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> Those that can issue money, wield incredible power Only if they can issue the money at will. If the issuance of money is controlled by a distributed transpar

> Those that can issue money, wield incredible power Only if they can issue the money at will. If the issuance of money is controlled by a distributed transparent cryptographic algorithm, then the power from issuing the money is not in the hands of the issuers (miners, in the case of cryptocurrencies). And that's a good thing.

geekpowa 7y ago
And this is at the heart of what crypto currency advocates fail to understand what money is. Money is a social construct. It isn't a thing, mined out of the ground or a cryptographic nonce that satisfies a a constraint on a hashing algorithm. Money is a social agreement that expresses credit worthiness as assessed by people regarded as reliable assessors credit worthiness. Crypto, which repudiates centralised control, cannot be money. Not until someone figures out a way to guarantee that credit worthiness can somehow be reliably encoded into a trustless p2p algorithm. Given that crypto currency can barely scrape through with a solution to the double spend problem, extending to a solution to assessing credit in a decentralized, anonymous way might as well be on the other side of the galaxy. It is impossibly inaccessible.
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  It is simply a wicked problem, and not the one Crypto is intended to solve. Crypto is intended to automate the role of the trusted third party. Bitcoin's ledger is much less intelligent than even the dullest central banker, but it has no self-interest. In cases where the trusted third party to a transaction has a reason to abuse their power - see e.g. 2008 bank bailouts - having a transparent algorithm handle that role is a massive savings. The problem of assigning creditworthiness remains, it's just that there is one less party whose trustworthiness needs to be assessed (and compensated). It's not that it solves the creditworthiness problem, but it makes the problem easier for others to solve.

geekpowa 7y ago

And this is at the heart of what crypto currency advocates fail to understand what money is. Money is a social construct. It isn't a thing, mined out of the ground or a cryptographic nonce that satisfies a a constraint on a hashing algorithm. Money is a social agreement that expresses credit worthiness as assessed by people regarded as reliable assessors credit worthiness. Crypto, which repudiates centralised control, cannot be money. Not until someone figures out a way to guarantee that credit worthiness can somehow be reliably encoded into a trustless p2p algorithm. Given that crypto currency can barely scrape through with a solution to the double spend problem, extending to a solution to assessing credit in a decentralized, anonymous way might as well be on the other side of the galaxy. It is impossibly inaccessible.

SuoDuanDao 7y ago
It is simply a wicked problem, and not the one Crypto is intended to solve. Crypto is intended to automate the role of the trusted third party. Bitcoin's ledger is much less intelligent than even the dullest central banker, but it has no self-interest. In cases where the trusted third party to a transaction has a reason to abuse their power - see e.g. 2008 bank bailouts - having a transparent algorithm handle that role is a massive savings. The problem of assigning creditworthiness remains, it's just that there is one less party whose trustworthiness needs to be assessed (and compensated). It's not that it solves the creditworthiness problem, but it makes the problem easier for others to solve.