"Blockchain technology will pervade, but not bitcoin."

[Whitehouse]

I've heard that phrase thousands of times, and I've thought about it enough to be sure I don't agree.
Bitcoin is necessary for the blockchain to exist, without the incentive, there are no miners and there is no network to rely on.
If you assert that the blockchain will pervade, you necessarily imply bitcoin as a currency will too.

What do you think?

I don't see why both can't suceed, but because bitcoin is two things it gives it double the chance to IMO. The only thing that is hampering btc as a currency is the price instability, but it is also this instability which makes it potentially a good investment.

But we can't really have one without the other unless it can be monetized in some other way. If bitcoins become worthless or worth very little then why would the miners bother? If it becomes unprofitable to mine bitcoins then they'd just stop.

[_chance_]

Even if that has to happen bitcoin will always be the core for next foundation. Things will be working on top of it
but it has to the the thing it can't just vanish like that.

[Piston Honda]

Without incentive, the blockchain is useless, without any one adding hash power into the network, the network will be attacked easily and you can never trust the transaction of large amount of value with it

That's the way I see it. I get the idea that all these blockchain bandwagon jumpers have this notion that they can create a new blockchain and that all the SHA-256 ASIC owners will joyously switch over their hash to it for free, just because it's cool.

I'll try an analogy...

It's the early 1800s and hot air balloons are getting popular, and the possibilities of air transport begin to blow minds.... annnd you get a section of the theoretically "thinking" classes go apeshit about baskets, (gondolas)  "yay, baskets, imagine what all you can put in the baskets, baskets is where it's at, corner the market in baskets!!!" and you ask if it isn't rather the portable high density liquid or gaseous fuels, the burners of same or the envelope materials that are maybe the most important, as the source of buoyancy, the means of leaving the ground, annnnd they'll be like "No, baskets! Look what you can put in them, we'll drag them around with horses..." ... and you'll be shaking your head and thinking they missed the point, things can be transported, but the medium of transport is the egg laying golden goose, not the damn egg carton.

Engines...

Did a network of railways pre-exist the steam locomotive? did a network of asphalt roads pre-exist the motor vehicle? did the internet pre-exist commercial mini-computer adoption? NO, because all those were not especially fucking useful without the engines that demanded and supported their development and use.

So to me, the vaunted blockchain applications that seem to completely ignore the incentivisation to attract hashpower to secure and enable them, make as much sense as talking about trainless railways, vehicle free roads and computer free internet.


Flash.

Good way of thinking about it - I never thought of it that way to be honest.

[pitham1]

The blockchain technology does not belong exclusively to bitcoin which means anybody can use it

Anybody can start a new blockchain, but will it be supported by the processing power that backs bitcoin?
Why would anybody switch to a brand new blockchain. Bitcoin's blockchain is where all the action is. 

[juicyjuice87]

For the good of the world, their should and will be more then one crypto that people can rely on. If it were only Btc and that went to shit one day, that means we will have to start from square one again. Fuck that for a laugh.

Disclaimer: Bitcoiners are as dumb as dog shit.

[YarkoL]

I'll try an analogy...

It's the early 1800s and hot air balloons are getting popular, and the possibilities of air transport begin to blow minds.... annnd you get a section of the theoretically "thinking" classes go apeshit about baskets, (gondolas)  "yay, baskets, imagine what all you can put in the baskets, baskets is where it's at, corner the market in baskets!!!" and you ask if it isn't rather the portable high density liquid or gaseous fuels, the burners of same or the envelope materials that are maybe the most important, as the source of buoyancy, the means of leaving the ground, annnnd they'll be like "No, baskets! Look what you can put in them, we'll drag them around with horses..." ... and you'll be shaking your head and thinking they missed the point, things can be transported, but the medium of transport is the egg laying golden goose, not the damn egg carton.

I have a little trouble deciphering the analogy. To me Bitcoin (and by extension,
cryptocurrency, or crypto-something) is a network  comprising of nodes that both
produce and maintain a record of their communication. It could be said that they
both compose and uphold a common reality on which they all agree. The consensus
record is organized as a linked list of proven work-units (the blockchain). The consensus
record can contain any kind of data. In Bitcoin the data are the records of transference
of value. But it could be easily be any other data, and the incentive to maintain it
would not necessarily have to be private profit, but could arise from the internal
needs of some organization for instance, and so the custom blockchain would be
restricted to that organization. I'm pretty sure various companies and organizations
are experimenting with this right now.

