> but the only reason everyone got excited was because the value of Bitcoin went to the moon
I'm a blockchain minimalist, but I'd say that there are at least 2 other reasons why blockchains are interesting:
1) A trustless, distributed digital ledger.
But it turns out that _in most cases_, we are OK with a trusted, centralized, institutional clearing agent that maintains the ledger. The benefits are numerous as long as we trust the institution/agent.
2) An immutable record of transactions.
This follows (1), though: if you trust the institution, you trust that there won't be a malicious mutation of your records and in general, because the records are mutable, they can also easily canceled or reversed which also turns out to be generally beneficial.
So I do think blockchains do have some unique use cases where they would be beneficial (e.g. I think property (land, home, car) titles is a good one, car accident/repair history), but there are just way too many where they add no value.
I'm a blockchain minimalist, but I'd say that there are at least 2 other reasons why blockchains are interesting:
1) A trustless, distributed digital ledger.
But it turns out that _in most cases_, we are OK with a trusted, centralized, institutional clearing agent that maintains the ledger. The benefits are numerous as long as we trust the institution/agent.
2) An immutable record of transactions.
This follows (1), though: if you trust the institution, you trust that there won't be a malicious mutation of your records and in general, because the records are mutable, they can also easily canceled or reversed which also turns out to be generally beneficial.
So I do think blockchains do have some unique use cases where they would be beneficial (e.g. I think property (land, home, car) titles is a good one, car accident/repair history), but there are just way too many where they add no value.