For this episode we have a “who’s who” of Crypto Critics who have assembled in Twitter Spaces, hosted by author Jake Donoghue, of “Crypto Confidential.” Jake put together a team of prominent people to discuss the current state of the industry, including myself, former SEC cybercrime head, John Reed Stark, journalist David Gerard, tech entrepreneur Dave Troy, senior policy analyst Mark Hays and others. We have a casual conversation about what’s going on in the industry and take some questions.
I apologize for the beginning and ending being cut off – I started recording when I came in and somehow the recording stopped at around the 2 hour mark, but we have almost the entire conversation archived.
Hope you enjoy!
Regarding my counter-argument to the crypto-shitcoin-shilling troll who appeared in the podcast, let me address that… her claim was that ‘blockchain is mainstream’ and IBM is using it. This is a phony narrative that crypto people keep spreading. Here’s the truth on that:
For those wondering whether her claim that “IBM is using blockchain” is legit, no it’s not. Their primary IBM blockchain project that was hyped by crypto bros — still to this day, was a prominent partnership with shipping company Maersk. While the web page promoting the venture still sits online and is cited every day as a “crypto success story” in reality it was cancelled. See: https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2022/11/29/maersk-and-ibm-to-discontinue-tradelens
Other so-called “blockchain” projects, such as IBM’s “hyperledger” are not actually blockchain – IBM has just borrowed that name and registered their own trademark: “IBM Blockchain®” When you examine what IBM calls “blockchain” it looks nothing like crypto’s version.
IBM’s version is centralized; it’s not permissionless; it’s not public, and there’s no evidence it’s “immutable” in the same manner as crypto blockchain. It’s just a marketing ploy to take advantage of the crypto/blockchain fad.
So if you ask somebody, “What makes blockchain, blockchain?” They’ll give you a list of answers that basically negate whatever IBM is claiming is blockchain, as being anything that resembles what crypto/blockchain people call “blockchain.”
Words mean things. If just labeling something “blockchain” without actually checking to see if it resembles the conventionally-known tech is ok, then we no longer have the ability convey legitimate ideas.
But more importantly, there’s insufficient evidence that any mission-critical apps are using the tech. There’s lots of name-dropping but nothing indicating this is anything more than prototypical. The reason for this is because we know, by design. blockchain is an inferior database system, hamstrung from its birth, abandoned decades ago by real engineers. I prove this in my documentary (see www.BlockchainII.com).