What could contribute more to government efficiency than by securing lucrative contracts for your crypto donors to implement inefficient technology that is uniquely suited to solving problems you don’t have? www.bloomberg.com/news/article... - ThreadSky

molly.wiki • 28 days ago

What could contribute more to government efficiency than by securing lucrative contracts for your crypto donors to implement inefficient technology that is uniquely suited to solving problems you don’t have?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-25/musk-exploring-blockchain-use-in-us-government-efficiency-effort

Comments

numerius.bsky.social•28 days ago

I can easily imagine how Musk is convinced everyone else just failed to use the blockchain well and he can easily solve this. It’s so him.

zoonie.bsky.social•28 days ago

Fucking blockchain, I ask you. He's just another investment dickhead saying words he thinks mean something. What, exactly, does he want to achieve with it, ffs?

zoonie.bsky.social•28 days ago

Hey, heard you on More Or Less. Very smart and straightforward. Yay!

agentmarco.bsky.social•25 days ago

Are you interested in earning extra income through crypto trading?

colinball.bsky.social•28 days ago

To literally make everything untraceable? Cool. Checks and balances are stupid

darkglade.bsky.social•28 days ago

Not defending this bullshit but most blockchain stuff ISN'T untraceable by design, the ledger is open for anyone to read.

The whole "BTC is anonymous" bit is horseshit (unless you're mining it yourself but even then)

One notable exception is Monero which was designed to obfuscate the money trail.

colinball.bsky.social•28 days ago

Ah. Okay. See this is helpful. Thank you for that

mau.fyi•28 days ago

It’s almost as if it has nothing to do with efficiency and everything to do with filling their pockets

scyllafren.bsky.social•28 days ago

Let him use it... Then we have a unchangeable track of proof of everything he does. Any info enters blockchain is undeletable, unchangeable and forever in there. :D

ughblehmeh.bsky.social•28 days ago

Isn't it notoriously bad at processing huge numbers of transactions? I seem to remember even the ones specifically designed for high throughput couldn't deal with the volume required for mainstream. And couldn't China just sneeze and accidentally do a 51% attack? Or have these problems been solved?

jalixe.bsky.social•26 days ago

it's extremely slow and charges you high fees lmao, it is not even anonymous unless if you do monero

the only perk behind it is that you can't do chargebacks, you always lose the money for good if you send it

cowan.lol•28 days ago

When has the blockchain *actually* solved a real world problem?

qwercus.bsky.social•28 days ago

Since I gave you an example that was *adjacent* to blockchain, I'll give you my current favorite blockchain tool: https://subscriptions.llamapay.io Streaming peer to peer payments. Pay rent/subscribe to a creator/do payroll directly. Unused deposits earn interest. You only touch your funds and they theirs.

qwercus.bsky.social•28 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System

jt34s1z6.bsky.social•28 days ago

does IPFS itself utilize a blockchain? or is it the relation/integration with it Filecoin and dApps, that use blockchains? I've never looked at those projects that closely

qwercus.bsky.social•28 days ago

I wasn't sure and after diving a bit deeper I think you are correct! I think it's just the filesystem. Filecoin and dapps build with it so often mentally fused it together.

natanael.bsky.social•28 days ago

The core IPFS project doesn't use any blockchains. A lot of cryptocurrency projects builds extra stuff on top of it

ncweaver.skerry-tech.com•27 days ago

And critically IPFS doesn't actually provide any robust guarantees of storage either.

qwercus.bsky.social•27 days ago

Is that an inherent property of having decentralized hosting or just a trade off made to reduce redundant copies on the network?

Like if a party wanted to ensure data is on the network they'd have to host their own node right?

garulon.bsky.social•28 days ago

Merkle trees are good - git is based on them - and when you see crypto zealots tout "the blockchain" it's almost certainly one of those but hosted on a system with normal account-based security

Crypto's big stupid is zero trust not the tech used to create zero trust, I think

runefar.bsky.social•28 days ago

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a

jt34s1z6.bsky.social•27 days ago

wait, does bsky plan on integration?
-"... financing led by Blockchain Capital ..."
-"This does not change the fact that the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.)"

runefar.bsky.social•28 days ago

Plus afterall look at bluesky itself. You are on a decentralized platform when you use it and one funded by blockchain too

runefar.bsky.social•28 days ago

https://e-estonia.com/solutions/cyber-security/ksi-blockchain/

https://www.unicef.org/innovation/blockchain

https://www.un.org/en/un-chronicle/blockchain-and-sustainable-growth

runefar.bsky.social•28 days ago

To be fair both unicef and estonia use it or similar systems in conjunction with their healthcare and humanitarian network

africanoreuropean.bsky.social•28 days ago

it does solve real world problems: the problem of how criminals can get paid. E.g. Ransomware wouldn't exist without cryptocurrency. It also gives North Korea a lucrative target for hacking.

