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I don't have much invested in crypto, and I find PoW hideous. I think crypto is most useful for illegal things and tradecraft, but illegal doesn't mean immoral,
by sterlind 5y ago
I don't have much invested in crypto, and I find PoW hideous. I think crypto is most useful for illegal things and tradecraft, but illegal doesn't mean immoral, and useful to criminals is still useful.
* Buying VPN relays anonymously, for connecting to through Tor, VPSes etc.
* Buying drugs.
* Donating to causes sanctioned by your country.
* Paying informants.
* Allowing you to prove you're the author of something, or knew a secret, later on.
* "Dead hand" schemes which release information if your wallet activity stops for more than a couple weeks. This keeps people from killing you to keep something from getting out.
* Online gambling.
* Evading financial controls to send money to your family abroad.
Some of this doesn't require any trust (e.g. proving you knew something before some date), most of the rest requires trust, but what makes crypto useful for these cases isn't lack of trust but auditability, anonymity and/or lack of control by authorities.
- Kostchei 5y agoI have worked in (used personally or done professionally) pre-crypto versions of these, excluding the dead hand scheme- and although some were a little complex and had some risk, I would argue that the new version has the same complexity and risk, only it seems to be hidden by crypto buzz-words. Also reminds me why I don't do those things any more.
- OOPMan 5y agoIndeed. I've come across a dead letter application that has been around for ages and I'm pretty sure it doesn't use crypto. Honestly, using crypto for something like seems a bit nuts, like using a jackhammer to destroy a cardboard box.
- virtualritz 5y agoNone of these require crypto. This is a fallacy. Which is closely tied to the fallacy that using crypto(currencies) gives you anonymity. Cash gives you better anonymity than any crypto currency currently in wide circulation for the applications you listed.