Bitcoin and Blockchain Are Among the Fastest-Growing Skills Online (bloomberg.com)

As cryptocurrencies explode in popularity, employers are clamoring for workers with expertise in the emerging field. From a report: Demand for online freelancers who specialize in blockchain and bitcoin-related work surged last quarter, according to data compiled by Upwork, a website that connects freelancers with employers. The two skills were respectively the second and third fastest-growing skills on Upwork's platform. With the price of bitcoin having surged more than 500 percent this year, companies are rushing in to capitalize on the boom. Other skills in Upwork's list of fastest-growing skills include robotics (No. 1), as well as a cybersecurity specialty called penetration testing (No. 4) and a subfield in artificial intelligence called deep learning (No. 8).

Comments

Re:Fancy accounting.

[Sarten-X]

I'd rephrase that a bit: Blockchains are appropriate where the effort required to corrupt the blockchain is significantly greater than the value to be gained by defrauding the other involved parties.

That's very similar to a basic axiom of game theory: Players will be honest when the perceived cost of cheating is higher than the perceived value to be gained by cheating.

In a private two-party system, a blockchain doesn't add anything, because either side can trivially rebuild the entire chain to fit their narrative. Publishing the chain brings in a trusted third party (a public record). In that case, the cost to cheat includes the cost to change the public record, which varies by implementation. In countries with endemic corruption, the cheating becomes simpler, because the trusted record-holder (say, a copy of the blockchain in a bank vault or published to a newspaper) can be changed for a certain fee (like bribing the bank officers or newspaper archivist). Even in a widely-published chain like BitCoin, the whole network can be adjusted by a quorum of nodes (though at great expense), and that in turn actually raises the value gained by cheating, because then it appears even more unreasonable to accuse someone (and all of the required accomplices) of the deception. When truth is determined by a simple majority, conspiracies become more appealing.

In comparing technologies, it is important to compare them equally. Attacks on blockchains are different from those in more traditional business models, so it is tempting to simply say "blockchain has none of these normal risks" and assume it is perfect. It makes a more reasonable comparison to ask "what is the cost to compromise this?" and compare the results of the analysis. That also allows a grounded discussion about whether the project in question actually warrants the increased complexity of having a blockchain, or if a more traditional system is still secure enough for the project's value.