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"I’m sure you’re seeing the problem here- there is not a schema that doesn’t reward those who already are already wealthy, who are already bought in, who alread

"I’m sure you’re seeing the problem here- there is not a schema that doesn’t reward those who already are already wealthy, who are already bought in, who already have excess capital or access to outsized computational power. Almost universally they grant power to the already powerful." Now I'm imagining a crypto currency that just gets awarded randomly to any person on the planet in a world-wide lottery. Or it could get distributed evenly like UBI to everyone.

felipeccastro 6y ago
I like this crypto UBI idea! But without the early movers incentive to increase the coin value, how could that work?
- sofetch 6y ago
  > But without the early movers incentive to increase the coin value, how could that work? Are you seriously asking how having the value distributed out to a large number of people could ever have utility without oligarchs to "set the value" to some "proper" value?
  - felipeccastro 6y ago
    I’m seriously asking for new ideas. This space is new and free to rethink incentives in all sorts of ways, it doesn’t need to repeat the same mistakes as fiat.
  - Ensorceled 6y ago
    Yes. If we split all the bitcoins up into 7.8 billion pieces and distributed them to everyone on the planet ... what do you think bitcoins would suddenly be worth? Would each slice still be worth ~$100 or would the market simply collapse?
  - jordan_curve 6y ago
    That seems like a legitimate question although you’ve rephrased it somewhat uncharitably.
- crumbshot 6y ago
  The value would end up pegged to the price of a bag of weed on the dark markets, as that category of trade is the only genuinely useful application of cryptocurrency that's been found so far.
kevingadd 6y ago
I wonder how much we'd see a spike in crypto UBI fraud, where people find ways to scam people into transferring their crypto or claim it on behalf of non-computer-owners. We saw a lot of this with stimulus checks and tax returns in the US over the last decade.
zaroth 6y ago
If you can solve Sybil attacks in a fully decentralized network — such that the rich can’t buy an arbitrarily large number of lottery tickets, then not only is this particular idea possible, but so many others. If you devise a way to have a proveably fair worldwide lottery for every human on the planet at essentially zero cost to each participant, in a decentralized network, I think you would will win a Turing at least if not a Nobel, aside from making billions of dollars. You need a random oracle that outputs a value that maps 1:1 to a human in the world, probably without any form of pre-registration, because any registration function can be reused by the same human multiple times. Basically a decentralized technology that can identify souls on the planet and randomly select them in a Byzantine fault environment. As of today, entirely indistinguishable from magic. Of course it’s possible to do with a centralized registration system, but building and deploying such a tracking system IMO is akin to a war crime.
- comboy 6y ago
  The amazing thing is, that utopia still would not work! Imagine you did that, everybody has 1 UniversalToken every newborn gets one (and people are absolutely not killing they own children for personal gain as it was done throughout the human history, I diverge). And by yet another miracle this token has some value. You know exactly what those struggling financially do with that token right away. Food is better than tokens. You also know who will buy it. Thy system self-"corrects" itself right away. I've been thinking about it for some time. Fiat system is flawed, it literally takes money away from the bottom and puts it at the top (inflations + being able to diversify outside cash + loans + bailouts). But even the most perfect forms of money seem to have inherent unfairness in them. Money makes money. Having time to research possible investments, having money to do them, being able to afford risk, liquidity that allow you to avoid loans (unless you want to use them for leverage) etc. At least as long as people sell their time which seems like the foreseeable future. If you were hoping for me to offer some solution I have none. <daydreaming> But on the long enough run (if we have one) I think money will become irrelevant and our society will be more like a single organism. A shift in entity and entities mindset to be more oriented towards information processing and achieving specific goals / playing specific role and less driven by the limbic system which now can be satisfied at will if still present. I mean, it sounds mooshy wooshy, but look around your lucky good coders bubble. I think money is already losing value for those who don't worry about basic needs (while of course still being solution to 95% of problems for those less lucky, which seems great to remember). In more strict terms, the only valuable thing on the long run is information. I hope for some well-grounded disagreement on that.
kmeisthax 6y ago
Poverty is not Sybil-resistant, capital is. There's nothing keeping you from pretending to be ten or ten thousand poor people instead of one rich person. In the real world we have to use strong, centralized identity checks to validate things like welfare programs or voting. These cannot be turned into distributed systems and remain robust to manipulation. You only get the security guarantees of crypto from actually scarce resources. That being said, this has been done, but usually off the backs of existing blockchains. In Etheriumland this is known as an "airdrop" and is considered a form of annoying spam these days. Of course, if you actually wanted a wallet full of no-name ICOs you could just send coins back and forth to yourself to keep your address on the blockchain so that you got more airdrops. This is bounded mainly by gas price (which is artificially made scarce through protocol limits), but I wouldn't consider this system robust or equitable.
syockit 6y ago
How do you assign value to that currency? What is crypto about it?

