13 ms·

Cryptonetworks and why tokens are fundamental

118 points by squirrel 8y ago

montrose 8y ago
I upvoted this despite the rewritten title, which I hope the mods will fix.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
Context: Union Square Ventures was part of a recent group of VCs that “wanted formal assurance from regulators that their products would be exempt from SEC oversight, arguing the tokens aren’t investments but products that can be exclusively used to access services or networks provided by startup companies” [1]. This was broadly seen as a self-serving pitch, as Matt Levine comically noted: “I am sympathetic to the idea that some innovation should be allowed in initial coin offerings, and that the fact that ICO tokens definitely seem like ‘securities’ under existing precedent doesn't necessarily mean that the best policy approach is to subject them to all of our existing securities laws. The optimistic view of ICOs is that they enable a genuinely new way to fund and create ownerless networks, and in this age of overly powerful owned networks, that is something worth exploring and encouraging. But you do have to start from a place of honesty: ‘These are probably securities, so what do we do about it’ rather than ‘hahaha what there is no speculation in the ICO market, what are you even talking about?’ [2]” [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-20/being-short-and-right-can-be-bad https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-20/being-sho...
- berberous 8y ago
  Just because it’s a self-serving pitch, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I love Matt Levine, but this take of his is a little too glib/snarky and short on analysis. There is a coherent, rationale analysis that certain tokens, once live, are “utility tokens” that should not be considered securities. For example, USV has invested in Filecoin, a distributed data storage network. Given the network is not live, this was sold via a SAFT (simple agreement for a future token) to accredited investors only, with the tokens to be delivered once the network is launched. At that point, since the tokens are used to pay for storage, is the token a security or a utility token? Reasonable arguments can be made for the latter, and regulatory clarity to that affect would be extremely helpful to this developing space. It’s great that these VCs are working with regulators to explain and advocate for positions that are helpful to the crypto community. They are NOT, I’d sure, arguing that any company should be able to ICO freely.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Given the network is not live, this was sold via a SAFT (simple agreement for a future token) to accredited investors only, with the tokens to be delivered once the network is launched. At that point, since the tokens are used to pay for storage, is the token a security or a utility token? Filecoin ran an exceptionally-compliant process. That said, it's not obvious that even their token will not be a security. SAFTs are self-admitted securities. (One can think of them as deliverable forwards.) There aren't many securities in the wild that convert into non-securities for the simple reason that they were bought for investment purposes, and so anything they become traces to that desire. So even in the case of the exception, we need to wait for the SAFT to convert and see if that token does what every other token so far has done: die or "moon" as a speculative investment vehicle. > They are NOT, I’d [sic] sure, arguing that any company should be able to ICO freely "The group wanted formal assurance from regulators that their products would be exempt from SEC oversight" sounds like that [1]. They asked for too much, too soon; this presentation is part of the backtracking. I don't mean to say it isn't worth flipping through. Just that this context is material to any analysis of it. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-...
    - berberous 8y ago
      >> "They asked for too much, too soon; this presentation is part of the backtracking." The WSJ article is very thin on details, and I suspect is missing important nuances. I do not know what happened at the SEC meeting, but my guess is that they pitched something very close to this linked presentation (which you'll note is dated March 13, likely before the SEC meeting). In particular, take a look at slide 11, which tries to bifurcate the world into (i) pre-launch securities and (ii) post-launch live networks, with the latter perhaps being a currency, commodity, security or some other beast, depending on its properties (e.g. a post-launch token with profit sharing features would likely still be a security). These VCs and their lawyers are not morons -- the case for most ICOs being blatant securities offerings is impossible to argue against, but the more narrow view that Nick has outlined has real merit to it and I'm sure is close to what they pitched. Also, I don't disagree that a ham-fisted SEC regulator could easily argue that Filecoin post-launch is a security -- that's precisely the problem. Crypto today can often be treated as a currency, a commodity and a security all at the same time, and often in incompatible ways. The industry _should_ be meeting regulators, and coming to a sane coherent policy on how to treat these things in different contexts (perhaps via well-delineated safe harbors), so that people can continue to innovate without worrying they are breaking the law.
