The bit I find amusing is that people think tulips will work this time. The only difference between the confidence in tulips and crypto is that the crash will be much more efficient should the confidence fail.

Based on the evidence, the next major news will be yet another huge theft or failure of a crypto venture.

If something really works, don't expect a pat in the back, awards or any recognition....expect cut-throat competition. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/html/digitaleuro.en.html

It’s being used in the supply chain for high value food ingredients to prevent food fraud. Admittedly, this probably is not the most common use, but it is an important use with a high value to society.

But why use a distributed block chain instead of a centralized database provided by, say, IBM.

IBM uses blockchain no?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelw...-supply-chain/

Simply put: to make it open, transparent and accessible. Centralized systems are great as long as the company owning and operating the system is universally trusted, completely unbiased and has no conflict of interest. Even if you don’t believe in that: simply put does any company that has a platform like that which controls a market at the very least too much money off it (when you ask the customers...)

Food is one example but there are similar use cases from diamonds over barrels of oil to pretty much anything else you want to securily track.

I was interested in the IBM solution and skimmed through their documentation, but it seems they are using a blockchain internally but exposing the data through a web portal and APIs.

So I don't get it - if the data is only distributed on servers controlled by the one organisation, that's no different to having a resilient regular database.

Did I miss something?

But would you really want to trust 4 unaccountable chinese guys instead of Guardtime or IBM?

Yes, you missed that blockchain has only one real use case (cryptocurrency) and one other real-world use case: marketing buzzword. Most blockchain providers benefit from the second one

Guardtime had actually a very interesting product/technology but after the blockchain craze re-branded everything to blockchain

Not all blockchains are open to everyone. If an industry agrees on a standard is it totally possible and fine to limit users to known entities... it doesn’t have to be some random Chinese guy validating the blocks. Simply put: I recently talked to a b n b owner. I can assure you they are all fed up with paying 20% to booking.com for their platform. But if you are not on it, do you essentially not exist for a large part of your market. If you have now the opportunity to design a new industry platform- no matter for what industry... are there very good arguments for a decentralized solution. Unless you are planning to be the next iTunes and believe you have what it takes to hold your industry ransom.

If you close the blockchain to one or more companies, then you have to trust those companies and you no longer need a blockchain...

Not with a centralised blockchain. What that gets you is a token, and if agreed (or so defined by that central authority) that can represent anything.

The advantage is that a transaction doesn't need a trusted 3rd party to, for instance, guarantee one side of the transaction (payment, say) so the two agents can safely handle the 2nd side (handing over the goods or providing a service, say). The result is much quicker closing of the transaction, no need to wait for the 3rd party to do whatever it's supposed to do.

Think of buying a house. You either pay cash (hand over the token) or pay a bank to guarantee payment against evidence to the buyer (a 3rd party guarantees payment).

Now think of two banks transacting with each other using digital tokens issued by the central bank (e.g. e-Franken or e-Euro). Instead of having the central bank transfer the money they can exchange both parts directly, instantaneously. This simplifies and speeds up interbank transactions significantly.

Sorry, but either you have no idea how blockchain works, or are woefully failing to communicate.

Actually the purpose of the 3rd party is more often to act as an escrow agent and guarantor of fair play, to avoid the problem of "who goes first". Do I click on the "send bitcoin" button before or after I get the key??

Also, blockchain is really really not quick - for example, the average time for a Bitcoin transaction to confirm is frequently cited as ten minutes.

In a global FX market, I'd guess ten minutes = a few million trades? Hard to see how that's going to work!

Not all block chains applications use Proof of Work. Not all are distributed. There are plenty of centralised, Proof of Authority applications.

It's just a tamper proof log. If you want to know reallife applications, then there are plenty. If only there was a some way of globally searching for such information... I guess it's just easier to insist that there aren't any applications other than cryptocurrency and they all use Proof of Work and server farms. Based on that article you read three years ago...

its at 15k CHF today.

What is pretty amazing, use cases or not, is how it keeps going up. Its like its own dot com bubble. The people into it are completely convinced it will change the world so keep telling each other its more and more valuable. Either it is, and it will work, or it isnt and if its the latter it will all come crashing down.

I think there are real use cases - mainly in the area of audit rather than financial transactions - but i look in wonder at the price. someone told me to buy one at 5000 chf saying it was "a bargain" and now its 15k (I didnt of course!!!) but if you ask him he is completely, totally, convinced it will get to a million in the next few years.

The irony is that it will only change the world if it becomes less volatile.

The same as most bubbles - the real players will only take part after it bursts...

How's that not what I said?
A problem of data volume and bandwidth, which is removed by centralisation. Instead of the anonymous swarm in a decentralised implementation, the trusted authority defines the ledger in a centralised one.
Access to the e-Franken will be limited to the domestic banks, 2-300 or so, the FX market is out of scope.

This is not the reason blockchain is slow. It is slow because it demands proof-of-work which has to be slow and costly to prevent chain hijacking.

Your proposal to use a centralised authority is fine, except blockchain is absolutely pointless unless it is decentralised. With a single authority blockchain has zero security and massive costs.