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"Something here seems awfully similar to the system that crypto-currency was meant to fix. It was meant to eliminate rulers. It was meant to make everyone accou

by dash2 5y ago

"Something here seems awfully similar to the system that crypto-currency was meant to fix. It was meant to eliminate rulers. It was meant to make everyone accountable for their actions. It was meant to reward the intelligent, the hard working and the capable, and not reward the incompetent, or the makers-yet-breakers of promises. However, this repeat of the broken old system seems to be playing out again." One response is that the promise was not well thought through. The idea was to replace "rulers" (human beings who make decisions to take care of a system) and "law" (written rules interpreted by humans) with code. But (a) code is written by humans who make mistakes; (b) the world changes, and systems need to update to respond to that; (c) somebody has to be responsible for dealing with a and b. As a result, currencies need central organizers to look after them. And those central organizers need to be motivated, i.e., paid. Old-fashioned currencies have sovereigns to back them, and the sovereigns are paid by the monopoly of taxation and/or the ability to issue money. Inefficient, but it works. From this perspective, bitcoin et al. look like technical solutions to social problems. In particular, bitcoin is designed to have nobody taking care of public goods problems on its behalf. That's a flaw![1] [1] https://wyclif.substack.com/p/thought-bubble-defending-bitcoin https://wyclif.substack.com/p/thought-bubble-defending-bitco...

agumonkey 5y ago
Also, humans or not, in any given system, there will be people in position to analyze and take advantage of subtle / indirect / emergent effect of that system. Be it better brains, more funding to try strategies, it will happen.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hiddencache 5y ago
  Is that a bad thing? Maybe that's how systems become more efficient.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    Depends on which side you're on. The big smart may again take advantage of the rest.
    - hiddencache 5y ago
      The eternal challenge - improving efficiency in systems while ensuring that those efficiency gains are fairly distributed among participants...
      - MichaelZuo 5y ago
        Ah the story of organic matter.
      - agumonkey 5y ago
        Now in that view, it's possible that crypto currencies and/or Blockchainish project may raise the floor for everybody (in the case absolutes matter).
nathanvanfleet 5y ago
Isn't the issue that there are people in control of these new currencies, new people who are sometimes frightening?
a-dub 5y ago
it's funny that this appeared today. i've recently been musing about whether or not a technical and political migration of the bitcoin ecosystem from proof of work to a consensus model that simulates the proof of work economy in a clean way, complete with a socio-economic solution that does not leave miners and their associated/secondary economy out in the cold, could be an idealized model for migrating the global economy off of fossil fuels.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  There are a number of articles claiming various percentages of Bitcoin mining from renewables, but this is probably the most balanced quote: "Commonly cited estimates range from 39% to 73% renewable energy. Jesse Morris, CEO of non-profit Energy Web says most estimates find 20% to 50% of bitcoin is powered by renewable energy, but all available numbers are based on self-reported data, which is unverifiable. 30 June 2021" My inner optimist is satisfied that the renewable percentage is constantly growing.
  - tedsanders 5y ago
    Does anyone know of any sources that attempt to look at the marginal energy source rather than the average energy source? For example, a region might have 50% of its power from hydro and 50% from gas, but 0% of new power plants are hydro and 100% are gas. In such a world, adding a new electricity consumer to the grid causes 100% gas emissions, even though "50% of power is clean hydro." The proper attribution really ought to be the causal attribution, which typically means looking at the marginal source of power rather than the average. I know this is a complicated topic. Entire PhD theses have been written on modeling the emissions impact of EVs, and there's a healthy debate of how to best calculate the 'causal' impact.
