Cryptocurrency Is Garbage. So Is Blockchain.

Abstract

The entire space cryptocurrency/blockchain space is dominated by false claims, conspiracy theories, muddled thinking, and outright fraud of many kinds. It is remarkable how much academic, journalistic and popular writing on blockchain accepts at face value dogma that any dispassionate investigation shows to be false, This paper consists mainly of two lists: falsehoods that nobody who is interested in the world as it really is should ever repeat, at least not without heavy qualification; the second a list of truths and rules of thumb about cryptocurrency and blockchain that have been demonstrated repeatedly (often for many years) but escape notice far too often. Each item in the list is accompanied with some, but only a small subset, of the evidence available to support it.