Comment by acqq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acqq | Hacker News Reader

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They also didn't actually produce anything that can't be implemented better without "the blockchain". Even with the news like these:

https://theintercept.com/2021/03/24/andrew-cuomo-covid-ibm-b...

"Blockchains are typically public, their contents transparent to anyone with an internet connection, but the one behind Excelsior Pass will be private, meaning only parties sanctioned by IBM will be able to check the contents."

But the blockchain is the protocol for updating the information where other players aren't trusted. As soon as any "party" can be "sanctioned to be able" there's just no need for blockchain at all. It's just selling of snake oil, and yes, IBM is indeed doing it.

Now who'd expect that? The technology company uses the hyped technologies to sell their services and products, even if the said technologies don't make the products any better?

I've read somewhere that banks use blockchain internally. I mean levels of trust can be different within a company. Maybe you don't want anybody to be able to modify the ledger's history.

If you were a bank or a set of banks and just "don't want anybody to be able to modify the ledger's history" and you know what you are doing, you actually don't want to use blockchain. Because blockchain doesn't mean "nobody can modify the the ledger's history". It means "for it we have to use "proof of work"". But the "proof of work" means "whoever has 51% of the computing power can take over all".

Of course, blockchain promoters would tell you that "there will be something else, comes Really Soon (tm) which won't use "proof of work"."

One can more efficiently use public key cryptography, hashing and signing without the blockchain for any other problem than "implementing bitcoin."

The usual use case isn't intra-company controls but replacing the clearinghouse / inter-bank settlement layer. This still does seem like a potential actual use for a blockchain, but "we can replace ACH" gets you maybe a couple hundred million at most, and for a lot of work. Easier to just scam people.

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