Has anyone come up with a use for blockchain yet?

Bitcoin is the critical pillar that enabled the commoditization of the ransomware industry. It's a whole field that likely wouldn't exist if it wasn't for pseudonymous digital currencies.

It’s a great way to separate gullible people from their money and that is always in demand.

- Synthetic Stocks (that trade 24 hours a day)

- Decentralised Money Markets (including forward rate curves), biggest analogue to this is the emergence of a nascent eurodollar market in the 50's

- Trustless Borrowing and Lending

- Evasion of sanctions and capital controls (N.B. this is not necessarily negative)

- Allow decentralised autonomous organisations (D.A.O's) to manage treasury assets (e.g. are a key part of coordination)

- Allow me to self custody my wealth outside a traditional institution and outside of inflationary govt. backed currencies

I have been working with a few Russian and Belarusian software engineers on Upwork and I now pay them in cryptocurrencies, because Upwork (and other websites) banned their profiles and they can't receive my payments.

Lots of people are using it, so yes it has a use, and while people keep using it (even if it's not the best way to achieve their goal), it will continue to have a use, and the skeptics (I number myself as one) should just get used to it.

One definite potential use-case is FX settlement, which currently goes through an obscure (and expensive) bank-owned coop-type institution (CLS bank). I think other inter-bank and central bank uses might also make sense.

- accepting payments when visa/mastercard/your bank decide your business is not allowed to exist anymore - sending money anywhere in the world in minutes for minimal fees - keeping your privacy when you’re paying online

So something like ENS [0] is not a use-case? Here's a product that is using it: [1][2]

[0] https://ens.domains/

[1] https://www.skiff.org/

[2] https://www.skiff.org/updates/skiff-ens

Frankly, it’s kind of hard to pitch blockchain if you’re at all honest with your stakeholders.

“So, we want to recreate databases, except vastly slower, far less energy-efficient, and way harder to use.”

Don't kid yourself. Anything the feds think is important enough to start regulating should be taken seriously.

Authentication and payment for online content (micro-payments), or services which process information (such as AI based summarization of content).

Put an NGINX proxy in front of content or an API and then wire it up to Lightning. Requests can be done without site authentication and the site still gets paid for the content or service.

This would finally implement 402s: https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec1...

418 I'm a teapot

Oh, get your head out of the sand. It doesn't take much searching online to find many valid use cases for the basics of blockchain verification.

I haven’t actually shipped anything but I’m working on a couple blockchain related artworks, and I occasionally talk to other artists who are active in the art part of the NFT world, as opposed to the “financial instrument dressed as a monkey” part.

Two things seem to be an emerging, er, consensus:

1. Having the blockchain part (the NFT for instance) actually have some real relationship to the art is much more interesting than just having pointers to artworks that are fine without it.

2. The exciting thing is that people can go and do what they like with the NFTs (etc) without your permission. This applies to non-art too I think: nothing is stopping you from making Mutant Ape Yacht Mashup.

So, I contend that “decentralized user interaction with artworks via a system the artist doesn’t control” is a use for blockchain, though I admit it’s a pretty fringe one.

As a longtime crypto & blockchain skeptic- I have to be fair and note that, according to this FT article, HSBC and Wells Fargo are using (non-crypto) blockchain specifically to settle currency trades. And this is apparently past the testing or experimentation stage, this is live implementation.

I don't really understand how it works (if you have a fat finger error, is it reversible?) or why it's better than a simple relational database, but apparently this is a use case

https://www.ft.com/content/1a4dcaf5-2b4b-4f0b-8c58-a8fa173f2... https://archive.is/qs8Cg (archive.is link to bypass the paywall)

A century ago when people were fleeing war zones or religious hatred, the difficulty of the rest of their life often depended upon whether or not they had any gold (which was often confiscated) or a Swiss bank account.

In a similar situation today, a mnemonic phrase for a crypto account serves a similar purpose.

PodPing is a podcasting notification system that replaces constantly polling individual RSS feeds. It is based on the Hive blockchain.

You can see podcasts updated in real time at https://podping.watch/

Orbis is a decentralized alternative to Twitter:

https://orbis.club/

All data is stored on blockchains, so in contrast to the old social networks, your post history, likes and comments can not be taken away from you.

Somehow relevant: https://time.com/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/

Sending money overseas (remittances). Companies that offer this service take a cut, most of which can be avoided with a blockchain currency (buy blockchain currency, send it to someone else, they sell it for fiat).

Why do people still think Blockchain has to be a consumer product?

“Nobody has come up with a use case”.

How about DeFi? I think that’s a pretty big use case! Besides, who cares? Either use it (DeFi, donations, salary etc) or don’t.

Lot's of people shit on NFTs, but they are certainly a use case.

Buying drugs online is one of the first use cases and one with the longest use.

People here seem to like IPFS

Find a true Scotsman, they'll give you a valid answer

Decentralized exchanges with no counterparty risk that require no user info.

Most people coming from the traditional finance world understand the value of this.

here I quote from wikipedia

>>A hash chain is similar to a blockchain, as they both utilize a cryptographic hash function for creating a link between two nodes. However, a blockchain (as used by Bitcoin and related systems) is generally intended to support distributed consensus around a public ledger (data), and incorporates a set of rules for encapsulation of data and associated data permissions.

So a Blockchain is only a configuration of a hashchain. So we have to make clear that blockchain is only a fancy name and nothing realy special. There are a shitload of different setups of hashchains and they mostly have no fancy name, as far as I know. Everyone with the skill can make whatever with hashchains and call it whatever.. Trianglechain.... NextgenQuantumsuperchain...ChainChain... whatever... So if the basic question is, do hashchains have real use cases? Most certainly. But I am to lazy to google.

Or does the configuration of a hashchain called blockhcain does have a real use. Atm Crypto but as far as I know some banks and supply chains and IBM tried to find problems for blockchains, but failed. Even if highly controverse, the german goverment wants to put things like the passport, diplomas and drivers licence on the blockchain. I think somehow IBM is involved. But is more or less that they want to try to sell that shit. But its not p2p whatever, only a Databank that is a blockchain.. at the end it will be a better database. Maybe a hashchain. Btw it did allready fail for the vaccines passport. They wanted to but that into 5 blockchains. At the end it was a central database, maybe a merkle tree or similar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_chain

Ukraine has received between USD50-100m in crypto donations since the start of the war and there isn’t a damn thing Putin can do about it.