tramGG 8y ago
I read this about an "ocean of tokens", and their role and evolution of building new tech and it seems relevant https://blog.synapse.ai/an-ocean-of-tokens-abf976418feb https://blog.synapse.ai/an-ocean-of-tokens-abf976418feb
rajeck 8y ago
I'm always happy to be convinced that someone has seen something I've missed in all of this hype about crypto, but when you say things like... 'imagine if you could fork Amazon and launch a direct competitor' ..you've lost me. Amazon is not a code base. It has over 500,000 employees who work hard to serve its customers. How do you fork that? I would offer another, better example but I can't think of one. Web 2.0 companies are so far ahead that web 3.0 is going to have to come up with something completely different to be commercially interesting.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Web 2.0 companies are so far ahead that web 3.0 is going to have to come up with something completely different to be commercially interesting Web 1.0 (e.g. e-mail, http, et cetera) was more de-centralised than any token-based company I see today.
  - jsutton 8y ago
    It started out decentralized but quickly consolidated. Cryptocurrencies in theory should enable a sustainable decentralized network.
    - urda 8y ago
      Yeah but in practice today they are far from sustainable, and have done significant environmental damage due to their ridiculous energy consumption.
      - ghthor 8y ago
        This argument is absurb. The damage done by crypto mining is nothing compared to the environmental damage that government(aka weapons) backed fiat currencies have brought upon the world.
        urda 8y ago
        One of those provide value, protection, and an exportable / importable product. This actually progresses nations and communities, which is not a waste of energy at all. The other is crypto mining and crypto currency. > This argument is absurb [sic]. Your entire argument here is indeed absurd, as demonstrated in this thread.
equalarrow 8y ago
This is the big picture and it most aligns with how I feel about this emerging space. There's a problem with developers and cs people and that is that they are looking at one small spec - the blockchain data structure. From there, the work their way up through sensationalist headlines and shout "blockchain is crap, it should go away, we don't need more 'money', this whole space with its ico's is a scam!", etc, etc. But it's not a scam. It should not go away. And, it is the future. No one I think is debating that the 'blockchain' (I'm referring to the bitcoin data structure here) is slow. Anyone that holds on to that nugget is entirely missing the point and needs to grab their 56k modem and 386 and go hunker down in the closet, because that's their mindset. Bitcoin (and other tokens) are not valuable because of their slow data structure. They are valuable because, like the article says, they are permissionless and globally distributed (immutability is also key and not mentioned). If you think that is not important, you are fooling yourself. It's a revolution just as big as webapps were over non-connected desktop apps. Just as mobile was over desktop web apps. Take my super high level case of 'blockchain' medical company (I use this when I talk to people about why this next wave is important). Currently today companies own your medical data. If you move from one medical provider to another, in order to get your history over to the new provider, the new guy has to either call or request a fax of that data and then double enter it into their system. Maybe this exchange is automated but I doubt it. What happens when you leave that company? New company has to go through the same laborious process. And so on and so forth. This is today's problem: silo'd data 'owned' by various companies out there. The end user/customer has little power because they own nothing. They are at the mercy of that data because companies do not want to share (they want to corner markets and destroy competition) and companies do care enough about securing 'your' data, so thieves then break in and steal it. It's funner for them to build teams, have company parties, tout their prowess and expertise in the press. Securing data and making it interoperable - not very fun or profitable. What (smart) people are working towards is turning this equation on its head and encrypting and distributing globally all the data. So, instead of using 10 medical companies throughout your life, the potential is to use a distributed system that stores your data in some kind of 'blockchain' (zoom out an think an immutable record of your entire health history) that only you have the full pub/private key(s) to. (Yes, wallets and keys are a potential problem here and we'll have to work more towards making recovery easier. This is a big, deep topic in and of itself.) This is not far fetched. We already use ssh keys on remote servers where root has the ultimate permissions and then we can add/remove users at will with their own keys and permissions. So, we understand conceptually how to use pub/priv keys with regard to access. It's not a stretch to start figuring out how to apply this to global