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Bitcoin's decentralised nature is not a feature, its a bug

QAPereo 9y ago
It’s a feature, in the same way that the decentralized nature of white collar crime is a feature. The bug is in the people who naively believe that technology changes human nature, rather than empowering it. Those people need to be locked in a small room with an excellent library to study history for at least a year.
- TokyoKid 9y ago
  You start out with a good point, but the idea that there is one default human nature isn't right.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    Individuals don’t really matter in the calculus of billions of people. The dominant trends are frankly old, and persistent.
    - colordrops 9y ago
      The bandwidth, latency, and fidelity with which information is transferred between individuals has changed the calculus of billions of people dramatically.
    - TokyoKid 9y ago
      The out come has changed over time, and that's what science says, not my personal observation.
- baddox 9y ago
  You could say the same thing for historical approaches to central planning of anything. Plenty of good and bad to go around.
lend000 9y ago
Do people who didn't make any money off of crypto just upvote any crap Bitcoin article that has a negative connotation in the title? Fact: There are pros and cons to decentralizing a system. Some alleged pros to the centralized system were not described in any technical detail in this article.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- laci27 9y ago
  No. I just agreed 100% with "Decentralised magically doesn't mean it's better. There are scenarios it fits, and there are scenarios it doesn't fit."
laci27 9y ago
At last someone smarter than me, agrees with me. I've been telling people the same thing since {I didn't invest in BTC when it was $8}. :)
- laci27 9y ago
  The main thing about BTC, the one that I, as a technical person, didn't understand until recently, is NOT it's tech, bugs or features... It's the value it has for people (albeit until recently mostly criminals and paranoid people). Value that is just as tangible as FIAT currency.
clarents 9y ago
This seems to be a rather short-sighted view of the 2008 financial crisis. Even conceding that the bailout of the too-big-to-fail banks was a good thing and saved the economy, and that this was possible only because of the centralization that this article supports, it was this same centralization that did things such as repeal the Glass-Steagall Act that allowed for such zany behavior that led up to the crisis in the first place. So yeah, at one moment in time centralization was very beneficial. At many other moments in time before and after that, maybe it wasn't so great.
- viswanathk 9y ago
  Repeal of Glass-Steagall act actually allowed the government to somewhat step away. Some of the well capitalised commercial banks were able to absorb the losses of the investment banks by buying them out when the price was low, and then making more money once the panic ended.
Psilidae 9y ago
I was intrigued when I started reading this article, but then it just ended without really delivering anything. I think this could be summarized as: "I once heard about how having a centralized currency helped prevent bad things. Bitcoin is decentralized." I was actually interested to hear a perspective of how a hypothetical centralized cryptocurrency might be superior, but the author just kind of offered an allusion and nothing else.

It’s a feature, in the same way that the decentralized nature of white collar crime is a feature. The bug is in the people who naively believe that technology changes human nature, rather than empowering it. Those people need to be locked in a small room with an excellent library to study history for at least a year.

TokyoKid 9y ago
You start out with a good point, but the idea that there is one default human nature isn't right.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Individuals don’t really matter in the calculus of billions of people. The dominant trends are frankly old, and persistent.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    The bandwidth, latency, and fidelity with which information is transferred between individuals has changed the calculus of billions of people dramatically.
  - TokyoKid 9y ago
    The out come has changed over time, and that's what science says, not my personal observation.
baddox 9y ago
You could say the same thing for historical approaches to central planning of anything. Plenty of good and bad to go around.

lend000 9y ago

Do people who didn't make any money off of crypto just upvote any crap Bitcoin article that has a negative connotation in the title? Fact: There are pros and cons to decentralizing a system. Some alleged pros to the centralized system were not described in any technical detail in this article.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
laci27 9y ago
No. I just agreed 100% with "Decentralised magically doesn't mean it's better. There are scenarios it fits, and there are scenarios it doesn't fit."

laci27 9y ago

At last someone smarter than me, agrees with me. I've been telling people the same thing since {I didn't invest in BTC when it was $8}. :)

laci27 9y ago
The main thing about BTC, the one that I, as a technical person, didn't understand until recently, is NOT it's tech, bugs or features... It's the value it has for people (albeit until recently mostly criminals and paranoid people). Value that is just as tangible as FIAT currency.

clarents 9y ago

This seems to be a rather short-sighted view of the 2008 financial crisis. Even conceding that the bailout of the too-big-to-fail banks was a good thing and saved the economy, and that this was possible only because of the centralization that this article supports, it was this same centralization that did things such as repeal the Glass-Steagall Act that allowed for such zany behavior that led up to the crisis in the first place. So yeah, at one moment in time centralization was very beneficial. At many other moments in time before and after that, maybe it wasn't so great.

viswanathk 9y ago
Repeal of Glass-Steagall act actually allowed the government to somewhat step away. Some of the well capitalised commercial banks were able to absorb the losses of the investment banks by buying them out when the price was low, and then making more money once the panic ended.

Psilidae 9y ago

I was intrigued when I started reading this article, but then it just ended without really delivering anything. I think this could be summarized as: "I once heard about how having a centralized currency helped prevent bad things. Bitcoin is decentralized." I was actually interested to hear a perspective of how a hypothetical centralized cryptocurrency might be superior, but the author just kind of offered an allusion and nothing else.