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The free peoples of the world need tools to prevent these relentless assaults on our liberties. Unfortunately, we’ve been sociologically engineered to desire a

The free peoples of the world need tools to prevent these relentless assaults on our liberties. Unfortunately, we’ve been sociologically engineered to desire a false sense of safety delivered by “benevolent” overlords, instead of actual community interdependence. Removal of any sense or ability for individual volition in matters of personal commerce is one of the final steps toward complete servitude. Fortunately, help is at hand. A new generation of decentralized algorithms supporting cryptocurrency commerce resistant to (state-initiated) Network Partitions will support unstoppable commerce between independent agents, and will work at small (local network) scale, as securely and easily as at global scale (> millions of aggregate transact per second). And not a moment too soon.

Vervious 7y ago
Disclaimer: I work on decentralized cryptocurrencies. I think your claims are flawed. You missed the whole "Big Tech" part of this bill. In fact, I'd argue Facebook has probably encroached more on our liberties than any other American institution. If you read the bill, it's about preventing Facebook from becoming a finance company, to prevent it from circumventing finance regulations. The international monetary system is built on government-managed central banking. This is why modern economics are so stable (and a huge player in post-WW2 growth). Governments did away with private currencies a long time ago, and for better or for worse it is a pillar of 21st century economics.
- pjkundert 7y ago
  Libra is a Fiat currency proxy; all on/off-ramps will be KYC and AML protected, no significant money creation action will be allowed by Facebook. It’s basically an SDR for the great unwashed. So, it basically reduces USD to a weighted component of a currency basket. That’s the only thing this bill is trying to prevent - reducing the supremacy of the USD. Look past the propaganda. Facebook won’t be allowed to bypass existing regulations. They’re... regulations, after all. Modern economics is only “so stable” for big players; small businesses and flyover country slobs like me and you are sheep to the slaughter. And, no, Libra isn’t going to do a thing for us, other than insulate is from a bit of currency instability and lubricate retail transactions and perhaps remissions back home. It’s a proof-of-oligarchy permissioned global-consensus blockchain; nothing interesting. No improvement to the risky one-mistake-and-you’re-dead PKI security model, so most normals will eventually lose their money, to either incompetency or theft. If you work on what you believe are decentralized crypto currencies, please describe, precisely, what occurs when your global system experiences a total N-segment Network Partition — as will occur in the first 15 minutes of the next hot war; specific focus on A) system livenness, and B) account “values” after 1+ week of total partition, followed by global network restoration...
b_tterc_p 7y ago
Right, the reason bitcoin hasn’t become mainstream is the algorithms
- pjkundert 7y ago
  One big reason, yes - one mistake and you lose your money. Statistically almost guaranteed for an account with regular usage! Look at the statistics. These are non-ergodicic probabilities; you don’t get to “play again” when they affect you. Losing your money in cryptocurrency PKI systems is closer to “Russian Roulette” than a “roll 1, you lose your bet” dice game. Screw up just once and it’s all gone. So yes, the algorithms are a big part of why normals don’t use crypto — and rightly so.

Vervious 7y ago

Disclaimer: I work on decentralized cryptocurrencies. I think your claims are flawed. You missed the whole "Big Tech" part of this bill. In fact, I'd argue Facebook has probably encroached more on our liberties than any other American institution. If you read the bill, it's about preventing Facebook from becoming a finance company, to prevent it from circumventing finance regulations. The international monetary system is built on government-managed central banking. This is why modern economics are so stable (and a huge player in post-WW2 growth). Governments did away with private currencies a long time ago, and for better or for worse it is a pillar of 21st century economics.

pjkundert 7y ago
Libra is a Fiat currency proxy; all on/off-ramps will be KYC and AML protected, no significant money creation action will be allowed by Facebook. It’s basically an SDR for the great unwashed. So, it basically reduces USD to a weighted component of a currency basket. That’s the only thing this bill is trying to prevent - reducing the supremacy of the USD. Look past the propaganda. Facebook won’t be allowed to bypass existing regulations. They’re... regulations, after all. Modern economics is only “so stable” for big players; small businesses and flyover country slobs like me and you are sheep to the slaughter. And, no, Libra isn’t going to do a thing for us, other than insulate is from a bit of currency instability and lubricate retail transactions and perhaps remissions back home. It’s a proof-of-oligarchy permissioned global-consensus blockchain; nothing interesting. No improvement to the risky one-mistake-and-you’re-dead PKI security model, so most normals will eventually lose their money, to either incompetency or theft. If you work on what you believe are decentralized crypto currencies, please describe, precisely, what occurs when your global system experiences a total N-segment Network Partition — as will occur in the first 15 minutes of the next hot war; specific focus on A) system livenness, and B) account “values” after 1+ week of total partition, followed by global network restoration...

b_tterc_p 7y ago

Right, the reason bitcoin hasn’t become mainstream is the algorithms

pjkundert 7y ago
One big reason, yes - one mistake and you lose your money. Statistically almost guaranteed for an account with regular usage! Look at the statistics. These are non-ergodicic probabilities; you don’t get to “play again” when they affect you. Losing your money in cryptocurrency PKI systems is closer to “Russian Roulette” than a “roll 1, you lose your bet” dice game. Screw up just once and it’s all gone. So yes, the algorithms are a big part of why normals don’t use crypto — and rightly so.