Hidangan Lauk yang Praktis dan Sehat, Inilah Resep & Cara Membuat Pepes Ayam: Pереѕ mеruраkаn masakan khas dаеrаh ѕundа. Rеѕер ререѕ ayam уаng kami ѕаjіkаn іnі bisa menjadi hidangan lauk yang praktis dаn ѕеhаt. Dіоlаh dеngаn cara dіkukuѕ mеnjаdіkаn hіdаngаn іnі sehat kаrеnа mіnіm penggunaan mіnуаk gоrеng. Penggunaan berbagai macam bumbu mеnjаdіkаn rеѕер ini ѕаngаt lеzаt dіѕаntар. Sebungkus pepes ayam раnаѕ, dіѕаjіkаn dеngаn ѕеріrіng nаѕі putih hаngаt, pasti аkаn mеmbаngkіtkаn ѕеlеrа bersantap keluarga anda.
Untuk hіtungаn hidangan ѕеtіар hаrі, rеѕер ререѕ ayam mеmbutuhkаn wаktu mеmаѕаk уаng ѕеdіkіt lebih lаmа, 45 menit. Untuk itu, persiapkanlah hіdаngаn ini kеtіkа аndа benar-benar уаkіn mеmіlіkі waktu yang сukuр untuk mеngоlаhnуа. Untuk mеnѕіаѕаtі wаktu mаѕаk yang lebih ѕіngkаt, ауаm bisa аndа роtоng lеbіh kecil-kecil ѕеhіnggа akan lebih сераt matang ѕааt dіkukuѕ.
We would like to start by wishing everyone a very merry Christmas and happy New Year. 2018 was an eventful year for all of us, and thanks to our amazing global community, we have achieved a great deal. When we launched the project around this time last year, we couldn't have imagined achieving over 70,000 users, 20+ languages and so many active country ambassadors. Thank you all for your support, loyalty and help this year. We couldn’t have done it without you!
Xmas office hours
The MPG team has been working very hard over the last few weeks to complete the rebrand materials and are all looking forward to a break over the holiday season. The office will be closed from the 24th December until the 7th January, according to local custom in the Netherlands, so today is effectively our last working day. There will be a skeleton staff on during the holiday period and we will deal with emergencies, but our response time may be slower than usual. Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Rebrand progress
Some of our websites have gone live, but note that final corrections and translations are still happening. You may of course have a look at the websites as it gives you a good idea of the look and feel we are trying to achieve as a group.
The name change of the company from Dominium B.V. to Max Property Group B.V. and the transfer of ownership of all underlying companies has nearly completed too, so we are ready for 2019!
Last chance for MPG bonuses
We would like to close of the last newsletter of the year with a friendly reminder that the bonus period for MPG tokens will end tomorrow. Today is the last day to claim a 10% bonus on MPG purchased from the platform. From the 22/12/2018 until the end of the year the price for MPG will be set at €10.00 and from the new year onwards, will be subject to the full platform price of €0.25.
Best regards, The MPG Team
Do not forget to follow Max Property Group for the latest updates
Tax laws are different for each country, but in general, if you had purchased $10,000 worth of Bitcoin - or any combination of cryptocurrencies - at the start of 2018... your investment would have declined in value by 70-90% leaving you with a crypto portfolio with a value of $3000 to $1000.
That would entitle you to claim $7000 to $9000 in capital losses, which would be deducted from the taxable earnings from other sources...
Each of the services above offers a different way to import your trading history from a range of exchanges - and once you have imported your data, careful review is required to update and categorize deposits and withdrawals from your trading accounts.
Personally, I've used Cointracking.co to create and submit my tax reports for 2015, 2016 and 2017 - and now it's time to get everything ready for 2018 tax returns.
We are not tax consultants, but we may be able to help you with the software:
Be sure to stop by the DISCORD chat group if you have any questions about usingCointracking.co and I'll be happy to help as much as I can. We also have a number of members with experience using Bitcoin.tax - so let us pool our experience and help each other out!
