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Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

techcrunch.com

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Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#131

Post by mkohlmyr »

ballenf wrote: post #65
almostApatriot1 wrote: post #43

> Johnson said that the company had made several venture investments in bitcoin-related businesses and that the company was looking at applications of blockchain technologies alongside several leading universities. Every crypto article makes the same vague claims about the potential of non-specific blockchain technology. I'm surprised there was no mention of replacing Visa in this one as well.

I got removed from a project because I was raining on everyone's blockchain fantasy. Later they begrudgingly admitted that blockchain wasn't going to solve the hard interoperability problem we were facing (bog standard need to pull & analyze data from multiple incompatible data stores held by multiple independent parties). I can forgive all the business guys for that thinking given articles like these, but the tech g…

Shipping is a really interesting application I had never really considered! That seems like a perfect fit, like you say.

Is provenance in general a good usecase? e.g. chain of custody for evidence / drug testing / food labelling?

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#132

Post by cm2187 »

eksemplar wrote: post #105
ballenf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got removed from a project because I was raining on everyone's blockchain fantasy. Later they begrudgingly admitted that blockchain wasn't going to solve the hard interoperability problem we were facing (bog standard need to pull & analyze data from multiple incompatible data stores held by multiple independent parties). I can forgive all the business guys for that thinking given articles like these, but the tech g…

The tech isn't going to die, it's just not going to change the world in any sexy way. Maersk is using it for something as boring as secure claims for containers to fight corruption in shipping. In government we're looking into running things like the land ownership registry and other public records on the tech. Not because it's hip, but because it'll save employee resources when we have to perform less audits, and be…

And to the horror of most crypto-currencies enthusiasts, blockchain will likely end up being used as a tool just like SQL servers and distributed clusters, by large companies and governments instead of being the instrument of challenge to these established entities.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#133

Post by cm2187 »

kobeya wrote: post #32
watertom wrote: post #31

I can't wait until large firms, or very rich people start throwing a lot of money at mining and start co-opting cryptocurrencies

You think they aren't? Mining is a multi billion dollar industry.

The term "industry" suggests they produce something, which in the case of bitcoin mining is questionable.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#134

Post by 01000001 »

almostApatriot1 wrote: post #43

> Johnson said that the company had made several venture investments in bitcoin-related businesses and that the company was looking at applications of blockchain technologies alongside several leading universities. Every crypto article makes the same vague claims about the potential of non-specific blockchain technology. I'm surprised there was no mention of replacing Visa in this one as well.

Blockchains are the future, aka merkel trees are the future, aka git is the future. Put the world in source control. Distributed, trustless, decentralised source control.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#135

Post by omegaham »

proofofstake wrote: post #48
curious_fella wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you get for correctly calling the bubble in 3 years? Well, if you knew when the bubble was bursting, then there would be no problem!

A slot machine is known to give a 200% ROI and allow a single pull each day. You play this slot machine every day for 500 days, until you notice it stops rewarding you. Then someone says: "Look I told you so, I've been telling everyone for 2000 days now: This slot machine will crash one day!". And you say: "Ok. You were right. Guess the party couldn't last forever. Thanks for the warning!". Out of habit you play for…

This isn't quite right. To stick with the casino example, a large number of Bitcoin speculators are "letting it ride." They've won a bunch of times, and they continue to bet more and more money.

Your example only works if you are regularly selling BTC as its worth increases. If you're just holding onto it, your gains are never realized.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#136

Post by user5994461 »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #118
thisisit wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is funny. While cryptocurrency gets most of the brickbats around here on HN, I think Deep Learning is also in the same boat. Executives want to apply Deep Learning to everything and anything they can get their hands on. The results most of the time are underwhelming and could be had with a much simpler set of tools. Just wondering how long before Deep Learning goes into trough of disillusionment.

