> For example, what if World of Warcraft used a cryptocurrency based system for ingame currency? Why would they need a distributed system? They already have an

> For example, what if World of Warcraft used a cryptocurrency based system for ingame currency? Why would they need a distributed system? They already have an in-game currency with a central authority (their trusted servers) and can already limit the rate of currency creation (reduce monster's gold drop rate to zero or whatever). EVE Online shows just how well a central authority can manage a virtual game currency. No crypto or blockchain needed. > Let's say we wanted to build a social network, where we didn't actually want everybody to just be able to say whatever they want without a threat of consequence Cool, so like a reputation system on old forums where you have to have a certain number of positive comments to participate in other private forums, and there's heavy moderation? Oh woah, no crypto, no blockchain. I don't see how cryptocurrencies make the fundamental problems of building such a system any easier btw. Attaching a value to someone in a database is easy, and even distributed social networks like mastodon trust the participating servers (and if you don't, you block the whole server). Cryptocurrencies are a problem looking for another problem, and it turns out rubbing two problems together doesn't make fire. A central database is usually better (the WoW example), and they're often orthogonal to other ideas they're shoved into (reputation system, file storage, whatever).