  - a-dub 5y ago
    as long as there are any dirty megawatts, any clean bitcoin mining energy could be replacing it, assuming it is physically close enough to existing electric power grids. all bitcoin mines are is a proof of investment for the purposes of divvying up entries in a decentralized periodic lottery where the probability of winning is proportional to ones investment in equipment and energy. is it really truly impossible to efficiently simulate this (specifically the economics, so that existing players don't revolt) while maintaining decentralization in the consensus algorithm? it seems like there could be a technical solution, but the harder problem is building political consensus in a decentralized world... sort of like getting the global economy off of fossil fuels...
kristofferR 5y ago
(b) is why Bitcoin core development has stagnated[*]. And that's fine if people just want it to be like gold, however Ethereum doesn't aspire to not evolve. (c) I actually disagree with. Decentralized governance is a very interesting subject, and some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Right now I'm really confident in how Ethereum is governed, with the "old-fashioned" open-source development model, where everyone can participate, but core devs have the final say. However, decentralized governance may be something they implement in the future. [*] Slightly harsh, see comments below.
- yunohn 5y ago
  > some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Whenever crypto enthusiasts tell me about DeFi governance, I get excited about the possibilities. Then, I actually take a look at some of the group decisions, and literally all of them are crypto/coin-related, and don’t deal with any /real/ or human problems…
  - woile 5y ago
    Well you have uniswap's vote on the educational fund. Which IIRC was about allocating money to lobby for crypto. https://app.uniswap.org/#/vote/1/1 https://app.uniswap.org/#/vote/1/1
    - yunohn 5y ago
      Yes, so you’re proving my point? Sure, it’s about lobbying, but in defense of crypto (Previously known as: DeFi Political Defense Fund), to keep their crypto ball rolling.
      - woile 5y ago
        yes, indeed. I just thought this case is slightly different, they chose to go out and do politics (true, over crypto nonetheless). But I feel that normally, all the proposals are about the protocol itself, changes rates, etc and this case it's about interacting with other humans.
yholio 5y ago
There is nothing wrong with technical solutions to social problems per se. For example, sovereigns tend to spy on their citizenry, and the technical solutions of cryptography and steganography help mitigate that, albeit in a limited way. The problem with Bitcoin at al is that they propose wrong solutions to ill defined social problems. Absolutely no real macroeconomic insight was put in the initial bitcoin halving block reward. Later adopters invested it with magic ability to forever stop "inflation", ill defined as taxation through monetary expansion. What resulted was a highly speculative asset that even 10 years later shows no signs of macrostability and is prone to losing 50% of its value in a single trading day. The social costs of using such a monetary unit day to day would be orders of magnitude higher than any reasonable inflation. Another ill defined problem was financial privacy. In most cryptos, there is no way to socially cooperate to reliably limit financial privacy of bad players. What you get is an excelent system for teleporting a wad of cash across borders - if you can stomach the volatility. And it just so happens there is a substantial "market" that requires this laundry service and would gladly pay 10% or so to transform illicit gains into "crypto investements".
- lottin 5y ago
  A solution looking for a problem, basically.
birdyrooster 5y ago
I personally enjoy the absurd concept of decentralization that crypto proponents have while centralizing the governance and law of global monetary policy. If you wanted to create a global government, this is where you would start. It takes financing to enact laws and the board directing the dominant coin are defacto legislators of this new world order.
cblconfederate 5y ago
gold is law (as in, overwhelmingly subject to physics laws) and it has survived for millenia. Whatever social problems caused people to move away from it, after some time they kept going back

