6 ms·

I'm not looking for links to books. I'm looking for an explanation in plain English that shows why any of this matters.

mikro2nd 6y ago
The world needs a form of money that is not under the control of any one sovereign power or group of sovereigns. Understanding this may necessitate reading some books, but in short, sovereigns have historically proven to be untrustworthy, so a trust-free form of money is a powerful notion.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  > The world needs a form of money that is not under the control of any one sovereign power or group of sovereigns. Why? Why can't you explain this in simple, easy terms?
  - zdkl 6y ago
    Simple is going to be a caricature: Diversification of risk.
    - louwrentius 6y ago
      Have you bought a loaf of bread with Ethereum or Bitcoin? And internet is shut down btw...
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  This may not be the case with any crypto currencies soon. The entire asset class is already way beyond 'let the geeks play with it' stage. It's taxed,it can be seized and banned all together,if that's what governments want. Not quite the freedom tbh..
- callahad 6y ago
  > The world needs a form of money that is not under the control of any one sovereign power or group of sovereigns. Do you believe that any existing cryptocurrencies currently fulfill that criterion?
  - mikro2nd 6y ago
    Yes.
- prussian 6y ago
  so instead of sovereign powers, we should hand our monetary policy to the neo-nobility that is large stakeholders (PoS) or the sovereign granted patents in ASIC mining in PoW coins? I feel like we're just shifting who to trust and not the fact that we all have trust; haven't even touched the whole idea of having to on-ramp/off-ramp fiat on central exchanges with sovereign backed currencies.
- lentil_soup 6y ago
  sure, I can agree, but surely a form of money that fluctuates like crazy and needs people to read books about it to understand it is not going to convince the people that need this kind of system the most.
- arcturus17 6y ago
  Of all the world ills I can think of, none are caused by money as means of exchange or by trust systems more broadly. Crypto isn’t going to do anything for global warming or for rampant inequality caused by the unstoppable compounding growth of big capital (in fact it may do the opposite). The premise that trust systems have failed humanity is flawed. I am willing to be persuaded otherwise but I doubt this will come from reading “a couple books” because as it stands I firmly believe that the idea is complete nonsense.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sargos 6y ago
    > Crypto isn’t going to do anything for global warming Actually this is a pretty good example of a problem that quadratic funding has a good chance of helping with. It's really hard to coordinate all nations on Earth but not actually that hard to coordinate people from all over the Earth. https://wtfisqf.com/ https://wtfisqf.com/
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    This book is the best summary that I can give you to being persuaded. Bitcoin's price movement is just a market signal that there's something deeply wrong and unfair with the current financial system. The more you learn about it, the more you can profit from the huge value transfer that's going on in front of your eyes. If you want a link, I suggest hope.com as well (as I could suggest many others, but what's important is that the ROI of learning about the reason for Bitcoin is huge).
    - arcturus17 6y ago
      > Bitcoin's price movement is just a market signal that there's something deeply wrong and unfair with the current financial system Sorry but this sounds like the conspiracy drivel commonly heard in crypto circles. To a reasonable person, Bitcoin's price movement is a market signal of people speculating and trying to become richer - simple as. Occam's Razor, and all that.
- znpy 6y ago
  One could argue that Ethereum like any other cryptocurrency is under the strict control of the development team, though. Such team undergoes way less scrutiny than any trading firm or sovereign nation, probably.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  I would like to see a scenario where not one but several sovereign fiat currencies have utterly failed and yet ETH is still useful.
brighton36 6y ago
If you present complexity, people assume you're smart, and give you their money to invest.
SCHiM 6y ago
In simple terms. The currencies, and related technologies al deal with the problem of transferring of money/services between parties where no centralized trust/power exists. This is, in the words of their proponents to prevent abuse by the trusted party: Credit card companies blocking transfers to legitimate companies on the basis of pressure from the US gov. Banks printing money and devaluing currency of currency holders, etc. Bailouts/handouts to undeserving private companies with public money. Often mentioned that this freedom comes at the price of making it easier for bad guys to receive payments for various bad things, increasing their income, increasing the scope of the damage they do. If you write a program on the eth blockchain, no party can one change the way the contract was written or execute. What is written is what it does. You can't change the TOS later or something similar. They are called contracts for this reason. They prevent screw-overs in TOS that you have to "accept" or similar shenanigans that big corps use to screw you over, over time.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  It seems like the benefit of not having to trust world governments or their currencies isn't that compelling for most people, who I presume almost universally already participate in said social contracts.
  - hypertele-Xii 6y ago
    I certainly trust world governments more than some random Internet community. Who's to say the whole thing isn't a scam? Has this tech been independently audited?
    - SCHiM 6y ago
      If you can break this scheme you can steal billions of dollars worth of currencies right now. If that is not independently audited by all evil hackers out there I don't know what is :)
      - hypertele-Xii 6y ago
arcturus17 6y ago
You will not get a satisfactory answer. Cryptocurrencies will only make sense in cataclysmic scenarios or for very niche use cases. Trust systems (of which money is one) work well (some times very well) 99.99% of the time. It’s certainly been useful to some people for gambling - but that use case could’ve been satisfied with a video game, or a physical casino.
- earthtolazlo 6y ago
  I guess it depends on what you mean by cataclysmic scenarios. I can’t imagine many cataclysmic scenarios with working electricity and internet, to say nothing of mass-produced phones/personal computers.
  - arcturus17 6y ago
    I was thinking more in terms of a political or economic event where trust systems collapse but technology remains working.
- odopodo 6y ago
  Only in cataclysmic scenarios? I'm sorry to inform you, but in such scenarios most probably cryptos won't work either, as they all depend on proper working of the internet. It doesn't even need to be a Madmax situation: just imagine a war between the US and China, with one of the involved causing an prolonged interruption in the communications between the two countries, as they have significant numbers of nodes/miners in most blockchains. I'm afraid blockchains actually depend on the normal functioning of society with all its governmental structures in more ways than most crypto enthusiasts are ready to admit.
  - Sargos 6y ago
    The US and Canada could block each other and it wouldn't affect Ethereum at all. Everyone in the world including those two countries could still use it.
  - arcturus17 6y ago
newswasboring 6y ago
I am not arguing either way about the need for crypto currencies, but don't you think its an unfair thing to ask for a new technology [1]? Not everything can be explain in simple terms, not if you really want to explain those things. Sometimes it takes time to figure out the language to explain stuff. [1] I know this thing is more than a decade old, but new and old are very distorted terms in technology and honestly only become apparent post facto.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
eric_cc 6y ago
You need to put in a little effort to learn new things. Your comments are not going to age well. Your comments will read like somebody complaining/rejecting email in the early 90's.

