Us to Put Economic Data on 9 Blockchains
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The US government's plan to put economic data on 9 blockchains has sparked a heated debate about the benefits and drawbacks of this move. Some commenters, like RiverCrochet, argue that blockchain technology ensures data integrity by making it tamper-proof, while others, such as msgodel and recursivecaveat, question the improvement over simply publishing data online. The discussion reveals a divide between those who see potential in blockchain-enabled interactions with smart contracts, like yasp, and those who view it as just another third-party oracle, as glitchc pointed out. As LargeWu and yencabulator cynically noted, the real motivation might be to prevent data from being altered or suppressed for political gain.
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The only way would be some kind of giant panopticon of the entire relevant federal government and the daily activities of every employee. No amount of signing will increase the trustworthiness of the source.
Secretly altering the data is not a thing either. It's like trying to secretly alter last week's print NYT headline. You can push out all the new copies you want, but lots and lots of people remember the old one, there are a million old copies sitting in archives, and once somebody notices the jig is up forever. You can issue errata if you want, but that is orthogonal to storage mechanism.
This is just some combination of a flood-the-zone BS answer to criticism of interference with the BLS and a gift to the crypto industry donors of the admin.
Like, I can store this data on a server in a yaml file and that would be different. But it wouldn't improve anything. Taking an action and using a technology are not improvements in and of themselves.
Seems like you could get away with a centralized signing mechanism - am I missing something?
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohammad-Chowdhury-14/p...
Probably just money-laundering through crypto tokens.
It aims “to start trading in early September” [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/american-bitcoin-...
You can put anything "on a blockchain" but the cases in which that does anything useful versus any of several simpler and cheaper solutions are fairly narrow.
My guess is that he’s not quite dumb enough to take that capability away from himself.
I predict an article detailing all the technical/security flaws about a week after the implementation details are public.
However, to use it with blockchain smart contracts, you'd need to run an oracle to retrieve the data from the authoritative source then submit it to a blockchain, constantly. This moves the responsibility of this back to the government.
If you don't have a blockchain project, then this doesn't add value to you.
And they are going to poker face it.
It's not clear where (and maybe not easily accessible) to get these numbers at -exactly- the moment they release.
Nb announced revisions aren't a problem at all, and not one that "blockchain" prevents anyway (you can publish new stuff on a blockchain, no problem)
And either way, what does the blockchain offer if the government comes out and says that some previously published numbers were incorrect, and they publish new ones? You'll have two competing versions of the same data, with one considered obsolete because the government says so.
And none of this matters if they're altering the data before publishing.
*data is for 'entertainment' purposes only - Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual data is entirely coincidental.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5432523-trump-fi...
If there’s any issues with releases, they’re not going to be resolved by putting them on a blockchain
This is all publicly available to everyone at the exact same time. How do you think the market is moving in response, if this info is not available?
It seems similar to people who harvest the URL of a product before launch, so they don't have to wait for the slow website.
I can get the number on the internet within a fraction of a second. Back when bots were allowed on twitter I could get it faster than bloomberg.
I am getting strong "tech bros invent the bus in 2025" vibes. Putting Founder, CEO, Cereal Entrepreneur on your linkedin bio doesnt make you instantly a genius.
Its a vehicle that holds idk like 20 people or maybe even a bigger one that holds 100 or so. It will go from one point to another, along a pre-determined route, stopping at designated places along the way. People can get on and off at any one of the places it stops at.
Its reimagining the way we travel, its going to change the world. A similar thing is in the works that goes on fixed metal rails, the details havent all been figured out yet nor what to call it, but expect exciting news soon.
Otherwise, a transaction has to propagate through the network.
For Bitcoin, for the last couple years, looks like it's typically 15ish seconds to reach 90% of the network and 5ish to reach 50% of the network.
A centralized server could send updates to directly connected clients much faster than that.
https://www.dsn.kastel.kit.edu/bitcoin/#propdelaytx
Blockchain does absolutely nothing to address this trust issue.
I doubt even this.
I’ve been listening to Knowledge Fight, and in the way my brain needs it which is from the beginning so I’m at about 2019 and the playbook written by Jones/Stone/et al is in full swing - it used to be fun to laugh at him, and now I can see how he really paved the way for the hell we currently exist in.
I think one could argue that it's more elegant from the point of view of blockchain maximalism. But I don't quite understand the utility in any other sense.
or an insider trading scheme.
One has to understand it is very hard to bring data on the blockchain. The system being in a way fully isolated to the external world (no http GET query possible on xxx.gov, a trusted source has to bring it in).
If they will next publish actual data through an oracle as the official source it is actually a revolution (I do not have access to the Bloomberg article, not sure they talk about this). They are probably about to plug those blockhains as legitimate financial systems and it is gonna be hard to revert.
Whether we like or dislike blockchains, the US and others decided to dump their currencies on it to save them.
Probably not Trump idea, nor it was pitched to him by a crypto bro. He is just executing a move that is as big as Bretton Woods or the end the convertibility of the US dollar to gold.
If that’s the case, this is a great step forward for transparency and accountability.
We’ll see how it goes!