felipeccastro 6y ago

I like this crypto UBI idea! But without the early movers incentive to increase the coin value, how could that work?

sofetch 6y ago
> But without the early movers incentive to increase the coin value, how could that work? Are you seriously asking how having the value distributed out to a large number of people could ever have utility without oligarchs to "set the value" to some "proper" value?
- felipeccastro 6y ago
  I’m seriously asking for new ideas. This space is new and free to rethink incentives in all sorts of ways, it doesn’t need to repeat the same mistakes as fiat.
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  Yes. If we split all the bitcoins up into 7.8 billion pieces and distributed them to everyone on the planet ... what do you think bitcoins would suddenly be worth? Would each slice still be worth ~$100 or would the market simply collapse?
- jordan_curve 6y ago
  That seems like a legitimate question although you’ve rephrased it somewhat uncharitably.
crumbshot 6y ago
The value would end up pegged to the price of a bag of weed on the dark markets, as that category of trade is the only genuinely useful application of cryptocurrency that's been found so far.

kevingadd 6y ago

I wonder how much we'd see a spike in crypto UBI fraud, where people find ways to scam people into transferring their crypto or claim it on behalf of non-computer-owners. We saw a lot of this with stimulus checks and tax returns in the US over the last decade.

zaroth 6y ago

If you can solve Sybil attacks in a fully decentralized network — such that the rich can’t buy an arbitrarily large number of lottery tickets, then not only is this particular idea possible, but so many others. If you devise a way to have a proveably fair worldwide lottery for every human on the planet at essentially zero cost to each participant, in a decentralized network, I think you would will win a Turing at least if not a Nobel, aside from making billions of dollars. You need a random oracle that outputs a value that maps 1:1 to a human in the world, probably without any form of pre-registration, because any registration function can be reused by the same human multiple times. Basically a decentralized technology that can identify souls on the planet and randomly select them in a Byzantine fault environment. As of today, entirely indistinguishable from magic. Of course it’s possible to do with a centralized registration system, but building and deploying such a tracking system IMO is akin to a war crime.

comboy 6y ago
The amazing thing is, that utopia still would not work! Imagine you did that, everybody has 1 UniversalToken every newborn gets one (and people are absolutely not killing they own children for personal gain as it was done throughout the human history, I diverge). And by yet another miracle this token has some value. You know exactly what those struggling financially do with that token right away. Food is better than tokens. You also know who will buy it. Thy system self-"corrects" itself right away. I've been thinking about it for some time. Fiat system is flawed, it literally takes money away from the bottom and puts it at the top (inflations + being able to diversify outside cash + loans + bailouts). But even the most perfect forms of money seem to have inherent unfairness in them. Money makes money. Having time to research possible investments, having money to do them, being able to afford risk, liquidity that allow you to avoid loans (unless you want to use them for leverage) etc. At least as long as people sell their time which seems like the foreseeable future. If you were hoping for me to offer some solution I have none. <daydreaming> But on the long enough run (if we have one) I think money will become irrelevant and our society will be more like a single organism. A shift in entity and entities mindset to be more oriented towards information processing and achieving specific goals / playing specific role and less driven by the limbic system which now can be satisfied at will if still present. I mean, it sounds mooshy wooshy, but look around your lucky good coders bubble. I think money is already losing value for those who don't worry about basic needs (while of course still being solution to 95% of problems for those less lucky, which seems great to remember). In more strict terms, the only valuable thing on the long run is information. I hope for some well-grounded disagreement on that.

kmeisthax 6y ago

Poverty is not Sybil-resistant, capital is. There's nothing keeping you from pretending to be ten or ten thousand poor people instead of one rich person. In the real world we have to use strong, centralized identity checks to validate things like welfare programs or voting. These cannot be turned into distributed systems and remain robust to manipulation. You only get the security guarantees of crypto from actually scarce resources. That being said, this has been done, but usually off the backs of existing blockchains. In Etheriumland this is known as an "airdrop" and is considered a form of annoying spam these days. Of course, if you actually wanted a wallet full of no-name ICOs you could just send coins back and forth to yourself to keep your address on the blockchain so that you got more airdrops. This is bounded mainly by gas price (which is artificially made scarce through protocol limits), but I wouldn't consider this system robust or equitable.

syockit 6y ago

How do you assign value to that currency? What is crypto about it?