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Chinese President Xi Jinping Calls Blockchain a 'Breakthrough' Technology (cnbc.com)
Even as cryptocurrencies continue to draw skepticism from some, at least the underlying technology, blockchain, has found yet another high-profile admirer: Chinese President. Xi Jinping said in a speech this week that blockchain has "breakthrough" applications. From a report: "A new generation of technology represented by artificial intelligence, quantum information, mobile communications, internet of things and blockchain is accelerating breakthrough applications," he said Monday, according to a translation of his remarks. Xi also emphasized the need for China to focus on technological development and become the global center of science and innovation.
he said block chain, not crypto currency...
nothing to see here - move along
His control.
And Block Chain is all about decentralized control. So an odd pick.
I suspect he was just rattling of technological buzzwords that sounded trendy. Looks he forgot "Deep Learning".
You can track EVERYTHING with Blockchain. Make the one-time association between user and hash, and you have everything they ever do. Perfect for an all-controlling State!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
do the math...
If the translation is right, he said "breakthrough applications" and not "breakthrough technology". See the difference?
Blockchain is commonly defined by investment folks as such, sure - but it's just a database oriented to ensure uniqueness and carefully tracking user access.
Here's a gaming-oriented view on how Blockchain can be used more generally, and not just to ask for money:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Perhaps in the end, it will all be a dead-end, since those same ideas can be mixed better in something not called 'Blockchain' - but as it is, it is nicely well-tested set of code you can use for lots of other stuff. It seem a waste to not use it as a basic toolset, when it's so relatively well-tested.
Ryan Fenton
China is nominally communist at best these days. The central government still likes to exert a lot of authority, but they're perfectly happy having a market economy as long as everyone recognizes their authority and doesn't speak out against the government.
They've allowed for several special economic zones which have some of the least government economic interference on the planet and these places are wildly popular and productive. Shenzhen went from a tiny town (by Chinese standards) to one of the largest financial and technology centers on the planet in last ~40 years. The per capita GDP there (when adjusted for purchasing power parity) is similar to major US cities with a lot of tech companies such as Seattle or San Francisco.
what Xi is saying is that the next 5 year plan will have money in it for block chain. you can bet the researchers at universities in china are already developing ideas.
nothing to see here - move along
China has always been a fascist oligarchy, like pretty much all Communist nations end up (or, more accurately, start at and never move beyond). A small group of families run everything, and maintain dictatorial control via 100% State control of key industries. China still does this - complete control of communications, steel, transportation (air and rail), banks, and a few other key industries. It also maintains strict controls on the flow of currency in and out of the country, as well as goods and services; not just tariffs on imports, but required tariffs and controls on exports.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I wonder what it's like to have a leader who understands things.
Sounds like he threw out some random tech buzzwords to me. Big deal.
Better known as 318230.
Time to call a top.
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One Japenese band, one Chinese Poo-bah, several people I work with who bought into ICO's, way too much money.
Time to call a top.
China is the most successful US regime change operation in US history. Starting in 1972 with Nixon to now. Before 1972 China looked like NK does today except they had more mouths to feed. All the US had to do was show the Chinese leadership how rich they could become if they adopted a more open market economy. The migration was slow but steady. It's no surprise that the Communist Party leaders are some of the richest people on the planet. And the Party leadership is dynastic in form. People literally inherit their seats at the Party's power table. The Chinese government operates more like a corporate board when it comes to their economy and trade policies. The only turd in the punch bowl is China discovered it was cheaper to steal or borrow technology advancements from others rather than wasting large amounts of money on R&D.
People in tech in the west seem to forget the word 'chain' is in there somewhere.
I ordered my new world with Italian sausage and extra cheese.
Everyone in China gets an encrypted social credit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... All transactions get tracked.
When the Communist party detects anything that is not approved that social score is lowered.
The "blockchain" is not just about creating new wealth.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Yup. The largest Chinese banks as listed in order of assets
1. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China --> 4 Trillion US dollars worth
2. China Construction Bank Corporation --> 3.4 Trillion US dollars worth
3. Agricultural Bank of China --> 3.23 Trillion US dollars worth
4. Bank of China --> 2.99 Trillion USS dollars worth.
To put that in perspective.
5. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (Japanese) --> 2.78 Trillion US dollars worth ...
6. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (US) --> 2.53 Trillion US dollars
9. Bank of America --> 2.28 Trillion
Life is not for the lazy.
In the USA, it means money lobbies government to reduce to impact of the voters.
In China there are no voters, totally corrupt in that sense. And "Corruption" means princelings putting public money directly into their own pockets -- that type of direct corruption is extremely rare in the USA. (It is done indirectly, e.g. the general getting the job in the arms factory upon retirement, but not directly.)
There is no comparison.
Sure, there is trouble in the USA. But they are chalk and cheese.
