As of November 2019, no application of blockchain, defined as a public, decentralized, permission-less, trustless ledger, works or is widely used despite billions spent on it over a decade.
Mixed Partly true and partly false in roughly equal measure.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Judge as of 2019-11-06, using the claim's own definition (public, decentralized, permissionless, trustless ledgers) and excluding cryptocurrencies themselves only if the claim's wider context does so. True: as of November 2019 there was no non-currency application on a public permissionless blockchain with substantial real-world use. Mostly true: only niche applications existed, with small user bases. Mixed: one or a few such applications had meaningful but limited adoption (e.g. stablecoins, DEXs), making 'not a single' arguable. Mostly false: several public-blockchain applications were plainly working and used at scale, though the claim is right that hype outran adoption. False: widely used applications clearly existed, e.g. if Bitcoin itself as a payment or store-of-value ledger is counted and the claim does not exclude it.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
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E1 DappRadar 2019 dapp Industry Review - Dappradar DappRadar · 18 December 2019
“Clearly, these are not yet products with a mass audience, even in blockchain terms.”
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E2 DappRadar 2019 dapp Industry Review - Dappradar DappRadar · 18 December 2019
“Ethereum remains the most significant smart contract blockchain. It grew the daily user base of its dapp ecosystem 118% in 2019, with daily value up 166%.”
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E3 Ethereum DeFi users rise almost 530% in 2019 CryptoSlate · 19 December 2019
“the total value of ERC20 token activity in the second half of the year alone was $7.2 billion, up 166 percent.”
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E4 Bitcoin Usage Among Merchants Is Up, According to Data From Coinbase and BitPay CoinDesk · 3 February 2020
“Ether and various stablecoins make up a small percentage of both of the above-mentioned totals, with Chainalysis reportedly estimating roughly $4 billion in bitcoin alone was sent through payment processors in 2019.”
Reasoning
DappRadar's 2019 review says that dapps on public blockchains were "not yet products with a mass audience, even in blockchain terms" (E1). That partly supports the claim. The same review reports that Ethereum's daily dapp user base grew 118% in 2019 (E2), and CryptoSlate reports $7.2 billion in ERC20 token activity in the second half of 2019 (E3). This points to meaningful but limited use of applications on public blockchains. CoinDesk reports about $4 billion in bitcoin sent through payment processors in 2019 (E4), which would count against the claim if Bitcoin is included; because the claim's wider context is not in evidence, "not a single application" is arguable rather than clearly right or wrong.
Cite this claim
Nouriel Roubini, “As of November 2019, no application of blockchain, defined as a public, decentralized, permission-less, trustless ledger, works or is widely used despite billions spent on it over a decade.” (said 6 November 2019). Verdict: mixed. Reliability API, claim c_f4e54fa43846, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_f4e54fa43846
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Nouriel Roubini
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Mostly true
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Mostly true
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The 2026 Iran War caused the largest energy shock since the oil crises of the 1970s.
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Resolved true
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Mixed
“Although there was a massive boom in AI-related investments, uncertainties caused by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other polices curtailed growth in the second half of the year”
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Mostly true
“disruptions to official employment and inflation data as a result of the longest-ever government shutdown have further clouded policymakers’ perceptions.”
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.