data and companies and teams have already been doing this. Of course, the 'old' medical companies would have to use this system as well and they probably will go kicking and screaming since the data to _them_ is not as valuable because they are not in control anymore. But to _you_ it is. It really is _your_ data and you can take it wherever you want over your lifetime. This is a total paradigm shift of how tech companies will need to operate in the future. Tokens, blockchains, dlt's, yah, they're all buzzwords. But so are saas, elastic ip's, spa's, and load balancers. There was a time when you didn't need any of those things and now, they're part of everyday life even if you don't know it. So, hate if you will, but I already know people working on things like this. Tokenization, dlt/blockchain/dag, gloabal pki access, true micro txn's - these are all things already in play and we'll see more and more of them in the coming years.
BerislavLopac 8y ago
I'm honestly curious about what is VC reasoning behind investing to decentralised networks? In my view, a company behind such a product would be inherently un-exitable.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- snissn 8y ago
  If you view it as an inevitable technical innovation creating efficiencies in a marketplace, you wouldn't want to miss out on it..
- 21 8y ago
  Remember when people were saying that it's crazy to invest in Facebook because there is no way Facebook will ever be profitable? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145817
  - root_axis 8y ago
    This is a fallacious argument. It doesn't matter if some people predicted a company would fail even though it went on to succeed beyond what most people predicted, this is a rare outlier and usually the naysayers are correct, even if only because there are naysayers for literally everything.
faizshah 8y ago
The current business model of ICOs is functionally as a pyramid scheme due to the deflationary nature of most cryptocurrencies. The idea is you buy, then you hold & evangelize, then you sell at 10x/100x. Look at the dropping transaction volume across the board even during the mainstream attention on cryptocurrency. If these cryptocurrencies or tokens were inflationary and meant to promote commerce/trading rather than holding and speculation then I don't think anyone would have a problem (like more easily traded microsoft points or MMO gold). This also doesn't change the fact that most online currencies are functioning as unregulated securities and are facilitating illegal transactions and money laundering. If more thought was put into creating decentralized, inflationary currencies that followed current financial regulations I would not have a problem with cryptocurrencies. But the predatory nature of the community that has developed around cryptocurrency and the focus on get rich quick schemes rather than online commerce is what worries me about cryptocurrency. Sorry for the rant.
- 21 8y ago
  > focus on get rich quick schemes Sorry, but the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly. Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness and lack of regulations, are not fundamentally special in this regard.
  - cryptonector 8y ago
    Sure they are. They are specifically trying to evade national control. Yes, banks create money, but they are regulated, and they are not working to undermine the state (even if they occasionally accidentally cause crises that do undermine the state).
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness and lack of regulations, are not fundamentally special in this regard I disagree. Cryptocurrencies are unusually scammy. (Past tech cycles, both those which realized their fruits and which failed, had lots of vaporware. And there were some scams. But the latter are more prevalent in this domain.) My hypothesis for this is in the original sin of Bitcoin: choosing currency as its use case. This primed the space to think of tokens as securities on which the average Joe could get rich quickly, the underlying business be damned. (It also seeded the culture with black market operators.) > the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly Which makes the author of this article's efforts to exempt their investments from financial regulation [1] questionable. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-...
JamesLeonis 8y ago
If a protocol or technology is susceptible to government control or governance, it is by definition centralized. First it was Super Peers, then Trackers, and now it's these teams. It's all on the "The Role of Government" [1] page of his slide deck. Let me tackle each one-by-one. * Light-Touch Stewardship * Buyer/Investor Protection Both of these imply a beneficiary/counterparty to go after. No counterparty means any protections or enforcement is impossible below a network-wide ban. * US-Centrality Also implies a beneficiary, if only to gain tax revenue or the splashy effects of innovation. In both cases centralization is a key component. To put another way, BitTorrent does not have a Role of Government section in it's spec. 1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7koiztv8mae98qg/What%20Are%20Cryptonetworks%20and%20Why%20are%20Tokens%20Fundamental_.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/7koiztv8mae98qg/What%20Are%20Crypt...

