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m_ninepoints t1_j6hyvbb wrote

Reply to comment by BenThereNDunThat in TIFU by buying too much crypto by Colinian18

Let's be honest 5% is a massive exposure for a portfolio at any scale. How about 0%.

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BenThereNDunThat t1_j6i17j7 wrote

I don't disagree.

But if OP is really gung ho on crypto that's a limit I would set.

Honestly, they'd be far better off investing in blockchain technology instead of crypto as their speculative investment as there actually seems to be an upside there.

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m_ninepoints t1_j6i1ma2 wrote

I agree if by "blockchain technology" you mean the broader semiconductor industry. Blockchain itself has found no meaningful application where traditional database tech wouldn't service faster and more efficiently over the course of its existence. Invest in the industries that make beanie baby manufacturing possible, but not the beanie babies themselves.

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BenThereNDunThat t1_j6iycv3 wrote

There's a whole bunch of people at some really big companies that would disagree with you. It's the big trend in inventory, order and supply chain management at the moment with companies investing millions into it.

Could blockchain be just another fad that will disappear when something new comes along in five years? Could it be a case study for future MBA candidates to dissect why it failed?

Maybe.

But right now there's still a lot of upside for companies in the field and that makes it an investment option for a small, measured portion of a broad portfolio.

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luitzenh t1_j6j4606 wrote

> It's the big trend in inventory, order and supply chain management at the moment with companies investing millions into it.

No, it's not. Blockchain is an implementation detail and implementation details don't matter. It's as asinine as choosing a flight based on whether a the airline uses Slack or Teams for internal communication. You don't see new airlines being founded based on the fact that AWS is the future. You don't get emails by your bank saying they're better than their competitors because they use PostgreSQL.

The fact that companies advertise implementation details means that the implementation detail is a fad. The fact that you don't understand that blockchain is an implementation detail means you don't understand blockchain.

A blockchain is a data structure. Other data structures are linked lists, arrays, queues and hash tables. Unlike blockchains these are actually used by developers, some of them on a daily basis. When is the last time you've heard a company created a buzz around double linked lists?

The only reason advertising using a blockchain makes sense is when using a public blockchain, but running a public blockchain without a cryptocurrency does not make sense as there is no incentive and you've already admitted that there's nothing to crypto currencies.

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benevanstech t1_j6j0rqo wrote

Which companies? MSFT, IBM, Red Hat have all shuttered their dedicated "blockchain" units, and any remaining staff have been folded into general R&D.

The Australian Stock Exchange has written off their entire blockchain project & marked it to zero.

Maersk is out, too.

So - which companies are we talking about here?

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m_ninepoints t1_j6jf9fu wrote

Well, appeal to authority doesn't quite work in this case given that I was a principal engineer at one of those big tech companies :P. People that were pro blockchain were generally not treated favorably because we all know it's utter BS.

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