[junglecat]

I've heard that phrase thousands of times, and I've thought about it enough to be sure I don't agree.
Bitcoin is necessary for the blockchain to exist, without the incentive, there are no miners and there is no network to rely on.
If you assert that the blockchain will pervade, you necessarily imply bitcoin as a currency will too.

What do you think?

Block chain technology was invented and used as early as the 1970's in telephone systems. So your statement is invalid as it pertains to Bitcoin.

[davidgdg]

I'll try an analogy...

It's the early 1800s and hot air balloons are getting popular, and the possibilities of air transport begin to blow minds.... annnd you get a section of the theoretically "thinking" classes go apeshit about baskets, (gondolas)  "yay, baskets, imagine what all you can put in the baskets, baskets is where it's at, corner the market in baskets!!!" and you ask if it isn't rather the portable high density liquid or gaseous fuels, the burners of same or the envelope materials that are maybe the most important, as the source of buoyancy, the means of leaving the ground, annnnd they'll be like "No, baskets! Look what you can put in them, we'll drag them around with horses..." ... and you'll be shaking your head and thinking they missed the point, things can be transported, but the medium of transport is the egg laying golden goose, not the damn egg carton.

I have a little trouble deciphering the analogy. To me Bitcoin (and by extension,
cryptocurrency, or crypto-something) is a network  comprising of nodes that both
produce and maintain a record of their communication. It could be said that they
both compose and uphold a common reality on which they all agree. The consensus
record is organized as a linked list of proven work-units (the blockchain). The consensus
record can contain any kind of data. In Bitcoin the data are the records of transference
of value. But it could be easily be any other data, and the incentive to maintain it
would not necessarily have to be private profit, but could arise from the internal
needs of some organization for instance, and so the custom blockchain would be
restricted to that organization. I'm pretty sure various companies and organizations
are experimenting with this right now.

Why would a firm bother with all this rigamarole when it could just maintain a centralised database? The point about blockchain and POW is that they allow consensus to be achieved between  people who don't have any reason to trust each other.

[Flashman]

. The consensus record can contain any kind of data. In Bitcoin the data are the records of transference
of value. But it could be easily be any other data, and the incentive to maintain it
would not necessarily have to be private profit, but could arise from the internal
needs of some organization for instance, and so the custom blockchain would be
restricted to that organization. I'm pretty sure various companies and organizations
are experimenting with this right now.

Okay, imagine some piddling little alt, worth satoshis, market cap of a few thousand bucks, a couple of gigahash of diehards hashing on it.... now tell me why it would not be a good idea to use that blockchain to store cryptographic proof of ownership records for, say, Tesla cars...

The incentive to do the right thing, has got to be larger than the incentive to do bad things. IDs are not supposed to have intrinsic value for example, yet they do, hence the phenom of ID theft. A blockchain ID system would face the risk that insertion of fake IDs would be lucrative, as maybe would be invalidating the ID of specific high profile persons at critical points in time.

Internal blockchains in large orgs could be useful, but still, you've got a couple of hundred machines securing it maybe, is it doing something that is of high value to a competitor to steal or mess up? 'coz a few hundred machines ain't nothing if it can be got to.

You might think that it would be incentive to the people who have a crypto ID to secure the blockchain, but even though their ID might be worth $1000 to a criminal, you can bet they are not gonna spend $1000 worth of resources regularly to maintain an ID and nobody is going to do it for them gratis.

Now if you had a blockchain of blockchains with a large mining incentive then anybody who wanted something stored/validated in it, could use it for whatever purpose, and there would be enough participants, even though they had their own uses, to keep the whole thing secure. It's a strength in numbers thing.

[2112]

Okay, imagine some piddling little alt, worth satoshis, market cap of a few thousand bucks, a couple of gigahash of diehards hashing on it.... now tell me why it would not be a good idea to use that blockchain to store cryptographic proof of ownership records for, say, Tesla cars...

It would work fine if the mining was licensed (with public key crypto) by the Tesla manufacturer. Such distributed database could then outlive the Tesla manufacturer itself and be invulnerable to legal attacks in various localities jurisdictions.

Issuing licenses for mining has been discussed on this forum many, many times. For Bitcoin it is unacceptable because of its anarchist origins. But for any non-anarchist endeavor it is a viable choice. Each Tesla car could do a little mining while being charged, with the certificate of ownership stored somewhere in its management computer.

