Ask HN: My friend is a founder of a blockchain startup. I'm skeptical. What now?

Hey HN! I would like to ask you guys for some advice. Up until recently, I was vaguely aware of one of my friends being involved in some side business. Just yesterday, I found out that the business - a startup - was going to use blockchains for whatever reason. Not only that, he is the founder of said startup! His team has received some investment and has conducted a blockchain workshop or two, and they seem to have no signs of stopping.

Now, I know that there are probably blockchain and cryptocurrency advocates among the HN crowd. That being said, I am skeptical about him running a startup that focuses solely on blockchains. The problems he wants to address (e.g. fraud prevention in charity money transactions) could be easily solved using conventional databases with basic security measures. While I laud my friend for embarking on this venture, I can't help but feel as if this will lead nowhere. His team is basing their tech stack off an open source blockchain developed for a Chinese cryptocurrency, though they are not in charge of it directly - they have an IT team for that.

Both of us are still university students. I have no intention of discouraging him, but at the same time, I would like to nudge him in the right direction. Feel free to ask any questions, but please note that I won't bring up any names unless absolutely necessary. I would really like to hear your take on this.

Thanks!

Not really helpful. Youth, and the lack of worldly experience it brings, provides an excess of exuberance for ventures that more mature individuals may lack.

There are viable uses of blockchain, this does not appear to be one of them though. Naivety does not a scammer make.

This isn't uncommon. There's hundreds or thousands of companies that combine [blockchain x thing], in some vague hope of getting people in the [thing] industry will give them money. There's never a technical reason for this to happen, other than someone thought it was an attractive sounding idea. Generally speaking there's very few things which could be conceivably solved by a block chain, it's not a solution which can be pasted over any interesting sounding problem, and manages to create a multitude of problems when it is.

Almost every persona in the space is the cause for disillusionment with the general public and tech knowledgeable.

He's still at university so the experience will be useful (provided he doesn't quit his uni work to do it). The investors are cretins. Get him to buy you beer :)