Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
bloomberg.com
Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
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Re: Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
#2"the only thing previously stopping the standardization of reconciliation processes was the unwillingness of financial institutions to collaborate. Financial institutions spend $65-80 billion on back office reconciliation every year. The employees working in back offices probably offered lots of excellent reasons why their roles couldn’t simply be standardized away."
Re: Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
#3I'm all for deflating blockchain hype, but I found the overall tone of the article pretty disagreeable, and more importantly, wholly missing the point.
"In other words, the only thing previously stopping the standardization of reconciliation processes was the unwillingness of financial institutions to collaborate."
No, actually, the one thing the blockchain provides, which was literally unsolved before pre-Nakamoto, was a working implementation of "trustless" consensus. Turns out fraud prevention is kind of a big deal shuffling around billions or trillions among numerous third parties, but I'm sure that's just because they're "security-conscious egoists."
Re: Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
#4tldr; this whole breakthru in technology called the blockchain isn't a new idea at all. Banks have known about "shared" ledgers since 1800s. But because everyone is talking about Blockchain now in 2016, banks are finally ready to embrace some standards.
Re: Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
#5Being a general ledger, the Blockchain also can be used as a more professional way of proving you made a prediction at a certain time. Sure, as an individual, I can tweet where I think the P/E of Amazon will be in a year and refer back to it to prove my point, but is that the best way for a financial institution? Having an entry in the blockchain has a more business oriented feel to it.
Re: Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
#6Can somebody explain me how we deal with the increasing size of a blockchain? I get moore's law etc., but other than that? I mean, it's trillions of transactions we are talking about. Federated servers? We break the chain in some way?
Re: Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
#7Can somebody explain me how we deal with the increasing size of a blockchain? I get moore's law etc., but other than that? I mean, it's trillions of transactions we are talking about. Federated servers? We break the chain in some way?
Most of the chain can be dropped/collapsed. All you need to keep are the final hashes. The white paper discusses this.
Re: Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
#8Being a general ledger, the Blockchain also can be used as a more professional way of proving you made a prediction at a certain time. Sure, as an individual, I can tweet where I think the P/E of Amazon will be in a year and refer back to it to prove my point, but is that the best way for a financial institution? Having an entry in the blockchain has a more business oriented feel to it.
Neither one of these is compelling to me as you have to prove that this was the only prediction you made and you aren't cherry picking the correct ones.
Re: Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
#9tldr; this whole breakthru in technology called the blockchain isn't a new idea at all. Banks have known about "shared" ledgers since 1800s. But because everyone is talking about Blockchain now in 2016, banks are finally ready to embrace some standards.
> tldr; this whole breakthru in technology called the blockchain isn't a new idea at all
I haven't read the article, and I been tired of blockchain hype for multiple years, but if this is an accurate tldr of the article, it isn't true at all. Blockchains are far more than simple shared ledgers. They're trustless shared ledgers, which is a huge leap forward from simple shared ledgers, and a pretty big deal for financial institutions, for whom dealing with trust issues is a major headache.
Re: Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers
#10Can somebody explain me how we deal with the increasing size of a blockchain? I get moore's law etc., but other than that? I mean, it's trillions of transactions we are talking about. Federated servers? We break the chain in some way?
The best theory I could found is that everybody just starts trusting an old enough snapshot of the chain, and its end becomes the chain's beginning. Then everybody just throws the older transactions away.
I can imagine this working in a low volume chain. I do really doubt it would ever work on current Bitcoin chain or anything bigger.