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Digicash was centralized and thus could shut down, and it did shut down. Major blockchains are effectively immortal, with open-access rules that have enormous m

Digicash was centralized and thus could shut down, and it did shut down. Major blockchains are effectively immortal, with open-access rules that have enormous momentum to remain unchanged. This allows larger numbers of disparate parties to coordinate on them for financial and social interaction. I would not rely heavily on a token distributed on a centralized digicash like system but I would rely on a token my company issues on Ethereum, because I know any one receiving the tokens would still be able to access them years from now and that the infrastructure of compatible software, both client-side and blockchain-based, will only grow over time.

throwaway82652 4y ago
>Major blockchains are effectively immortal No, this is extremely wrong. I would encourage you to look into the rather large graveyard of cryptocurrencies that collapsed and are now worthless. A digital cash platform will shut down when it's not profitable and nobody wants to use it anymore, the exact same thing is true of any cryptocurrency. It also seems really bad to me that this view is becoming more common, that's it's actually a good thing that BTC and ETH are getting "too big to fail" despite the flaws in them being relatively well known at this point. It's like we've come full circle...
- CryptoPunk 4y ago
  >>No, this is extremely wrong. I would encourage you to look into the rather large graveyard of cryptocurrencies that collapsed and are now worthless. None of those are major cryptocurrencies, and the blockchains of many of those which are now effectively worthless continue to exist in a handful of nodes around the world, showing the resilience of this enterprise structure. >>A digital cash platform will shut down when it's not profitable and nobody wants to use it anymore, the exact same thing is true of any cryptocurrency. No, a blockchain is inherently far more widely distributed in its infrastructure providers and datastores, and is therefore far less likely to disappear as a trusted database for shared operations like a token ledger. >>that's it's actually a good thing that BTC and ETH are getting "too big to fail" In this case they are too big to fail on their own, not too big for society to allow them to fail, which is an entirely different concept, and only superficially similar. It is a good thing for the world at large when a shared ledger becomes increasingly robust to failure due to its own structure becoming more resilient. This makes for a more reliable platform for financial and social interaction.
  - throwaway82652 4y ago
    >None of those are major cryptocurrencies Sure, but this is circular logic. They're not major anymore because they're dead. >and the blockchains of many of those which are now effectively worthless continue to exist in a handful of nodes around the world, showing the resilience of this enterprise structure. Yeah and I still keep copies of old Word 95 documents around, so if we're going by only "time spent existing" then the data structure used in Word 95 documents is much better and more resilient than blockchains. Of course that's a silly way to look at things. >a blockchain is inherently far more widely distributed in its infrastructure providers and datastores This is not even remotely close to being true. Nothing about blockchains makes them inherently more distributed, you can very easily deploy a blockchain on only one machine and keep it that way. The communities around them might be more distributed but that's a different discussion that isn't really related to blockchains. >In this case they are too big to fail on their own, not too big for society to allow them to fail I'm sorry I don't understand what the difference is. The definition of success here is "society sees it as useful" so the mode of failure is the same either way. >It is a good thing for the world at large when a shared ledger becomes increasingly robust to failure due to its own structure becoming more resilient. This makes for a more reliable platform for financial and social interaction. Sure, I can agree with that, but these statements have nothing to do with blockchains or cryptocurrency at all. You could say the same thing about a digital cash becoming more robust.

throwaway82652 4y ago

>Major blockchains are effectively immortal No, this is extremely wrong. I would encourage you to look into the rather large graveyard of cryptocurrencies that collapsed and are now worthless. A digital cash platform will shut down when it's not profitable and nobody wants to use it anymore, the exact same thing is true of any cryptocurrency. It also seems really bad to me that this view is becoming more common, that's it's actually a good thing that BTC and ETH are getting "too big to fail" despite the flaws in them being relatively well known at this point. It's like we've come full circle...

CryptoPunk 4y ago
>>No, this is extremely wrong. I would encourage you to look into the rather large graveyard of cryptocurrencies that collapsed and are now worthless. None of those are major cryptocurrencies, and the blockchains of many of those which are now effectively worthless continue to exist in a handful of nodes around the world, showing the resilience of this enterprise structure. >>A digital cash platform will shut down when it's not profitable and nobody wants to use it anymore, the exact same thing is true of any cryptocurrency. No, a blockchain is inherently far more widely distributed in its infrastructure providers and datastores, and is therefore far less likely to disappear as a trusted database for shared operations like a token ledger. >>that's it's actually a good thing that BTC and ETH are getting "too big to fail" In this case they are too big to fail on their own, not too big for society to allow them to fail, which is an entirely different concept, and only superficially similar. It is a good thing for the world at large when a shared ledger becomes increasingly robust to failure due to its own structure becoming more resilient. This makes for a more reliable platform for financial and social interaction.
- throwaway82652 4y ago
  >None of those are major cryptocurrencies Sure, but this is circular logic. They're not major anymore because they're dead. >and the blockchains of many of those which are now effectively worthless continue to exist in a handful of nodes around the world, showing the resilience of this enterprise structure. Yeah and I still keep copies of old Word 95 documents around, so if we're going by only "time spent existing" then the data structure used in Word 95 documents is much better and more resilient than blockchains. Of course that's a silly way to look at things. >a blockchain is inherently far more widely distributed in its infrastructure providers and datastores This is not even remotely close to being true. Nothing about blockchains makes them inherently more distributed, you can very easily deploy a blockchain on only one machine and keep it that way. The communities around them might be more distributed but that's a different discussion that isn't really related to blockchains. >In this case they are too big to fail on their own, not too big for society to allow them to fail I'm sorry I don't understand what the difference is. The definition of success here is "society sees it as useful" so the mode of failure is the same either way. >It is a good thing for the world at large when a shared ledger becomes increasingly robust to failure due to its own structure becoming more resilient. This makes for a more reliable platform for financial and social interaction. Sure, I can agree with that, but these statements have nothing to do with blockchains or cryptocurrency at all. You could say the same thing about a digital cash becoming more robust.