Bitcoin Forum

I hear many bitcoin enthusiasts say that creating a blockchain without a monetary token behind it would be pointless, or even impossible. To be honest though, I've never heard an analysis on why that would be. Without evidence presented though, it's hard to figure out if there's actual knowledge supporting such an argument, or a fear of bitcoin being left behind if banks start using blockchain tech without it.

We've already started hearing about big institutions expressing interest in blockchain tech, investing in related enterprises, and even using it. What are your thought on this? And from the technical side of things, what is it that makes a blockchain without bitcoin behind it sound unreasonable?

I don't understand why companies are saying the blockchain is great while Bitcoin is bad. The blockchain is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is just a name given to the units used within the transaction in the blockchain. You cannot have the blockchain without some kind of unit to represent the tokens in a human understandable way in transactions. I think it is completely unreasonable.

The other thing is that big institutions don't seem to understand the point of the blockchain. It is supposed to be a distributed ledger system for decentralization. The whole point is so that it is decentralized, so anyone can get it and run their own rules regarding it. Compared to a centralized database, the blockchain is horrible inefficient. Besides crypto 2.0 stuff that uses the blockchain for decentralized data stuff, I don't understand why institutions are interested in the blockchain.

Blockchain is the First online wallet, and it got a lot trusted from all "new" bitcoin users.
I think blockchain will keep improving and give their best service to others.

Also a lot people still using blockchain to check some transaction Tx id.

EDIT after 5 minutes: I'm sorry if blockchain here is stand for all transactions in bitcoin, and not about the online wallet.

"Coinless" as a term is not possible with blockchain. But, the blockchain technology can be used without the need for it to be like Bitcoin. There are so many different uses, for example: http://storj.io

It wouldn't be pointless or impossible.

The blockchain is a way of authenticating and tracking a transaction. The transaction can be anything. There's nothing unreasonable about business using blockchain to make their business more efficient.

I'm a big fan of it!

The bitcoin blockchain is distributed to multiple nodes around the world.
It's not possible for a business to have a similar structure without a huge starting cost.

Of course, it's possible to make a coinless blockchain. Just don't expect to have many miners. Several large companies are looking into this as a way to store and share their data among many servers around the planet. The blockchain is mostly seen as a giant public ledger, but that's a database.

In theory a blockchain without bitcoin or any other currency is possible, but would it work ?

To maintain the blockchain, you need a large number of users going online, doing the calculations and in the process spending money on the energy, etc.
Without a chance to get compensated in bitcoins for their efforts and expenses, what will there be an incentive for them to do so ?

it would be also centralized because no reward for many different node to work for and it would be issued by a single entity, no tnx i prefer the coin-woith blockchain

Yes, OP is talking about the actual blockchain, not blockchain.info
To sum this OP, banks are just trying to cope with the fact that they will get eventually deprecated by Bitcoin, so they are selling this "blockchain technology" propaganda to keep living longer. But the fact is, a blockchain without a decentralized token like Bitcoin, it's just a more fancy excel spreadsheet, something boring and unexciting. The real progress will be on a decentralized blockchain and Bitcoin's one is the king.

The way I see this is that I don't see a problem will there be a token or not or will you attach a value to it or not. You can write a code and set an algorithm as you wish.

The biggest strength of Bitcoin is its decentralized value and from there you get tokens that are valuable and they keep system in check, since miners are securing a network for a reward that has to be valuable.

Problem with government blockchains is their closed status which is not trustless. So you can still do corrupted stuff as you are doing in today's financial system. A system like this can indeed be ran without a token.

As far as I know, most of the banks and large institutions are interested in the blockchain technology only. They are not interested in crypto currencies. The blockchain could solve them infrastructure, transaction integrity, high availability issues and to take advantage of the blockchain they don't need a crypto currency.

I worked out a while ago how to use a minor modification of leafshares recompiled and using two raspberry-pi units within a local network to make a toychain which has most of the properties of the bitcoin blockchain, except that nobody else can use it unless they use a copy of my binary.  If anyone wants to buy my toycoins and a wallet app for rPi B2 1024MB quadcore then pm me.

The blockchain is simply a ledger maintained by a whole network of people instead of a centralized entity, the fact that any single transaction/communication is seen and verified by the entire network makes the system very secure. Virtual coins are certainly not the only things that can make use of such tech.

The blockchain is simply a datastructure (think database, not as efficient) and of course it can exist without coins. Permissioned blockchains which are centralized are still blockchains. The coins are the mechanism to incentivise a de-centralized blockchain like Bitcoin.

The CIYAM system has been developed for creating blockchain applications and has no "coin" at all (although there will be an optional Token package made available later, however, that would function more like a "voucher system" rather than a currency).

You can follow the project development here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=598860.0

Although being a "coin" does provide an initial incentive I think there are other practical uses for blockchain applications that don't need coins at all (think of franchises running a blockchain application on a PC at each franchise rather than using a "cloud server").

Note that such applications can still be decentralised (so having a "coin" is not necessary for that at all).

If you think of creating similar blockchain as bitcoin has then without 'coin' behind it there is no way to do that. Because to process transaction and fuel the blockhain processing power is needed.
I doubt that people will use their computing power on something from they don't profit.

Hmm... well you might be rather surprised to find that it has already been done then.


It really just depends upon the motives of the people involved - if franchise owners are going to save money by sharing an application with other franchise owners then that itself would be the motivation to do so.

Also if groups of people share a common interest then it is likely they might be motivated to provide the small amount of resources required to run a non-POW blockchain node.

they can only function as a proof of integrity, they will miss all the benefits of having a decentralized coin that sustain it

now there is out there a decentralized coinless blockchain? i doubt

You can doubt reality as much as you like - that doesn't change it from being real. :D

Nothing has been spent on promoting CIYAM at this stage, however, its blockchain and a simple application using it has already been tested.

Yes, but without rewarding people with virtual coins, how else will you motivate them to maintain the decentralised ledger ?

To cite an example - the ASX was considering using a blockchain rather than their current clearing system as it would be faster overall and cost less for the banks to upkeep (reduced cost is basically the same as profit so that's the reward in the this) and it would be safer than the current database (although given the backup mechanisms in place only marginally more so).

Technicaly that is the approach of the private Blockchains that Banks are trying to create. It will be a centralized Blockchain and not a blockchain in the Bitcoin sense as we all know. These private blockchains will offer no economic incentive so there will not be decentralization which can be bad because they will be able to rewrite the blockchain the way they want.