Blockchain isn't the answer

I'm ironically writing this on Steemit to bring attention to the very lucrative phenomena of the so-called "distributed applications", the needless blockchain centric funding ecosystem, and the tokenization of what already exists.

Why Bitcoin and the technology behind it?

(bitcoin.org)

Regardless of what you might have of heard, Bitcoin is the name of the first knowingly public implementation of a Peer-to-Peer Network (P2P) that utilizes a revolutionary concept known as Proof-of-Work (PoW). The technical aspects of the network itself are somewhat similar to BitTorrent technology, noting that participants are exchanging content data and metadata about themselves, and among themselves, regardless of bandwidth capabilities, user intent, client implementation, device or operating system. Bitcoin takes this concept of an amoral distribution system to create a network designed to convert a highly valued resource such as electricity, into a digital representation that is equal to or greater than the value of the conversion resource itself. This conversion process not only gives Bitcoin its aggregate value, but it's the same process that secures the network from fraud, attacks, and censorship, while simultaneously providing an incentive reward model for the network participants providing the resources required to execute the resource conversion process. It's a lot more complicated than that but these are the key things you should remember:

1. The resource cost to attack and takeover the Bitcoin network is more costly than it is to gracefully participate within the network.

2. The problem Bitcoin solves is called Double-Spend. The network itself acts as a record enforcement mechanism that prevents you from using coins that you've already relenquished to other network participants.

3. Network participants probably don't trust each other and don't need to trust each other.

Bitcoin is to Blockchain what CPU is to personal computing.

(pixabay.com)

It's not uncommon to see cryptographic buzzwords (pun intended) flying around the internet. People and self-proclaimed market alliances often promulgate vague terms that intrigue the interests of outsiders as a way of achieving their overall money making goals. Internet 2.0 when AJAX arrived (and again when a college of corporations tried to make a separate internet for business), Cloud when CPanel was no longer hip, Responsive when screen size recognition switched from JavaScript to Cascading Style Sheets. We are now welcoming Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology because Bitcoin is antithetical to the primary goals of the profit through control buzzword creators.

Organizations are constantly trying to separate the core technology of Bitcoin from Bitcoin without much success. Some are trying to do so naively, while others have a far more nefarious, and lucrative agenda in mind. There are even competing development teams such as Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin Unlimited, and Bitcoin ABC, who are all trying to forcibly split the network for their own benefit. Everyone who's into bleeding edge technology is aware of the pie and they're all trying to get a slice by any means necessary. Unfortunately for them, they're going to learn the very hard, expensive, and unforgiving lesson that is failure when they finally realize that the PoW chain and Bitcoin cannot be separated due to the nature of its design. They must co-exist in the same way that a laptop or a desktop needs a CPU to operate in any meaningful capacity.

Skeptical networks, naive investors.

(pixabay.com)

I'm going to make a bold estimation based on my observations, conversations, and readings to state that 99.999% of all traditional and neo-investors and traders have virtually zero technical knowledge regarding what it is they're putting their money into. For them the innovation isn't what powers Bitcoin and it's competitors, the innovation is them being able to put in an amount they can't afford to lose, and then have it go 50x overnight. Because fuck you, fuck them, and most of all, fuck me. Right?

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Market Caps

(pixabay.com)

Do you know how the market cap of a cryptographic currency is calculated? It's more or less the dot product of *N-total *of coins produced and USD value per-coin. This sadly flawed method of calculation is basically what dominates the headlines of websites and even print news and magazines. Hypothetically speaking, if some project with 1-Trillion coins reaches the value of 1 USD per-coin, you better believe everyone and their grandma is going to hear about the new 1-Trillion dollar market cap of the coin that can't even be spent. Many coins don't even have a limit on how many cans can be produced...

Current Top Markets
(coinmarketcap)

1. BTC
   Available Supply: 16,439,687
   Market Cap: $40,068,449,125

2. ETH
   Available Supply: 93,186,718
   Market Cap: $20,765,728,239

3. XRP
   Available Supply: 38,291,387,790
   Market Cap: $8,320,412,236

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Apples and Oranges

(pixabay.com)

When a person describes a concept to you, you actually learn a lot more about the person describing the concept, and often more so than the concept itself. I bring this up because it's quite concerning when I see people comparing XMR (Monero), which is a highly specialized privacy coin, with something such as NMC (Namecoin). Both coins have privacy in mind, but XMR is meant to co-exist or possibly replace Bitcoin, and the other is designed with future hopes of being the reward system for the potential successor to the Domain Name System (DNS). If you don't quite understand what that means and why that's a problem, I recommend that you reduce your current investment risks by 100%.