IMO making crime easier is a bad thing to solve IMESHO.

the-ballmer-peak.bsky.social•28 days ago

Spot on comment.

melica.me•28 days ago

Oh lol another “… investigates blockchain use …”. It’s like the step everyone everywhere lands on when there are absolutely no other ideas left in the world.

petergratton.bsky.social•28 days ago

My favorite example is the World Bank. So many white papers on it, then they do blockchain bonds and…well not really much in bonds but still those white papers on the promise of blockchain.

petergratton.bsky.social•28 days ago

It’s really a race between blockchain ppl and alcoholics in how many promises they make for brights days just a bit ahead.

martinrayner.bsky.social•28 days ago

IIRC, blockchain was going revolutionize logistics. How’s that been working out so far?
https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2021/07/27/how-blockchain-technology-is-beefing-up

jonhallin.bsky.social•27 days ago

While the problems they describe are real, and the solutions they suggest sound very useful, they have absolutely nothing to do with blockchains. It's just a central database that clients can use.

martinrayner.bsky.social•27 days ago

Maersk and other shippers can get along quite fine w/out blockchain. It adds nothing of value whatsoever to the process, imho.

molly.wiki•27 days ago

https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2022/11/29/maersk-and-ibm-to-discontinue-tradelens?exit=Newsletter

martinrayner.bsky.social•26 days ago

Ha! Brilliant... thanks for sharing.

Shame having my long-held belief vindicated wasn’t somehow profitable.

natanael.bsky.social•28 days ago

The only use of blockchains have is when you have multiple mutually distrusting entities where a public information exchange protocol is enough to enforce the rules (like a money ledger), and the moment you have a trusted third party (like a government agency) it becomes totally pointless

jonhallin.bsky.social•27 days ago

Or one of the world's largest shipping companies, which also happens to be the one who is physically holding the items you want to track...

natanael.bsky.social•28 days ago

In logistics it's somehow even maximally useless. Everybody needs to be trusted to some degree and there's no mechanism to prevent fake data being entered because the blockchain can't magically know what's happening in the real world.

martinrayner.bsky.social•28 days ago

“Maximally useless”... Always happy to learn a brilliant new phrase. 👍

Comment field is too limited to explain why, but agree w/ you completely. Basically, it just serves no valid purpose and is, best I can tell, utterly superfluous.

vos.bsky.social•28 days ago

“investigates blockchain” in this case means “sees opportunity to inflate value of coin he holds”

martinrayner.bsky.social•28 days ago

Cannot wait to discover more precise details about what this “exploration” involves. Thankfully, there’s a transparent reporting mechanism for this phantasmagorical “DOGE” agency or whatever, right?

colin.hoagie.fun•28 days ago

The government is literally the trusted source of truth!

(Well, you know)

jonhallin.bsky.social•27 days ago

"If DOGE pursued the technology it would likely dwarf any government project seen in the US to date."

Sounds like a good way to save a lot of money...

0kay1st.bsky.social•28 days ago

It’ll be really efficient when these clowns establish a crypto reserve. Really makes the grift easier.

wingtips.bsky.social•28 days ago

If it’s a really, really bad idea they will promote it with everything they’ve got. We’re talking about #LootingTheTreasury folks.

that70sdrip.bsky.social•28 days ago

Voter Expectation: "Cut wasteful spending to lower the deficit"
Reality: Give more than any money that could possibly be saved from cutting anti-discrimination programs to John Scammer and Rugpull Andy

darkglade.bsky.social•28 days ago

Of course, the endgame was always to get more money into their pockets... more efficiently?

techerous.bsky.social•28 days ago

It still hurts my brain that this iteration of the GOP took over in part through the disenchantment of the Bush administration's cronyism.

estabon-vadesi.bsky.social•28 days ago

Or giving a speech at a German Nazi rally claiming you "can't hear" them and asking them to "raise their hands or something". Fuck this guy.

acetrace.bsky.social•25 days ago

So is the plan to stir up so much drama, have people debate blockchain, crypto, etc. hoping no one will notice what they’re actually doing?

lonestargooner.bsky.social•28 days ago

Scammers gonna Ponzi.

vexorian.dev•28 days ago

Great let's start with the solution and then look for the problem. It sounds 'efficient' for sure.

darkglade.bsky.social•28 days ago

Because that solutions looking for problems always go so very well :/

intense.wiggling.me•28 days ago

Suppose to be identifying the best tech to solve a problem with. Not identifying what problems you can solve with a specific tech not made for those problems.

