I have read quite a bit on blockchain / cryptocurrencies and can’t say I ever understood what all the fuss is about. I have joked that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have all the disadvantages of a credit card combined with all the disadvantages of cash. I believe the original goal (like PayPal) was to make a new payment system. Lots of the claims and directions the technology has taken since then seem … unusual, at least to me. A good write up from The Verge:
‘BLOCKCHAIN’ IS MEANINGLESS
One quote I liked:
“‘Private blockchain’ is just a confusing name for a shared database,” wrote Arvind Narayanan, an assistant computer science professor at Princeton who co-teaches a popular blockchain class on Coursera.