Technically speaking, you can compare anything. A cow to a horse, cheese and ice cream, cars vs bikes, warm weather or cold weather. We as human beings must compare so that we can help identify how we feel about ourselves and our own ideas to better reason with the world external to but not separate from us. With that said, it's easier to compare and ultimately reason with things in the same or similar category because this allows us to better quantify attributes and characteristics that would otherwise be incredibly difficult to reason with. You can't really compare ETH (Ethereum) to Bitcoin because one was designed for personal commerce and the other was designed as a reward system for a concept called DAPPS (distributed applications). I'm not saying people won't make these silly comparisons, or that many will agree, or even consider my argumentation as a valid. I'm simply just trying to point out that many of these coins, if ever capable of delivering on their technological aspirations, are often in a class of their own.

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Proof-of-Stake Is Not A Date

(king-cart.com)

I'll keep this section as brief as possible because I honestly haven't taken the time to look at all the N-thousand forks and implementations proclaiming to be a working, valid, non-PoW blockchain. I imagine you're going to Tweet the fuck out of me (@wheelchairjuice) with your Whitepaper.pdf and tell me about my lack of eye opening wisdom. Throw me over a fucking bridge, ass hole. I understand that in the future there could potentially be a working chain that is both better than PoW and is one day preferred over Bitcoin and possibly even integrated into Bitcoin. I don't pretend to know the future, so I cannot also pretend to deny that possibility, however unlikely. However, what I can say with absolute certainty, plain and simple, PoW was and is the groundbreaking technology.

I know it's a shocker for the uninitiated but until another system is invented and more importantly, until another system is being used more than Bitcoin, there is nothing better than PoW and anything other is so experimental, I would argue that it couldn't even be classified as a blockchain technology. Blockchain and more specifically Bitcoin as we know it, can only be PoW until further developments show the world otherwise. This will be a technical progression and not an emotional market making decision, so if your reasoning is outside the realm of something that can be placed into the code itself, you might want to rethink your argument for or against these young and emergent technologies.

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Legal Laws and Actual Laws

(janetpope.org)

Many won't agree with my beliefs and understanding of Legalism and how it relates to non-Human Law. I for one am of the belief that Legalism is the human philosophy derived from spiritual law in attempt to distill the primitives of all existence into speakable and actionable precepts, maxims, and axioms. Don't feel bad if that didn't make any sense to you, it took my entire life to understand that myself. I just need you to understand that certain balances within ourselves, outside of ourselves, and beyond ourselves, can only ensure that all things out of bounds may only fall in bounds as a matter of absolute justice regardless of how we may feel about it or perceive it. There's no rules to this game but there are superseding laws and one of them isn't blind allegiance, nor def, nor mute, and certianly not unwise either in life, trade, or investment. Metaphorically speaking of course. I mean, you can certainly not be of physical sight and see more clearly than the individual blind to their own ignorance. There is no shortage in those who unknowingly handicap themselves, it's just amazing to see them do it with their life savings.

I've seen people double and triple-down on their investments (read gambling chips) because they read an article and declared it FUD without actually understanding the arguments made within the article. "Fuck the law, we going to the moon", and in the hearts and minds of those who can't wait to throw it all away, this is basically what's being said every time a project gets exposed for fraud and is scrutinized for the highly improbable technical claims about their non-existent product. This is basically a niche community bursting out into the mainstream and now even the publications are promoting front-page recklessness. What you now see are articles about college students putting everything they have into ETH (Ethereum) and not a single fucking question about risk, reward, technical, or financial understanding. Nope! Fuck that! We throwing college tuition in this bitch called Poloniex and let's get this lambocopter on blast! Started from the bottom, now we here now.

Let's go over some Human Law red flags that nobody bothers to talk about in the form of inquiry:

• Has one or more individuals associated with the development or management of a project ever been convicted of a financial crime?

• Has one or more individuals associated with the development or management of a project ever started a similar project, enriched themselves, and then exited?

• Has one or more individuals associated with the development or management of a project previously or currently under criminal investigation?

• Has one or more individuals associated with the development or management of a project ever make a claim or a statement in an attempt to absolve themselves of their legal responsibilities?

Now let's go over some Actual Laws:

• A device, system, or mechanism used to separate a fool from his money can only do so when fully utilized by the fool.

• He who doesn't read is no different from he who can't. (Do your fucking research)

• Unnecessary complexity is both the tool and the deception.

Maybe do the task of identifying more laws before you throw your money into these Rube Goldberg machines?

Initial Coin Offerings

(trollpasta.wikia.com)

This subject probably deserves a 100-chapter book but I'll try to keep this short and concise. Initial Coin Offerings are similar to Initial Public Offerings with the following exceptions,

• Absolutely zero financial regulation of any kind.

• Absolutely zero legal obligation to deliver a product

• Absolutely zero products need to be partially or fully built

• Absolutely zero investment or technical knowledge is required

• Absolutely zero returns to investors other than the self-issued coins

• After investors acquire their coins, it's a race to see who can dump their coins at the highest price on the first exchange to list it.

