pull down to refresh

Universities are STILL offering only courses on Blockchain, instead of Bitcoin
410 sats \ 10 comments \ @BitcoinHandsOn 21h bitcoin
In promoting my previous book SQL Practice Problems I found it was useful to connect with professors teaching databases and data science. They were often interested in using my book in their classes.
So in promoting my new book Bitcoin, Hands On!, I've been looking up what classes universities offer, around Bitcoin, to see if they'd want to use my book.
I was surprised (sort of, I know most universities suck now) that...they don't, really. I didn't find ANY university that had a course on Bitcoin. It was ALL BLOCKCHAIN, with occasionally some side references to cryptocurrencies and very occasionally to Bitcoin.
It pisses me off, because I listened to that whole mainstream academia/corporate idea for a long time, without realizing how important Bitcoin was.
That idea - that Bitcoin was just a little side project off "Blockchain", and that "Blockchain" would revolutionize the world cost me a lot, in terms of how late I was to understanding Bitcoin.
And universities are still promoting blockchain over bitcoin!
Saifedean Ammous, in his book The Bitcoin Standard, has a great section on Blockchain Technology and how useless it is outside of bitcoin, in the chapter Bitcoin Questions. Here's an illustration from that chapter.
Also apparently @JimmySong has written about this topic.
write
preview
related posts
42 sats \ 0 replies \ @jimmysong 20h
There's a course at Texas A&M for undergrads, and there was one at UT but I don't know many more.
reply
32 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford 18h
Universities are really behind when it comes to tech. This does not surprise me. There are of course exceptions.
reply
41 sats \ 1 reply \ @BitcoinHandsOn OP 18h
In my mind, the "blockchain is the real thing of value" idea is from 5 to 10 years ago. Even though Bitcoin is in the news all the time (at least to my skewed eyes), universities still haven't moved on.
reply
32 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 18h
We have our bubble but you are correct. "Blockchain" is a joke in the tech circles I am in. No one that is in engineering thinks it is a value let alone the real value. Its a joke to most. Hype with no substance. No use case. And this is why many have no interest in understanding bitcoin. For most, crypto is gambling / scams and blockchain is only referenced as a joke when mocking the tech industry and its tendency to jump on bandwagons.
reply
32 sats \ 0 replies \ @Ge 18h
They don't understand that Bitcoin is THE BLOCKCHAIN... the message has been so skewed... all with shrouds over their eyes...
reply
32 sats \ 2 replies \ @fiatbad 20h
I have yet to hear a use-case for blockchain other than money (Bitcoin).
Centralized DB's just work better for almost every other proposed use-case.
reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @metadavid 18h
What do you think about it being used for property deeds?
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fiatbad 15m
Property is a human construct..... it belongs in the social-layer, and the underlying asset is in the physical realm. A house can be taken from you by force whether or not you have the private key to it on a blockchain.
Force is the only way to prove ownership over physical objects. Whether that force is your own guns or your government's soldiers guarding your borders.
So, sense we essentially need a government in order for "ownership" to be enforced, we trust their centralized authority to manage who owns what. In other words, they control the grand ledger of property deeds.
Why would we want to use a blockchain to keep track of who "owns" something in the physical world, when that "ownership" requires a government to enforce your right to "own" it?
I said all that because I really want to strongly establish the idea that property ownership is a centralized endeavor by necessity! Once you understand this fact, you realize that a centralized database is far superior for such a thing! The government would use an SQL database that they control because they're the ones enforcing the ownership anyway.
Blockchain is an incredibly inefficient database that comes with one very powerful property: no one holds the login credentials to it. Anyone can read/write to the database for entries which they have the private key to. But for a system that doesn't require extreme decentralization, ANY other database is far superior to blockchain.
So, no. Using blockchain to store property deeds is an incredibly stupid idea. I don't think it will ever happen for the reasons I've described here. But I didn't come to this realization over night. At first, it sounded like a really good idea. But it's not. The only use case for blockchain so far is: Bitcoin. Shitcoin "utility" is a scam.
reply
32 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 20h
I am unsurprised.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @zapsammy 14h
HFSP NGMI
reply