Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin result in the concentration of wealth, not greater equality
With the value of bitcoin having fallen by about 70% since its peak late last year, the has now gone bust. More generally, cryptocurrencies have entered a not-so-cryptic apocalypse. The value of leading coins such as Ether, EOS, Litecoin and XRP have all fallen by over 80%, by 90%-99%, and the rest have been exposed as outright frauds. No one should be surprised by this: four out of five initial coin offerings (ICOs) were to begin with.
Faced with the public spectacle of a market bloodbath, boosters have fled to the last refuge of the crypto scoundrel: a defence of “blockchain,” the distributed-ledger software underpinning all cryptocurrencies. Blockchain has been heralded as a potential panacea for everything from poverty and famine to . In fact, it is the most overhyped – and least useful – technology in human history.
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Martin is interested in using a DWeb alternative to Google Docs, but worries about the energy use associated with blockchain
I recently read . As I am looking for an alternative to Google, Microsoft and the other big names, Graphite stood out. However, it uses blockchain, and one thing that I do not find encouraging is the amount of energy it consumes.
So my question is: from an energy point of view, is there much difference between cloud and blockchain?
The main aim of the decentralised web (DWeb) is to remove the power of centralised “gatekeepers” such as Facebook and Google, who hoover up the world’s data and monetise it by selling advertising. It reminds me of the original concept of the web, where every computer would be both a client and a server, sharing information on a more or less equal basis.
