The Blockchain Is Bigger Than Any Bubble

&gt; Bitcoin is a poor currency and a crazy investment -- but the technology behind it is a real breakthrough.<p>I feel like that should be the other way around. When all the &quot;blockchain startups&quot; and ICOs blow up, Bitcoin will be left standing. The true innovation behind the &quot;blockchain&quot; was its decentralised consensus mechanism. That mechanism is only secure as long as no single entity controls over 50% of the hash rate. Some of the largest Bitcoin miners have so much hash rate today that they could attack any (SHA-256 based) blockchain but the Bitcoin one.<p>&quot;The Internet is a poor network and a crazy investment -- but TCP&#x2F;IP is a real breakthrough.&quot;... Sure!

The block chain is good in so far as it is useful. I&#x27;m seeing a whole bunch of people deploy it where anonymous trust is not a requirement. They&#x27;re just needlessly increasing the costs of the networks they create. It&#x27;s a bit of hype that will surely subside. Not saying it&#x27;s not useful - just not for everything under the sun!

FYI: If you are interested in building your own blockchains from scratch over at the Awesome Blockchains page (and repo) [1] I collect starter samples (e.g. in 20 lines of javascript, python, ruby, ...) and articles. Happy Blockchaining. [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;openblockchains&#x2F;awesome-blockchains" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;openblockchains&#x2F;awesome-blockchains</a>

&gt; Blockchain technology might also be used one day to produce new kinds of central-bank money.<p>I feel like they missed the whole point.

&gt; stabilized by central banks acting as <i>trusted monopoly producers</i><p>Oh the number of cryptocurrencies which have tried to stabilize their currency. There was BitsharesX which was abandoned quickly. Then there is USDT. The answer is there can never be a &quot;trusted monopoly producers&quot; in a decentralised world.

I stopped reading when the author claimed that bitcoin not having &quot;alternative uses, like gold&quot; makes it less suitable as a currency

I don&#x27;t understand how bitcoin is different from a fiat currency. Both only has value because we say it has value. Obviously a fiat currency generally has the backing of a central government. However a government is only viable as long as the constituents tolerate it, meaning whatever currency it issues, backed by the credit of such government, again only has value because people say it does.

at 144GB it&#x27;s definitely very big

Bitcoins value does have an upper limit, to the extent it is cheaper&#x2F;advantageous to move to a nearly identical clone, because the mainline is over-valued enough that the idea entices critical mass (of new people) to shift. This normalizes over time&#x2F;culture, today we fork for technical reasons, but in the future there will be other reasons.

People keep comparing Bitcoin to a currency like the Dollar which leads to a lot of problematic comparisons.<p>Think about it as gold and it starts to make sense in the long term (short term is anyone&#x27;s guess)

That might very well be true - as blockchain these days can mean just about anything related to cryptography.

WHICH blockchain, though?

How many times can a bubble burst? once ... So far the bitcoin bubble has &quot;burst&quot; several times, maybe we can call it something other than a bubble?