Also, besides btc there are other cyptocurrencies with considerably lower transaction times, quite similar to visa’s. But hey, don’t take my word for it. After all, im just another angry prick on facebook: https://www.quora.com/Which-blockchain-based-cryptocurrency…
- Freedom to transact without government supervision
I’m so happy this guy lives in a nice and stable democracy, where he can predict and expect what’s coming tomorrow. A big fucking round of applause for this guy, right here. What a great, sensible, caring, lovable person.
Do you live somewhere where assets are easily frozen by governments? Or have you suffered from currency hyper-inflation? Maybe you moved abroad and found the gazillion problems banks create for when you need to open a new bank account?
Too bad. I’m sorry the current state of things don’t work out for you. Maybe in your next life, pal. Who knows?!
Another problem seems to be: “what happens if people get hacked”. oh geez. I never, once in my life, heard of a bank not being able to give its customers their money back. Like, ever.
- Micropayments and bank-to-bank transfer
btc blocks take 10 minutes to get confirmed (on average, not 8 minutes). Transactions are instantaneous. It takes 10 minutes to approve in btc’s blockchain. Do you know how long it usually takes visa to confirm (settle) a transaction? Up to 30 days. Congratz on ruining your own argument. Need some sauce? https://lifehacker.com/this-is-why-your-credit-card-transac…
If you pay in btc, it takes a couple of seconds to make a payment. Just google it.
more sauce: https://www.youtube.com/watch…
- “Smart” contracts
I’m simply going to share 10 companies that have found many different use cases for smart-contracts (or similar technology) operating on a distributed ledger (or DAG, in case of iota). Please enjoy: (quick disclaimer: i have invested in some of these tokens)
- https://www.wacoin.io/
- https://santiment.net/
- https://vergecurrency.com/
- https://neo.org/
- https://www.bitclave.com/pt/
- https://modum.io/
- https://iota.org/
- https://eos.io/
- https://www.upfiring.com/
- https://basicattentiontoken.org/
Are there more?
https://coinmarketcap.com/
- Distributed storage, computing, and messaging
Well, because there are companies that already allow people to share hardrive space to store other people’s files, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t add it to a distributed ledger. It’s like saying: because there are hotels you don’t need airbnb. Because there are taxis you don’t need uber. Because there is uber you don’t need cabify. etc, etc, etc. Terrific argument. Saying most of these cryptos do not have 2 factor authentication clearly comes from someone who has never, ever, used any form of cryptocurrency. I have 2 factor authentication on most of my wallets. What about that?
I gotta actually quote the guy on this one. Ahem. “Price trade-offs are entirely implausible — the bitcoin blockchain has consumed almost a billion dollars worth of electricity”
Wow. A billion dollars! Let me quickly destroy this absolute bullshit argument, from most of btc haters.
a) the number of people using bitcoin has 0 correlation with the amount of energy needed to validate transactions. The amount of energy needed to validate transactions is set by the cryptographic algorithm. It takes 10 minutes, in average, to solve the mathematical problem called hash.
b) Most cryptocurrencies are going into other consensus mechanisms. That’s why validation is needed. Proof-of-stake (like ethereum’s casper), DAG (like iota’s tangle),etc, etc, etc
Why is the blockchain validation energy consumption, via proof-of-work, so high? Because the number of new miners entering the market and the number of machines being used to mine, is increasing.
https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-cons…
Replication in distributed ledgers is being improved. Via sharding for example. Here, amuse yourself: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-FAQ
Ok. Got tired. There are more points he discusses, i don’t have the energy to explain.
Conclusion: Cryptocurrency wasn’t created to facilitate payments as this guy puts it. Cryptocurrency is an economic incentive. No more, no less.