Because the originator of part of Gillian Tett’s article (“Bankers quietly mould crypto improvements”, Opinion, December 17) I want to appropriate a misrepresentation of our reporting. Tett cited BP’s Karen Scarborough as saying “blockchain isn’t a superb device for monitoring and tracing” including her personal “but” to the quote.
In truth, as we reported in Oil IT Journal in August 2021, Scarborough really added “the truth is, there are many legacy applied sciences that do that higher”.
This was music to my ears as I’ve been a blockchain sceptic since my “Blockchain is bullshit!” editorial of 2018 after I reported a basic flaw in blockchain purposes that purport to authenticate real-world artefacts like artistic endeavors or, as has been instructed in our trade, metal pipeline segments and different provide chain gadgets.
The argument goes as follows. Think about a murals bought with an authenticating register on the blockchain. The customer, it seems, is missing in scruples, and has a forgery made which she or he sells to somebody, together with the “authenticating” blockchain token. The unique is then bought to a real artwork lover who would fairly have the unique than any of the blockchain nonsense. This mechanism, with an authentic altering arms as copies are licensed as genuine (maybe on different “darkish” blockchains), could possibly be repeated many occasions in a grand “shell recreation”.
Whether or not it’s a murals, inexperienced electrical energy, stuff within the provide chain or the rest, it’s unattainable to unambiguously tie a token in a pc with a real-world artefact.
The truth that the blockchain has acquired such traction is as a result of it performs to the IT trade trope of being in cost. Simply consider HAL, the pc that took over command of the spaceship in Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Area Odyssey.
Our “Blockchain is bullshit” piece has had an excellent reception within the oil and gasoline trade though persons are understandably reluctant to return out and admit that among the stuff achieved by their IT departments might not be fairly as helpful as they hoped.
The blockchain initiatives possess one other side of a lot IT work in that they’re hammers in search of nails, novelties searching for to interchange stuff that works simply effective — “legacy applied sciences that do that higher” the truth is.
Neil McNaughton
Editor, Oil IT Journal, Sèvres, France