The world needs a form of money that is not under the control of any one sovereign power or group of sovereigns. Understanding this may necessitate reading some books, but in short, sovereigns have historically proven to be untrustworthy, so a trust-free form of money is a powerful notion.

louwrentius 6y ago
> The world needs a form of money that is not under the control of any one sovereign power or group of sovereigns. Why? Why can't you explain this in simple, easy terms?
- zdkl 6y ago
  Simple is going to be a caricature: Diversification of risk.
  - louwrentius 6y ago
    Have you bought a loaf of bread with Ethereum or Bitcoin? And internet is shut down btw...
cosmodisk 6y ago
This may not be the case with any crypto currencies soon. The entire asset class is already way beyond 'let the geeks play with it' stage. It's taxed,it can be seized and banned all together,if that's what governments want. Not quite the freedom tbh..
callahad 6y ago
> The world needs a form of money that is not under the control of any one sovereign power or group of sovereigns. Do you believe that any existing cryptocurrencies currently fulfill that criterion?
- mikro2nd 6y ago
  Yes.
prussian 6y ago
so instead of sovereign powers, we should hand our monetary policy to the neo-nobility that is large stakeholders (PoS) or the sovereign granted patents in ASIC mining in PoW coins? I feel like we're just shifting who to trust and not the fact that we all have trust; haven't even touched the whole idea of having to on-ramp/off-ramp fiat on central exchanges with sovereign backed currencies.
lentil_soup 6y ago
sure, I can agree, but surely a form of money that fluctuates like crazy and needs people to read books about it to understand it is not going to convince the people that need this kind of system the most.
arcturus17 6y ago
Of all the world ills I can think of, none are caused by money as means of exchange or by trust systems more broadly. Crypto isn’t going to do anything for global warming or for rampant inequality caused by the unstoppable compounding growth of big capital (in fact it may do the opposite). The premise that trust systems have failed humanity is flawed. I am willing to be persuaded otherwise but I doubt this will come from reading “a couple books” because as it stands I firmly believe that the idea is complete nonsense.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Sargos 6y ago
  > Crypto isn’t going to do anything for global warming Actually this is a pretty good example of a problem that quadratic funding has a good chance of helping with. It's really hard to coordinate all nations on Earth but not actually that hard to coordinate people from all over the Earth. https://wtfisqf.com/ https://wtfisqf.com/
- xiphias2 6y ago
  This book is the best summary that I can give you to being persuaded. Bitcoin's price movement is just a market signal that there's something deeply wrong and unfair with the current financial system. The more you learn about it, the more you can profit from the huge value transfer that's going on in front of your eyes. If you want a link, I suggest hope.com as well (as I could suggest many others, but what's important is that the ROI of learning about the reason for Bitcoin is huge).
  - arcturus17 6y ago
    > Bitcoin's price movement is just a market signal that there's something deeply wrong and unfair with the current financial system Sorry but this sounds like the conspiracy drivel commonly heard in crypto circles. To a reasonable person, Bitcoin's price movement is a market signal of people speculating and trying to become richer - simple as. Occam's Razor, and all that.
znpy 6y ago
One could argue that Ethereum like any other cryptocurrency is under the strict control of the development team, though. Such team undergoes way less scrutiny than any trading firm or sovereign nation, probably.
metalliqaz 6y ago
I would like to see a scenario where not one but several sovereign fiat currencies have utterly failed and yet ETH is still useful.