On December 20th 2018, two United States congressman introduced a bill to the House of Representatives which wants to disregard digital assets as being defined as securities.
Representatives Warren Davidson (R) and Darren Soto (D) introduced the "Token Taxonomy Act of 2018" which seeks to exclude digital currencies being classified as securities. In order to do this, Reps. Davidson and Soto ask that Congress:
"...amend the Securities Act of 1933 and the SecuritiesExchange Act of 1934 to exclude digital tokens from the definition of a security, to direct the Securities andExchange Commission to enact certain regulatory changes regarding digital units secured through publickey cryptography, to adjust taxation of virtual currencies held in individual retirement accounts, to create a tax exemption for exchanges of one virtual currency for another, to create a de minimis exemption from taxation for gains realized from the sale or exchange of virtual currency for other than cash, and for other purposes."
The document goes on to outline that the Secretary of the Treasury must issue a set of regulations providing detailed information for returns on transactions in which gain or loss is accepted on digital currencies.
Rep. Davidson further revealed plans to introduce new legislation in which a new "asset class" was created for cryptocurrencies and digital assets at the beginning of December. Davidson explained how this new law would:
"prevent them (cryptocurrencies) from being classified as securities, but would also allow the federal government to regulate initial coin offerings more effectively."
The bill is a follow-up to a Congressional table held by Davidson earlier in the year in which 45 representatives from Wall Street firms and companies built on cryptocurrency told explained to lawmakers that the lack of regulatory clarity for ICOs and digital currencies, with some arguing that regulations were simply "outdated."
Should this bill be accepted it would mark a huge turn in the regulation, classification and taxation of cryptocurrencies and digital assets in the United States.
The Bitcoin industry has allowed wealthy individuals to do some very unusual things. In most cases however, those developments will not make any media headlines. The literal fiat currency airdrop executed by Wong Ching Kit, a Bitcoin millionaire, will raise a lot of questions. It may be a positive sign for the struggling industry as well.
A Fiat Currency Airdrop to Promote Bitcoin
Those who invested in Bitcoin at a very early stage have made millions over and over again over the past few years. Especially if they managed to hold onto their BTC holdings until the all-time high of $19,500 was reached in late 2017. Whether or not Wong Ching Kit sold his holdings prior to that date will always remain in question. The end result is how this 24-year-old is a Bitcoin millionaire residing in Hong Kong.
Over the years, he has amassed a significant portfolio and associated value accordingly. During these troublesome times for Bitcoin and other currencies, he decided to airdrop some money in the real world. Although airdrops are nothing new in the world of cryptocurrencies, they usually involve digital tokens and assets. For Wong Ching Kit, he decided to distribute over 100 million Hong Kong Dollar this week. That is worth at least $13m, which was given away to random people.
Chinese 24 year old Bitcoin Millionaire Wong ching kit 黄鉦杰 AKA bi shao ye 币少爷 (Mr coin ) throws 100’s of millions of HKD from the roof top. He said “he feels as if he is god and he is responsible to teach the world about bitcoin.” Is this a sign of a bullrun incoming or ?! pic.twitter.com/IfgKykB0ME
— Mia Tam (@_blockandchain_) December 16, 2018
To make this cash airdrop successful, Wong Ching Kit decided to throw the money off a rooftop in Hong Kong. During this event, he also proclaimed to “feel like a god” and “being responsible for teaching the world about Bitcoin”. Two very serious claims, although it seems the latter one may be interpreted in many different ways. Unfortunately, he was also later arrested when he was heading back in his Lamborghini. Police arrested him for causing a disorder in a public place.
The main question is what this person aims to achieve by giving away millions of HKD for no apparent reason. It can be seen as a sign of how investing in Bitcoin will always be a good option to make money down the line. One could also say his youthful age simply got the best of his common sense and he acted on a whim.
