Your ultimate 4-minutes-guide to becoming a real Blockchain Mythbuster!!!

4 min readApr 11, 2019

When people barely understand what is what and who is who and are too afraid to learn, ask and discover — they run into the fiction, seeking help out of imaginary by underestimating the power of knowledge.

We have an eye on your understanding of blockchain and want YOU to define the reality from fairytales, so there wouldn’t be a need of guessing, awkwardly smiling and silencing when someone is saying an obvious absurdity.

All you need to do is read this BLOCKpost till the end, absorb the possible information and shape your opinion towards blockchain technology! Being a Mythbuster is not an easy bare to have, we are here to open your eyes towards the reality, and fracture those foolish myths in its core.

So, first things first — we need to understand how does myths were created?

The process went something like this: it began with a real or imagined incident or event that was worth repeating, something so intriguing that we were compelled to repeat it. It was passed along by word of mouth, had been told and retold millions of times and existed in a hundred different versions around the world. This is due to certain natural but curious tendencies of the mind — the tendency, for instance, to remember things that make a strong impression and to forget things that don’t impress us very strongly. There is also a tendency to exaggerate or minimize, to glorify or ennoble, to idealize or vilify. Beyond that, there’s a natural, unconscious tendency to analyze things, to take them apart and put them back together in different combinations and a natural tendency to simplify or edit.

Now, let’s go myth by myth and figure out some common misconceptions:

Blockchain is a hotbed of illegal activity

Natalia Karayaneva — the CEO of Propy ( a Silicon Valley proptech company that is revolutionizing home purchasing via blockchain.) shared a valuable insight toward the common misconception, that many people believe that blockchains are full of illegal activities: “Of course, criminals can use the blockchain for illegal activity, but they can also use highways or the postal system to facilitate their crime,” Karayaneva said. “Blockchains are used for legitimate, legal and necessary tasks, just like anything else. And not just for the trading of cryptocurrency, either — that’s another myth.”

2. NOT all blockchains are open.

Open Blockchains (particularly cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin) are indeed open to everyone, without a single exception, but there are also 2 other types of blockchains about which you have to know.

Private blockchains feature access controls and authorization requirements. Between those parties, the data will be open and shared…but if you’re not a part of that, you can’t have access to the information which shares inside of it.

Hybrid blockchains — the ones, that still keep a part of the information fully public, but still reserving a part of it centralized.

3. Blockchain, bitcoin, and distributed ledgers are NOT the same thing.

Let’s understand it once and forever:

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that uses blockchain technology.

Blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology, but not all distributed ledgers are effectively blockchains, said Michela Menting, digital security research director at ABI Research.

“While the definition of distributed ledger technology is still debatable, the current dominant position is that they essentially require a legal identity with permissioned nodes to validate transactions,” Menting said. “As such, there are a number of enterprises labelling themselves blockchain, but in reality, they are just distributed ledgers.”

4. Blockchain technology is NOT only for financial services.

For sure, blockchain blossomed thanks to the bitcoin. But the financial services are not the only field for blockchain. We have covered topics like :

Stay tuned for much more!

5. It is POSSIBLE to hack blockchains.

One of the main selling points about Blockchains is their inherent permanence and transparency. When people hear that, they often think that means that Blockchains are invulnerable to outside attacks. No system or database will ever be completely secure, but the larger and more distributed the network, the more secure it is believed to be. With 51% attack it IS possible.

6. Smart contracts DON’T have the same legal value as regular contracts

Smart contracts are just pieces of code that execute actions automatically when certain conditions are met. Therefore, they are not considered as regular contracts from a legal perspective. However, they can be used as proof of whether or not a certain task has been accomplished.

Now, when you have enough piece of knowledge towards the myths that are flying around the blockchain technology.

We dare you to check out our quiz and prove your place among the blockchain Mythbusters of our time!

Read more on:

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it is 100% safe.

Blockchain is NOT a pyramid scheme.

https://medium.com/@coinmarketreporter/21st-century-pyramid-scheme-how-blockchain-technology-is-reinventing-an-old-con-b4a76cf58d7

Coins and tokens are NOT the same thing.

References:

Your ultimate 4-minutes-guide to becoming a real Blockchain Mythbuster!!!

Written by Nooor: Armenian Blockchain Association

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