5 ms·

Most of these are just "do a thing you can already do with money, but shittier"

by robonerd 4y ago

horsecabletruck 4y ago
- woeirua 4y ago
  Decentralization is not a goal of the modern financial system. Indeed for many reasons, decentralization is not desirable, as crypto-bros are about to find out when Tether blows up and takes out 3/4 of the market.
  - horsecabletruck 4y ago
    Tether is hardly decentralized and it blowing up will not have impact on the network. Who cares if a high-risk stablecoin crashing takes out the market price of ETH so long as the chain continues to fill blocks and protocols like DAI, RAI and USDC continue to operate as intended. > Decentralization is not a goal of the modern financial system. Many people in the world do want a broader range of options than “fiat in centralized digital bank.” Even the HN crowd sometimes praises cash and its peer-to-peer and censorship-resistance attributes. The ability to have a smart contract perform operations like atomically and trustlessly swapping two assets without human oversight is interesting. Maybe not to you, but to many users and industries.
vinyl7 4y ago
You know when theres a tech bubble when people are pushing pointless products
amanj41 4y ago
I would guess that you have never been made to remit money to someone living in a different country. There are multiple uses for a CBDC but this one is a low hanging fruit example. I have had headaches doing because of existing infrastructure. Wire fees + exchange fees
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  Why aren't stablecoins already used widely for remittances? Is it the gas fees? Or lack of technical sophistication on the receiving end?
randomhodler84 4y ago
“But without permission”. Shittier might be acceptable if you do not wish to seek permission. Which is the whole point.
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  So, for crime? Like, what is the legitimate use-case where not needing permission is the defining requirement?
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    We do you need to seek permission by default to save, spend and transact over the internet? Do we need permission to send TCP packets? To send an email? Consider that the internet works because it is permissive in what it accepts. What if money was abstracted from the states monetary policy, and it was as frictionless as any other internet protocol. The internet experiment changes our lives every day, in ways we cannot fathom.
    - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
      So, for crime then.
      - fleddr 4y ago
        Stupendous remark. I'm old enough to have lived in a cash society. We got paid in cash and paid for things in cash. You can send cash to others. Without a cap. We didn't own some government an explanation on what we do with our money, as it's none of their damn business. "Guilty by default, prove me that you're not" is to be rejected. Society had less crime not more. Moreover, things like capital controls do nothing at all. Criminals with half a brain are quite obviously going to work around publicly known limitations.
        lmm 4y ago
        > Society had less crime not more. Citation needed, at least if you're defining crime in the sense of what's experienced by regular people. Being a victim of violence was much more likely in those days, and the fact that you could easily spend the money of someone you mugged was a significant factor in that. > Moreover, things like capital controls do nothing at all. Criminals with half a brain are quite obviously going to work around publicly known limitations. The point isn't to eliminate it entirely but to make it more costly, and in that regard they seem to have been quite successful.
DANK_YACHT 4y ago
This point always comes up, and it typically shows a lack of knowledge about what you can do with a smart contract. E.g. with a smart contract, you can implement an option on anything and sell the option to a counter party with very little work. How would you do that without a blockchain? One way would be to sell an option on a listed security through your brokerage, but the blockchain democratizes this ability and makes it so anyone can do it for a different set of assets then would otherwise be possible. Like why have digital banking infrastructure at all? What new thing was enabled by digital banking infra? The answer is that nothing new was enabled, but the tech made banking operations faster and more accessible to more people. The same thing applies to blockchain tech.
fleddr 4y ago
You're starting to get it. A government-backed crypto currency would come with a wallet. The central bank becomes both the issuer of money as well as host your account. This makes other banks largely obsolete. Assuming it to be the main and only currency, transaction privacy fully ends. Transaction blocking and censorship would be the push of a button, pretty much your entire digital existence and access to things can be wiped out at will. Given that the majority of the world lives in an authoritarian regime, not at all a far-fetched scenario. Money would also be programmable. The central bank can apply its monetary policy directly to your wallet. Stimulus money. Interest rates based on your behavior. The blocking of purchasing particular categories of products. Anything, really.
- randomhodler84 4y ago
  Algorithmic enforcement of social norms to confer an ideology of the state. I recall a historical tiff between Jefferson and Hamilton on the powers of the central bank a few years ago. Unfortunately CBDC is how a majority of humans will transact in 2030, history has demonstrated this. What we have up our sleeve is specific codified internet protocols that allow state-less money. Really, this point is still lost on most people, in that they have the ability to transact over the internet with no trusted third party. Blows my mind every day.