Various images of the stash of money being dropped from the sky have surfaced on Twitter ever since. It is something that makes many people wishful they were part of it. A cash airdrop doesn’t happen all that often, especially not for such large amounts. Even so, this person can seemingly pare the money without losing sleep over it. Giving something back to the rest of the world is a noble gesture, though one that will always be criticized.
For the Bitcoin industry, this may not necessarily be the signal most people are looking for. There will always be those who claim this person should just reinvest the money and keep the price afloat. Even so, people are entitled to use their money as they see fit. If they want to make it rain Hong Kong Dollars, that is their prerogative to do at any given time. A very remarkable airdrop first and foremost and one that will be remembered for some time to come.
Almost 30% of all cryptos Binance and Poloniex are shaping up into blast off bottom formations!
Hi
Our Crypto Moon Launch has been delayed many times - Is this finally the countdown that will end with a successful blast off?? The chart patterns tell all, to those who can read them.
After a voting session called “The future of HT is up to you—Vote On HT Buybacks” hosted by Top 5 cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global, the exchange announced the results which lead to HT token burn starting Q1 2019.
Huobi Token holders expressed their opinion and selected the Huobi Tokens to be burned rather than to be continued to be airdropped to HT holders.
The Numbers
The voting period was live from 15:00 on December 3, 2018, to 15:00 on December 6, 201. A total of 72,079,205 votes were cast. 19.01% of the votes were for airdropping and 80.99% for burning.
The voting had one rule, “Whichever plan earns more than 50% of all the votes will be adopted”. The voting result is as follows: bought back Huobi Tokens will be burned in the future.
Starting Q1 2019
According to the official announcement, since the repurchase work for this quarter (the fourth quarter of 2018) has been completed, HT that have been bought back in this quarter will still be airdropped to users, which will be the last time to process repurchased HT by airdropping.
From the first quarter of 2019 (including the first quarter), repurchased HT will be burned. The specific plan in the first quarter of 2019 will be noticed via announcement here.
Why Burn Cryptocurrencies?
The main reason for burning a cryptocurrency is to increase the value of the other tokens that are in circulation.
Many cryptocurrencies have a finite total number that can exist and therefore, assuming the demand for the token remains the same, the value should theoretically go up if there are less in circulation.
This idea stems from the notion that there are fewer tokens to satisfy the overall demand for that particular cryptocurrency making the one that does exist more desirable and therefore valuable. An increase in the demand for a crypto asset can be noted by a consistent rise in the price of that particular token combined with growing volume.
About Huobi
Huobi exchange 24 hours trading volume is $457,595,830.29 (131,291.59 BTC). This exchange supports 162 cryptocurrencies and 367 market trading pairs.
Huobi Global was founded in 2013 when the founding members foresaw the great potential of the blockchain industry to revolutionize the future of the global financial system.
Soon, Huobi was founded with a mission to both make the financial industry more efficient and to make wealth more accessible to everyone.
The mission is to dedicated to providing safe, professional, trustworthy, and world-class services to its global clients making us the world-leading cryptocurrency financial services group over 130 countries.
The fact that ERC20 is nowadays the most widely used standard for smart contracts is a blessing in disguise. It allows the economy of tokens on the Ethereum blockchain to run fairly smoothly and enables many cross-contract behavior. But in most of the analyses that I have seen, there is a definite overconfidence in the standard.
If you read the definition of the ERC20 standard you will find something well written and quite straight forward. But you will most likely also overlook one small detail that can make the world of difference in analyzing some contracts. It is in the relationship between the transfer() and transferFrom() methods and the Transfer() event. Take a look at this transaction for example.
Tools like Etherscan consider that there were 1000 tokens transferred by this message call. But upon closer inspection the method is called “MassNotify”. It doesn’t sound like a transfer to me. So what happened there? Why does it seem that 1000 tokens were issued when it is not the case?
The answer lies in this little detail that is easily overlooked: Transfer() must be triggered by token transfers, but it could be triggered for other reasons too! The wording of the standard is the following:
MUST trigger when tokens are transferred, including zero value transfers.
