9 ms·

Interesting paper, but whether the early cooperation was necessarily altruistic in nature remains a mystery to me. The highly centralized structure which transp

Interesting paper, but whether the early cooperation was necessarily altruistic in nature remains a mystery to me. The highly centralized structure which transpired to make Bitcoin popular and regarded as secure raises suspicion about its legitimacy and true intentions, in my mind. Over a decade later, digital currencies have become much more palatable and even attractive to people, that there's even talk of government-backed DC's, and this resulting Overton window shift has significant implications for individual freedom and society.

nwah1 4y ago
No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain. A blockchain would add fundamental insurmountable drawbacks. Digital money using databases has been around since before the internet. Central bank digital currency is just a minor addition to our current digital financial infrastructure.
- kriops 4y ago
  A central bank and blockchain technology are antithetical concepts, and if a central bank is ever offering you something blockchain it's probably a scam by means of sham decentralization.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    >>A central bank and blockchain technology are antithetical concepts, I feel I need to screenshot this. It demonstrates more succinctly than I could write an essay on, how much we are muddying up technology, and purpose / politics / ideals when we start discussing this area (Crypto currency etc) How is a human institution in your mind "antithetical" to a technology? Is a government "antithetical" to 3rd normal form or airline antithetical to a b-tree? You are inserting a large number of undisclosed assumptions to even begin to make such a statement (whether aware of it or not). >>if a central bank is ever offering you something blockchain it's probably a scam by means of sham decentralization. I don't disagree with this... I just think it neatly extends fully to "if anybody is ever offering you something block chain" :-)
    - DasIch 4y ago
      Blockchain has a purpose: consensus without trust. Central banks are institutions that are trusted and cooperate with trusted institutions. In general as long as you have a mechanism to establish trust-based consensus by relying on people or a government there is really no advantage by using a blockhain and a huge number of disadvantages.
      - NikolaNovak 4y ago
        I agree.frequently it seems I'm in twilight zone minority :-)
    - mintyDijon 4y ago
      >How is a human institution in your mind "antithetical" to a technology? It's not human institution vs technology, it's the very structure of central banking vs decentral banking. It's the concepts themselves that are antithetical. -Edit I couldn't remember the word, but I believe the term that applies here is 'diametrically opposed'
      - NikolaNovak 4y ago
        But that's the unspoken assumption I'm talking about - that blockchain and decentralized banking are one and the same / that this is the only design use case for the technology. There are many people actively working in block chain space who do not believe these are identical concepts. They may yet win out long term.
        mintyDijon 4y ago
        I'm not claiming that blockchain is a one use concept. Yes it can be used for other things then banking. I personally feel that NFTs are a great example of that, and that they hold many possibilities for the future. But the main benefit that blockchain provides is a way to decentralize a network, it's quite inefficient from a performance standpoint. So to use it for anything other than that is a waste (at least currently). Centralized currencies are better than decentralized ones performance wise, and I don't predict that will change anytime in the near future. To quote Eldenwrong's perfect comment here "You can use a rock as a spoon but that just makes you retarded" Hense blockchain currencies (the ones that aren't scams ofc) are decentralized by their nature, since that's the only draw to using that method. Because of the Pareto distribution this should fail at some point, but with the innumerable amount of new currencies coming into existence, that shouldn't be a problem.
  - bozhark 4y ago
    Both are, always have been
- rvz 4y ago
  > No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain. f a l s e What is this then? [0][1] Where we have those same blockchain technologies from the likes of Stellar, XPRL, Algorand, etc that are compliant with the ISO 20020 standard? As I said before on what is really going on, both the crypto maximalists and the crypto skeptics are going to be very disappointed in achieving their unobtainable and extreme goals. [0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-hryvnia-pilot-launched-by-tascombank-and-bitt-on-stellar-301443773.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-... [1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210922005878/en/Royal-Monetary-Authority-of-Bhutan-Ripple-Partner-to-Pilot-CBDC-Using-Private-Blockchain https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210922005878/en/Roy...
  - ljf 4y ago
    That is not a central bank... From Wikipedia A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a state or formal monetary union, and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base.
    - rvz 4y ago
      > That is not a central bank... Assuming you read the entire press releases, so the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan as I previously mentioned [0], and the National Bank of Ukraine' NBU' mentioned in the press release and is part of the pilot program [2] are not central banks? What does this say here? [0] The Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan is the central bank of Bhutan... And here [1] The National Bank of Ukraine is the central bank of Ukraine... It also says here [2]: The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) selected the distributed ledger technology, in particular the private version of the Stellar protocol, to study opportunities of issuing e-hryvnia and to carry out the Pilot Project. The Reserve Bank of Australia have also implemented an Ethereum-based CBDC proof-of-concept which was successful. [3] So the claim 'No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain.' is still false. I think there is a strange sense of denial with the commenter who created that unfounded and baseless absolute claim. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Monetary_Authority_of_Bhutan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Monetary_Authority_of_Bh... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bank_of_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bank_of_Ukraine [2] https://bank.gov.ua/admin_uploads/article/Analytical+Report+on+E-hryvnia.pdf https://bank.gov.ua/admin_uploads/article/Analytical+Report+... [3] https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2021/mr-21-30.html https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2021/mr-21-30.html
- 0daystock 4y ago
  > No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain That's hilariously incorrect. You should revisit this comment later this year.
lupire 4y ago
It's not a huge mystery. "altruism" is author opinion not science. Double spending is a short term benefit, but risks destroying the value of your holdings by discrediting the whole system. Double spending only works in truly arms length transactions, where the victim can't retaliate AND trusts you enough to accept the transaction in the first place.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Also the gains for such action must be larger than resources spend. You are over spending the rest of the network in work, thus the transactions must be larger than possible gains from doing the same work in "main" chain.
audleman 4y ago
> The highly centralized structure which transpired to make Bitcoin popular What centralized structure?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 0daystock 4y ago
  Read the paper this thread is about.

