My Opinion on Blockchain

I feel like the author here really misses what makes this movement in technology interesting, and that is evident in the title. Blockchain is not the innovation, distributed ledgers are. Blockchain is just one component in one formula that made it work. When you take DLT as the focus, you can examine how disruptive the technology CAN be on traditional ledger systems that require enormous amounts of human energy to maintain. And those who maintain these systems tend to take advantage of those systems. There's so much to be gained by automating away many of the traditional roles banks play.

One handy thing about Bitcoin and systems like it is that, by creating digital money systems, the industry is funding itself which will hopefully lead to the rapid evolution of technologies within the space. There are hard problems to solve, but enormous incentives to solve those problems.

It also permits you to permanently lose that ownership, irrevocably, if you lose your keys.

Then why waste electricity in the equivalent of Denmark on math puzzles just to write 1MB of data every 10 minutes?

> while day-dreaming about selling it for a huge profit (in FIAT currency)

This isn't really true. The dream is that crypto becomes the reserve currency itself, and spendable after hard work on scaling solutions. There is no hypocrisy.

The Morpheus meme is one of the oldest and strongest that Bitcoin has. [0]

> Every advocate promotes holding, which is not what a currency is for

Holding is just a new meme for an old concept: Save your money. Saving your money is something your parents teach you when you're a kid. It doesn't mean dollars aren't a currency.

[0] https://i.redd.it/3525lt9kvir01.jpg

The problem with the argument is it always ends up circular to some extent. I always see something like the below - where crypto enthusiasts always try to argue bitcoin is something different than the current argument being levied against it...

Crypto Enthusiast: "Bitcoin is a currency"

Crypto Sceptic: "Well it's not a very good currency because of X, Y & Z reasons, and nobody is spending it"

Crypto Enthusiast: "Well it's not really a currency, you need to treat it as a precious metal"

Crypto Sceptic: "But precious metals have intrinsic value - ultimately you can make something from them"

Crypto Enthusiast: "Well it's more like you can make sure your money grows rather than being shrunk through inflation - look how it's always growing!"

Crypto Sceptic: "But isn't the growth just driven by pure speculation? As in price increases just come from new people entering crypto at the bottom, and pushing it up to people who bought it earlier, who have an incentive to promote it? A bit like a ponzi scheme? I mean nobody is spending it so if it's not growing what's the point?"

Crypto Enthusiast: "Well if it stops growing that's fine because it's really a currency"