• A coin that isn't or won't be listed on an exchange, will never be bought during the ICO.

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Shit That Doesn't Need A Chain, But Does

Virtually anything that can be achieved without a blockchain, should be achieved without a blockchain. I'm not trolling and it's not a joke. Part of the reason why Bitcoin works is because it's designed to be exponentially more expensive than all of the previous work performed by the network. Unless you're a military or government contractor, I can't think of a situation where you or your business needs a solution that is designed to increase operational costs over time... I'm not a businessition though.

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Database To The Face

As time passes it become more apparent that many people and organizations just want decentralization as a service *(DaaS. You heard it here first you fucks) or they need to hire better DB Admins who know how to setup replication nodes. All these so-called blockchain solutions are just normal shit that use a highly expensive database. There's even chat applications that have had an ICO so they can build an expensive AOL Instant Messenger clone or a Twitter clone. Ask yourself, in terms of cost, is it cheaper and faster to develop and use an application based on BitTorrent and Tor technology, or is it cheaper and faster to build a pre-alpha version of the same software on the world's most expensive databases in the history of known human history? Show me where in your day-to-day life you've had a Double-Spend issue while talking to your friends. I'm all open if you want to show me via Twitter (@wheelchairjuice - Note that I only do DMs if you got nudes, and even then I don't open them).

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Dumps Like A Truck, Truck, Truck, Thighs Like What, What, What

Virtually all ICOs are launched on the ETH (Ethereum) blockchain because one of the first things you learn about the software is a introductory guide on how to create your own coin. Yep, you heard correctly. Get ready to rub two sticks together before shoving them up my ass, because there's funds to be burned, and we don't want to miss out on this perfect opportunity to get fuckin' wrecked.

(ethereum.org)

One thing you'll notice about many ICO teams is that they don't bother contacting traditional investors or venture capital firms because they would not only have to provide a product, but they would also get rejected long before a physical meeting to discuss the details. One of the reasons why I pick on ETH (Ethereum) is because it's a platform used to build pump-and-dump schemes under the guise of "smart contracts". Apparently these contracts are so smart that they can only be used to issue assets during one of these ICO sales.

Latest ETH action

Distributed Applications

DAPPS are essentially an overly expensive web application that is hosted by the network participants and is so expensive to host anything useful, it'll be an additional 20-years before anyone knows if it will actually work. It probably won't take that long considering I haven't seen a single DAPP that isn't just a shittier version of a regular website, a Tor routed website, or just a plain ol' Desktop Application.

I hope you like playing very expensive games of chess. Some talented ass hole with the skill and know how, decided that the world needed a chess game on the blockchain...

(news.bitcoin.com)

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Smart Contract? Dumb Promise

Like all things Shitcoin, the marketing is several years ahead of the actual technology. Let's look at ETH (Ethereum) again for this instance.

• Unstoppable Applications (Censorship resistance)
• Always Running Applications (Application Servers with 100% Up Time)
• Free 3rd-party interference (External Attack Resistance)

Now let's enter into the now infamous The DAO situation. Without getting too deep into this shit storm let's establish what it is by using a few key descriptions.

• An unstoppable application
• A Smart Contract
• Built to enforce the concept that "Code is Law"

Now let's see how that turned out.

• Apparently "Code is Law" only when the ETH (Ethereum) team decides it is because the law stated that the person who ran recursive calls got to get some free coins.
• Smart Contracts are only as smart as their creators so we should prepare for some really dumb shit.
• I guess we need a new definition for 3rd-party interference because the ETH (Ethereum) team decided that the unstoppable application running on the network needed to be stopped and did so by reverting what was supposed to be an immutable ledger.

What if someone writes a smart contract that spams the network? How long before that unstoppable code gets stopped? Other than maybe some sort of an escrow contract, how would you use a smart contract in a real-world setting in today's world?

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We Need More Buzzwords

I hope you have an extra pair of sticks to rub together, because now we need to forget about DAPPs and go into ADAPPS. Because fuck you, fuck them, and more importantly, fuck me.

To the best of my ability, from what I can tell, it's just a marketing term used by privacy centric coins that want to have DAPP ICO pie slices. Forget about Tails, Tor, I2P, Freenet, BitTorrent, WebP2P.JS, and anything else that actually works. What we need is an expensive as fuck, possibly anonymous, DAPP. Regular DAPPs already don't work outside of maybe the gambling sector, but that's alright, we're going to take something that has very little proof of working outside of gambling, give it a new buzzword, and then bob's your uncle.

If anyone is up for the challenge, please create a DAPP that someone would use over any other alternative and please send the info to my Twitter (@wheelchairjuice). It can't be a gambling related DAPP either.

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Thanks for reading. - Wheelchair Juice PhD