by dash2 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

Also, humans or not, in any given system, there will be people in position to analyze and take advantage of subtle / indirect / emergent effect of that system. Be it better brains, more funding to try strategies, it will happen.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hiddencache 5y ago
Is that a bad thing? Maybe that's how systems become more efficient.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Depends on which side you're on. The big smart may again take advantage of the rest.
  - hiddencache 5y ago
    The eternal challenge - improving efficiency in systems while ensuring that those efficiency gains are fairly distributed among participants...
    - MichaelZuo 5y ago
      Ah the story of organic matter.
    - agumonkey 5y ago
      Now in that view, it's possible that crypto currencies and/or Blockchainish project may raise the floor for everybody (in the case absolutes matter).

nathanvanfleet 5y ago

Isn't the issue that there are people in control of these new currencies, new people who are sometimes frightening?

a-dub 5y ago

it's funny that this appeared today. i've recently been musing about whether or not a technical and political migration of the bitcoin ecosystem from proof of work to a consensus model that simulates the proof of work economy in a clean way, complete with a socio-economic solution that does not leave miners and their associated/secondary economy out in the cold, could be an idealized model for migrating the global economy off of fossil fuels.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
There are a number of articles claiming various percentages of Bitcoin mining from renewables, but this is probably the most balanced quote: "Commonly cited estimates range from 39% to 73% renewable energy. Jesse Morris, CEO of non-profit Energy Web says most estimates find 20% to 50% of bitcoin is powered by renewable energy, but all available numbers are based on self-reported data, which is unverifiable. 30 June 2021" My inner optimist is satisfied that the renewable percentage is constantly growing.
- tedsanders 5y ago
  Does anyone know of any sources that attempt to look at the marginal energy source rather than the average energy source? For example, a region might have 50% of its power from hydro and 50% from gas, but 0% of new power plants are hydro and 100% are gas. In such a world, adding a new electricity consumer to the grid causes 100% gas emissions, even though "50% of power is clean hydro." The proper attribution really ought to be the causal attribution, which typically means looking at the marginal source of power rather than the average. I know this is a complicated topic. Entire PhD theses have been written on modeling the emissions impact of EVs, and there's a healthy debate of how to best calculate the 'causal' impact.
- a-dub 5y ago
  as long as there are any dirty megawatts, any clean bitcoin mining energy could be replacing it, assuming it is physically close enough to existing electric power grids. all bitcoin mines are is a proof of investment for the purposes of divvying up entries in a decentralized periodic lottery where the probability of winning is proportional to ones investment in equipment and energy. is it really truly impossible to efficiently simulate this (specifically the economics, so that existing players don't revolt) while maintaining decentralization in the consensus algorithm? it seems like there could be a technical solution, but the harder problem is building political consensus in a decentralized world... sort of like getting the global economy off of fossil fuels...

kristofferR 5y ago

(b) is why Bitcoin core development has stagnated[*]. And that's fine if people just want it to be like gold, however Ethereum doesn't aspire to not evolve. (c) I actually disagree with. Decentralized governance is a very interesting subject, and some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Right now I'm really confident in how Ethereum is governed, with the "old-fashioned" open-source development model, where everyone can participate, but core devs have the final say. However, decentralized governance may be something they implement in the future. [*] Slightly harsh, see comments below.

yunohn 5y ago
> some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Whenever crypto enthusiasts tell me about DeFi governance, I get excited about the possibilities. Then, I actually take a look at some of the group decisions, and literally all of them are crypto/coin-related, and don’t deal with any /real/ or human problems…
- woile 5y ago
  Well you have uniswap's vote on the educational fund. Which IIRC was about allocating money to lobby for crypto. https://app.uniswap.org/#/vote/1/1 https://app.uniswap.org/#/vote/1/1
  - yunohn 5y ago
    Yes, so you’re proving my point? Sure, it’s about lobbying, but in defense of crypto (Previously known as: DeFi Political Defense Fund), to keep their crypto ball rolling.
    - woile 5y ago
      yes, indeed. I just thought this case is slightly different, they chose to go out and do politics (true, over crypto nonetheless). But I feel that normally, all the proposals are about the protocol itself, changes rates, etc and this case it's about interacting with other humans.

yholio 5y ago

There is nothing wrong with technical solutions to social problems per se. For example, sovereigns tend to spy on their citizenry, and the technical solutions of cryptography and steganography help mitigate that, albeit in a limited way. The problem with Bitcoin at al is that they propose wrong solutions to ill defined social problems. Absolutely no real macroeconomic insight was put in the initial bitcoin halving block reward. Later adopters invested it with magic ability to forever stop "inflation", ill defined as taxation through monetary expansion. What resulted was a highly speculative asset that even 10 years later shows no signs of macrostability and is prone to losing 50% of its value in a single trading day. The social costs of using such a monetary unit day to day would be orders of magnitude higher than any reasonable inflation. Another ill defined problem was financial privacy. In most cryptos, there is no way to socially cooperate to reliably limit financial privacy of bad players. What you get is an excelent system for teleporting a wad of cash across borders - if you can stomach the volatility. And it just so happens there is a substantial "market" that requires this laundry service and would gladly pay 10% or so to transform illicit gains into "crypto investements".

lottin 5y ago
A solution looking for a problem, basically.

birdyrooster 5y ago

I personally enjoy the absurd concept of decentralization that crypto proponents have while centralizing the governance and law of global monetary policy. If you wanted to create a global government, this is where you would start. It takes financing to enact laws and the board directing the dominant coin are defacto legislators of this new world order.

cblconfederate 5y ago

gold is law (as in, overwhelmingly subject to physics laws) and it has survived for millenia. Whatever social problems caused people to move away from it, after some time they kept going back