118 points by squirrel 8y ago

I upvoted this despite the rewritten title, which I hope the mods will fix.

Context: Union Square Ventures was part of a recent group of VCs that “wanted formal assurance from regulators that their products would be exempt from SEC oversight, arguing the tokens aren’t investments but products that can be exclusively used to access services or networks provided by startup companies” [1]. This was broadly seen as a self-serving pitch, as Matt Levine comically noted: “I am sympathetic to the idea that some innovation should be allowed in initial coin offerings, and that the fact that ICO tokens definitely seem like ‘securities’ under existing precedent doesn't necessarily mean that the best policy approach is to subject them to all of our existing securities laws. The optimistic view of ICOs is that they enable a genuinely new way to fund and create ownerless networks, and in this age of overly powerful owned networks, that is something worth exploring and encouraging. But you do have to start from a place of honesty: ‘These are probably securities, so what do we do about it’ rather than ‘hahaha what there is no speculation in the ICO market, what are you even talking about?’ [2]” [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-20/being-short-and-right-can-be-bad https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-20/being-sho...

berberous 8y ago
Just because it’s a self-serving pitch, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I love Matt Levine, but this take of his is a little too glib/snarky and short on analysis. There is a coherent, rationale analysis that certain tokens, once live, are “utility tokens” that should not be considered securities. For example, USV has invested in Filecoin, a distributed data storage network. Given the network is not live, this was sold via a SAFT (simple agreement for a future token) to accredited investors only, with the tokens to be delivered once the network is launched. At that point, since the tokens are used to pay for storage, is the token a security or a utility token? Reasonable arguments can be made for the latter, and regulatory clarity to that affect would be extremely helpful to this developing space. It’s great that these VCs are working with regulators to explain and advocate for positions that are helpful to the crypto community. They are NOT, I’d sure, arguing that any company should be able to ICO freely.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Given the network is not live, this was sold via a SAFT (simple agreement for a future token) to accredited investors only, with the tokens to be delivered once the network is launched. At that point, since the tokens are used to pay for storage, is the token a security or a utility token? Filecoin ran an exceptionally-compliant process. That said, it's not obvious that even their token will not be a security. SAFTs are self-admitted securities. (One can think of them as deliverable forwards.) There aren't many securities in the wild that convert into non-securities for the simple reason that they were bought for investment purposes, and so anything they become traces to that desire. So even in the case of the exception, we need to wait for the SAFT to convert and see if that token does what every other token so far has done: die or "moon" as a speculative investment vehicle. > They are NOT, I’d [sic] sure, arguing that any company should be able to ICO freely "The group wanted formal assurance from regulators that their products would be exempt from SEC oversight" sounds like that [1]. They asked for too much, too soon; this presentation is part of the backtracking. I don't mean to say it isn't worth flipping through. Just that this context is material to any analysis of it. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-...
  - berberous 8y ago
    >> "They asked for too much, too soon; this presentation is part of the backtracking." The WSJ article is very thin on details, and I suspect is missing important nuances. I do not know what happened at the SEC meeting, but my guess is that they pitched something very close to this linked presentation (which you'll note is dated March 13, likely before the SEC meeting). In particular, take a look at slide 11, which tries to bifurcate the world into (i) pre-launch securities and (ii) post-launch live networks, with the latter perhaps being a currency, commodity, security or some other beast, depending on its properties (e.g. a post-launch token with profit sharing features would likely still be a security). These VCs and their lawyers are not morons -- the case for most ICOs being blatant securities offerings is impossible to argue against, but the more narrow view that Nick has outlined has real merit to it and I'm sure is close to what they pitched. Also, I don't disagree that a ham-fisted SEC regulator could easily argue that Filecoin post-launch is a security -- that's precisely the problem. Crypto today can often be treated as a currency, a commodity and a security all at the same time, and often in incompatible ways. The industry _should_ be meeting regulators, and coming to a sane coherent policy on how to treat these things in different contexts (perhaps via well-delineated safe harbors), so that people can continue to innovate without worrying they are breaking the law.

