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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

Cryptocurrency enthusiast here.

This is exactly the sort of nonsense that people are doing that makes other people think the entire cryptocurrency community is a joke. Obviously there is no benefit to having this on a blockchain here. You can just pay the charging station.

I made a comment the other day that there is very little overlap between cryptocurrency enthusiasts and people who want to blockchain-all-the-things. It was heavily downvoted and I suspect people didn't believe me, so I'm going to keep repeating it until people believe me :)

Don't write off cryptocurrency just because of nonsense like this. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero (and a small handful of other coins) are genuinely worthwhile projects.

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> I made a comment the other day that there is very little overlap between cryptocurrency enthusiasts and people who want to blockchain-all-the-things. It was heavily downvoted and I suspect people didn't believe me, so I'm going to keep repeating it until people believe me :)

Probably because:

1. you're making a historically false claim. Pushing "blockchain" to business is quite well documented (Digital Gold, contemporary press) as being something that was pushed by the Bitcoin fans at the time - late 2014, when the bitcoin price was cratering - as a way to keep interest up.

2. the claims for "Blockchain" (and even the further euphemism, "Digital Ledger Technology") are blatantly the most fantastic claims for Bitcoin, with only the buzzword changed.

3. the bitcoin blog press can't get enough of these "blockchain" initiatives. Clearly their readers think it's all much the same thing.

Edit: I was mistaken

If it's literally just "use cryptocurrency to pay for car charging", I don't think that counts as "blockchain-enabled" any more than, say, accepting Visa payments makes you "database-enabled".

(I've read it now)

EDIT: Not that the misleading headline makes it a worse project. I actually think "use cryptocurrency to pay for anything" is a good project. But it's not blockchain-enabled. And that's a good thing.

... uses the Share&Charge platform developed by MotionWerk. Share&Charge harnesses the Ethereum blockchain to track the charging transactions and exchange payment between customer and host.

https://shareandcharge.com/

Money can be cashed-in to your Share&Charge wallet by using credit card, PayPal...

In addition to the Blockchain technology we developed our Share&Charge App, which builds the point of intersection between the users and the Blockchain.

https://blog.slock.it/share-charge-launches-its-app-on-board...

At the moment, this token cannot be traded and is reserved for use exclusively within the Share&Charge project, however, an e-money license being sought by the payment provider xtech of the project could see its use extended to it to other fields.

As far as I can tell, the only thing blockchainy about this is "Share&Charge and Slock.it are working hard in surfacing the blockchain aspects of the application for our more technical users. For example, we hope to eventually be able to load separately generated private keys within the apps."

That's all?

> Obviously there is no benefit to having this on a blockchain here.

- Minuscule transaction fees as opposed to 3% banking fees.

- Less necessary server infrastructure to manage identity/payments

Would these not be benefits or am I missing something?

Those are properties of using cryptocurrency for payment, they're not properties of putting car charging on a blockchain.

I think that's what this project does, and the headline is simply misleading. It's not really "blockchain-enabled", it just uses Ethereum for payment.

When I read the headline, I immediately thought that it meant I could pay for charging with Bitcoin and/or Ethereum.

What else can be inferred from the headline? What would it mean to "put car charging on a blockchain"? Can you explain for the rest of us ?

The bit that might take it further is

> the blockchain verifies how much the driver owes

Maybe there's something here where it's pulling external data (e.g. set price/unit or a trusted source that says how much was taken) to decide the price?

Think through the 3% bit a little bit. Do you think that the banks charge 3% because their settlement software is that much less efficient than a blockchain?

Of course not. You're paying for customer service, marketing, fraud protection & settlement, and a host of other things with that 3%. It's not 3% because that's what it costs to run a computer to figure out payment processing, it's 3% because that's what the banks can charge to run their business. In effect most people pay 2% or less because of credit card points, so really it's just a forced discount on retailers. Again, because the banks can.

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