It’s not a secret that I’m strongly against Bitcoin (I even believe cryptocurrencies at large are one of the major evils of this century), and I even disapprove of the blockchain technology. Nowadays, no matter what one believes, the billions of idiots on Earth would take the most suicidal decisions anyway (unlike the lemmings). This being said, I thought of providing a few pointers to resources able to clarify some concepts that became increasingly popular in recent years.

PART ONE: Crypto-related

As I prefer text to videos, here’s an unexpectedly useful short article by Euronews: Blockchain explained: Breaking down the technology that’s transforming the world of finance. The video only has 5 minutes.

The problem is, they failed to emphasize on the useless consumption of energy, and on the fact that blockchain couldn’t commit the same amount of transactions processed by VISA without a ginormous processing power and electricity.

From now on, I’ll embed YouTube videos, despite my overall despise for this social network. Yes, there are things to be learned from a good number of channels, but such channels are maybe 0.1% of what’s on YouTube; most of the YouTube contents is crap that’s both addictive and a waste of everyone’s time, not to mention the resources (storage, electricity, and the entire Internet infrastructure necessary for that everyone could stream such garbage). When it comes to cryptocurrencies, YouTube is full of rabidly pro-crypto channels, so it’s as bad as any social network. But even the more “neutral” and the more “professional” channels are still having a markedly pro-cryptocurrency stance. Sigh.

I selected a few videos that are rather old, but short and instructive. The order seems random, but it’s not: this is how I judged it to be more useful.

The last one deserves a few comments. I obviously agree with Daniele Messina’s comment:

Most of these things can be done without blockchain. If you don’t explain which keypoints of blockchain make the implementation better, it’s a form of straw man argument.

From the selective list of applications, I’ll add my own comment on “Tracking products for food safety” (3:54), quoting… from me:

I admit I don’t understand the utility of IBM’s Blockchain Platform, and I also failed to understand why IBM Food Trust™ couldn’t just use a normal database in the Cloud instead of being “Built on IBM Blockchain, this solution connects participants through a permissioned, immutable and shared record of food provenance, transaction data, processing details, and more.”

Really, no matter what label, certificate, token, or any other tracking and authenticity “thing” you attach to a batch or to an item of food, such as a package of meat, this makes absolutely zero sense, as it cannot be associated with that item of food (one cannot make a digital hash of a package of meat!), so the traditional solution, to use a batch number stored in a regular database, is as good, and much cheaper! Who cares about an immutable record, if there’s no proof that a specific package of contaminated food is indeed associated to that record?! Food packaging can easily be falsified, and such absurdly complex technologies are simply wasted money and energy!

Now, for the more technical of you (again, rather old videos, but still of relevance):

Even older (from 2017), and longer, but somehow better than many recent takes on the matter:

PART TWO: Bullshit-related

No connection neither to crypto, nor to any technology per se, but nonetheless relevant in these times of global madness.

There is no future in anything.

PART THREE: Buying property in the Metaverse, anyone?

Now, this is something to make me wish I weren’t born in these times:

A few comments I kinda liked:

Thomas Jefferson
7 days ago
Anyone spending more money for a virtual piece of land than a real piece of land is just down right moronic. Go take a hike go help the elderly do something valuable with your life.

RC
4 months ago
Let me shed some light on this. As soon as the next recession hits, this will all be worthless. There will not be revenue coming in from advertising, because that’s the first item in a company’s budget that is cut. Then come the jobs. So there is less people able to spend money on nonsense like this. Don’t waste your money.

Gunner
11 hours ago
Forgot to mention that this game is horrible, virtually nothing to do in it. No centralized developers means nothing gets done to the game. Also being able to buy votes with mana? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

This is a project that is a buzzword and will 100% crash and burn. Guy clearly holds a stake and is trying to bring attention to it; uses Elon Musk speech as a feasible thing? Nobody would touch this platform from a mile away. If you’ve ever played the game for more than 10 minutes you’d realize how horrible it is. But nice job trying to advertise one of your investments.

W.
2 months ago
This reminds me of SecondLife, they been around for over a decade

Nero Sri
2 months ago
This game must have a server somewhere to store all this information, and whoever has this server technically owns the game.

This is insane. There’s absolutely no benefit to being part of a virtual online world. You can’t breathe virtual air, can’t have virtual sex, can’t eat virtual food…

This game has a cool concept, but I can see millions of people get stuck on this platform.

This thing was… a thing even 3 years ago, when BBC Stories covered it!

Two weeks ago:

More craziness: