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Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens)

HBS Digital Initiative · 68.1K views · 2018-06-04 · 14:34

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Overview

James Mickens of Harvard gives a funny lecture at HBS's Future Assembly arguing that blockchains are a very bad idea. He covers their trust, legal and practical shortcomings for real-world problems.

On Hacker News

A staple HN recommendation in crypto and Web3 threads as an entertaining, compelling case against blockchain.

Recommended by 8 HN people across 8 months · HN mentions 2018–2023

Topics

CryptographyFuturism & technology and society
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blockchaincryptocurrencyjames mickenstrustweb3

What people said

asciimike · 2021-09 · Strong recommendation

James Mickens' "Blockchains are a bad idea" talk [1] is a great explanation that discusses exactly that. [1]: [VIDEO]

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thesuperbigfrog · 2023-08 · Recommendation

James Mickens gave an entertaining presentation about why blockchain is poorly suited for most application use cases: [VIDEO]

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thesuperbigfrog · 2021-11 · Recommendation

Web3 requires retrofitting the web to use blockchain technologies to do what the web can mostly do already. In "Blockchains Are a Bad Idea", James Mickens gives several arguments against blockchain-based systems like Bitcoin: See his presentation here: [VIDEO] 1. People have out-of-band trust relationships in real life which reduce the likelihood of malice. Bitcoin-style anonymous identities undermine trust relationships and are not needed for legitimate (not illegal) transactions. 2. Real life legal systems encourage good behaviors. If you have a dispute with someone, you can sue them. Bitcoin and related systems lack these protections. 3. Existing tools such as public-key cryptography and digital signatures can provide most of the functionality that applications need without the problems that blockchain-based systems have.

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Sources

Video by HBS Digital Initiative, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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