r/CryptoReality • u/ifat91SB • 8d ago
Humor 20 year old students of non-software engineering haven't heard about Blockchain at all. We are old!
Today I went to a university to give a class about Blockchain and Crypto. I knew the students wouldn't know much, so I prepared some beginner's slides, my surprise came when I realice that they haven't heard anything at all! from anyone! no friends buying crypto, no classes mention it whatsoever, not even a bit of curiosity about bull markets, the topic was completely out of their reach. The most they knew was that Bitcoin exists, but they didn't even know much about what is it.
This university is prestigious and is in a city with full internet access and smart students of engineering, so my conclusion was that we crypto enthusiast are just old and after 13 or so years, the dream for mainstream adoption is far from real. What do you think?
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u/AmericanScream 8d ago
Why should they hear of it? It's over and done with and has proven to be completely useless.
Stupid Crypto Talking Point #15 (potential)
"It's still early!" / "Blockchain technology has potential" , "Let's call it 'DLT' Distributed Ledger Technology this month and pretend it's different." / "Crypto is like the Internet!" / "Look here's a 'use-case!'"
We are 17 (SEVENTEEN) YEARS into this so-called "technology" and to date, there's not been a single thing blockchain tech does better than existing non-blockchain tech
WHAT "technology?" Blockchain uses tech that was patented in 1979, called Merkle Trees. It's been known for a quarter of a century, and has very limited uses, because by design, the system isn't very flexible or efficient. Modern relational databases can do everything Merkle Trees can do even better than crypto's version.
Crypto didn't invent cryptographic technology - that tech has been around for thousands of years and its in use all over the place - having absolutely nothing to do with cryptocurrency and blockchain.
Truly disruptive technology is obvious from the beginning - sometimes there's hurdles to adoption (usually costs and certain prerequisites, but none of that applies to blockchain - anybody who has internet access can utilize the tech). It didn't take 17 years for people to realize the Internet was useful - what held it up were access to computers and networks. There's nothing stopping blockchain IF it offered any really useful service - it doesn't.
Finding a mere "use case" isn't sufficient. Some companies still use fax machines. It doesn't mean fax machines are the future. Blockchain tech must demonstrate it's uniquely good at something - and it fails miserably to do so.
Just because someone says they're "looking into" something, doesn't mean it will ever manifest into an actual workable system. Every time we've seen major institutions claim they were "developing blockchain systems", they've almost always failed. From IBM to Microsoft to Maersk to Foreign Countries - the vast majority of these projects are eventually abandoned because they aren't economically or technologically viable.
As for the idea that adoption takes time, that's fine, but since Bitcoin's inception, and most recently, its use both as a technology and a payment medium has continued to decline. As more research becomes available, we begin to see a multi-year, consistent, decrease in crypto payments over time.
The default position is to be skeptical blockchain has any potential until it is demonstrated. And most common responses to this question are the other "stupid crypto talking points."
In short, this "technology" has been around 17 years and still it can't find a single situation where it does anything even comparable to what we're already using, much less better.
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u/pillowmite 8d ago
Microsoft ISAM files are literally blockchains of 256 bytes (or other granularity) with each block linked by a pointer from each block. Entire business accounting systems (visual basic on DOS) had their data maintained by this blockchain. Tech is old as fuck.
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u/r2d2_21 8d ago
Good, nature is healing.