A good friend of mine said 'asking your average finance guy about the merits of bitcoin, or any really blockchain tech, is like asking a formula 1 mechanic to do a physical inspection of an airplane, and trusting his opinion on whether it's safe to fly because they both go fast' The difference of course being that the mechanic, in this case, is really confident of his/her off the cuff opinion.

And yet, the media is fascinated with asking non-domain experts about various qualifications of a plethora of blockchain networks.

What seems lost on the blockchain hype crowd is that a blockchain or distributed ledger -- in and of itself -- is NOT the key innovation here. Rather, it is the relation to the consensus mechanism by which trustless, secure verification of the data on said ledger is achieved. Having said consensus participants be decentralized effectively ensures the integrity of the tamper/censorship resistance.

Couple this with whatever additional features of the protocol you'd like, but it needs to be viewed holistically.

Futures markets are being hailed as a net positive for bitcoin, introducing institutional liquidity to the market and providing a hedging mechanism for businesses, miners, and speculators. However, the presence of this market can also, theoretically, introduce new attack vectors. The first of these attack vectors is known as a 'Goldfinger' attack.