tramGG 8y ago

I read this about an "ocean of tokens", and their role and evolution of building new tech and it seems relevant https://blog.synapse.ai/an-ocean-of-tokens-abf976418feb https://blog.synapse.ai/an-ocean-of-tokens-abf976418feb

rajeck 8y ago

I'm always happy to be convinced that someone has seen something I've missed in all of this hype about crypto, but when you say things like... 'imagine if you could fork Amazon and launch a direct competitor' ..you've lost me. Amazon is not a code base. It has over 500,000 employees who work hard to serve its customers. How do you fork that? I would offer another, better example but I can't think of one. Web 2.0 companies are so far ahead that web 3.0 is going to have to come up with something completely different to be commercially interesting.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Web 2.0 companies are so far ahead that web 3.0 is going to have to come up with something completely different to be commercially interesting Web 1.0 (e.g. e-mail, http, et cetera) was more de-centralised than any token-based company I see today.
- jsutton 8y ago
  It started out decentralized but quickly consolidated. Cryptocurrencies in theory should enable a sustainable decentralized network.
  - urda 8y ago
    Yeah but in practice today they are far from sustainable, and have done significant environmental damage due to their ridiculous energy consumption.
    - ghthor 8y ago
      This argument is absurb. The damage done by crypto mining is nothing compared to the environmental damage that government(aka weapons) backed fiat currencies have brought upon the world.
      - urda 8y ago
        One of those provide value, protection, and an exportable / importable product. This actually progresses nations and communities, which is not a waste of energy at all. The other is crypto mining and crypto currency. > This argument is absurb [sic]. Your entire argument here is indeed absurd, as demonstrated in this thread.

equalarrow 8y ago

This is the big picture and it most aligns with how I feel about this emerging space. There's a problem with developers and cs people and that is that they are looking at one small spec - the blockchain data structure. From there, the work their way up through sensationalist headlines and shout "blockchain is crap, it should go away, we don't need more 'money', this whole space with its ico's is a scam!", etc, etc. But it's not a scam. It should not go away. And, it is the future. No one I think is debating that the 'blockchain' (I'm referring to the bitcoin data structure here) is slow. Anyone that holds on to that nugget is entirely missing the point and needs to grab their 56k modem and 386 and go hunker down in the closet, because that's their mindset. Bitcoin (and other tokens) are not valuable because of their slow data structure. They are valuable because, like the article says, they are permissionless and globally distributed (immutability is also key and not mentioned). If you think that is not important, you are fooling yourself. It's a revolution just as big as webapps were over non-connected desktop apps. Just as mobile was over desktop web apps. Take my super high level case of 'blockchain' medical company (I use this when I talk to people about why this next wave is important). Currently today companies own your medical data. If you move from one medical provider to another, in order to get your history over to the new provider, the new guy has to either call or request a fax of that data and then double enter it into their system. Maybe this exchange is automated but I doubt it. What happens when you leave that company? New company has to go through the same laborious process. And so on and so forth. This is today's problem: silo'd data 'owned' by various companies out there. The end user/customer has little power because they own nothing. They are at the mercy of that data because companies do not want to share (they want to corner markets and destroy competition) and companies do care enough about securing 'your' data, so thieves then break in and steal it. It's funner for them to build teams, have company parties, tout their prowess and expertise in the press. Securing data and making it interoperable - not very fun or profitable. What (smart) people are working towards is turning this equation on its head and encrypting and distributing globally all the data. So, instead of using 10 medical companies throughout your life, the potential is to use a distributed system that stores your data in some kind of 'blockchain' (zoom out an think an immutable record of your entire health history) that only you have the full pub/private key(s) to. (Yes, wallets and keys are a potential problem here and we'll have to work more towards making recovery easier. This is a big, deep topic in and of itself.) This is not far fetched. We already use ssh keys on remote servers where root has the ultimate permissions and then we can add/remove users at will with their own keys and permissions. So, we understand conceptually how to use pub/priv keys with regard to access. It's not a stretch to start figuring out how to apply this to global data and companies and teams have already been doing this. Of course, the 'old' medical companies would have to use this system as well and they probably will go kicking and screaming since the data to _them_ is not as valuable because they are not in control anymore. But to _you_ it is. It really is _your_ data and you can take it wherever you want over your lifetime. This is a total paradigm shift of how tech companies will need to operate in the future. Tokens, blockchains, dlt's, yah, they're all buzzwords. But so are saas, elastic ip's, spa's, and load balancers. There was a time when you didn't need any of those things and now, they're part of everyday life even if you don't know it. So, hate if you will, but I already know people working on things like this. Tokenization, dlt/blockchain/dag, gloabal pki access, true micro txn's - these are all things already in play and we'll see more and more of them in the coming years.

