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Cash is a decentralized payment system for most intents. So the question becomes: Do I need a digital decentralized payment system? Does one need them? One fai
by rtpg 8y ago
Cash is a decentralized payment system for most intents. So the question becomes: Do I need a digital decentralized payment system? Does one need them?
One fairly strong legitimate use case is people who are consistently shunned by credit card networks. Lots of people working in adult industries, weed (in states where it's legal), certain high risk spaces... though _even then_ it's not about decentralization, just abut needing some form of competition (debit card network?)
Meanwhile there are real costs to the decentralized networks
- mirimir 8y agoYou don't need a digital decentralized payment system for cash. At least, if cash transactions are all in person. But once you start mailing cash around, and having agents transport cash, a decentralized distributed-trust leger might be useful.
- rtpg 8y agoYes, that's a good point. If you have a certain number of trust points you could use a decentralized ledger to effectively build a banking system where you still get cash out of it. Suffice to say that this would likely be very against a bunch of KYC money laundering laws, but it's a decent trick
- mirimir 8y agoSuch as hawala. I have no clue how it manages trust.
- mateuszf 8y ago> Cash is a decentralized payment system for most intents. So the question becomes: Do I need a digital decentralized payment system? Does one need them? Cash is not decentralized. Governments can print as much as they want.
- rtpg 8y agoIt's decentralized for most purposes. It would be very hard for the gov't to revoke any transaction, or to blacklist money you have (except in very specific cases where the stars align and they can list serial numbers to block). The fact that gov't can print money has roughly the same effect as speculation has on cryptocurrencies