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After a continued anniversary in Las Vegas, I assuredly headed home to reflect on all the new releases and advice inundating CES. Press conferences, demonstrations, display meetings, and so abounding accompanying active appointment advance and meetups were accident that it bound gets overwhelming.
As I absolved through aisles of robots who could dance, admit and comedy with pets, race, record, and comedy ping pong, I was in awe at how anybody could possibly angle out in the world’s biggest, best technologically avant-garde marketplace.
But article absolutely stood out as I stood alfresco the Sands Expo on day 3, smoker a cigarette and hitting a cannabis vape pen with a friend.
There was a analytical abridgement of cryptocurrency mining.
Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
Cryptocurrency absolutely had a attendance in Las Vegas. From Ledger’s massive ad advance to Pundi X’s avant-garde network, networking contest at Mike Tyson’s old house, annular table conferences with crypto A-listers like Brock Pierce, and added could be found. In fact, Pundi X’s Zac Cheah started my adventure into the absolute blockchain innovations at CES.
But I didn’t see Bitmain, Bitfury, Canaan, Obelisk, or any of the ASIC miner manufacturers at all. It’s as admitting the billion-dollar industry was absolutely in hiding.
ASIC mining manufacturers disrupted the absolute video agenda bazaar in Q4 2024 through Q2 2024. It eventually cone-shaped off, but mining hasn’t gone anywhere, and neither are abounding of these companies.
Yet neither AMD nor Nvidia or Intel gave abundant anticipation to cryptocurrency mining in their columnist conferences. Video gaming and action were the targets. Buzzwords were befuddled around, but cryptocurrency and blockchain weren’t amid them.
Check out Nvidia’s latest G-Sync and Freesync-enabled RTX2080TI cartoon card.
It’s a abundant GPU for gaming, but cipher would acquaint me how able-bodied it could accomplish in cryptocurrency mining. Nor could they acquaint me if they’re accomplishing annihilation to stop crypto-mining on Nvidia equipment.
That vibe reverberated on the appearance floor. Hardware basic manufacturers like Gigabyte, ASUS, and Intel mostly stared at me blankly back I brought up mining and blockchain applications of their equipment.
Although how cool, both actually and figuratively, is this 3M liquid-cooled Gigabyte server?
And they weren’t the alone ones who seemed apprenticed of crypto.
Everyone was abashed about blockchain and crypto, and my cafeteria affair with Pete Camarillo, Business Wire’s media relations specialist, accepted that.
As the alone abreast blockchain announcer there, I acquainted a lot of weight on my amateur to dig through the trenches and acquisition some agitative advice to allotment with our readers.
Those amnion ran dry for several days, and a lot of my pre-planned affairs were declining to sustain the activity I had advancing in.
Walking the CES Digital Money Marketplace
One of the CES contest I was best aflame to see was the CES Digital Money Forum, but it concluded up actuality a decentralized amphitheater jerk.
We can do bigger than assuming off our lambos during a frat affair at Mike Tyson’s old mansion, crypto community.
The attendance of crypto on the CES appearance attic was candidly abysmal, and it showed added about the industry’s abridgement of ability than its innovation.
Devv.io promised a blockchain with 8 actor TPS. It’s aimed at action users and is added of a cloud-as-a-service archetypal than a accurate blockchain.
They were at CES attractive for action partners, but cipher was biting, admitting a actual arresting area at the access to the Sands Digital Money Marketplace.
The founder’s video bold tech was added absorbing than the “blockchain” he proposed.
Next up was CelPay, the adaptable crypto accommodation app from Celsius Network, which offers big-ticket crypto-backed loans. It’s a abundant abstraction with some money abaft it, but admitting cloudburst money into marketing, it struggles to acquisition users.
We already discussed SecuX’s accouterments wallet alternative in this article, which is who we talked to chronologically afterwards CelPay. Afterwards that, we saw Vault Logic’s multi-currency ATM, which supports cryptocurrencies. Bill pay, crypto trading and banknote outs, authorization transactions, and added are accurate in this machine.
It would be added absorbing if Las Vegas wasn’t already abounding with bitcoin BTMs and added cryptocurrency machines galore. In fact, here’s one at the off-strip liquor abundance we chock-full at Sunday night afterwards CES Unveiled.
Last we had WIZBL, a South Korean blockchain already afresh able action users fast transactions.
The botheration with abounding of these solutions isn’t necessarily the tech. It’s that anybody already has solutions in place, and they charge bazaar allotment and barter and acceptance and assurance to be interesting.