In the contract above what is called “virtual tokens” are issued at will and accounts are “notified” about it using the Transfer() event. That means that they are entered in a list of accounts that may transfer up to 10 tokens, provided it does not make the general supply reach the fixed limit. But until they do so, nothing in the contract ensures that they do have a token to spend. Such virtual tokens could be generated ad infinitum and completely throw off analyses of ERC20 tokens. The issue here in the etherscan analysis is that they used the Transfer() event log to get the information, which at the present state of the standard is not reliable.
You could suggest that we only count transfer() and transferFrom() message calls, but that would be a mistake again. Indeed nothing in the ERC20 standard currently suggests that these methods can only be called externally, by a message call. One could be called internally, inside another method. For example one could have an ERC20 contract with a shuffleAccounts(n)method, making n random calls to transferFrom(). That would appear in the Transfer() logs but not be seen by the method described above.
I suggest that any analysis of ERC20 token activity be preceded by a review of the contract’s code generating a list of method calls to be cross referenced with. As for virtual tokens, there is no way to know the individual state of accounts before they make their first use of their virtual tokens. I propose that in this case, counts should be capped by the total supply.
We are less than a week away from the launch of our synthetic asset platform that will support five fiat assets, eventually expanding to potentially hundreds.
This decision represents a refinement of the project’s purpose and was reached after extensive consultation with key members of our community.
With the upcoming launch of Synths — or what we previously called ‘multicurrency nomins’ — in the next few weeks, the Synthetix brand more accurately reflects what we see as the primary function of our system: enabling the creation of on-chain synthetic assets. This includes stablecoins pegged to the price of fiat currencies, as well as dollars pegged to the price of metals and indices.
Synths are backed by cryptoassets, meaning the collateral is resistant to censorship and seizure.
Here are the new names for the various aspects of our system:
Throughout the year, our team has been looking for an opportunity to improve upon Havven. We’ve been interested in finding a suite of brand elements with more cohesion, in which the relationships between each different part of the system was more intuitive. Our dual-token stability solution solves a critical issue in the ecosystem, and thus newcomers to our project will benefit from the various links between its elements being as clear as possible. This will be even more crucial when we are live on multiple blockchains, including EOSIO.
Why choose Synthetix?
While Havven was previously enabling the creation of a single stablecoin, nUSD, the new ‘multicurrency’ release provides so much more than just a stablecoin. Our collateral token, SNX, can now back a wide variety of synthetic assets, including dollars pegged to the price of fiat currencies, precious metals, indices, and even other cryptocurrencies. ‘Synthetix’ clearly and memorably expresses the function of the system in a way that ‘Havven’ did and could not.
What happens now?
We have already begun the process of reaching out to the most popular platforms, websites, and interfaces in the ecosystem, including CoinMarketCap, exchanges, and wallets, to inform them of the changes. We have asked them to switch over to Synthetix names and icons on Monday December 3, at 10:00am (UTC). Please give us up to 7 days for these changes to be implemented. If they are not yet carried out by then, please get in touch with us via email or Discord so we can reach out again to those platforms. There are no contract address changes, so nothing should occur to your tokens except for a name change.
La Asociación Blockchain México, la primera institución de
esta tecnología en el país, estará conformada por Bitso, Volabit, BIVA, GBM,
Lvna Capital, ConsenSys y Exponent Capital.
“Esta tecnología tiene el objetivo de crear procedimientos
más transparentes, seguros y eficientes”, afirmó Felipe Vallejo, presidente
provisional de la Asociación Blockhain México.
Esta unión de organizaciones quiere educar a los ciudadanos
en el uso de esta tecnología cuyas aplicaciones potenciales aún se desconocen.
Los integrantes también quieren asegurarse de que, antes de
que se vuelva una herramienta masiva, se fijen unos estándares para un uso
seguro y de calidad. Esto, con la intención de evitar malas prácticas a través
del blockchain, como lavado de dinero.
