I was listening to the Late Night Linux podcast today. They can be pretty sceptical about cryptocurrency, but it is interesting for other topics. They were discussing myths about open source based on this post. It got me thinking that people have a lot of misconceptions about blockchain too. I thought I would throw some out there and see what else people can think of.

I am not a blockchain and cryptocurrency expert, but I have been around it for quite a few years now and have seen people raise a lot of objections.

Blockchain is energy intensive

Well this does apply to some chains and of course Bitcoin is the one everyone has heard of. You can find stories every week about how much energy it consumes and how people are firing up old coal power stations to run their miners. I can agree that Proof of Work is wasteful. You need ways to control where the coins get allocated, but all that processing power to solve problems that are not actually useful seems a shame.

Meanwhile there are blockchains like Hive that are much more efficient. The power used by all the witnesses can probably be measured in kilowatts rather an gigawatts as they just need a powerful PC. Ethereum moved to proof of stake a couple of years ago and I expect that had something to do with how people perceive the waste.

Blockchain transactions are slow and expensive

This has been true at times on some chains. I really only use Hive where we are spoilt by free transactions that take seconds, but I have encountered issues elsewhere. In some cases I acquired some small amount of a coin through airdrops, but it was not viable to take it out due to the cost. I am sure other chains have fixed this too.

Blockchain has no real applications

Well duh! We here are all using some all the time. People will say it is just a database, and not a very efficient one, but with most databases you either have to host it yourself or trust someone else to keep hosting it. Our Hive data is replicated across the world and will exist as long as we have some witnesses. I have been bitten too many times by services that shut down. Google has been behind a lot of those.

When it comes to games you want to be able to own assets that you may have paid a lot for, but if they are on some company's servers then they could be taken away at any time if you are seen to infringe their rules. You can argue about the actual value of NFTs, but you control those you bought.

Even Futurama has been mocking the concept. It has got crazy at times and a lot of people lost money.

Your funds can be stolen

Blockchain relies on encryption for security. It is worth reading up on how digital signatures work as that is what it is based on. A transaction is only valid if signed by someone with the right key. Keeping that secure is up to you. Tools like Hive Keychain make life easier as you do not have to give the actual keys to sites you log into, but you need to keep a backup somewhere very safe.

You will see stories all the time about huge thefts of cryptocurrency. A lot of those seem to be from exchanges. They ought to have good security protocols, but you are relying on them to do things properly and there are risks of bad actors getting in. If the funds are in your own wallet then it is all down to you.

There are also risks of people finding exploitable flaws in the blockchain system and this has happened. The Hive codebase is pretty mature and I have not heard of this happening here. We have to accept that we have little chance of recovering funds once lost. You need to watch out for dodgy apps that could steal from you. This is why you do not want to give your actual keys to anyone.

Cryptocurrency is only used by criminals

Well I would hope that most Hivers are not criminals. People are using their funds every day in games and also to buy essentials. The communities in places like Venezuela and Cuba have made great strides with this.

Crooks do use the technology, but they have to be really careful as transactions can be traced on a lot of blockchains. I have heard that some of them moved to Monero that has untraceable transactions.

Cryptocurrency is too complex for regular people

From what I have seen a lot of Hivers are not uber-geeks. The tools have improved a lot over the last eight years, but I think you still need to understand the basics. That especially applies to key security as I already mentioned.

I have used chains and Hive seems easier than most. Just having readable account names is a big plus so you know where you are sending funds.

Over to you

I am sure others can come up with more for the list. You are free to correct me if I got anything wrong and I am happy to learn.

I do think that Hive counters a lot of the myths and we need more people to know that before they trot out the same old objections. I would not claim that it is perfect, but it offers a lot of opportunities.