The benefit that the technology brings, sans speculation, should be the same regardless of whether it's a bear or bull market though. What about blockchain technology development that isn't tied to a tradable token?
There is an EIP 1337 "Subscription Services on the Blockchain" that I think will supplement/replace tokenomics. It's what it sounds like, a decentrilized subscription protocol that allows builders to monetize their d-apps with ETH based on recurring payments to access the services.
This is essentially the first step to web 3.0 and a universal login.
I guess DAG with a merkle tree data structure would be more appropriate. Blockchain should be reserved for DAG's that use Nakamoto Consensus (or similar) to determine the longest chain.
If we can count on one thing that never dies, it is companies like IBM embracing buzzwords like AI and Blockchain and leeching millions from brain dead Non-IT companies that drink their consultancy koolaid.
It's kind of predictable to hear a Buzzword and add five years to the time it became a buzzword and you can search IBM + buzzword to see that they are the top results.
Sadly no. But luckily its self correcting. While traditional companies drink koolaid and aim for short term share price bumps, tech behemoths continue to eat their lunch. In a few decades (4-5), there might not be any traditional companies left to drink the koolaid.
Good question. But it could be that the hype cycle is a natural part of idea development and it may even hide beneficial effects to the timeline of refining a concept. It's kind of hard to say because we can't go back and do an empirical experiment; to try and develop the same technology twice, once with short, sexy buzzwords which spread through the media like an STD and once with dull but realistic scientific papers that never reach any laypeople until the tech is actually done and applied to products and services.
I guess a way to tamp it down might be to avoid appointing big, singular celebrity personalities as officers in the company, to carefully plan press releases, and try to describe concepts precisely and plainly instead of with trendy terms. But it's still so hard to predict what kind of terminology will have that buzz factor before it hits the public, so it might all be pissing up a rope.
Once more, it might actually be a bad idea to try and combat the over-hyping phenomenon when all is said and done. Sure, there's a trough of disillusionment, but there's also a lot of skilled individuals who get swept up in the gravity well of that concept anyway and add talent and funding despite the fact that expectations overshoot reality at first. It might not be so destructive or wasteful, but instead we place too much psychological weight on disappointment and let it blind us to the more modest and slow (but realistic) benefits. I think we as a culture are terribly phobic of disappointment.
Of course some hype cycles don't end in a plateau which gradually progresses upwards--some ideas just die. Who knows how to really spot one of those in time to do any good, though. Hindsight is a benefit we don't get until it's too late, and we must simply try to apply what we learned to the next thing. The next thing is always a little different, though, so it's never a perfect prediction.
I compare the 2017 crypto hype to the dot com bubble, people finally realized the potential but the real life value isn't there yet, lot's of scam ICOs just like all the companies that raised money during the tech bubble. Just like the dotcom bubble people said internet/tech was dead, there are people saying blockchain is dead. I think that out of this batch there will be the Google's, Amazon's, etc that emerge and actually deliver real world value as opposed to just hype
No evidence of any useful non-Bitcoin blockchain applications so far, so no reason to expect any Amazon/google type successes. If someone figures out something useful to do with “blockchain” it will probably blow up quickly.
Stock trades are already decentralized. You can trade AAPL stock derivatives directly without using a blockhain or a stock exchange, so the blockchain part hasn't added anything useful to the transaction.
That's just simply not true. Stock markets / futures markets are not decentralized in any sense of the word. You still require a 3rd party if you're going to trade derivatives over the counter.
Who is it useful to and why is it better than the trades you can make with an ordinary brokerage account?
Keep in mind that much of finance is not obviously useful from an outside perspective, so "here's a trade you could do" is not enough to show usefulness.
I agree that this particular example may not seem useful (since there are other, centralized ways to trade AAPL derivatives), but the useful thing here is that it's all within the same ecosystem. I've traded for years using brokerages, clearing houses, and banks, and this removes all of that overhead. The pegs are maintained by arbitrage and this allows the removal of almost all of the overhead associated with futures markets. But that's really just the tip of the iceberg. I'm not here to convince anyone; you should convince yourselves that it's either useful or not. There's certainly a lot of real development going on if you know where to look, and the hype is warranted if you can see the whole picture.
If it were a system that handled all the taxes for you, that would be genuinely useful. Keeping track of it all yourself seems like it would be a drag?
24/7 open trade market that can't be closed or shut down, no middleman fees (just network fees which will trend lower as scaling solutions are brought online).
Yeah, but it's a stablecoin pegged to the USD. This allows other projects, like dydx to create derivatives products based on this peg. You have other protocols that use the DAI peg to create stock market derivatives. Today, I can trade ETH for a token pegged to AAPL's stock on the blockchain.
