The Reasons Why Blockchain Is Not Quite Ready for Facebook’s Dreams

Many people have heard of blockchain technology, but few know what to make of it. Some people will tell you that it’s the next big thing, poised to disrupt almost every industry under the sun and reshape the world, affecting everything from real estate to education to the very structure of modern democracy. Others will assert that blockchain is technically advanced and theoretically interesting, but overhyped and impractical. 

NYU professor, former senior economist for international affairs in the Clinton White House’s council of economic advisers and Nobel Prize winning economist Nouriel Roubini once compared blockchain to “an Excel spreadsheet” and proposed that the technology has “absolutely no basis for success.” The truth lies somewhere between these two poles.

Many proposed uses for blockchain will remain forever implausible: Blockchain will not bring peace to the Middle East, and today’s blockchain solutions are inefficient. But the technology is improving and…