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Corporate America Cools On Blockchain. Gartner Sees 'Disconnect Between Hype and Reality' (bloomberg.com)
"Corporate America's love affair with all things blockchain may be cooling," reports Bloomberg. An anonymous reader quotes their report. [Alternate version here.]
A number of software projects based on the distributed ledger technology will be wound down this year, according to Forrester Research Inc. And some companies pushing ahead with pilot tests are scaling back their ambitions and timelines. In 90 percent of cases, the experiments will never become part of a company's operations, the firm estimates. Even Nasdaq Inc., a high-profile champion of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, hasn't moved as quickly as hoped. The exchange operator, which talked in 2016 about deploying blockchain for voting in shareholder meetings and private-company stock issuance, isn't using the technology in any widely deployed projects yet...
"The disconnect between the hype and the reality is significant -- I've never seen anything like it," said Rajesh Kandaswamy, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "In terms of actual production use, it's very rare...." Only 1 percent of chief information officers said they had any kind of blockchain adoption in their organizations, and only 8 percent said they were in short-term planning or active experimentation with the technology, according to a Gartner study. Nearly 80 percent of CIOs said they had no interest in the technology. Many companies that previously announced blockchain rollouts have changed plans
Problems include the fact that most blockchains "also can't yet handle a large volume of transactions," and worries about compatibility with other software -- which some hope to address next year with software certification testing. But at least two big tech companies are aggressively pushing blockchain.
"So far, IBM and Microsoft have grabbed 51 percent of the more than $700 million market for blockchain products and services, WinterGreen Research Inc. estimated earlier this year,"
"The disconnect between the hype and the reality is significant -- I've never seen anything like it," said Rajesh Kandaswamy, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "In terms of actual production use, it's very rare...." Only 1 percent of chief information officers said they had any kind of blockchain adoption in their organizations, and only 8 percent said they were in short-term planning or active experimentation with the technology, according to a Gartner study. Nearly 80 percent of CIOs said they had no interest in the technology. Many companies that previously announced blockchain rollouts have changed plans
Problems include the fact that most blockchains "also can't yet handle a large volume of transactions," and worries about compatibility with other software -- which some hope to address next year with software certification testing. But at least two big tech companies are aggressively pushing blockchain.
"So far, IBM and Microsoft have grabbed 51 percent of the more than $700 million market for blockchain products and services, WinterGreen Research Inc. estimated earlier this year,"
Because almost no one in the corporate world even understood what "blockchain" even means. They heard and saw a bunch of hype, they were afraid of missing the bandwagon, so they just reflexively "adopted" it.
It's very similar to the era where if you "had a website", your lack of a business plan or completely idiotic business plan, everyone jumped because "websites are going to be big!" Nobody know what they were really getting then, either, hence. Pets.com. etc.
Blockchain technology is real, and has some interesting applications and uses, but I guess the business folks are figuring out it's not some magic get-rich-quick sauce. I'm fine with the hype cooling off, as now the computer scientists / programmers can settle down and start figuring out how to make use of it for real and fix some of its deficiencies and problem areas, rather than slapping a label on a product or service by less scrupulous folks to manipulate stock prices.
Dare I hope the same thing happens with "AI" soon? Personally, I just substitute "advanced pattern recognition" anywhere I see the term "AI", which helps, but I'm still getting a bit tired of the hype.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Translation: "I bought bitcoin at $19000 with borrowed money and now it's under $7000. If it will only get back to like $12000, I'll be able to get out and not have to sell my car."
You are welcome on my lawn.
Blockchain != cryptocurrency, especially in corporate applications. Even those banks who are experimenting with coins like Ripple to manage settlements will come to their senses, and understand that they are completely out of their gourds using a cryptocurrency (of which half is owned by the founders) for this purpose. They may end up using blockchain technology to implement distributed trust and immutability, but they have no need for a coin.
As for retailers accepting BTC, there is very little upside there for either the merchant or the customer, unless that customer is someone who happens to already hold a decent amount of them. Another more efficient and stable cryptocurrency may eventually rise to become a widely accepted means of payment for the masses, but it won't be BTC and it won't be in the next 5 years. I'm willing to stake a good bottle of Scotch on that.
I'm not very surprised that corporations are cooling on the notion of "using blockchain". I work on innovation in a reasonably large entity, and if I would have gotten a Dogecoin for every time someone said "we are planning to do an experiment with Blockchain" or "Should we do something with cryptocurrencty?", I'd be able to retire by now. By the way, the best way to silence those idiots is to ask: "What?". What should we do with cryptocurrency, what is your blockchain experiment? No one is able to give a concrete answer to that, or propose something that couldn't be handled just as well or better with a database.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
And in countries with high corruption, who is going to set up this system? And who is going to pay for it? And even if you did set it up and get it funded, why would the corrupt government respect it? This is just more "evading the law".
Have you read my blog lately?