I remember showing a friend this really crappy online video stream in the late 90s, and I think he said something like "How can this ever be useful? I can rent a DVD and watch high quality video without any interruptions." He wasn't wrong.
Yes, but right now it's much more stable to be holding that than one of the pure crypto assets. Anyone can make a stablecoin backed by another country's currency.
That's the problem - the only functioning use for public blockchains after 10 years is for crypto assets, i.e. for money making schemes, so will there be anything left at all if the people interested in making money move on? In contrast, when the dot-com bubble burst and the get-rich-quick folks moved on, there were clear established use cases for the technology beyond simply making money, and as a result mass adoption was well underway. Pretty much all other so-called blockchain projects at the moment are either using it where they don't need to (i.e. they have no need for decentralised trust) or aren't using blockchains in the original sense at all (i.e. they're using some centralised version of it, which defeats the point).
1. for the CEO/manager in a big company - a very high security mechanism, verified by the billions of $ in bitcoin. Great quality assurance, and politically, that's a good choice to make for something as risky as computer security.
Nobody got fired for choosing blockchain.
2. Trust in needed when you want many companies to collaborate.
Nobody like centralized trust(a-la banks). They charge a lot of money, they usually end up as a monopoly, and they have power over you. nobody likes to give up power.
IBM's blockchain, i.e. Hyperledger, is open-source, governed by many companies, so i assume the money/power situation is far better. You could probably leave IBM's hosting if you really wanted.
The jury is still out on cryptocurrencies. The blockchain hype is priced into Bitcoin and other crypto. It will remain around in some form but not even close to its peaks.
It's ridiculously expensive per transaction, your account can be wiped out if someone gets your token, it's not "untraceable", etc.
> It's ridiculously expensive per transaction, your account can be wiped out if someone gets your token, it's not "untraceable", etc
These are all problems that are close to being solved. Sharding will solve high transaction fees, multisigs and account recovery mechanisms already exist for private key safety, zkSnarks solve privacy.
48 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 96.3 ms ] threadSomeone may eventually be right, but the number of times these words have been uttered is astounding.
There's no profit in current bear market = there's no hype.
This is essentially the first step to web 3.0 and a universal login.
Which would correlate with the title: "Blockchain’s Hype Is Dying According to Corporate America’s Earnings Calls"
0. "a data structure that carries some quantum of payload and a reference to the previous block"
It's kind of predictable to hear a Buzzword and add five years to the time it became a buzzword and you can search IBM + buzzword to see that they are the top results.
They'll settle for some other kind of awful, I'm sure.
I guess a way to tamp it down might be to avoid appointing big, singular celebrity personalities as officers in the company, to carefully plan press releases, and try to describe concepts precisely and plainly instead of with trendy terms. But it's still so hard to predict what kind of terminology will have that buzz factor before it hits the public, so it might all be pissing up a rope.
Once more, it might actually be a bad idea to try and combat the over-hyping phenomenon when all is said and done. Sure, there's a trough of disillusionment, but there's also a lot of skilled individuals who get swept up in the gravity well of that concept anyway and add talent and funding despite the fact that expectations overshoot reality at first. It might not be so destructive or wasteful, but instead we place too much psychological weight on disappointment and let it blind us to the more modest and slow (but realistic) benefits. I think we as a culture are terribly phobic of disappointment.
Of course some hype cycles don't end in a plateau which gradually progresses upwards--some ideas just die. Who knows how to really spot one of those in time to do any good, though. Hindsight is a benefit we don't get until it's too late, and we must simply try to apply what we learned to the next thing. The next thing is always a little different, though, so it's never a perfect prediction.
For reference if anybody hasn't seen it already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
Blockchain trading is simply a dark pool with less protections, and dark pools have also been a thing in finance for decades.
Keep in mind that much of finance is not obviously useful from an outside perspective, so "here's a trade you could do" is not enough to show usefulness.
"Dai is an asset-backed, hard currency for the 21st century."
1. for the CEO/manager in a big company - a very high security mechanism, verified by the billions of $ in bitcoin. Great quality assurance, and politically, that's a good choice to make for something as risky as computer security.
Nobody got fired for choosing blockchain.
2. Trust in needed when you want many companies to collaborate.
Nobody like centralized trust(a-la banks). They charge a lot of money, they usually end up as a monopoly, and they have power over you. nobody likes to give up power.
IBM's blockchain, i.e. Hyperledger, is open-source, governed by many companies, so i assume the money/power situation is far better. You could probably leave IBM's hosting if you really wanted.
It's ridiculously expensive per transaction, your account can be wiped out if someone gets your token, it's not "untraceable", etc.
These are all problems that are close to being solved. Sharding will solve high transaction fees, multisigs and account recovery mechanisms already exist for private key safety, zkSnarks solve privacy.