“Las aplicaciones actuales del blockchain van desde la
disminución de los costos de envío de remesas y pagos internacionales, hasta la
democratización del sistema financiero”, explicaba el fundador de Exponent
Capital, Mouses Cassab.
Inspiración y crecimiento
La Asociación Blockchain México se inspira en asociaciones
que ya existen en otros países. Por ejemplo, el Congressional Blockchain
Caucus, en Estados Unidos; el Cripto Valley, en Suiza, y e-Estonia.
Aunque la Asociación nace con siete integrantes, está
abierta a cualquier entidad y organización que se quiera sumar. Esto es porque
la tecnología blockchain se puede aplicar en todas las industrias.
“Tenemos ganas de generar un espacio de discusión y política
publica. Queremos que todos puedan exponer sus ideas”, dijo la directora de
BIVA, María Ariza.
¿Qué es el
blockchain?
La tecnología blockchain funciona como un documento de
Google o Google Doc.
Se trata de una cadena de información en la que todos los
integrantes tienen acceso a los datos que se registran en el documento en la
nube.
Esto permite que nadie quede ajeno de cualquier cambio que
se produce en el proceso o acto registrado. Es más, no se puede introducir
ningún cambio en los datos sin la autorización de todos los miembros de la
cadena.
Un ejemplo sería el proceso de producción de zapatos. Con el
blockchain, los compradores podrían ver todo el historial del proceso de
producción de unas botas y comprobar que están hechas de piel sintética.
¿Qué se gana con esto? Confianza sin necesidad de que la
intervención de un tercero, una agencia de control de calidad de productos, por
ejemplo.
Esto es un cambio de lógica, porque hasta el momento, cuanto
más cerradas eran las entidades, un banco, por ejemplo, más seguras eran.
En blockchain, la seguridad la garantiza la apertura de los
datos a los ciudadanos.
Aktor terkenal yang juga mantan gubernur California Arnold Schwarzenegger menghebohkan jagad sosial media setelah mengunggah foto dirinya yang sedang tidur di jalan di bawah patung perunggu dirinya di luar hotel, dan menulis dengan sedih, 'How times changed' ("Bagaimana waktu berubah").
Melalui foto tersebut, dia menyampaikan sebuah pesan bahwa penghormatan orang terhadap Anda berubah seiring berjalannya waktu.
Seperti dilansir Acek Talaud alasan dia menuliskan kalimat tersebut bukan karena dia tua, tapi karena ketika dia jadi gubernur California meresmikan hotel tersebut dengan patung perunggu dirinya di depan hotel tersebut. Pihak hotel menyampaikan ke Arnold "Setiap saat Anda boleh datang dan ada kamar untuk Anda yang selalu tersedia". Namun ketika Arnold sudah tidak menjabat gubernur lagi dan datang ke hotel tersebut, pihak hotel menolaknya dengan alasan bahwa kamar hotel sudah penuh.
Dia lalu membawa kantong tidur dan tidur di bawah patung dirinya dan berharap orang bisa mengambil pelajaran dari kejadian tersebut.
Arnold dengan kekayaannya bisa membeli hotel yang dia inginkan, tapi dia ingin menyampaikan pesan kepada orang-orang melalui tindakannya.
Dia memposting foto tersebut di media sosial, dia menyampaikan sebuah pesan bahwa ketika dia berada dalam posisi yang kuat, semua orang termasuk manajemen hotel memuji dia, namun saat dia kehilangan posisinya sekarang, mereka dengan mudah melupakan janji mereka kepadanya.
'How times changed'
Ya waktu terus berubah.
Jangan percaya pada semua atribut duniawi: jabatan anda, harta benda anda, atau kekuasaan atau kecerdasaan anda. Semua itu tidak ada yang abadi.
The end of the year is approaching and so is the release of TokenGen 4.0. With a little over a month left until 2019, we thought we’d share with you what the upcoming TokenGen update will feature.
