THE VIDEO SHELF · criticism of blockchains

Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens)

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.

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Why HN readers recommended it

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

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel: HBS Digital Initiative
Topic: criticism of blockchains
Format: lecture
Level: general
HN recommenders in dataset: 8
HN mentions in dataset: 13
Recommendation years in dataset: 2018–2023

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

James Mickens' "Blockchains are a bad idea" talk [1] is a great explanation that discusses exactly that. [1]: [VIDEO]
asciimike on Hacker News · 2021-09
In Bitfinex just spent $23.7M in fees to make a single Ethereum transaction
James Mickens has a pretty good breakdown of why blockchain isn't a good solution for most real-world problems: [VIDEO]
tootie on Hacker News · 2018-09
In Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are useless
Can only hide from fundamental issues for so long I suppose... Here's a compelling and fun to watch lecture that James Mickens (Harvard SEAS) recently gave about the problems with Blockchain - [VIDEO]
Reedx on Hacker News · 2018-09
In Crypto’s 80% Plunge Is Now Worse Than the Dot-Com Crash

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.