It really feels like SOMEWHERE there was a legitimate use for this for very mission-critical stuff that might need to be immutable once published and kept for posterity...

...but then it just became yet another speculative asset to make magic money that fueled stupid monkey jpegs.

The pursuit of profit benefits mankind only by the occasional anomalous accident.

[–] dpkonofa@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

100%. Capitalism is great until it reaches a peak where people who provide no value except in the wealth they’ve amassed are the ones who gain the most from it. You can succeed simply by being born with wealth and having no other value because other people who do have value will need you.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 8 points 9 months ago

This, exactly. Blockchain could have been used for tracking information publishing dates and such, but it is used for converting energy into IOUs

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

The point in OP is that "blockchain" was not a new thing. The Merkle Tree was patented in 1979, meaning that it has been free for decades. Most programmers might never have a use for it but they still encounter it every time they use git (which is older than bitcoin).

So, if you're not aware of this, that's because it is very technical and nothing to do with cryptocurrencies.