TokenGen 4.0 Features
With this update, we are not looking into bringing many new features but rather, a few big ones. The planned features are:
Landing Page – this is the crown jewel of the 4.0 update as it will bring another incredible edge to a tool that is already way ahead of the competition. The Landing Page feature will basically allow TokenGen projects to create landing pages where they can direct their investors. Once the token generation event begins, people will be able to participate directly from the landing page, as opposed to sending ETH to an address. Basically, we intend to provide a user interface that will ease the participation in TGEs created via TokenGen.
Profile page – we intend to add a dedicated Profile page where users will be able to add/edit certain details, receive notifications from TokenGen regarding projects, and a few other features.
Public Projects Directory – as mentioned a few times already, we will be adding a Public Projects Directory that will list all public projects created using TokenGen. Basically, it will be a TGE listings page.
More guides – for now, 3 new guides will be added to the Guides page.
Improved Smart Contract Management interface – we intend to make the entire feature much more user-friendly by eliminating unnecessary info and displaying more understandable labels for all of the contract variables.
Other Features We Are Looking Into
These are not a sure thing coming with the 4.0 version, but we are looking into them for their viability. Most probably some, or all, of these will come with future updates.
KYC – we want to integrate TokenGen with a third-party KYC provider so users can easily perform this integral part of modern ICOs.
TGE Rating – we want the Public Projects Directory to also include ratings of the projects as provided by ICObench, for example.
Alternative means of payment – since we’ve received several reports from TokenGen users about the fact that, payment can be made only in Fabric Tokens, and not ETH or fiat, we are looking into ways of implementing alternate means of payment while still keeping FT as the core of the payment process.
Summary
Until TokenGen 4.0, we don’t have any other planned updates for the tool. We recently reported on TokenGen’s performance since June this year and received a lot of positive feedback. In all honesty, we are also extremely happy with the development progress of TokenGen – keep in mind that it’s been just 6 months since we released the first fully functional version for public use and bears are lurking everywhere around the crypto market. Imagine how much better it will be once the bulls take over again and blockchain tech adoption skyrockets once more.
The hype around blockchain is massive. To hear the blockchain hype train tell it, blockchain will now:
Solve income inequality
Make all data secure forever
Make everything much more efficient and trustless
Save dying babies
What the heck is a blockchain, anyway? And can it really do all these things? Can blockchain bring something amazing to industries as diverse as health care, finance, supply chain management and music rights?
And doesn’t being for Bitcoin mean that you’re pro-blockchain? How can you be for Bitcoin but say anything bad about the technology behind it?
In this article, I seek to answer a lot of these questions by looking at what a blockchain is and more importantly, what it’s not.
What is a blockchain?
To examine some of these claims, we have to define what a blockchain is and herein lies a lot of the confusion. Many companies use the word “blockchain” to mean some sort of magical device by which all their data will never be wrong. Such a device, of course, does not exist, at least when the real world is involved.
So what is a blockchain? Technically speaking, a blockchain is a linked list of blocks and a block is a group of ordered transactions. If you didn’t understand the last sentence, you can think of a blockchain as a subset of a database, with a few additional properties.
The main thing distinguishing a blockchain from a normal database is that there are specific rules about how to put data into the database. That is, it cannot conflict with some other data that’s already in the database (consistent), it’s append-only (immutable), and the data itself is locked to an owner (ownable), it’s replicable and available. Finally, everyone agrees on what the state of the things in the database are (canonical) without a central party (decentralized).
It is this last point that really is the holy grail of blockchain. Decentralization is very attractive because it implies there is no single point of failure. That is, no single authority will be able to take away your asset or change “history” to suit their needs. This immutable audit trail where you don’t have to trust anyone is the benefit that everyone that’s playing with this technology is looking for. This benefit, however, come at a great cost.
The Cost of Blockchains
The immutable audit trail uncontrolled by any single party is certainly useful, but there are many costs to create such a system. Let’s examine some of the issues.