I'm not very familiar with Tesla cars, but I presume that they already have some sort of public key infrastructure installed in them to verify signatures on their software upgrades.

[cbeast]

Okay, imagine some piddling little alt, worth satoshis, market cap of a few thousand bucks, a couple of gigahash of diehards hashing on it.... now tell me why it would not be a good idea to use that blockchain to store cryptographic proof of ownership records for, say, Tesla cars...

It would work fine if the mining was licensed (with public key crypto) by the Tesla manufacturer. Such distributed database could then outlive the Tesla manufacturer itself and be invulnerable to legal attacks in various localities.

Issuing licenses for mining has been discussed on this forum many, many times. For Bitcoin it is unacceptable because of its anarchist origins. But for any non-anarchist endeavor it is a viable choice. Each Tesla car could do a little mining while being charged, with the certificate of ownership stored somewhere in its management computer.

I'm not very familiar with Tesla cars, but I presume that they already have some sort of public key infrastructure installed in them to verify signatures on their software upgrades.

Characterizing Bitcoin developers as anarchists is a red herring. They don't make those sorts of irrational arguments. Besides, you are talking about Smart Contracts and that concept was pioneered years ago by fellowtraveler.

[Flashman]

Issuing licenses for mining has been discussed on this forum many, many times. For Bitcoin it is unacceptable because of its anarchist origins. But for any non-anarchist endeavor it is a viable choice. Each Tesla car could do a little mining while being charged, with the certificate of ownership stored somewhere in its management computer.

So stepping into the persona of a Russian mafia hacker, I'd rent a Tesla, dump the ROM to steal the ID, and knowing that the crappy low power SOC they are using manages a kilohash at best, and there's only a few hundred online at any one time, I'd gin up something with a few GPUs and probably be able to not just 50%, more like 300% the network for minimal cost. Using other avenues, I can probably deduce which cars are fully charged by length of time on the net, and direct the ops guys as to the best ones to steal, who knows, even where they are by IP location, and owners address is probably no trouble for me....

Bitcoin works because of its assumption of anarchy, it's trustless, because nobody can be trusted, you start adding trust back into it, "oh that node must be okay, it has the right token", then you add points of failure. Then too, who is the fountain of trust? Something central.

The innovation is the whole thing, and how it interlocks and supports itself. You want a tank but don't want tracks in it, it's a sitting duck, okay, lose the turret, put in a convertible top instead, it's no longer a tank, it doesn't do what a tank can do, it's too heavy? Make it out of cardboard instead of steel? sorry, not a tank again. As a tank, it takes another multimillion dollar tank to take it on, with any substantial variations, you can take it on with a kitchen knife.

[2112]

So stepping into the persona of a Russian mafia hacker, I'd rent a Tesla, dump the ROM to steal the ID, and knowing that the crappy low power SOC they are using manages a kilohash at best, and there's only a few hundred online at any one time, I'd gin up something with a few GPUs and probably be able to not just 50%, more like 300% the network for minimal cost. Using other avenues, I can probably deduce which cars are fully charged by length of time on the net, and direct the ops guys as to the best ones to steal, who knows, even where they are by IP location, and owners address is probably no trouble for me....

Bitcoin works because of its assumption of anarchy, it's trustless, because nobody can be trusted, you start adding trust back into it, "oh that node must be okay, it has the right token", then you add points of failure. Then too, who is the fountain of trust? Something central.

The innovation is the whole thing, and how it interlocks and supports itself. You want a tank but don't want tracks in it, it's a sitting duck, okay, lose the turret, put in a convertible top instead, it's no longer a tank, it doesn't do what a tank can do, it's too heavy? Make it out of cardboard instead of steel? sorry, not a tank again. As a tank, it takes another multimillion dollar tank to take it on, with any substantial variations, you can take it on with a kitchen knife.

The ROM dump will give you a single Tesla Motors mining license. By sending a sudden flood of TM-blocks with your TM-license ID you'll identify yourself as a thief and fraud. Your GPU scheme will collapse and all Tesla owners will be made aware of that.

In your original example Tesla Motors is a good central point for issuance of the licenses to mine on the Tesla Motors blockchain and is a way to distinguish true Tesla Motors cars from counterfeit ones. There's no point for providing "incentive to mine" because the cars are "mined" only in the factory and "mining" is just a way of distributed tracking of the ownership and detection of counterfeits.

