Name: Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain
ISBN: 9781974000067

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain

An experimental new Internet-based form of money is created that anyone can generate at home; people build frightening firetrap computers full of video cards, putting out so much heat that one operator is hospitalised with heatstroke and brain damage. A young physics student starts a revolutionary new marketplace immune to State coercion; he ends up ordering hits on people because they might threaten his great experiment, and is jailed for life without parole. Fully automated contractual systems are proposed to make business and the law work better; the contracts people actually write are unregulated penny stock offerings whose fine print literally states that you are buying nothing of any value. The biggest crowdfunding in history attracts $150 million on the promise that it will embody “the steadfast iron will of unstoppable code”; upon release it is immediately hacked, and $50 million is stolen. How did we get here? David Gerard covers the origins and history of Bitcoin to the present day, the other cryptocurrencies it spawned including Ethereum, the ICO craze and the 2017 crypto bubble, and the attempts to apply blockchains and smart contracts to business. Plus a case study on blockchains in the music industry. Bitcoin and blockchains are not a technology story, but a psychology story. Remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

What Hacker News says

arcticbullMar 2023

There's always Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain :)

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gregjorNov 2022

I recommend David Gerard's book Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain. Then you can ignore the hype and move on with your life. Other than various forms of fraud and financial manipulation no one has found a "real life use case" in a decade and a half. At least no real-life use case that has any clear advantage over traditional databases.

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AndrewStephensJul 2022

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain by David Gerard is an excellent summary of the crypto landscape. The author takes the view (which I agree with) that crypto is a scam in its entirety, so there is a lot of ground to cover.

The book's only flaw is that it was published in 2017 so it misses all of the recent drama.

Author's Site: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/book/

My Review: https://sheep.horse/2019/12/book_-_attack_of_the_50_foot_blo...

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gregjorJun 2022

Read David Gerard’s book Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain and the articles on his web site. Do the research as the crypto boosters like to say.

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gregjorJan 2022

It isn't up to skeptics and critics to prove "blockchain technology" doesn't have any real value (or that it's not particularly innovative). It's up to the blockchain proponents or "community" to deliver value. Just calling something revolutionary and useful doesn't make it so. More than a decade after "blockchain" became a thing we have yet to see any value other than crypto, and the value from crypto is mainly in illegal financial transactions and fraud.

If distributed, decentralized, append-only databases have wider applications (outside of crypto), what are those applications? When will we see the disruption?

David Gerard showed that blockchain is wearing no clothes in Attack of the 50-foot Blockchain and nothing has happened since he published that book to make me think he was wrong.

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shimonabiOct 2021

I'm just reading the book "Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain" by David Gerard.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35525995-attack-of-th...

It was published in 2017, but lists all the false arguments the author of this article makes. Even M-Pesa, mentioned in a lot of replies of the commenters, is mentioned.

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