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> My impression is that Bitcoin (and crypto) is now a religion. Whilst this looks valid on the face of it, the best explanation I've seen is that crypto-curren

> My impression is that Bitcoin (and crypto) is now a religion. Whilst this looks valid on the face of it, the best explanation I've seen is that crypto-currencies, DAOs, NFTs, what-have-you are counter-intuitive to most people, even the ones hodling it, because most of these decentralized products are just not the same thing and shouldn't be all lumped up in one giant straw-man. For one, I am really bullish about payment networks like Facebook's Diem, Celo.org, Coinbase/Circle's USDC, and Stellar. These absolutely should disrupt international payments. There's a lack of coherent understanding but just as apenwarr pointed out, eventually something good will come of it, and then everyone that is/was on the blockchain train would claim, "I told you so". At this point, there are so many smart people working on it, that I don't see it failing in my lifetime. The key, I guess, is to pay attention to whoever is out there toiling away to make the ecosystem better and listen to their whats, whys, and hows.

dmingod666 5y ago
Isn't 'solving' international payments messing with the US govt? If you bypass the swift system then they can no longer track international transactions and more importantly enforce sanctions.
- 4ggr0 5y ago
  As someone who's not from the US, good.
  - oblio 5y ago
    You're probably working under the assumption that whatever replaces the US system is better. You have no way of knowing that and most US geopolitical alternatives are awful. Except for maybe the EU if you include it.
    - 4ggr0 5y ago
      > that whatever replaces the US system I'm just generally opposed to a system being pushed by a single country. Don't care if that's the US, China, Russia or Nepal. It's not because I don't like the US, I just wish that we all would get to say how that system is supposed to work, instead of the US thinking it knows what's best for "us". Similar to how it's for whatever reason okay that the US has it's military bases littered all over the world. I've got nothing against y'all as people, but your government and military for sure grind my gears.
- simonh 5y ago
  I'm a Brit so an outsider on that issue. I would imagine the only legal issue with international bitcoin transactions are related to tax. Unless of course the transfer is part of some other illegal activity, such as money laundering or drug trafficking.
doom2 5y ago
> There's a lack of coherent understanding This, plus the lack of simple explanations of the various parts of the ecosystem(s), is one of my main gripes (the environmental costs being the other). Hopefully it will change in the near future, but if it takes 1000 words (and potentially as many moon/rocket emoji) to explain the what/why/how of NFTs/cryptocurrencies, that doesn't seem like a sign of success to me.

dmingod666 5y ago

Isn't 'solving' international payments messing with the US govt? If you bypass the swift system then they can no longer track international transactions and more importantly enforce sanctions.

4ggr0 5y ago
As someone who's not from the US, good.
- oblio 5y ago
  You're probably working under the assumption that whatever replaces the US system is better. You have no way of knowing that and most US geopolitical alternatives are awful. Except for maybe the EU if you include it.
  - 4ggr0 5y ago
    > that whatever replaces the US system I'm just generally opposed to a system being pushed by a single country. Don't care if that's the US, China, Russia or Nepal. It's not because I don't like the US, I just wish that we all would get to say how that system is supposed to work, instead of the US thinking it knows what's best for "us". Similar to how it's for whatever reason okay that the US has it's military bases littered all over the world. I've got nothing against y'all as people, but your government and military for sure grind my gears.
simonh 5y ago
I'm a Brit so an outsider on that issue. I would imagine the only legal issue with international bitcoin transactions are related to tax. Unless of course the transfer is part of some other illegal activity, such as money laundering or drug trafficking.

doom2 5y ago

> There's a lack of coherent understanding This, plus the lack of simple explanations of the various parts of the ecosystem(s), is one of my main gripes (the environmental costs being the other). Hopefully it will change in the near future, but if it takes 1000 words (and potentially as many moon/rocket emoji) to explain the what/why/how of NFTs/cryptocurrencies, that doesn't seem like a sign of success to me.