After raising $ 100 million, Kik's CEO declares: "almost nobody should be looking at blockchain"

in #bitcoin6 years ago

On May 31, Ted Livingston, the CEO of the instant messaging application Kik, made pessimistic statements about the blockchain technology before the Financial Post team.

According to Livingston, the majority of existing projects should not be fixed in the blockchain, since the usefulness of this technology seems to lie specifically in the cryptocurrency projects.

Almost nobody should notice the blockchain (...) Unless you are trying to build one of the most used cryptocurrencies in the world, the chances that the blockchain will create value for you are very low.

Livingston commented that he does not believe that there are many practical applications of blockchain technology beyond Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. In this sense, he explained that the point is that this technology allows creating digital shortages by issuing a limited number of tokens that can be exchanged safely in a network without the need for trust among those who participate in it.

Just Livingston said that although this need for confidence is very useful to control transactions between people who do not know directly, added that it is not useful in other applications.

What is the blockchain doing at the end of the day? It allows you to create a database without the need for trust. That can be applied in a number of ways, but in most of these ways, you still need confidence.

These criticisms of the incorrect use of the blockchain to store data add to the discussion that has arisen in the community around this issue. A few days ago Bobby Lee, co-founder of BTCC and member of the board of directors of the Bitcoin Foundation, made statements about the misuse of the blockchain tag in database projects.

Both Lee and Livingston seem to agree on a point, there are certain data that by their very nature do not agree to be stored in the blockchain. Information about the real world, since it is not strictly digital in nature, tends to present a subjective character and / or can not exist in a system where trust is not required between its parts.

For example, storing information about the number of births in a blockchain would be problematic. If anyone can be free to upload data in the blockchain, then false reports of births would arise, it is required to trust that the people who uploaded the data are not lying. And if anyone is not allowed to upload information to the blockchain, we would be talking about a centralized service and the blockchain tag would be used incorrectly.

It should be noted that Kik has its own cryptocurrency called Kin, which exists in the blockchain of Ethereum. However, at the beginning of the month they announced that they plan to create their own blockchain from a Stellar bifurcation.

Sort:  

Coins mentioned in post:

CoinPrice (USD)📉 24h📉 7d
BTCBitcoin7331.580$-4.43%-4.61%
ETHEthereum575.350$-5.27%-4.76%
KINKin0.000$1.4%-5.66%
XLMStellar0.271$-6.57%-10.58%

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.36
TRX 0.12
JST 0.040
BTC 70846.59
ETH 3567.69
USDT 1.00
SBD 4.79