The latest hot meme in Bitcoin: shooting down the “Blockchain not Bitcoin” concept by way of little analogies. See, e.g., this particular example from a personal hero of mine, Andreas Antonopoulos:
I like this idea for a “lightbulb”. Can we do it without all that complex “electricity” crap?
#bitcoin
— AndreasMAntonopoulos March 14
Naturally I leapt to the defence of the technology upon which this business is founded. So I began:
Let's have some fun with this.
If you buy this copy of Windows 95, its value will only go up. Trust me.
#blockchain
— Preston J. Byrne March 14
And then I got a little carried away:
This ARPANET thing is perfect. I can't think of anything else that packet switching is useful for.
#blockchain #thelonious
— Preston J. Byrne March 14
I can't see why anyone would want their own computer when they can just visit the Pentagon and use ENIAC.
#blockchain
— Preston J. Byrne March 14
Why use smart contracts? Manually inputting data with soft copies of MS Excel spreadsheets works just fine for us.
#blockchain
— Preston J. Byrne March 14
And, being direct:
Bitcoin is great. There is no other reason to want cryptographically verifiable execution of code on distr. ntwrks.
#blockchain
— Preston J. Byrne March 14
Followed by an obligatory marmot reference:
This marmot is just a fat squirrel. I have no idea why you'd want to make it the President of the United States.
#blockchain
— Preston J. Byrne March 14
It is true that everyone and his sister wants and expects the world to latch onto this or that protocol or this or that single database or this or that service provider and stick with that single vendor, for life, with the expectation that their chosen platform is better than all others.
This is silly. The world doesn’t use one SQL database. It shouldn’t use one blockchain, either. That said, it’s cool to be evangelistic about Bitcoin if that’s your thing. I was too, once upon a time.
But equally, it’s also cool to be evangelistic about using blockchain data structures for all kinds of other stuff. Because, at the end of the day, this stuff is just software.
People should be free to use this technology for whatever they damn well please.
Hence why our platform exists, and is open-source. Blaze your own trail in crypto valley: roll your own personally-tailored blockchain today.