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Comment by teilo | Hacker News Reader

> In fact, the Bloomberg system is a blockchain, just instead of having the users control it, we control it, but it has all the attributes of that.

Thus proving that whatever he thinks about Bitcoin, Michael Bloomberg is clueless about the blockchain.

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Actually they might be running a separate Blockchain to manage their side. Similar to https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum which uses raft con sensus.

He is being confusing though and you could be right so...

They are not running a separate Blockchain and equating their system with how Blockchain works is quite misleading. I work in finance and use Bloomberg's system daily. It's essentially an online data provider/analytics platform running in a terminal-like environment. I don't think they would sneak in a private Blockchain without clients knowing about it. Even if they would, what for?

I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the IT department explained to him that they are using some kind of consensus based mechanism (zookeeper, etcd, consul etc), that works just like a blockchain, to manage the bloomberg infrastructure. He then goes on tv and tells the world that bloomberg is using The Blockchain. Just wild speculation but its seems plausible to me.

Edit: a quick google lead me to Bloomberg's consul deployment cookbook: https://github.com/bloomberg/consul-cluster-cookbook/blob/ma...

zookeeper, etcd, and/or consul function according to something only trivially different from Nakamoto Consensus? That would be news to me. His IT dept must have misinformed him.

Why can't they run an internal blockchain?

If you're a single entity, your don't need a block chain. Just a list.

Because that's just a merkle tree.

Why can't a fish wear swimfins?

A blockchain is a solution to the problem of establishing consensus without relying on an authority. If your systems relies on trust in an authority, adding a blockchain is good for one thing: marketing.

You just provided a reason to use a block chain, not a reason that it is implausible.

Whether or not it is something you think of as a good reason, “marketing” is a real reason things get done in businesses.

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