decentralised blockchains can be used in a way to both time stamp some data and also archive it in a way that the original archived version cant be edited later

so say for instance someone took an original photo of a celebrity, sat alone at a beach. they* could timestamp the hashfile of the image and also decentralised data store the photo.
*they=source photographer/celebrity involved(to protect their property/likeness/copyright)
there are ways to have identity verification whereby the original source participants sign to say they are the copyright owners and the celebrity agrees that the image is genuine

it doesnt need to be some elite governing central group being judge of authenticity..

thus when editors use AI to photo edit someone to be in some sexual affair by putting another person into the photo. the blockchained version of the photo can corroborate that the AI generated photo is not the original and that the original photo is genuine

so yes there are things blockchains can do

however, what it cant do is change someones misinformed opinion thats not based on facts/data
it cant stop idiots spewing bullcrap comments that are not backed up by any source, which is why when you read any news, try and find some source info backing up the story or debunking it

The blockchain is so powerful and it is one of the best technology we witnessed this time around. The good aspect of it is that blockchain is not an end another is it a means to an end. It is ever evolving and limitless. We should not be surprised that the powers of blockchain is yet to be fully harnessed. So whatever technology a layman doesn't understand, he sees it as a magic. While believing it is a magic they can over exaggerate the power of that technology. So, to a novice, Blockchain is a total magic and if you don't agree with them, get ready to prove otherwise.

Bitcoin was designed to solve one problem, and one problem only: to allow those who could not safely transact for fear of their government to transact.

That's it. That was Bitcoin's (and generally, blockchain's) only unique contribution to the world. This can be an important problem to solve, but it's also a fairly narrow one.

But then, somewhere along the way, people figured out how to turn Bitcoin into a speculation instrument, which meant that the more people loved Bitcoin, the more money current holders would make.

Then, predictably, people started, well, lying about it in order to pump the market price of Bitcoin. They said Bitcoin and blockchain would do millions of things it could never do, and/or implied that only Bitcoin/blockchain could solve problems that millions of other things solve ("if your problem is a nail, every tool is a hammer", etc.).

You "can" build any app that needs to store data in some fashion using the blockchain architecture. That doesn't mean it's a good idea. Nobody would suggest you write the next blockbuster video game in Perl, even though it's technically possible. Why? Because Perl isn't a speculation instrument worth a trillion dollars.

If it were, then everybody on TV would say that the FAA air traffic control systems should be rewritten in Perl. That voting systems should be re-written in Perl so they would be more "secure" (somehow). That video games should include Perl code so they are better somehow. And so on.

And then programming would be dragged backwards in progress by about 40 years...

It doesn't solve that problem either. For example, I sold 99.9% of my BTCs, because of new KYC/AML regulations, since 2025. I still have some coins, just to play with them, if needed, and Bitcoin is still a very interesting project, from the programming perspective, but it will be harder and harder to use it in practice, without having your ID checked by someone.

The problem, which is really solved, is just a double spending problem. If you have "Alice->Bob" and "Alice->Charlie" transaction, then blockchain can tell you, which one is valid, and which one was supported by the hashrate majority. And that's it. There's not that much beyond Byzantine Generals Problem, really (by the way: if you want to execute an example, described by Satoshi, where each General has a computer, then you can use OP_SIZE on DER signature, and lock it into a shared public key, for a given group of Generals, and then, the fastest General can create a transaction, which will claim the whole pot, and will be first broadcasted to the Bitcoin network).

We are getting there, but not because of Bitcoin. Recently, the "magic box, that can do everything" is Artificial Intelligence. Blockchain-based ideas will soon hit their limits, if people will find out, that transactions have fees, and if you do a lot of computations, without batching anything, then you have to pay a lot of money for doing that. Also, AI-based models will hit a different limits, when people will notice, that "AI programmed by AI" is not the best way to do things, and can lead to more and more dumb models, which will just turn everything into some kind of echo chamber, where the same data will be just processed over and over again, without adding anything creative.

Fake news will never be removed, because if some alternative version of the reality is logical, and could happen in theory, then it is hard to falsify it, if you don't have enough data. If you have "Alice->Bob" genuine transaction, and "Alice->Mallory" fake transaction, then both can have valid signatures, and the news saying that "Mallory received coins from Alice" is called "fake news", only because the "hashrate majority" decided to do so. And because all AI models have their limits, and their models are simplified and optimized, to give answers fast enough, there will be always some room for "fake news". Because AI can predict your age, based on your age, with 99% accuracy (and there is always 1% left for fake answers, just because that's how AI models are trained, and that's what prevents them from "overfitting", when you introduce a penalty for producing "too complex solutions").

Definitely agree, but this was the reason Bitcoin was invented.


You don't need blockchain to do that. Computers have been solving this problem since the 1950s.



I agree about AI being the new buzzword-de-jour, but at least there's... there there. Broadly speaking, AI is really just increasingly complicated algorithms that rely on an increasing amount of available data. There's nothing wrong with that basic idea, even if it's misunderstood, overhyped, etc. Blockchain on the other hand was created to solve one narrow computing problem and doesn't uniquely solve anything else.

Bitcoin is more popular than the word blockchain yet a greater percentage of human population have not even heard of Bitcoin and even if they do, it rarely make sense to them. So, I will not be surprise if they have not even heard about it talk more of thinking it was some kind of magic. Maybe you might want to say that some of those who have heard but could not comprehend it might think it was some kind of magic. Although, magic is some big words to use for such description.

Something funny that recently resurfaced and was seen on social media was some sort of survey where they asked different Americans "where does chocolate milk come from" and they were answering "brown cows"!

Your post made me think of that and the point is this lack of knowledge is not limited to Bitcoin/Blockchain, it is becoming a common thing. Generally speaking what I've observed lately is that people are getting dumber, which is the weird part because in modern times they literally have all the knowledge in the world in the palm of their hands and yet for example they use their smart phones to watch cat videos.

Mainstream media makes it even worse.
In a way not all the fault is on people that they think blockchain is a magic solution to everything. The media advertised it as a solution to everything! I still remember back in 2017-ish when they kept creating completely useless projects (usually tokens) and mass advertised them as the solution to various problems like "energy problem" the "healthcare system", and a lot of other weird things.

That "cat-video-watcher" who is just scrolling through the news only reading the headlines before they go and watch their cat videos, sees titles saying "this new blockchain project is going to solve [blank]" over and over, will eventually think blockchain is indeed a magic solution.

Asking people about a technology they don't understand is simply dumb.
It's like someone asking me "What do you think about the AP-1000 US nuclear reactors?" I don't understand anything about nuclear reactors, so I can't give an expert opinion. I don't consider myself to be an expert in both blockchain technology and AI. I would probably give the same answer as those 54%, if someone asks me about blockchain and AI. Many crypto bros used to think that blockchain technology is some kind of silver bullet/panacea, that will solve all global problems. I think that the people inside the crypto community aren't smarter than the people, who know nothing about Bitcoin, altcoins, blockchain technology, mining, nodes, protocols, etc..

People who believe that blockchain technology can overcome fake news simply do not understand the real purpose of blockchain technology itself. They are too imaginative and think that blockchain technology is like a magical technology that can change anything, or they are indeed less knowledgeable about it but think that they already know everything. Blockchain technology is as simple as secure transactions and does not allow it to be edited, but most people do not understand the essence of it, and instead say that it can ward off fake news or even solve global economic problems, it's just funny.

Why? Because it's worth billions of dollars to crypto whales when people lie about what blockchain can do.

Yes, people are often ignorant about technology, but the crypto industry actively proliferates lies about blockchain because it's profitable to do so.