Development is stricter and slower
Creating a provably consistent system is not an easy task. A small bug could corrupt the entire database or cause some databases to be different than other ones. Of course, a corrupted or split database no longer has any consistency guarantees. Furthermore, all such systems have to be designed from the outset to be consistent. There is no “move fast and break things” in a blockchain. If you break things, you lose consistency and the blockchain becomes corrupted and worthless.
You may be thinking, why can’t you just fix the database or start over and move on? That would be easy enough to do in a centralized system, but this is very difficult in a decentralized one. You need consensus, or the agreement of all players in the system, in order to change the database. The blockchain has to be a public resource that’s not under the control of a single entity (decentralized, remember?), or the entire effort is a very expensive way to create a slow, centralized database.
Incentive structures are difficult to design
Adding the right incentive structures and making sure that all actors in the system cannot abuse or corrupt the database is likewise a large consideration. A blockchain may be consistent, but that’s not very useful if it’s got a lot of frivolous, useless data in it because the costs of putting data into it are very low. Neither is a consistent blockchain useful if it has almost no data because the costs of putting data into it are very high.
What gives the data finality? How can you ensure that the rewards are aligned with the network goals? Why do nodes keep or update the data and what makes them choose one piece of data over another when they are in conflict? These are all incentive questions that need good answers and they need to be aligned not just at the beginning but at all points in the future as technology and companies change, otherwise the blockchain is not useful.
Again, you may be wondering why you can’t “fix” some broken incentive. Once again, this is easy in a centralized system, but in a decentralized one, you simply cannot change anything without consensus. There’s no “fixing” anything unless there’s agreement from everyone.
Maintenance is very costly
A traditional centralized database only needs to be written to once. A blockchain needs to be written to thousands of times. A traditional centralized database needs to only checks the data once. A blockchain needs to check the data thousands of times. A traditional centralized database needs to transmit the data for storage only once. A blockchain needs to transmit the data thousands of times.
The costs of maintaining a blockchain are orders of magnitude higher and the cost needs to be justified by utility. Most applications looking for some of the properties stated earlier like consistency and reliability can get such things for a whole lot cheaper utilizing integrity checks, receipts and backups.
Users are sovereign
This can be really good as companies don’t like the liability of having user data in the first place. This can be bad, however, if the user is “misbehaving”. There’s no way to kick out the user that’s spamming your blockchain with frivolous data or has figured out a way to profit in some fashion that causes other users lots of inconvenience. This is related to the above observation that incentive structures have to be designed really, really well in that a user that figures out an exploit is not likely to give that up, especially if there’s profit for the user.
You may be thinking that you can simply refuse service to malicious users, which would be very easy to do in a centralized service. However, unlike a centralized service, refusing service is difficult because no single entity has the authority to kick anyone out. The blockchain has to be impartial and enforce the rules defined by the software. If the rules are insufficient to deter bad behavior, you’re out of luck. There is no “spirit” of the law here. You simply have to deal with malicious or misbehaving actors, possibly for a very long time.
All upgrades are voluntary
A forced upgrade is not an option. The other players on the network have no obligation to change to your software. If they did, such a system would be much easier, faster and cheaper to build as a centralized system. The point of a blockchain is that it’s not under the control of a single entity and this is violated with a forced upgrade.
Instead, all upgrades have to be backwards-compatible. This is obviously quite difficult, especially if you want to add new features and even harder when thinking from a testing perspective. Each version of the software adds a lot to the test matrix and lengthens the time to release.
Again, if this were a centralized system, this would be very easy to correct by no longer servicing older systems. You cannot do this, however in a decentralized system as you cannot force anyone to do anything.
Scaling is really hard
Finally, scaling is at least several orders of magnitude harder than in a traditional centralized system. The reason is obvious. The same data has to live in hundreds or thousands of places than in a single place. The overhead of transmission, verification and storage is enormous as every single copy of the database must pay them instead of those costs being paid just once in a traditional, centralized database.
You can, of course, reduce the burden by reducing the number of nodes. But then at that point, why do you need a decentralized system at all? Why not just make a centralized database if scaling costs are the main concern?