The rest of your message where you switch back to talking about Bitcoin and anarchy can simply serve as an entertainment when contrasted with a nearby message:

Characterizing Bitcoin developers as anarchists is a red herring. They don't make those sorts of irrational arguments. Besides, you are talking about Smart Contracts and that concept was pioneered years ago by fellowtraveler.

Again: licensed mining was extensively discussed here and on other forums years ago. It was rejected for Bitcoin as inconsistent with the goals of the project. But it is still a viable solution where the existence of a centralized or distributed authority is not questioned.

[theskillzdatklls]

give me one example of how anyone is incentivized in a decentralized manner to support the blockchain with no bitcoin reward.

[2112]

give me one example of how anyone is incentivized in a decentralized manner to support the blockchain with no bitcoin reward.

It is just above: Flashman's example of a blockchain specific to cars made by Tesla Motors. The incentive would be tracking of ownership and detecting counterfeits. I just don't know much about those cars besides that they are electric, expensive and a status symbol.

[theskillzdatklls]

give me one example of how anyone is incentivized in a decentralized manner to support the blockchain with no bitcoin reward.

It is just above: Flashman's example of a blockchain specific to cars made by Tesla Motors. The incentive would be tracking of ownership and detecting counterfeits. I just don't know much about those cars besides that they are electric, expensive and a status symbol.

thats not decentralized. sure tesla may be incentivized to keep a blockchain ledger going in that instance but i am not nor is some random dude in africa. and if the incentives aren't entirely democratic, corruption etc will be pervasive.

[kodtycoon]

i dont think the quote means that blockchain tech will live on but with out currency/tokens residing on/in the blockchain.. i think it means that the blockchain technology will live on but it will be a different platform that goes full blown mainstream and not the bitcoin blockchain. which is very possible. it is only early days after all.

[Flashman]

The ROM dump will give you a single Tesla Motors mining license. By sending a sudden flood of TM-blocks with your TM-license ID you'll identify yourself as a thief and fraud. Your GPU scheme will collapse and all Tesla owners will be made aware of that.

Well yah, once any kind of crack is public people smarten up, but there's a window of opportunity there, in mere hours they could be selling "legit" cars to Tesla dealerships or something, it will take some time for message to get through.

The rest of your message where you switch back to talking about Bitcoin and anarchy can simply serve as an entertainment when contrasted with a nearby message:

Characterizing Bitcoin developers as anarchists is a red herring. They don't make those sorts of irrational arguments. Besides, you are talking about Smart Contracts and that concept was pioneered years ago by fellowtraveler.

I said the assumption of anarchy, meaning that it has to function in an anarchic environment. No external rules to protect it. When you have to start adding "Thou shalt nots" to protect something, some awkward bugger shall. (i.e. it would be  about as effective as writing "Private, keep out" on the side of your cardboard tank)

[chek2fire]

I have ask this question Patrick Murck from bitcoin foundation in AMA reddit and the asnwer was this

It seems to me that bitcoin as a unit of value and the blockchain are inseparable. Saying you can use blockchain technology without bitcoin is sort of like saying you can use stock market technology without listed companies.

[2112]

thats not decentralized. sure tesla may be incentivized to keep a blockchain ledger going in that instance but i am not nor is some random dude in africa. and if the incentives aren't entirely democratic, corruption etc will be pervasive.

Well, Tesla Motors is very new, and I don't know much about it. But two other well known car brands: BMW & Mercedes already have the incentive for decentralized ownership tracking and counterfeit detection. In fact they are desperately researching all available technologies, because the theft, counterfeiting and reassembling of partially totaled cars are so prevalent. E.g. I know that they (and the car insurers) paid for a pilot program of DNA-marking the genuine products with killed harmless genetically engineered bacteria mixed into paints. They (BMW & Mercedes) operate in so many jurisdictions that none of the centralized solutions have been working out for them. In particular counterfeiting and reassembly of wrecks is of interest to buyers and resellers because of how they affect collision safety of those expensive cars. For sellers being able to include uninterrupted record of periodic maintenance greatly increases the price.

Outside of the automotive business I know that Cisco is one of the globally recognized names that is also desperately researching ownership tracking and counterfeit detection technologies.

Edit: I forgot to add one thing: even before I joined this forum in 2011 I spoke with an IT executive in insurance who was interested to use Bitcoin/Namecoin/altcoin variant for tracking relevant non-financial transactional information to facilitate truly global market for health, ship & plane insurance. This Tesla and cars discussion distracted me from the original thought I meant to write.