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> "They are the fuel that powers a new form of technology infrastructure that is being built on top of the foundational internet protocols." I can't get my hea

• loceng 8y ago
  I've been a long-time AVC commenter. It's marketing speak trying to legitimize attaching an added cost of the Pyramid-Ponzi scheme of incentivized crypto-assets into a transactional layer. In the end it will cost less in the short-term (per transaction costs) and in the long-term (the unnecessary, unreasonable amount of wealth reallocated weighted towards earlier adopters) to compete not using blockchain for everything - especially not incentivized crypto-assets - as they're banking on and investing in perpetuating an ecosystem for. Competition will exist to show the cost differences, however there will continue to be a strong and growing push by those who are already vested in and own any number of these incentivized crypto-assets, and the platforms/services that have tied themselves into them. It's understandable that VC would enter the market once it gained enough traction, at least once the ecosystem matured enough, once there was enough hype, and gaps in the market were spotted by competent teams who were wanting to fill them, e.g. Coinbase as one example of USV's investments; selling services during a "gold rush" is likely the safest bet and most profitable. Albert, another partner as USV has been evolving his understanding and has been working on a book called World After Capital - http://worldaftercapital.org/ http://worldaftercapital.org/ USV as a whole have been evolving a thesis related to decentralization, which I believe they've perhaps mispurposefully attributed to being solved by blockchain; the thesis and conversation that Fred posted around years ago was relating to the idea of the The Independent Web - my blog post on this from 7 years ago: http://mattamyers.tumblr.com/post/2903098250/the-independent-web-how-can-it-work http://mattamyers.tumblr.com/post/2903098250/the-independent... - "The Independent Web, How Can It Work?" The answer of trying to create collaboration by aligning everyone in a Pyramid-Ponzi scheme however is wrong and immoral IMHO, and there's a better way - as even with decentralization you still need centralization for governance, as without it you allow bad actors to flourish - and with the current system of incentivized crypto-assets, existing/known bad money certainly has entered that ecosystem. Whenever I write responses like this to Fred or other people's posts who seem all-in for incentivized crypto-assets, the responses are none-to-shallow in depth. And I have gone into much more nuanced detail in other comments relating to why incentivized crypto-assets are overall bad for society. Perhaps the most purposefully ignored long-term negative is that there is a tipping point of adoption - let's say it's at "40%" adoption - where after that tipping point those later adopters are simply realizing the added cost of the increasing cost per "coin," and so they are no longer incentivized to collaborate. The danger here for society however is you now have up to "40%" of society vested into making sure this gets adopted fully by society, including any number of bad actors - who perhaps will have then hundreads of billions-to-trillions of dollars they want realized; this could be as subtle as enough politicians getting elected into government, or bribing existing, or of course the worst. The solution, if blockchain is a necessary technology to use, is to have all existing fiat currencies globally merge - and only when governments are ready and under no pressure or force (and with no lobbying efforts by incentivized crypto-asset groups trying to indoctrinate based on their biased desires or ask to not be regulated..) - into a single digital ledger/currency. And with this solution instead of "you" giving me cash in exchange for a digital asset, "you" give cash to that government's mint and it gets converted into the digital ledger/removed from regular circulation; the conversion rate would likely only simply need to match going exchange rates between currencies - there will be some nuance to explore of course.
  • strypey 8y ago
    > Albert, another partner as USV has been evolving his understanding and has been working on a book called World After Capital It's probably no reflection on the rest of his thesis, but he's wrong about what was scarce in pre-agrarian societies (see 'The Original Affluent Society by Marshall Sahlins). Looks like an intriguing book though, thanks for sharing. Seems similar to the thesis of Jeremy Rifkin's 'Third Industrial Revolution' and 'Zero Marginal Cost Society' books. As for your worst-case-scenario about crypto-currencies, replace them with over-valued real estate and we've already seen it play out at least once. The majorities (or 40% minorities in my country) who vote for fiscally conservative parties pushing austerity policies, despite all the evidence they make the problem worse not better, are desperately trying to prop up the value of their real estate investments and retirement funds. Like goldbugs and bitcoinbugs, they have an irrational fear and hatred of even mild inflation, as any inflation causes some erosion of the value of their stored wealth. This fear and hatred makes them willing to ignore the acid that austerity pours of the social fabric, and the way its gradual demolition of public services built up over generations, so it can feed the remains into barrel fires and convince itself this is "growth".