Opinion: Roubini calls out the big blockchain lie

[endicom]

Market Watch
Nouriel Roubini
Oct. 18, 2018

Excerpt:

Faced with the public spectacle of a market bloodbath, boosters have fled to the last refuge of the crypto scoundrel: a defense of “blockchain,” the distributed-ledger software underpinning all cryptocurrencies. Blockchain has been heralded as a potential panacea for everything from poverty and famine to cancer.

In fact, it is the most overhyped — and least useful — technology in human history.

In practice, blockchain is nothing more than a glorified spreadsheet. But it has also become the byword for a libertarian ideology that treats all governments, central banks, traditional financial institutions, and real-world currencies as evil concentrations of power that must be destroyed. Blockchain fundamentalists’ ideal world is one in which all economic activity and human interactions are subject to anarchist or libertarian decentralization. They would like the entirety of social and political life to end up on public ledgers that are supposedly “permissionless” (accessible to everyone) and “trustless” (not reliant on a credible intermediary such as a bank).

More... https://www.marketwatch.com/story/roubini-calls-out-the-big-blockchain-lie-2018-10-17?mod=newsviewer_click

[endicom]

Roubini speaks to a radical strain of libertarianism that has unfortunately become the voice of that movement that doesn't move. The internet was also to be a great liberator. The internet is, I think, somewhat liberating but is also a tool to be used contrarily.

I've never understood how Bitcoin could be a repository of wealth. Does it facilitate the creation of wealth or is it just a phantom bidding war?



 

[Drago]

...Does it facilitate the creation of wealth or is it just a phantom bidding war?

More like a decentralized Western Union...especially useful in places like Venezuela.

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

Roubini speaks to a radical strain of libertarianism that has unfortunately become the voice of that movement that doesn't move. The internet was also to be a great liberator. The internet is, I think, somewhat liberating but is also a tool to be used contrarily.

I've never understood how Bitcoin could be a repository of wealth. Does it facilitate the creation of wealth or is it just a phantom bidding war?

Bitcoin is a repository of wealth, just like gold, a FRN, or a share of IBM.  It has value as long as someone else is willing to trade you their STUFF (real wealth) for it, probably under the assumption that someone else down the road will accept it for their stuff.

One thing to keep in mind is that Bitcoin is not blockchain.  Bitcoin is one application that uses blockchain tech.  Kind of like how keeping your phone selfies on a google server has about jack all to do with cloud computing, it's just what the masses know as "cloud".