BerislavLopac 8y ago

I'm honestly curious about what is VC reasoning behind investing to decentralised networks? In my view, a company behind such a product would be inherently un-exitable.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
snissn 8y ago
If you view it as an inevitable technical innovation creating efficiencies in a marketplace, you wouldn't want to miss out on it..
21 8y ago
Remember when people were saying that it's crazy to invest in Facebook because there is no way Facebook will ever be profitable? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145817
- root_axis 8y ago
  This is a fallacious argument. It doesn't matter if some people predicted a company would fail even though it went on to succeed beyond what most people predicted, this is a rare outlier and usually the naysayers are correct, even if only because there are naysayers for literally everything.

faizshah 8y ago

The current business model of ICOs is functionally as a pyramid scheme due to the deflationary nature of most cryptocurrencies. The idea is you buy, then you hold & evangelize, then you sell at 10x/100x. Look at the dropping transaction volume across the board even during the mainstream attention on cryptocurrency. If these cryptocurrencies or tokens were inflationary and meant to promote commerce/trading rather than holding and speculation then I don't think anyone would have a problem (like more easily traded microsoft points or MMO gold). This also doesn't change the fact that most online currencies are functioning as unregulated securities and are facilitating illegal transactions and money laundering. If more thought was put into creating decentralized, inflationary currencies that followed current financial regulations I would not have a problem with cryptocurrencies. But the predatory nature of the community that has developed around cryptocurrency and the focus on get rich quick schemes rather than online commerce is what worries me about cryptocurrency. Sorry for the rant.

21 8y ago
> focus on get rich quick schemes Sorry, but the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly. Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness and lack of regulations, are not fundamentally special in this regard.
- cryptonector 8y ago
  Sure they are. They are specifically trying to evade national control. Yes, banks create money, but they are regulated, and they are not working to undermine the state (even if they occasionally accidentally cause crises that do undermine the state).
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness and lack of regulations, are not fundamentally special in this regard I disagree. Cryptocurrencies are unusually scammy. (Past tech cycles, both those which realized their fruits and which failed, had lots of vaporware. And there were some scams. But the latter are more prevalent in this domain.) My hypothesis for this is in the original sin of Bitcoin: choosing currency as its use case. This primed the space to think of tokens as securities on which the average Joe could get rich quickly, the underlying business be damned. (It also seeded the culture with black market operators.) > the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly Which makes the author of this article's efforts to exempt their investments from financial regulation [1] questionable. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors-...

JamesLeonis 8y ago

If a protocol or technology is susceptible to government control or governance, it is by definition centralized. First it was Super Peers, then Trackers, and now it's these teams. It's all on the "The Role of Government" [1] page of his slide deck. Let me tackle each one-by-one. * Light-Touch Stewardship * Buyer/Investor Protection Both of these imply a beneficiary/counterparty to go after. No counterparty means any protections or enforcement is impossible below a network-wide ban. * US-Centrality Also implies a beneficiary, if only to gain tax revenue or the splashy effects of innovation. In both cases centralization is a key component. To put another way, BitTorrent does not have a Role of Government section in it's spec. 1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7koiztv8mae98qg/What%20Are%20Cryptonetworks%20and%20Why%20are%20Tokens%20Fundamental_.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/7koiztv8mae98qg/What%20Are%20Crypt...