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The state-run lottery is so because the profits go back to the system, which means that as a method of social ruin it at least subsidizing the rest of the socia

The state-run lottery is so because the profits go back to the system, which means that as a method of social ruin it at least subsidizing the rest of the social services. About the second point, in the dot-com boom, billions of dollars in value were destroyed by people doing the same kind of speculation as they're doing now with crypto. At least a lot of that money paid for labor and assets. What do ICOs actually leave behind? And what actual, useful innovation of blockchain technology has any uses whatsoever? Man, it's been over 8 years since we have cryptocurrencies as none of the tech's transcended that niche.

CryptoPunk 9y ago
The dot com boom also spurred enormous tech development, and any government effort to curb it would have been a sweeping/imprecise measure that would have stifled the good (e.g. the early Amazon) with the bad (the 90% of firms that were crap). Moreover, a valuable lesson would have gone unlearned, leaving the investing public in its more naive state where it is more dependent on the publicly funded risk assessment that regulatory agencies do. This socialization of due diligence is going to create moral hazard, which is an economic inefficiency. >And what actual, useful innovation of blockchain technology has any uses whatsoever? People are able to move value in situations that they previously could not. Spin off benefits include the creation of a hardware wallet industry, an enormous amount of knowledge gained by cryptocurrency users on computer security, and greater public attention to monetary policy. I would argue that it has pushed PayPal and the credit companies to up their game and offer faster/cheaper services, but that's more speculative. I believe the big benefits of cryptocurrency are yet to come. They represent a paradigm shift and paradigm shifts take a long time to materialize. To give you an example, e-commerce took a long time to move beyond the realm of fantastical claims about its future promise to actual large-scale real world utility.

CryptoPunk 9y ago

The dot com boom also spurred enormous tech development, and any government effort to curb it would have been a sweeping/imprecise measure that would have stifled the good (e.g. the early Amazon) with the bad (the 90% of firms that were crap). Moreover, a valuable lesson would have gone unlearned, leaving the investing public in its more naive state where it is more dependent on the publicly funded risk assessment that regulatory agencies do. This socialization of due diligence is going to create moral hazard, which is an economic inefficiency. >And what actual, useful innovation of blockchain technology has any uses whatsoever? People are able to move value in situations that they previously could not. Spin off benefits include the creation of a hardware wallet industry, an enormous amount of knowledge gained by cryptocurrency users on computer security, and greater public attention to monetary policy. I would argue that it has pushed PayPal and the credit companies to up their game and offer faster/cheaper services, but that's more speculative. I believe the big benefits of cryptocurrency are yet to come. They represent a paradigm shift and paradigm shifts take a long time to materialize. To give you an example, e-commerce took a long time to move beyond the realm of fantastical claims about its future promise to actual large-scale real world utility.