brighton36 6y ago

If you present complexity, people assume you're smart, and give you their money to invest.

SCHiM 6y ago

In simple terms. The currencies, and related technologies al deal with the problem of transferring of money/services between parties where no centralized trust/power exists. This is, in the words of their proponents to prevent abuse by the trusted party: Credit card companies blocking transfers to legitimate companies on the basis of pressure from the US gov. Banks printing money and devaluing currency of currency holders, etc. Bailouts/handouts to undeserving private companies with public money. Often mentioned that this freedom comes at the price of making it easier for bad guys to receive payments for various bad things, increasing their income, increasing the scope of the damage they do. If you write a program on the eth blockchain, no party can one change the way the contract was written or execute. What is written is what it does. You can't change the TOS later or something similar. They are called contracts for this reason. They prevent screw-overs in TOS that you have to "accept" or similar shenanigans that big corps use to screw you over, over time.

faitswulff 6y ago
It seems like the benefit of not having to trust world governments or their currencies isn't that compelling for most people, who I presume almost universally already participate in said social contracts.
- hypertele-Xii 6y ago
  I certainly trust world governments more than some random Internet community. Who's to say the whole thing isn't a scam? Has this tech been independently audited?
  - SCHiM 6y ago
    If you can break this scheme you can steal billions of dollars worth of currencies right now. If that is not independently audited by all evil hackers out there I don't know what is :)
    - hypertele-Xii 6y ago

arcturus17 6y ago

You will not get a satisfactory answer. Cryptocurrencies will only make sense in cataclysmic scenarios or for very niche use cases. Trust systems (of which money is one) work well (some times very well) 99.99% of the time. It’s certainly been useful to some people for gambling - but that use case could’ve been satisfied with a video game, or a physical casino.

earthtolazlo 6y ago
I guess it depends on what you mean by cataclysmic scenarios. I can’t imagine many cataclysmic scenarios with working electricity and internet, to say nothing of mass-produced phones/personal computers.
- arcturus17 6y ago
  I was thinking more in terms of a political or economic event where trust systems collapse but technology remains working.
odopodo 6y ago
Only in cataclysmic scenarios? I'm sorry to inform you, but in such scenarios most probably cryptos won't work either, as they all depend on proper working of the internet. It doesn't even need to be a Madmax situation: just imagine a war between the US and China, with one of the involved causing an prolonged interruption in the communications between the two countries, as they have significant numbers of nodes/miners in most blockchains. I'm afraid blockchains actually depend on the normal functioning of society with all its governmental structures in more ways than most crypto enthusiasts are ready to admit.
- Sargos 6y ago
  The US and Canada could block each other and it wouldn't affect Ethereum at all. Everyone in the world including those two countries could still use it.
- arcturus17 6y ago

newswasboring 6y ago

I am not arguing either way about the need for crypto currencies, but don't you think its an unfair thing to ask for a new technology [1]? Not everything can be explain in simple terms, not if you really want to explain those things. Sometimes it takes time to figure out the language to explain stuff. [1] I know this thing is more than a decade old, but new and old are very distorted terms in technology and honestly only become apparent post facto.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

eric_cc 6y ago

You need to put in a little effort to learn new things. Your comments are not going to age well. Your comments will read like somebody complaining/rejecting email in the early 90's.