Blockchain as a service
|
One of those beautiful logical oxymorons, blockchain as a service — "B.S." to those of us who admire it at least for its staggering chutzpah — as the instant solution for those who, one one hand, so distrust financial intermediaries that they would cast operation of their ledger into monstrously slow, infiexible and environment-massacring gears of a blockchain but, on the other, so lack resources or expertise in distributed ledger technology, that they will hand the entire implementation over to a random startup, who will charge them handsomely, and in perpetuity, for providing an open-source software solution.
If blockchain itself is to all intents a bust — beyond the sovereign wallet (and, ahhh, discretely financing drug trafficking and terrorism) no-one has come up with a plausible use case yet, in ten years of trying — then combining it with the boneheaded rentier carry-on of software as a service is essence of extra-virgin, first-pressing snake oil.
Yet the airwaves are full of it[1] So, what do you call someone who (1) wants to re-intermediate a technology whose sole apparent benefit is disintermediating, and (2) who doesn't trust Clearstream or Visa, but is prepared to trust a couple of guys in Bulgaria who met on 4chan?
Hopefully not "your Chief Technology Officer".