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Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

reuters.com

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Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#51

Post by toomuchtodo »

this_user wrote: post #22

What does "blockchain" even mean in this generalised context? When we are talking about crypto currencies, it is a distributed database with a consensus mechanism that is extremely costly to run. But this is not something you would need or want in most other situations, because there is always some degree of trust with your counterparties (and legal recourse if necessary). If we strip away the consensus mechanism, al…

Blockchain is simply a sexy term for a distributed ledger, which has its place in a limited set of use cases.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#53

Post by bushin »

scrooched_moose wrote: post #11
johnchristopher wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example from the top of your head ?

GPU acceleration in scientific computing. My god in 2011 it was the only thing anyone talked about. Every COTS solver package cobbled together support in less than a year and were promising order of magnitude speedups. In 2018 it's still hanging around but realizing a 20% speedup on certain classes of problems. Maybe.

Amdahl's law strikes again.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#54

Post by boffinism »

onion-soup wrote: post #9
rambossa wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My major questions have always been: where is the business value in blockchain applications? what can a blockchain app do that can't be done by non-blockchain (beyond decentralization - bc I don't think this produces much business value)?

Sending money without fees and delay? Have you ever tried a normal bank transfer? How long did it take? Have you ever tried, say, nano? It literally takes seconds and 0 fees. Here is some value.

In the UK we can do that without the blockchain, in many situations, thanks to the real-time payment system [0]. So for me, a normal bank transfer is free and easy, whereas every time I've tried to do something involving blockchain it's meant delays, fees, and messing around on shady-looking websites.

I take the point that in other places the norm is a lot worse and blockchain systems are producing better results, but it won't be long before banks get their act together and improve their services to match modern expectations (for fear of becoming obsolete), and then the blockchain competitive advantage is gone.

[0] http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#55

Post by lifeisstillgood »

nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

The idea of a neutral "third party"(!) operating a globally available transaction ledger, with standardised APIs and agreed meanings to contracts and data structures is appealing to everyone in every sector.

the sizzle of blockchain is enticing, it solves huge problems that are darn well intractable without "disruption".

for example in finance the global clearing system is an embarrassing hodge podge that only benefits the fraudulent and the incompetent - and replacing that completely over night has enormous attractions for pretty much every actor. but ... it is really a silver bullet - if it was so easy to replace global clearing, to get everyone agreeing on one representation of a trade or an instrument or a hundred other things i honestly never understood, if it was that easy it would have happened.

this sort of sector wide cohesion comes with either one dominant player or many years of government level negotiations

The web only blew past everyone in most areas because there were no global communications between parties at all in the areas the web now dominates (cf social media vs international shipping documentation)

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#56

Post by SirLJ »

arisAlexis wrote: post #38
debt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“governmemts are thinking of putting assets and laws on Blockchain” Two things: this statement is so vague it borders on meaningless. What assets? Who will put it in there? The president? Why would a government do that? Is it free to do or is there budget? Etc. Secondly, even if we could surmount the vagueness that plagues not just this idea but all blockchain ideas, the Herculean effort required to move governments…

assets like everything from real estate records to money to corporate stocks to car ownership to birth certificates. What you call vagueness I call short sightedness and failing to see the big picture. It has been done before with all major breakthroughs since the applications are not immediately obvious to everyone.

What government? I hope mine do not do that, this information should remine private...

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#58

Post by aje403 »

akerro wrote: post #12
nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

I have 1 Bitcoin therefore blockchain will succeed.

The very worst part of this is these are elected officials too

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#59

Post by vinniejames »

malvosenior wrote: post #28
nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

> yielding almost no fruit Bitcoin and Ethereum are "almost no fruit"? Combined they're sitting at ~$165 billion dollars in created value.

Market cap in no way equates to "created value"

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#60

Post by ryandrake »

debt wrote: post #29
arisAlexis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

governmemts are thinking of putting assets and laws on Blockchain, stock exchanges are waiting for scalability to start putting everything on the blockchain. Immutable government records already exist. Where do you base your argument?

“governmemts are thinking of putting assets and laws on Blockchain” Two things: this statement is so vague it borders on meaningless. What assets? Who will put it in there? The president? Why would a government do that? Is it free to do or is there budget? Etc. Secondly, even if we could surmount the vagueness that plagues not just this idea but all blockchain ideas, the Herculean effort required to move governments…

The vagueness of Blockchain reminds me of the same “Cloud” vagueness. CEOs and CIOs read these articles about how great “Cloud” is and how everything is moving to “Cloud” and they turn around and declare things like “I want Cloud” and “We need to work on Cloud!” and “Invest in Cloud”. Just parroting what they read in HBR or what some IBM consultant told them. Then a whole bunch of money is spent on “Cloud” with often not much to show for it at the end, besides a bunch of opportunistic Cloud providers getting rich.

Rinse and repeat for Big Data, ML, AI, Bockchain, and whatever the next fad will be.

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