legaldinho wrote:

I can't edit but this is a lie, their white paper mentioned a law firm had approved their scheme. 

This field is full of scams. I mean, ripple is a scam. People are pouring money into it. It has none of the good bits of bitcoin and all the dangers are exponentially increased.

What are you talking about? This isn't in the Action Coin white paper? You're probably not intentionally making me look like a irresponsible shill for malignant coins but I'd appreciate if you would be more clear.

Typo is staying in lel

is a horse a hobby

If a horse is a hobby is a hobby horse gambling?

I don't think anyone is writing the whole thing off.
Just that over the next year or so coins are going to become a scammers paradise.

There's no helping some people.

This whole blocko thing sounds like the communal ejaculation of geek prospectors, surfing on their jizz until it reaches the first cliff-face. Money can be made for now, but how can anyone predict the timing of its wall, and who's to say if it stabilises or crashes at that point?

It needs to become a routine online currency to stabilise, I'd say, and it's never doing that for as long as it's an investment-only concern driven by recumbent profiteers, rather than summat that you might use on yer Amazons.

legaldinho wrote:

No blockchain is a real innovation

But if the major banks oppose it on self-preservation grounds (I presume they will?), it's down to us to trust it as much as them. It seems inevitable in the future, but I can't see an exodus from trad banks for a good while yet.

Goes without saying it's not my area, but chalk me up as sceptical in the immediate.

I had a conversation recently with some people from a London currency company, who were convinced that blockchain was the future of the economy and that everyone would be using it for every type of transaction within 20 years. They couldn't come up with a single advantage other than it would allow them personally to make a pot of cash very quickly in the short term. It's amazing how some highly educated people can be very dumb at the same time, even in the same sentence.

Confirmation bias init.

monkey wrote:

Dinostar77 wrote:

No blockchain is a real innovation

But if the major banks oppose it on self-preservation grounds (I presume they will?), it's down to us to trust it as much as them. It seems inevitable in the future, but I can't see an exodus from trad banks for a good while yet. Goes without saying it's not my area, but chalk me up as sceptical in the immediate.

Dude, I linked the wired article above about how many millions banks are already pumping into blockchain. Forget the currency aspect. The blockchain tech will be utilised as its a potentially massive improvement on ancient outdated and incompatible databases used for financial transactions.

Yeah it's not like a financial organisation would ever make a bad investment. Blockchain seems good for anything that needs an audit trail. I'm sure it's the future for most financial transactions, probably health records and stuff. But it's very trendy and buzzwordy. There's no reason at all why eg a company loyalty scheme, as per that Action shite, needs to be a blockchain other than to get a load of attention. Good for the department in that company that did it, as they can do a fancy powerpoint presentation on it and get a bonus. Pointless for anything else.  The old databases of financial houses already have superior technology they can be migrated to, better programming languages and technologies. It's just hard work and not worth it in most cases, hence why they're still there. Blockchain won't make that migration any easier.

You're missing the real value of blockchain and that's the democratising and decentralising of trustless information be it currency, audit checks, smart contracts or whatever. The scope for blockchain right now is finding it's niche and proving it's utility.  There's no reason for institutions to develop their own blockchain to use in house, why would they? They're the owners of their own information, they don't necessarily need to decentralise it.

Step out of these institutions and find out where multiple companies need to work together or areas where they're currently not serving because it's too difficult or not profitable. Logistics is a developing area at the moment. Being able to track from manufacturing through every single access point, monitoring ambient conditions through to the distributer to the retailer to the end client. There are imperfect ways to do this at the moment and they rely that you trust each single handler through the chain. I know for a fact all of the major logistics companies recognise this as a problem and and are balls into blockchain to create a transparent real-time tracking system. Whether they collaborate or choose an independent 3rd party, who knows. What I also know is that a system like that in the UK pharmaceutical industry is going to stamp out the grey market as dispensers will no longer be able to resell their inventory.

Why would they not create their own and then get others to use theirs? Well, other companies probably would be very shy to trust proprietary systems integration developed by a rival and then it's still not trustless because everyone is still relying on one company to maintain and uphold the ledger. Take another step, Action Coin. Why do they need a blockchain it's a rewards programme. Again trustless, transparency between multiple organisations. Anology because everyone for some reason loves using coffee with blockchain. If the consumer had a single reward system to use with Costa, Starbucks and whatever it would be great. But you'll never convince Costa to trust Starbucks and vice-versa etc. This is where blockchain can create a rewards programme which everyone can trust to work.

Anyway that's my New Year day hangover to deal with now and I'm sure the analogies I use aren't perfect and I've left stuff out but very roughly blockchain is useful when you don't want to trust organisations, institutions, infrastructure. A public ledger is irreversible and once it get's to a certain size becomes almost impossible to effectively game even by a state actor.

I'm not trying to be a naysayer about this. It's good technology and has the potential to be transformational in some cases, maybe many cases. But there's also a lot of nonsense being talked about it by people who don't really seem to understand it (not directing that at anyone here, just the media in general). And, as per the rewards program, a lot of pointless bandwagon hopping.

Am also thinking of jumping in. Can anyone recommend me a reliable app + wallet? I'm in the process of delving into the subject. Fascinating stuff.

Good summary except bittrex isn’t accepting new joiners either. poloniex Is next best imo

Good job Dino! 

I've updated my article on security with an example of a hacked hardware wallet. Before, all I really said was don't but from a 3rd party and this -£25,000 is why. Also added a quick paragraph about 2FA too.

If you don't want to click the link:

Update: January 07th 2018.

Do NOT buy a hardware wallet from 3rd party sellers! A Reddit user named moodyrocket reported on Reddit that they bought a Ledger Nano S from eBay, which unknown to him was compromised. Subsequently he lost £25,000 which he thought was stored safely on his device.

How did this happen? The Ledger Nano S he bought had already been activated. The seller noted down the seed words and mocked up a fake 'Recovery Sheet' with scratch off silver paper.

Fake Seed Recovery Sheet

The seller was then able to scan the wallet to check for any deposits. Once it was confirmed that there was a balance, all they had to do was recover the wallet onto another Ledger using the seed words that they had provided to moodyrocket. From there, all they had to do was send the money to another wallet and which then left a moodyrocket out of £25,000.

An uncompromised device would have generated the seed words and requested that the user write them down the provided blank recovery sheet. Presumably, if you're buying a hardware wallet you have significant amounts to store. Don't risk it all buy trying to save a few pounds on eBay or any other site which isn't the official manufacturer's site.

End of update.