- This article handwaves about musical blockchains to push Opus, a generic Ethereum/IPFS/DRM music proposition of the sort I describe multiple variants of in chapter 12 of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain. You’ll be disappointed to know you just missed their ICO token offering.
- But you might instead go for Viberate, the live music on the blockchain startup. Apparently if you book your gigs on a blockchain, somehow this ensures everyone gets paid! Because gig money famously comes from people doing cryptocurrency transactions at the door. The actual purpose of this dubious proposition is to sell their ICO token to crypto gamblers. They consider the perfect advisor for their unregistered security offering is Charlie Shrem, who was previously jailed for money laundering on behalf of the Silk Road drug market.
- Convicted felons are, of course, all the rage in the blockchain entertainment space. We now have the technical details of Kim Dotcom’s new service, apparently to be at k.im: “We have our own file type,” and to open it “you will need one of our apps or third party apps that will use our API.” That is, it’s DRMed files streamed from behind a paywall, because DRM totally works. He’s trying to recruit YouTube stars to get things started. And, of course, run an ICO. Which may not get the US government off his back.
My previous advice — if anyone pitches blockchains to you, kick them in the nuts and run — still stands.
The book is out, with the full-length chapter on blockchains in music!
Paperback £12.99 UK or $16.95 US!
E-book £4.99 or some equivalent number of dollars from Amazon!
Bitcoin is a tulip craze. A Ponzi scheme. Wonder why government regulators around the world don’t just shut them down. Some even started to embraced it. Because blockchain works. Smart contract is very very new – not even 3 years old. Yes, there are scalability issues etc etc. Sure there are scammers out there. Just do not throw the baby with the bath water yet. Anyway, good for you to point out the short comings.
Smart contract is 21 years old ;-) I do spend chapter 10 of the book detailing why smart contracts are a bad idea … ending with The DAO. Your smart contract immutability guarantee is absolutely robust!! until the big boys might lose money.
Maybe I use the wrong term or we meant different thing. I always like to avoid the term smart contract. Ethereum ‘smart contract’ is only as old as Ethereum. You are right, the current security is for writing the program that supposedly execute itself is atrocious. Ethereum is trying to fix this with their next interaction. Do we need to use such programs or when? TCPIP took decades to be adopted and now we use this protocol as second nature. Yes, there are people who takes advantage of this nascent blockchain technologies to over promised solutions. That does not mean it is not a good technology. Use for what it was meant for in the first place – bitcoin is a proven case in point and there will be people wanting to use it for their own purpose. As the demand for it is more than its supply – the value goes up. Will people stop using bitcoin – like the sudden stop in the buying of those tulips ? Maybe. But the technology is proven. Just like windows or Apple OS, there will be very smart people building more secured application around this technology. You are right again, some of the implementations should not be adopted yet.
As one who has worked the door at clubs, I can assure that everyone in line will happily wait for, oh, 300 cryptocurrency transactions to be made, when everyone arrive fifteen minutes before the top-billed act is about to go on.
And if it’s a big name act, then there might 3,000 or 30,000 such transactions. Yup, this is way better than paying with cash or cards.
Haven’t see you cover ASIC’s ICO guidance (http://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/digital-transformation/initial-coin-offerings/) anywhere, though I may not have been paying sufficiently close attention. There’s quite a good article about it on The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/australian-regulators-have-finally-made-a-move-on-initial-coin-offerings-84840), which apparently almost nobody read or understood enough to comment on.
Jeremy – hadn’t seen that, thank you!