According to the translation he's saying "A new generation of technology ... is accelerating breakthrough applications". You know what this means? Party time! Blockchain mentioned! Actually, it's called one of many new generation technologies. I also agree with comments noting it sounds basically a list of buzzwords with no specific meaning, although if you look at the list, they're all immensely useful technologies for ubiquitous surveillance. But he said "breakthrough applications", that can only mean one thing... Cryptocurrency mentioned, party time!
Yes, Git is sort of like a blockchain. However, you most certainly CAN change a git history. I've done it before when I realized I accidentally committed 2 things together that should have been separate commits and then pushed them. All you have to do it go back to the spot in the history you want to modify, make the modification, and then successively rewrite everything that came after it. What happens then is that you simply fork the GIT repository. One fork has the original history, and the other fork has the rewritten history. However, the same thing is true of blockchain. You most certainly CAN rewrite the blockchin...you just have to rewrite everything that came after the modification.
The trick is how you deal with the fork. In a GIT repository, if you grabbed my old history before I rewrote it, then we can no longer share our commits with each other (short of simply cherry picking patches 1-by-1 off the other branch, which is essentially a manual merge of the forks). For this reason, I only do this sort of GIT history rewrite when I know there is nobody else involved. It's never on a publicly shared repository....only a private one where I know none of my coworkers have been working on that project recently.
But in theory, if one of my coworkers DID grab the old copy of the GIT history, then in order for us to become productive we'd have to come to an agreement on which history to use going forward. Either I say "forget it, lets just ignore my history rewrite", or he accepts my history and then cherry-picks/rewrites his commits to work against the new history. Of course that's only when there is 2 of us. If 100 people had grabbed the repository and made changes against it, then the solution becomes obvious...we CANNOT accept my rewritten history, and I'm overruled by my 100 coworkers.
And THIS is where we come to the ONLY thing that blockchain offers...how do we come to an agreement when not everyone agrees (ie: when the history has been forked). In the case of my GIT repository fork, we either manually resolve the 2 branches, or in the case of 100 coworkers I just accept majority rule and continue working off of their fork containing my unmodified history. Blockchain's ONLY contribution here is in algorithmically defining how we automatically all come to an agreement over time, and then particular blockchain implementations define (via proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, proof-of-storage, etc) how we ensure that one person can't pretend to be infinite people, thus manufacturing their own "majority" to stuff the ballot box and force their particular fork on everyone else.
Of course you can have it another way...you can have a central controller who is always the authority on what is the real history. An example of this is where you need to customize the code in a public GIT repository, but for one reason or another cannot push your code back into the GIT repository (either your changes must be kept secret, or the repository maintainer doesn't want to accept your changes). In that case, the person maintaining the repository is ALWAYS the authority. You can customize it to your hearts content, but nobody else using the repository has to care about your changes, and every time he releases an update, you are responsible for figuring out how you resolve the differences in your own copy of the code.
In the case of this central authority, blockchain offers NOTHING of value. We've already picked the algorithm for resolving multiple forks....we all trust and accept the central authority's decision and make his version official. In theory, he could always go back and rewrite his history...make a modification to a commit years ago and then rewrite the entire chain of modifications after that. He would then force his rewrite upon everyone else and they'd just have to accept it.
This sort of thing tends not to happen, because one possible outcome is that the masses agree he is no longer the central authority to be trusted. However, there are cases where this would happen. Think of a governme
To be honest, with the direction the US Gov't is going, I'd almost rather live in China right now and in the future. At least they admit they're an oligarchy to some extent and don't hide behind the bullshit "Democratic Republic" that the U.S. used to be. At least you know you're getting fucked, kinda like the courtesy of some foreplay. Oh... and the country isn't being taken over by religious zealots who value sky ghosts over science.
He who forgets will be destined to remember. - EV
Despite all the hype, I still haven't seen much to convince me blockchain has any sort of really new applications other than the original intent to support cryptocurrency. All the other pie in the sky speculation boils down to applications we are already supporting with existing technologies like good old databases.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
You wouldn't last very long nor would I...Haven't you read about their
new facial recognition/biometric/economic/credit-social score tracking systems yet?
It's true we're being invaded (US and Canada) and it's awful it's still treated as bigotry and tin foil hat/alt right garbage but as I write this I enjoy a full life as a plus Fifty Technology worker, married, a bouncy new puppy, nice house, year old car and savings/investments with a plethora of hobbies, all of which would be curtailed by Chinese authorities were they in charge of our lives....so while we're alive (for the next twenty years or so) we should be at least a little grateful we're not in our twenties...
End of Line.
You are an absolute idiot, there are almost 3000 elected officials in the Chinese government; the fact that China actually has election within CCP is probably lost upon you. Calling China a fascist oligarchy is like calling US is a fascist oligarchy, it is moronic. The fact that you are even somehow voted 5 informative shows ./ is full of idiots, probably (hopefully) just Americans.
