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Turns out North Korea are using crypto! To fund missile programs https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60281129.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60281129.

Turns out North Korea are using crypto! To fund missile programs https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60281129.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60281129.amp The more I think on these things, the more I think trust is a feature, not a bug

olalonde 4y ago
Do you extend that thought to the Internet as well? The web is undoubtedly helpful to North Korea, probably more so than crypto.
- maratc 4y ago
  OpenOffice, Linux and RISC-V are of tremendous help to Russia.
  - dburflzz 4y ago
- lottin 4y ago
  I think the problem with this argument is the internet is useful to anyone, not just criminals.
didericis 4y ago
Trust is a feature. Transparent systems in which transactions are screened do not trust their people. North Korea would never allow their people access to a truly private cryptocurrency (which Monero does better). It would become easier to funnel money internally and create opposing factions. This discussion is no different than a discussion about just rulers. If the person in charge of a monetary system has good intentions, or is informed by a democracy with collectively good intentions, it is better for them to dictate who can have access and who cannot. Crypto forces those on the network to trust in the free decisions of the collective. If you think more people would transact with a large criminal psychopathic state like North Korea than they would with people who oppose North Korea, that is a collective choice. In a truly decentralized system, where everyone had access (which is not the case, and complicates things), the real, in practice will of the people comes out.
- haxiomic 4y ago
  It’s an appealing idea and what attracts so many bright minds to crypto. People voting with their money for their interests or the interests of the group. Love it. But that’s not how this dynamical system plays out. It would perhaps stand a chance if players could make transaction decisions based on information about the other party but that just isn’t the case in practise. Bad actors have had no issue obscuring sources if they need to (as is clear by NK state successfully using stolen crypto). But let’s say they could make truly informed decisions, that would put them at a competitive disadvantage to those who just trade with anyone regardless of potential harm. So you have a system of oligarchic growth of bastards - the biggest bastards get bigger. We of course have a similar problem in fiat, but with a currency backed by government, you have a chance to place sanctions or seize funds of actors harming the group. Organisation of systems of humans is _hard_. We’ve been trying many different systems of governance for thousands of years. There are appealing ideas, many experiments but no easy answer. Does currency decoupled from local governance work better or worse for the interests of humanity? The answer is not obvious and we should be careful saying we have clarity. It’s worth the experiment. I’m curious to know the result and watching the evidence carefully but my reading is results don’t support the suggestion that crypto is a force for good overall. It’s not even clear crypto stays trust-less and decentralised in any practical sense once it begins to collapse into more efficient structures of big players (coinbase and friends)
  - didericis 4y ago
    Well said, agree with all of that. I have hope for systems that allow for the easy, anonymous (to outside observers, at least) build up of networks for the kind of information exchange you rightly claim to be the most important aspect of creating good systems in practice. It doesn’t solve that information bottleneck problem, but I think the more efficient structures that lead to transactional bottlenecks and are necessary in things like Bitcoin are technical problems that can and I think have been worked out in currencies like Monero. Monero has quite successfully resisted the same pulls to centralization that Bitcoin and Ethereum have succumbed to for the sake of efficiency. It is smaller, but still quite large. That does not necessarily mean it is good, and while I’m optimistic, I understand where the caution comes from. At the very least it’s extremely interesting, both from a technical perspective and a social/political perspective. At the end of the day I am more and more convinced that all of this money and power stuff is downstream of relationships, culture, and ability to communicate and cooperate across differences. That’s what’s really important, and can be either encouraged or discouraged to move in a direction that helps the most people with all kinds of different tools, of which money is just one, and which could happen all kinds of different ways in different systems. I wish it were easier to know what helps and what doesn’t so we wouldn’t risk making things worse. But I think the only way to know is to experiment.
unity1001 4y ago
Yep. Trust is a feature, not a bug. So that the 'legitimate and righteous' blockade of North Korea by the Angloamerican establishment could turn on its domestic dissent whenever needed. As we saw during the Occupy protests in 2011.

olalonde 4y ago

Do you extend that thought to the Internet as well? The web is undoubtedly helpful to North Korea, probably more so than crypto.

maratc 4y ago
OpenOffice, Linux and RISC-V are of tremendous help to Russia.
- dburflzz 4y ago
lottin 4y ago
I think the problem with this argument is the internet is useful to anyone, not just criminals.

didericis 4y ago

Trust is a feature. Transparent systems in which transactions are screened do not trust their people. North Korea would never allow their people access to a truly private cryptocurrency (which Monero does better). It would become easier to funnel money internally and create opposing factions. This discussion is no different than a discussion about just rulers. If the person in charge of a monetary system has good intentions, or is informed by a democracy with collectively good intentions, it is better for them to dictate who can have access and who cannot. Crypto forces those on the network to trust in the free decisions of the collective. If you think more people would transact with a large criminal psychopathic state like North Korea than they would with people who oppose North Korea, that is a collective choice. In a truly decentralized system, where everyone had access (which is not the case, and complicates things), the real, in practice will of the people comes out.

haxiomic 4y ago
It’s an appealing idea and what attracts so many bright minds to crypto. People voting with their money for their interests or the interests of the group. Love it. But that’s not how this dynamical system plays out. It would perhaps stand a chance if players could make transaction decisions based on information about the other party but that just isn’t the case in practise. Bad actors have had no issue obscuring sources if they need to (as is clear by NK state successfully using stolen crypto). But let’s say they could make truly informed decisions, that would put them at a competitive disadvantage to those who just trade with anyone regardless of potential harm. So you have a system of oligarchic growth of bastards - the biggest bastards get bigger. We of course have a similar problem in fiat, but with a currency backed by government, you have a chance to place sanctions or seize funds of actors harming the group. Organisation of systems of humans is _hard_. We’ve been trying many different systems of governance for thousands of years. There are appealing ideas, many experiments but no easy answer. Does currency decoupled from local governance work better or worse for the interests of humanity? The answer is not obvious and we should be careful saying we have clarity. It’s worth the experiment. I’m curious to know the result and watching the evidence carefully but my reading is results don’t support the suggestion that crypto is a force for good overall. It’s not even clear crypto stays trust-less and decentralised in any practical sense once it begins to collapse into more efficient structures of big players (coinbase and friends)
- didericis 4y ago
  Well said, agree with all of that. I have hope for systems that allow for the easy, anonymous (to outside observers, at least) build up of networks for the kind of information exchange you rightly claim to be the most important aspect of creating good systems in practice. It doesn’t solve that information bottleneck problem, but I think the more efficient structures that lead to transactional bottlenecks and are necessary in things like Bitcoin are technical problems that can and I think have been worked out in currencies like Monero. Monero has quite successfully resisted the same pulls to centralization that Bitcoin and Ethereum have succumbed to for the sake of efficiency. It is smaller, but still quite large. That does not necessarily mean it is good, and while I’m optimistic, I understand where the caution comes from. At the very least it’s extremely interesting, both from a technical perspective and a social/political perspective. At the end of the day I am more and more convinced that all of this money and power stuff is downstream of relationships, culture, and ability to communicate and cooperate across differences. That’s what’s really important, and can be either encouraged or discouraged to move in a direction that helps the most people with all kinds of different tools, of which money is just one, and which could happen all kinds of different ways in different systems. I wish it were easier to know what helps and what doesn’t so we wouldn’t risk making things worse. But I think the only way to know is to experiment.

unity1001 4y ago

Yep. Trust is a feature, not a bug. So that the 'legitimate and righteous' blockade of North Korea by the Angloamerican establishment could turn on its domestic dissent whenever needed. As we saw during the Occupy protests in 2011.