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The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

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Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#11

Post by coralreef »

m-i-l wrote: post #7

I used to think that the blockchain bubble was like the dotcom bubble, in that the core technology was actually genuinely transformative, so that even after the bubble burst and all the over-valued companies went bust, the technology would remain and continue change our lives. However, I must admit I'm starting to have my doubts now. It was 10 years in to the dotcom era that the dotcom bubble burst, and by that time…

A lot of the utility from blockchain doesn't come from being able to do "new" things. They come from being able to do old things better: cheaper, more securely, free from the interference of trusted parties / government.

It remains to be seen which processes the blockchain will take over. Some are obvious, ie. prediction markets, sports gambling, money remittance.

Some are more complex, and will require frameworks to work within trusted parties: ie. tokenizing physical assets or securities that exist outside the blockchain world. Identity management.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#12

Post by rpedela »

I think blockchain will end up like PageRank. Both are amazing algorithms with very narrow use cases. And maybe a few companies can generate enormous value with blockchain like Google did with PageRank, but that will be it. That's my prediction.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#13

Post by [deleted] »

fivedogit wrote: post #9

News flash: it already popped. 70‰ from top. ICOs dried up. Blockchain market cap is about $300 billion now. Should the next major tech wave be worth half a Facebook? IMO, yes, and more. Blockchain has already proven 2 major use cases (e-gold and ICOs) and several minor ones (unstoppable casinos, prediction markets). Doubters are in for a bunch of regret.

[deleted]

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#14

Post by m-i-l »

coralreef wrote: post #11
m-i-l wrote: post #7

I used to think that the blockchain bubble was like the dotcom bubble, in that the core technology was actually genuinely transformative, so that even after the bubble burst and all the over-valued companies went bust, the technology would remain and continue change our lives. However, I must admit I'm starting to have my doubts now. It was 10 years in to the dotcom era that the dotcom bubble burst, and by that time…

A lot of the utility from blockchain doesn't come from being able to do "new" things. They come from being able to do old things better: cheaper, more securely, free from the interference of trusted parties / government. It remains to be seen which processes the blockchain will take over. Some are obvious, ie. prediction markets, sports gambling, money remittance. Some are more complex, and will require frameworks to…

Maybe not government, maybe just humans in general. Decentralisation, blockchain, smart contracts, cryptocurrency, AI and IoT could really start coming into their own further into the future when we start having more autonomous agents performing those little tasks on our behalf, like a smart fridge ordering more milk and interacting with a drone to ensure payment and delivery without having to bother a human.

But I'm not getting the sense that any of the huge amounts of money being invested is going into much other than feeding the crypto ecosystem at the moment.

True story: VCs specialising in funding blockchain projects told a dev team "You guys are building a proper business, that's great but it means it won't 100x in a short period, so isn't really what we're after".

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#16

Post by paulpauper »

fivedogit wrote: post #9

News flash: it already popped. 70‰ from top. ICOs dried up. Blockchain market cap is about $300 billion now. Should the next major tech wave be worth half a Facebook? IMO, yes, and more. Blockchain has already proven 2 major use cases (e-gold and ICOs) and several minor ones (unstoppable casinos, prediction markets). Doubters are in for a bunch of regret.

yeah, the market already popped as far as ICOs are concerned. many down 75-95% from highs and have no viable products

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#17

Post by bepotts »

In all seriousness, what are the advantages Blockchain has over a public SQL database with limited reads and writes that also maintains a public transaction history? Cause when I hear people talk about the problems Blockchains solves (outside of cryptocurrency which is a whole other topic), I don't see what advantages Blockchain has over that. A public SQL database isn't the most "clean" solution, but it'll save everyone a bunch of time and money over the resource intensive blockchain verification process.

This idea that centralization is always evil, or that public actors are inherently untrustworthy and we need some mathematical algorithm to verify all interactions between them strikes me as one of those Silicon Valley idiosyncrasies that Silicon Valley haters laugh at.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#18

Post by craigc »

The biggest problem is that blockchains are inherently not scalable. That is more or less by design, but it limits the types of applications that can run on top of them.

I think a more likely outcome is that most types of payment infrastructure and settlement/transaction layers move to blockchains and not actual applications. For example, it’s not too difficult to imagine the stock market switch to tokenized stocks to buy and trade shares of companies. Or perhaps deeds to property in the real estate world could be issued on top of a blockchain.

I think the real value is removing intermediaries and allowing people to control their own finances, shares, land, etc where you can cryptographically prove that you own it. Building a decentralized Uber that is slower and more difficult to use does not make much sense to me.

I think we will see these things develop. Remember TCP/IP was developed in the 1970s so it took almost twenty years before HTTP came out, and another 5-10 years before people really started using it.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#19

Post by smsm42 »

I just have been at OSCON, and they were talking about blockchain all the time, blockchain this, blockchain that, private blockchain, enterprise blockchain, blockchain plus this thing and blockchain on top of that thing. But still I couldn't figure out or find any explanation how anything of it would be useful for the member of the public, and indeed how it can work sustainably without the hype that would drive the cost sky high and makes people invest into mining hoping to cash out one day. And all hype ends eventually...

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#20

Post by pembrook »

coralreef wrote: post #11
m-i-l wrote: post #7

I used to think that the blockchain bubble was like the dotcom bubble, in that the core technology was actually genuinely transformative, so that even after the bubble burst and all the over-valued companies went bust, the technology would remain and continue change our lives. However, I must admit I'm starting to have my doubts now. It was 10 years in to the dotcom era that the dotcom bubble burst, and by that time…

A lot of the utility from blockchain doesn't come from being able to do "new" things. They come from being able to do old things better: cheaper, more securely, free from the interference of trusted parties / government. It remains to be seen which processes the blockchain will take over. Some are obvious, ie. prediction markets, sports gambling, money remittance. Some are more complex, and will require frameworks to…

>"They come from being able to do old things better: cheaper, more securely, free from the interference of trusted parties / government."

Name one thing that blockchain has made, or is even close to making cheaper or more secure or trustless?

The largest application of the technology has been bitcoin thus far, and bitcoin is more expensive; less secure than the traditional financial system (where if you get hacked you at least have some recourse); and you still have to trust intermediaries like Coinbase to acquire the Bitcoin and Bitpay to actually buy anything with it.

And I know the canned response to that is usually "why can't X new cryptocurrency solve these problems eventually? The internet had its problems at first as well."

But you solve those problems by making bitcoin exactly like our current financial system, with intermediaries and trust and regulation. And minus the hilarious waste of time, money, and energy that is proof-of-work.

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