Most of these are just "do a thing you can already do with money, but shittier"

horsecabletruck 4y ago

woeirua 4y ago
Decentralization is not a goal of the modern financial system. Indeed for many reasons, decentralization is not desirable, as crypto-bros are about to find out when Tether blows up and takes out 3/4 of the market.
- horsecabletruck 4y ago
  Tether is hardly decentralized and it blowing up will not have impact on the network. Who cares if a high-risk stablecoin crashing takes out the market price of ETH so long as the chain continues to fill blocks and protocols like DAI, RAI and USDC continue to operate as intended. > Decentralization is not a goal of the modern financial system. Many people in the world do want a broader range of options than “fiat in centralized digital bank.” Even the HN crowd sometimes praises cash and its peer-to-peer and censorship-resistance attributes. The ability to have a smart contract perform operations like atomically and trustlessly swapping two assets without human oversight is interesting. Maybe not to you, but to many users and industries.

vinyl7 4y ago

You know when theres a tech bubble when people are pushing pointless products

amanj41 4y ago

I would guess that you have never been made to remit money to someone living in a different country. There are multiple uses for a CBDC but this one is a low hanging fruit example. I have had headaches doing because of existing infrastructure. Wire fees + exchange fees

ProjectArcturis 4y ago
Why aren't stablecoins already used widely for remittances? Is it the gas fees? Or lack of technical sophistication on the receiving end?

randomhodler84 4y ago

“But without permission”. Shittier might be acceptable if you do not wish to seek permission. Which is the whole point.

ProjectArcturis 4y ago
So, for crime? Like, what is the legitimate use-case where not needing permission is the defining requirement?
- randomhodler84 4y ago
  We do you need to seek permission by default to save, spend and transact over the internet? Do we need permission to send TCP packets? To send an email? Consider that the internet works because it is permissive in what it accepts. What if money was abstracted from the states monetary policy, and it was as frictionless as any other internet protocol. The internet experiment changes our lives every day, in ways we cannot fathom.
  - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    So, for crime then.
    - fleddr 4y ago
      Stupendous remark. I'm old enough to have lived in a cash society. We got paid in cash and paid for things in cash. You can send cash to others. Without a cap. We didn't own some government an explanation on what we do with our money, as it's none of their damn business. "Guilty by default, prove me that you're not" is to be rejected. Society had less crime not more. Moreover, things like capital controls do nothing at all. Criminals with half a brain are quite obviously going to work around publicly known limitations.
      - lmm 4y ago
        > Society had less crime not more. Citation needed, at least if you're defining crime in the sense of what's experienced by regular people. Being a victim of violence was much more likely in those days, and the fact that you could easily spend the money of someone you mugged was a significant factor in that. > Moreover, things like capital controls do nothing at all. Criminals with half a brain are quite obviously going to work around publicly known limitations. The point isn't to eliminate it entirely but to make it more costly, and in that regard they seem to have been quite successful.

DANK_YACHT 4y ago

This point always comes up, and it typically shows a lack of knowledge about what you can do with a smart contract. E.g. with a smart contract, you can implement an option on anything and sell the option to a counter party with very little work. How would you do that without a blockchain? One way would be to sell an option on a listed security through your brokerage, but the blockchain democratizes this ability and makes it so anyone can do it for a different set of assets then would otherwise be possible. Like why have digital banking infrastructure at all? What new thing was enabled by digital banking infra? The answer is that nothing new was enabled, but the tech made banking operations faster and more accessible to more people. The same thing applies to blockchain tech.

fleddr 4y ago

You're starting to get it. A government-backed crypto currency would come with a wallet. The central bank becomes both the issuer of money as well as host your account. This makes other banks largely obsolete. Assuming it to be the main and only currency, transaction privacy fully ends. Transaction blocking and censorship would be the push of a button, pretty much your entire digital existence and access to things can be wiped out at will. Given that the majority of the world lives in an authoritarian regime, not at all a far-fetched scenario. Money would also be programmable. The central bank can apply its monetary policy directly to your wallet. Stimulus money. Interest rates based on your behavior. The blocking of purchasing particular categories of products. Anything, really.

randomhodler84 4y ago
Algorithmic enforcement of social norms to confer an ideology of the state. I recall a historical tiff between Jefferson and Hamilton on the powers of the central bank a few years ago. Unfortunately CBDC is how a majority of humans will transact in 2030, history has demonstrated this. What we have up our sleeve is specific codified internet protocols that allow state-less money. Really, this point is still lost on most people, in that they have the ability to transact over the internet with no trusted third party. Blows my mind every day.