“Make Something People Want”: How Blockchain Has Become a Fetish
Desire for an entity that is believed to convey supernatural powers, eliciting a condition of intense excitement. We call this fetishism. An old idea is that our consumer society is afflicted by a fetish for commodities, coveting the trappings of a phantasmagoric existence. More recently the idea of “Blockchain” has emerged as an object of contemporary fetish. We’ve heard that it’s bigger than the Internet itself! It’s, almost, bigger than The Beatles! Given this state of affairs one might start to wonder - from whence did this adulation of Blockchain arise? The situation is analogous to....
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A few years ago when the Altcoin enthusiasm grew exponentially, a few platforms came to the market for people to create their own Altcoins, like the now defunct application Coingen. Fast forward to now where the topic of conversation has left the Altcoin arena with the cry for “private blockchains” Now with a new service called “Create A Private Blockchain in 90 Seconds” or “MultiChain”, anyone not just Blythe Masters can enjoy making their own permissioned chain. The website featuring this new application called “Make Bitcoin Great Again” feels that allowing people to create their own....
UPDATE: In this article we used a picture from blockchain.info which has been deleted! The company Blockchain and its products have nothing to do with what the author writes in this article! However it might caused confusion as we included their picture before. We are sorry for this misunderstanding! Bitcoin critics often make the clame that “crypto-based technology has nothing to contribute to the everyday world.” It seems like demonizing digital currency is a zealous fetish of theirs, while blatantly ignoring the breakthroughs already made and the potential that the blockchain technology....
Bitcoin.com chatted with the Chief Scientist of prediction market protocol Hivemind. Paul Sztorc, who also works with the blockchain firm Bloq, gives our readers an update on Hivemind, his work on peer-to-peer sidechains, Blockstream’s Liquid, Segregated Witness and more. ‘Sidechains Will Allow People to Work on What They Want’. Bitcoin.com (BC): What’s....
We’ve all heard of Bitcoin evangelism, but is it to be heard everywhere like in the states? The UK has so far been silent – until now. The British public has spoken, according to a survey released by YouGov, a UK-based the market research firm, which asked 2052 people about their opinions of Bitcoin. Perhaps the one of the gloomier statistics to come from the research is that 71% of consumers “do not want” the option to pay with virtual currency. And of those who did want it, the main reason was fairness rather than interest, respondents saying that all valid currencies should be made....
Who wants to be a millionaire? That could possibly lead to a cheerful chorus of “me” almost anywhere. The only other question that might get a similar response is “who want’s ice cream?” The stories of rags to riches are inspirational stuff. When it comes to Bitcoin there are many reasons to believe that the cryptocurrency has the power to create wealth. Even small amounts of Bitcoin have made people incredibly wealthy. In December of 2015, The Guardian reported the case of Kristoffer Koch, a Norwegian who had purchased Bitcoin worth $26.60 in 2009. Koch acquired a total of 5000 Bitcoins....