If an author does not understand what he is talking about, then his conclusion should be ignored. This article is laughable, I would suggest doing your own research before listening to baseless prose. Below, we see why this might not be a sound article:

> The first miner that solves the problem is rewarded with a few Bitcoins, hence the unkind comparisons to Ponzi or MLM schemes.

Author clearly does not understand what MLM and Ponzi schemes are, likely throwing them out as buzzwords to associate mining with scams.

> Actually trying to make computers in general reflect the real world is a very hard task, and the blockchain does nothing to solve this issue.

Black and white statements are a red flag; it's likely this guy does not know much and was hired to "write posts about bitcoin". Blockchains and other emergent structures may trigger tons of research into automata theory. Blockchains do get us one step closer to representing globally unique objects. Seems like the author didn't ponder at all.

> One of the most common proposed usages of blockchain is to track the shipment of real world goods, including everything from food to diamonds. On the surface this sounds great, you could easily and trustlessly prove that the shiny rock in your beloved’s ring wasn’t mined by children in a war torn region, fantastic!

The author's sarcasm here is very telling of his lack of imagination. To swiftly denounce technology that doesn't exist in its full form yet is incredibly presumptuous.

> Ebay purchaser did not deliver? Tough. Someone held you hostage until you sent them bitcoin? Tough. Private key hacked, or hard drive destroyed? That’s unfortunate for you.

As if these problems are not applicable to fiat currency...

> The only way to recover bad bitcoin transactions is to convince everyone to do a hard fork

This is possible with smart insurance contracts with two user segments: insurance providers, and insurance seekers.

> [Refunds due to faulty transactions] would rapidly clutter up the chain full of “oops” transactions, which would pretty quickly make you wonder why you’re bothering at all.

Did this guy just forget that faulty transactions make up almost no relative volume? This is a moot point. Even if every single transaction was faulty, it'd only be a factor two more in size according to the Author. The author thinks that a factor of two is a worthy point here. I am really starting to question the validity of these points.

> It turns out, that there’s very few systems that truly benefit from an inability to amend or update transactions.

Okay, I can say that too. Where's the source?

> The idea of everyone mining on their phone is just laughable.

The idea of everyone carrying around a device that computes faster than the supercomputers Feynman was playing on is just laughable.

> On top of that, as best I can tell a large percentage of Ethereum contracts are literal Ponzi schemes and ICO tokens

So, you can't tell very well? AFAIK the logic here is also flawed; even if most of the ICOs were scams, it says more about the people doing ICOs than it does about the concept of the ICO itself. Again folks, this article contains a lot of misinformation. I highly suggest doing your own research before making decisions.