Scusate, aggiungo in oggetto il titolo dell'articolo. Giacomo On 24/04/2019, Giacomo Tesio <giacomo@tesio.it> wrote:

Articolo interessante: sebbene cerchi diplomaticamente di non prendere posizione sottolinea alcune delle criticità più evidenti dei software basati sulla blockchain senza portare un singolo argomento a favore della tecnologia. Anche se non tratta gli enormi problemi teorici e tecnici, è più serio di tanti altri.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/technology/bitcoin-tulip-mania-internet.h...

When you talk to tech industry insiders about where Bitcoin is heading, two vastly different comparisons are inevitable: the tulip bulb and the internet.

Bitcoin’s critics say the digital tokens are like the tulip bulbs of 17th-century Holland. They generated a wild, speculative rush that quickly disappeared, leaving behind nothing but pretty flowers and wrecked bank accounts.

Bitcoin believers, on the other hand, want us to think about cryptocurrencies as if they were the internet: a broad technology category that took some time to reach its potential, even though expectations got ahead of reality in the early years. If that’s true, last year’s crash in Bitcoin prices was like the dot-com bust; a temporary setback before the big ideas come to fruition. [...]

Speculative transactions accounted for roughly 60 to 80 percent of all transactions on the blockchain, according to Chainalysis, a start-up that does analysis of the blockchain for big companies and governments. Most of those transactions are Bitcoins moving between cryptocurrency exchanges around the world. [...]

Many if not most Bitcoin advocates I’ve encountered will admit it doesn’t offer much of an improvement over traditional electronic methods of payment. In several ways, it’s worse. Paying with Bitcoin requires you to become a speculator on its volatile price for the time you are holding on to tokens and waiting to pay. [...]

The bigger problem facing Bitcoin is that the practical and legal uses have struggled to outpace illegal or clearly unethical activity.

The list of ways that Bitcoin has proved useful to criminals keeps growing, from the ransom payments on locked-up computer files — or even hostages — to illegal drug sales. [...]

Many venture capitalists have made bets on Ethereum and EOS, alternative cryptocurrency networks that can be programmed for more sophisticated applications, like financial contracts, than Bitcoin’s software allows. [...]

But a majority of these Dapps still focus on legal gray zones, like gambling. The most prominent use of Ethereum so far has been by companies, many of them scams and frauds, that wanted to raise money without complying with securities regulations, through so-called initial coin offerings.

I have seen little indication that any of the more legitimate uses have worked easily enough to have any appeal beyond cryptocurrency fanatics. [...]

The latest big cryptocurrency player is Facebook, which is said to be working on its own digital tokens. So are several other big messaging companies.