On the job I have to constantly shoot down big data / data mining / intelligent nn analysis crapware showeled to my bosses, and 99% of the time the answer is “you got NO data to speak of” One day a consultant or another yesman will be able to check in and syphon precious resources with their pipe dream and I’ll watch six figures fly out of the window while my dev team struggles debugging simulated ipads with mac mini…

Take a step back and look at your work conditions. Maybe you should become the consultant in that story.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#137

Post by wslh »

ballenf wrote: post #65
almostApatriot1 wrote: post #43

> Johnson said that the company had made several venture investments in bitcoin-related businesses and that the company was looking at applications of blockchain technologies alongside several leading universities. Every crypto article makes the same vague claims about the potential of non-specific blockchain technology. I'm surprised there was no mention of replacing Visa in this one as well.

I got removed from a project because I was raining on everyone's blockchain fantasy. Later they begrudgingly admitted that blockchain wasn't going to solve the hard interoperability problem we were facing (bog standard need to pull & analyze data from multiple incompatible data stores held by multiple independent parties). I can forgive all the business guys for that thinking given articles like these, but the tech g…

A lie has short legs: if you dive into private blockchain projects you will realize they are mostly proof of concepts.

This is not to say that ideas behind consensus, security, and smart contracts are not useful but you need to start with a concrete problem instead of adapting a fixed solution.

Having said this, it is interesting to explore a pluggable way to make agreements between parties and follow defined workflows for interoperability. The main barrier with implementing this idea is not technical but political since it is difficult to create agreements about this architecture between companies (e.g. banks).

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#138

Post by jnbiche »

ballenf wrote: post #65
almostApatriot1 wrote: post #43

> Johnson said that the company had made several venture investments in bitcoin-related businesses and that the company was looking at applications of blockchain technologies alongside several leading universities. Every crypto article makes the same vague claims about the potential of non-specific blockchain technology. I'm surprised there was no mention of replacing Visa in this one as well.

I got removed from a project because I was raining on everyone's blockchain fantasy. Later they begrudgingly admitted that blockchain wasn't going to solve the hard interoperability problem we were facing (bog standard need to pull & analyze data from multiple incompatible data stores held by multiple independent parties). I can forgive all the business guys for that thinking given articles like these, but the tech g…

Well done for sticking up for reason. I first got involved in Bitcoin in early 2011, but left the whole scene in 2015 because of the dwindling number of serious programmers and innovators and the increasing number of fraudsters and "marketers".

Like you say, there are some incredibly innovative uses for the blockchain (another excellent one is claiming and tracking digital works of art like visual arts and music), but using the blockchain as a simple database replacement is ludicrous.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#139

Post by jacques_chester »

proofofstake wrote: post #48
curious_fella wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you get for correctly calling the bubble in 3 years? Well, if you knew when the bubble was bursting, then there would be no problem!

A slot machine is known to give a 200% ROI and allow a single pull each day. You play this slot machine every day for 500 days, until you notice it stops rewarding you. Then someone says: "Look I told you so, I've been telling everyone for 2000 days now: This slot machine will crash one day!". And you say: "Ok. You were right. Guess the party couldn't last forever. Thanks for the warning!". Out of habit you play for…

My investment horizon is a bit more than 530 days.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#140

Post by Snackchez »

ballenf wrote: post #65
almostApatriot1 wrote: post #43

> Johnson said that the company had made several venture investments in bitcoin-related businesses and that the company was looking at applications of blockchain technologies alongside several leading universities. Every crypto article makes the same vague claims about the potential of non-specific blockchain technology. I'm surprised there was no mention of replacing Visa in this one as well.

I got removed from a project because I was raining on everyone's blockchain fantasy. Later they begrudgingly admitted that blockchain wasn't going to solve the hard interoperability problem we were facing (bog standard need to pull & analyze data from multiple incompatible data stores held by multiple independent parties). I can forgive all the business guys for that thinking given articles like these, but the tech g…

Isn't that main goal of Chain Link?

https://link.smartcontract.com

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