Centralization is a lot easier
If you notice a theme, it’s that decentralized systems are very difficult to work with, expensive to maintain, hard to upgrade and a pain to scale. A centralized database is much faster, less expensive, easier to maintain and easier to upgrade than a blockchain. So why do people keep using the word blockchain as if it’s some panacea for all their problems?
First, a lot of these industries that are being sold on blockchain are really overdue for IT infrastructure upgrades. Health care has notoriously terrible software. Financial settlement is still running on software from the 70’s. Supply chain management software is both difficult to use and hard to install. Most companies in these industries resist upgrading because of the risk involved. There are lots of infrastructure upgrades that cost hundreds of millions and end up being rolled back anyway. Blockchain is a way to sell these IT infrastructure upgrades and make them a bit more appetizing.
Second, blockchain is a way to look like you’re on the leading edge of technology. Like it or not, the word “blockchain” has taken on a life of its own. Very few people actually understand what it is, but want to appear hip so use these words as a way to sound more intelligent. Just like “cloud” means someone else’s computer and “AI” means a tweaked algorithm, “blockchain” in this context means a slow, expensive database.
Third, people really don’t like government control of certain industries and want a different adjudication mechanism than the legal framework which is often slow and expensive. To them, “blockchain” is really just a way to get rid of the heavy apparatus of government regulation. This is overselling what blockchain can do. Blockchain doesn’t magically take away human conflict.
The result is a lot of people that are hyped up on the promises without actually understanding the abilities or costs. What’s worse, the actual technical details and costs are abstracted away from a lot of VCs and executives in such a way as to obscure what a blockchain can and can’t do. Everyone under them become afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes and we have the situation that we have now.
So what is blockchain good for?
We’ve already established that a blockchain is very expensive relative to centralized databases. So the only reason you should be using a blockchain is to decentralize. That is, remove the single point of failure or control.
This naturally means that the software or database must not change things around often, if at all. There should be little upside to upgrading and much downside to screwing up or changing the rules.
Most industries are not like this. Most industries require new features or upgrades and the freedom to change and expand as necessary. Given that blockchains are hard to upgrade, hard to change and hard to scale, most industries don’t have much use for a blockchain.
The one exception we’ve found is money. Unlike most industrial use cases, money is better if it doesn’t change. Immutability and difficulty in changing the rules is a positive for money and not a detriment. This is why blockchain is the right tool for the job when it comes to Bitcoin.
What’s clear is that a lot of companies looking to use the blockchain are not really wanting a blockchain at all, but rather IT upgrades to their particular industry. This is all well and good, but using the word “blockchain” to get there is dishonest and overselling its capability.
Conclusion
Blockchain is a popular term these days and unfortunately, this “blockchain not Bitcoin” meme won’t die. If you are a centralized service, a blockchain doesn’t get you anything that you can’t do a thousand times cheaper with a centralized database. If you are a decentralized service, then you’re probably fooling yourself and not thinking about the single points of failure that exist in your system. There wouldn’t be a “you” at all in a truly decentralized service.
Biggest joke in this entire article
Back in the early 2000’s, there was a push by a lot of executives in the tech industry to use Java and XML. Despite these two things being tools and not actual products, many executives insisted on their use, no matter how poor the fit was to what their engineers were trying to achieve. Blockchain is very much like that. Focus on the problems you’re solving and the tools will make themselves readily apparent. Focus on tools that you want to use and you’ll end up making Rube Goldberg machines that don’t do anything particularly well.
In a sense, current conceptions of blockchain are trying to do the impossible. They want the security of a decentralized system with the control of a centralized one. The desire is the best of both worlds, but what they end up getting is the worst of both worlds. You get the costs and difficulty of a decentralized system with the failure modes of a centralized one.
Blockchain is used way too much as a buzzword to sell a lot of useless snake oil. The faster we get rid of the hype, the better off long-term we’ll all be.