nwah1 4y ago

No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain. A blockchain would add fundamental insurmountable drawbacks. Digital money using databases has been around since before the internet. Central bank digital currency is just a minor addition to our current digital financial infrastructure.

kriops 4y ago
A central bank and blockchain technology are antithetical concepts, and if a central bank is ever offering you something blockchain it's probably a scam by means of sham decentralization.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  >>A central bank and blockchain technology are antithetical concepts, I feel I need to screenshot this. It demonstrates more succinctly than I could write an essay on, how much we are muddying up technology, and purpose / politics / ideals when we start discussing this area (Crypto currency etc) How is a human institution in your mind "antithetical" to a technology? Is a government "antithetical" to 3rd normal form or airline antithetical to a b-tree? You are inserting a large number of undisclosed assumptions to even begin to make such a statement (whether aware of it or not). >>if a central bank is ever offering you something blockchain it's probably a scam by means of sham decentralization. I don't disagree with this... I just think it neatly extends fully to "if anybody is ever offering you something block chain" :-)
  - DasIch 4y ago
    Blockchain has a purpose: consensus without trust. Central banks are institutions that are trusted and cooperate with trusted institutions. In general as long as you have a mechanism to establish trust-based consensus by relying on people or a government there is really no advantage by using a blockhain and a huge number of disadvantages.
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      I agree.frequently it seems I'm in twilight zone minority :-)
  - mintyDijon 4y ago
    >How is a human institution in your mind "antithetical" to a technology? It's not human institution vs technology, it's the very structure of central banking vs decentral banking. It's the concepts themselves that are antithetical. -Edit I couldn't remember the word, but I believe the term that applies here is 'diametrically opposed'
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      But that's the unspoken assumption I'm talking about - that blockchain and decentralized banking are one and the same / that this is the only design use case for the technology. There are many people actively working in block chain space who do not believe these are identical concepts. They may yet win out long term.
      - mintyDijon 4y ago
        I'm not claiming that blockchain is a one use concept. Yes it can be used for other things then banking. I personally feel that NFTs are a great example of that, and that they hold many possibilities for the future. But the main benefit that blockchain provides is a way to decentralize a network, it's quite inefficient from a performance standpoint. So to use it for anything other than that is a waste (at least currently). Centralized currencies are better than decentralized ones performance wise, and I don't predict that will change anytime in the near future. To quote Eldenwrong's perfect comment here "You can use a rock as a spoon but that just makes you retarded" Hense blockchain currencies (the ones that aren't scams ofc) are decentralized by their nature, since that's the only draw to using that method. Because of the Pareto distribution this should fail at some point, but with the innumerable amount of new currencies coming into existence, that shouldn't be a problem.
- bozhark 4y ago
  Both are, always have been
rvz 4y ago
> No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain. f a l s e What is this then? [0][1] Where we have those same blockchain technologies from the likes of Stellar, XPRL, Algorand, etc that are compliant with the ISO 20020 standard? As I said before on what is really going on, both the crypto maximalists and the crypto skeptics are going to be very disappointed in achieving their unobtainable and extreme goals. [0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-hryvnia-pilot-launched-by-tascombank-and-bitt-on-stellar-301443773.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-... [1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210922005878/en/Royal-Monetary-Authority-of-Bhutan-Ripple-Partner-to-Pilot-CBDC-Using-Private-Blockchain https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210922005878/en/Roy...
- ljf 4y ago
  That is not a central bank... From Wikipedia A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a state or formal monetary union, and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base.
  - rvz 4y ago
    > That is not a central bank... Assuming you read the entire press releases, so the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan as I previously mentioned [0], and the National Bank of Ukraine' NBU' mentioned in the press release and is part of the pilot program [2] are not central banks? What does this say here? [0] The Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan is the central bank of Bhutan... And here [1] The National Bank of Ukraine is the central bank of Ukraine... It also says here [2]: The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) selected the distributed ledger technology, in particular the private version of the Stellar protocol, to study opportunities of issuing e-hryvnia and to carry out the Pilot Project. The Reserve Bank of Australia have also implemented an Ethereum-based CBDC proof-of-concept which was successful. [3] So the claim 'No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain.' is still false. I think there is a strange sense of denial with the commenter who created that unfounded and baseless absolute claim. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Monetary_Authority_of_Bhutan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Monetary_Authority_of_Bh... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bank_of_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bank_of_Ukraine [2] https://bank.gov.ua/admin_uploads/article/Analytical+Report+on+E-hryvnia.pdf https://bank.gov.ua/admin_uploads/article/Analytical+Report+... [3] https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2021/mr-21-30.html https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2021/mr-21-30.html
0daystock 4y ago
> No central bank digital currency is planning to use a blockchain That's hilariously incorrect. You should revisit this comment later this year.

lupire 4y ago

It's not a huge mystery. "altruism" is author opinion not science. Double spending is a short term benefit, but risks destroying the value of your holdings by discrediting the whole system. Double spending only works in truly arms length transactions, where the victim can't retaliate AND trusts you enough to accept the transaction in the first place.

Ekaros 4y ago
Also the gains for such action must be larger than resources spend. You are over spending the rest of the network in work, thus the transactions must be larger than possible gains from doing the same work in "main" chain.

audleman 4y ago

> The highly centralized structure which transpired to make Bitcoin popular What centralized structure?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
0daystock 4y ago
Read the paper this thread is about.