A lot of these projects are aloof too baby and new to accomplish a big abundant appulse yet, and they were absent in a huge show.
Just because you body it, doesn’t beggarly bodies will come. The alone aggregation that brought article absorbing to the blockchain industry at CES was IBM.
The Dawn of Quantum Computing
Despite what you may accept heard in Forbes and blockchain media that wasn’t at CES, IBM didn’t breach the blockchain. What IBM did was advertise its massive, 9ft by 9ft aboveboard breakthrough computer, dubbed the Q System One.
It’s a breakthrough, not aloof in blockchain, but in technology itself. So let’s altercate what the IBM Q System One is and isn’t. I’ll do my best not to get too wonky on you and accumulate it on a aerial akin for now.
We’ll alpha with this video from our altercation with Pundi X CEO Zac Cheah at CES Unveiled. Notice that back we use the appellation “psuedo-random,” Zac says “mmhmm” at the 0:20 additional mark with the accent that he assuredly accepted he was talking to bodies who accept cryptography and blockchain. Pay abutting absorption to the beam of my architect acquaintance allurement the question.
Zac anon knew what he was about to be asked, as did anybody but the business bodies abaft him, who aback benumbed out.
It was ironically at that point that we accustomed absolutely area our assurance akin with Cheah was.
The continued adventure abbreviate is that annihilation in a computer is anytime absolutely random. No amount how avant-garde they get, the basics of accretion haven’t changed.
Computers can alone do what they’re programmed to do, so they’re not “random” in the aforementioned way attributes is “random,” and alike that is a misnomer.
If algebraic aesthetics is absorbing to you, I’m blessed to get added technical, but you’ll accept to let us apperceive on Twitter or Telegram. For now we’ll move on, because the boilerplate being hates math.
But do you apperceive who loves math? Computers.
And do you apperceive who loves both computers and blockchain? IBM.
Why Blockchain Will Survive IBM
Quantum computers, like ASIC mining rigs, can be engineered to accomplish actual avant-garde calculations actual fast. The botheration is they charge to be run in actual absolutely controlled environments to work.
The abstraction that breakthrough accretion can “beat” blockchain is based on the absolute actuality that avant-garde cryptography standards will charge to beforehand already breakthrough accretion becomes readily accessible to the masses.
Analysts claiming IBM dead blockchain not alone don’t accept blockchain, but they don’t accept cryptography. Quantum accretion isn’t activity to abort the fundamentals of algebraic – it’s activity to beforehand them far above what we can alike brainstorm appropriate now, and it’s activity to do that at a actual avant-garde pace.
Of course, the abstraction that you’ll own a breakthrough computer at home is a bit antic at the moment.
The IBM Q System One is alone about 5 ft by 2 ft of that behemothic box. The blow of the case is advised to actualize the controlled ambiance bare to run it, which is a lot altered than your home PC case.
Quantum Computers Can’t Kill Blockchain
If you anticipate anyone but action users are activity to finer run a breakthrough computer, I point you to the cannabis abstraction industry as an example.
Home abstraction users architecture kits in their garages acclimated open-loop cannabis abstraction systems fabricated from PVC pipes. Because they were open-looped, they were generally attenuated and exploded.
It fabricated the account a lot, and bodies abhorrent butane for the applesauce of animal individuals, and BHO cannabis extracts got a lot of bad press.
In able environments, bankrupt bend systems fabricated of metal pipes are acclimated for cannabis extraction. Because it’s a controlled, bankrupt environment, annihilation gets in or out, and the consistent artefact is added pure. Explosion accident is bound absolutely to animal error, and if it does occur, the metal pipes won’t splinter and annihilate anybody in the room.
A home breakthrough computer isn’t activity to backfire in your room, but by the time it’s miniaturized and fabricated safe abundant to be acclimated beneath those conditions, action technology will accept avant-garde so abundant that it won’t matter.
IBM’s breakthrough computer didn’t annihilate blockchain. Blockchain companies accept continued been alive with IBM, and blockchain companies will one day buy their own Q System One to angle alongside the ASIC mining rigs in authoritative blockchain networks.
I didn’t see the end of blockchain at CES like I feared that I would afterwards dredging through the bare Sands. The abstraction that a breakthrough computer will annihilate blockchain is as cool as the abstraction that the PC dead the internet.
I witnessed no murder. I saw the aurora of a new age of blockchain accretion affective into 2024.
The columnist is invested in agenda assets, including Bitcoin which is mentioned in this article.