New York City Launches First Blockchain Initiatives

That&#x27;s a complete waste of tax payer money. Per the article this money will be used to actually find a use of blockchain, rather than funding existing ideas for how blockchain could improve &quot;security, efficiency, and turn-around-times for government services.&quot;<p>In other words, NYC is blowing $200M to chase a fad that they nor many in the press even seem to grasp. This is one of those schemes they look back on with shame and embarrassment.<p>I&#x27;m still waiting on the edge of my seat for the other uses for blockchain than pseudo currency. But I&#x27;ve been on the edge of my seat for three years now, and other than perhaps DNS I&#x27;ve not heard much.<p>Most of the proposals ignore the fact that the ledger gets larger and more costly [by design] which limits the growth potential. That&#x27;s why nothing has ever come on tap (except currency&#x2F;investments where increased cost is a benefit, not a drawback).

I couldn&#x27;t be happier that my tax dollars are going to harness the power of the blockchain to solve the problems of &quot;food deserts&quot; and gentrification.<p>--edit--<p>In case you are wondering if this is sarcastic, let me clarify. I fully expect the blockchain to revolutionize the delivery of government services the same way Bitcoin will revolutionize grocery shopping, and the same way Etherium will revolutionize legal contracts.<p>--edit 2--<p>Since people still don&#x27;t get it, let me elaborate:<p>Imagine a world where you could use Bitcoin to transfer money anywhere in the world with the same ease as making a Bitcoin micropayment, simply, safely, instantly, with no fees.<p>Imagine a world where people use Etherium smart contracts to control everything from marriages to college diplomas to corporate governance.<p>Now imagine the same revolutionary ideas applied across NYC to everything from garbage collection to city ordinances!<p>The power of the blockchain is bounded only by your imagination.

That is an awful lot of words to say &quot;Hey anybody got any ideas how to make &#x27;blockchain&#x27; useful to people not interested in bilking cryptocurrency speculators? Sure, we&#x27;ve got homeless on the streets but ALSO $200 million burning a hole in our city&#x27;s pockets, and saying &#x27;blockchain&#x27; is much cooler than &#x27;hunger&#x27; or &#x27;poverty&#x27; or &#x27;infrastructure.&#x27; Ooh look, blockchain!&quot;<p>Please somebody suggest an even remotely plausible way that &quot;blockchain&quot; could possibly improve &quot;turn-around times for government services.&quot;

I know there&#x27;s a lot of pooh-poohing of the blockchain here, and for good reason. However, I can think of an excellent use case for blockchain in government that couldn&#x27;t (verifiably) be done with a normal database: tracking grants, contracts, misc spending, etc.<p>With a public blockchain, grants and other government spending (which are sometimes otherwise misspent or stolen) could be verifiably tracked and published. This could be a great asset to state and local governments that are prone to corruption.

NYC is a high-tax, high-growth region. It should use a blockchain to distribute tax credits to those people who need it most. Those people can then take the tax credits and spend them at city businesses. The great thing is that it could defer these tax credits... that is disallow them to be resolved for N years. Experience growth now and pay for it in the future. It would be an interest-free loan (though in reality, the credits would be discounted) ... in other words it would be currency. It could easily transform welfare within the city.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17041697" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17041697</a>

Replace blockchain with &quot;mathy database&quot; is the use case still cool? No? Ok then.

Without reading sounds like free money for whatever “friend of NYC” sold them this load of crap! Even better than ICO free money.