Tim Worstall tries to mitigate the damage caused by Will Hutton’s amazing misunderstanding of what blockchain technology is:
Will Hutton decides to tell us all how much Bitcoin and the blockchain is going to change our world:
Blockchain is a foundational digital technology that rivals the internet in its potential for transformation. To explain: essentially, “blocks” are segregated, vast bundles of data in permanent communication with each other so that each block knows what the content is in the rest of the chain. However, only the owner of a particular block has the digital key to access it.
So what? First, the blocks are created by “miners”, individual algorithm writers and companies throughout the world (with a dense concentration in China), who want to add a data block to the chain.
Will Hutton is, you will recall, one of those who insists that the world should be planned as Will Hutton thinks it ought to be. Something which would be greatly aided if Will Hutton had the first clue about the world and the technologies which make it up.
Blocks aren’t created by miners and individual algorithm writers, there is the one algo defined by the system and miners are confirming a block, not creating it. The blocks are not in communication with each other, they do not know what is in the rest of the chain – absolutely not in the case of earlier blocks knowing what is in later. It’s simply a permanent record of all transactions ever undertaken with an independent checking mechanism.
It’s entirely true that this could become very useful. But it’s really not what Hutton seems to think it is.