linuxrebel.org•28 days ago

This is a somewhat systemic problem in the tech world. Engineers are trained to, and very good at, providing solutions. What they're not good at, is describing the problem. We've all got hammers, and the world is nails.

ceszare.bsky.social•28 days ago

We are not only on the darkest timeline, but the dumbest as well

nunyabitnez.bsky.social•28 days ago

At one of his rallies, a woman was giddy about this idea of buying 100 million bitcoin with US dollars. This will be the largest single transfer of wealth to the worst people on earth. Crypto is made for drug, arms, human trafficking. That is what it was made for, an untraceable transfer of money

davidjbyrne.bsky.social•28 days ago

As many felons would tell you it’s not untraceable. The IDs of the wallets used are in the block chain forever

hardxcoded.bsky.social•27 days ago

I hate musk, but your take is not balanced, blockchain does solve some problems, It just people do not understand money very well and how it works, not to mention blockchain, but it exactly takes like this one, make it a scapegoat and easy beating boy for technologically unaware.

jcastillotan.bsky.social•28 days ago

The Doge failure never stops

jamie.schembri.me•28 days ago

IDK, I think it’s in character for a traditional, bureaucratic organisation to invent new hoops to jump through and new problems to prevent getting useful work done.

vos.bsky.social•28 days ago

There aren’t many to begin with, but if anything is NOT a use case for crypto it’s efficiency

runefar.bsky.social•28 days ago

To be honest, this isnt a move unique to Musk though. This is actually a move that is much more in line with how many more socialist/mixed economy countries are moving. As terrible as Musk is; it is important fo recognize other governments like Estonia and the UN have implemented it

runefar.bsky.social•28 days ago

While scandinavian counties like Norway,Sweden and other digitzed more digitized economies are investigating it. In fact I attended a conference in Oslo dedicated to the subject and other cybersecurity matters

runefar.bsky.social•28 days ago

What pressure needs to be put on though is that it is an actual implementation of the technology rather than Trump using it for a memecoin that doesnt even use blockchain. That is where we should be concerned not dismissing its potentiol integration out of hand

runefar.bsky.social•28 days ago

Compare https://e-estonia.com/solutions/cyber-security/ksi-blockchain/ and https://www.unicef.org/innovation/blockchain https://www.undp.org/news/undp-takes-its-blockchain-academy-global and https://www.un.org/en/un-chronicle/blockchain-and-sustainable-growth to consider governments already consider it as part of a potentiol infrastructure plan.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452414X22000188

runefar.bsky.social•28 days ago

Partly for governments they have different focuses. Humantarian efforts utilize it as a way for providing for the unbanked while the idea of efficiency much more releates to the combination of its verification system and its automation system including that you can use the network as data automator

nick.goede.cc•28 days ago

Would love if the headline writers didn’t try so hard to make it all sound legit and like Musk actually understands any of it.

kauaiarts.bsky.social•28 days ago

They will bankrupt america

vivekr.bsky.social•28 days ago

We have had technology to track federal spending with every permissioning, decisioning, reporting and analytics feature you can imagine for, what, two decades now? It’s all enterprise grade. And tracking spending should be centralized, with one source of truth.

I feel like I am taking crazy pills

pabloredux.bsky.social•28 days ago

Maybe it offers a different kind of efficiency? https://bsky.app/profile/pazuzuzu.bsky.social/post/3lglrst4myk2h

pazuzuzu.bsky.social•28 days ago

Blockchain scales terribly, so it's a poor solution for large numbers of small purchases. However if you consider it as a ledger used between a few hundred/thousand gigantic corporations to sync their balance sheets daily, it's absolutely reasonable.

pabloredux.bsky.social•28 days ago

(But is it necessary even there? Just looked at use cases and seen fair amount of tech-solutionism bullshit - real-world problems may require solutions that rather boringly lie elsewhere?)

pazuzuzu.bsky.social•28 days ago

It's not necessary. But this technology makes sense only in the case of a nightmare dystopia, and that tells you something about the future envisioned by its creators and advocates.

pabloredux.bsky.social•28 days ago

Er... cool!

pabloredux.bsky.social•28 days ago

What is going on here? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/25/tech-right-trump-inauguration?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

pazuzuzu.bsky.social•28 days ago

They should really Google "reign of terror"

glacierlily.bsky.social•28 days ago

Wish this immigrant would stick with spaceships and cars

glacierlily.bsky.social•28 days ago

Autocracyinc

linuxrebel.org•28 days ago

He's going to give us something truly unique. Blockchain social media run by AI, and managed in an agile process to achieve maximum SEO exposure.

(I've given you enough buzzwords you should be hearing bees right now)

trey.progressivebitcoiner.org•28 days ago

Yeah this is really dumb

africanoreuropean.bsky.social•28 days ago

grift more efficiently, LDO.

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