Hmmm... Hi there, I lived in China for 6 years, been spending half my life there for the better part of 20, and my wife is Chinese. One of my best friends is Chinese, still lives there, and has worked his way up quite high in the Zhejiang provincial power structure (politically connected into Beijing, and he runs a division of a heavy industry owned outright by the CCP). Only certain members of the CCP can vote, you need to be sponsored in to the CCP in the first place, and each election has almost always a single candidate for any position. Those "3000" people are all from the same families, they never change over. Xi is causing a bit of a disruption because he's being a bit more vindictive against his political enemies as compared to the last several PMs (who always serve for 2 full terms, for some reason)...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Quite a novel idea, having intelligent politicians, like scientists, engineers etc Wonder what Trump thinks of blockchain? Apparently he struggled with the difference between HPV and HIV as a health concern, despite extensive explanation.
Are (any) fiat-currency and (any) cryptocurrency really equivalent, as cryptocurrency fans claim?
Of course they're not equivalent. Fiat-currencies are backed by hopes and dreams and the trust in the issuer. They can, at their whim, simply print more money and devalue it, making all of the currency you're holding worth less and throwing your usage of the currency into uncertainty. If you can trust the US government to keep the private institution that is the Fed in line, then you can trust the value of the currency. And if you can trust FDIC, you can even trust banks and credit-unions and such. And you can. The US government is very stable. So people think US dollars have value, and so it does.
And on the other-hand, crypto currencies are backed up by math and a metric metaphysical ton of speculation. As well as people needing to send money globally without wanting to pay as much to middle men or being tracked. It's relatively new, and people are wrapping their heads around it, and there's a ton of hype, so the price is volatile as all get out and there's loads of uncertainty. So I wouldn't set prices by it, and I wouldn't hold onto coins longer than necessary. But it let's me trust a random stranger on the Internet across the globe give me money, so it has utility. There are other services that do this with US dollars, but they're more expensive, and less trustworthy. Paypal was good for a while, but they've got a bad habit of freezing funds.
For example, US Dollar and Bitcoin are really equals?
No, right now one bitcoin get you 7413.99 US dollars.
What authorization/guarantee/insurance is behind Bitcoin?
Math.
Math is your friend. You can trust math. Implementations using it... ehhhh, they can have troubles. But you can take every resource available to the US government and the US public and they are powerless against $5 of processing time on commodity hardware running hard crypto. Because of math.
Why do you think Satoshi Nakamoto is really hiding his identity, if Bitcoin is really such a great innovation?
He's a paranoid recluse. Very much the sort of scheme and work really hard trying to.... upend the US monetary system? I'm pretty sure he's the type to rant about how central banks are behind a bunch of conspiracies and shit like that. And yeah, I imagine he has a pile of bitcoins and could sell them for a load of money. Having that sort of asset sitting around on your hard drive makes you a juicy target.
It's not a ponzi scheme. At least not a classical one. That requires you to lie about how well other peoples investments are doing. You have to hope people don't try to cash out. But it IS very much the sort of thing other people have to believe in to have value. Like everything else. There's..... mind-space market share. Like a company brand or shit like that.
If so-called cryptocurrencies are really good innovation, why they attract so many criminals/criminal activity?
Oh no, don't get me wrong. It's crazy useful for money laundering. Moving money around the globe is one of those things that (big time) criminals do a lot of. There's a difference between doing well and doing good.
If so-called cryptocurrencies are really currency, why no company/store can use Bitcoin as currency anymore?
Well... there ARE stores that accept bitcoin. So... blow that one out of your ass. But yeah, with this volatility, I wouldn't list a static price in bitcoins. You'd have to have a dynamic market-price tracker with some reasonable limits, or just state the price in US dollars and accept bitcoins as an intermediary. Hopefully the price will stabilize.
Would the result be different, if Bitcoin replaced by any other "cryptocurrency"?
Fundamentally? Probably not. I think they all try to do their own thing, each a little
It's mathematically hard by design. That means computational crunching power. You can see that as wasteful if you want, but think of all income of all the bankers and all the severs running VISA transactions and all the advertising costs that Visa and Mastercard and such pay for. And all the fraud. Visa just eats the costs of a lot of fraud (and passes it onto merchants).
But yeah, any blockchain tech that gets popular and has lots of transactions is going to take serious hardware and have electricity costs.
China has always been a fascist oligarchy, like pretty much all Communist nations end up (or, more accurately, start at and never move beyond). A small group of families run everything, and maintain dictatorial control via 100% State control of key industries. China still does this - complete control of communications, steel, transportation (air and rail), banks, and a few other key industries. It also maintains strict controls on the flow of currency in and out of the country, as well as goods and services; not just tariffs on imports, but required tariffs and controls on exports.
The US is also a hydraulic empire with little political representation of its population; it is just not as blatant.
Thanks goodness he approves. I don't know if we could have moved on without his blessing.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock