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You present a problem with Proof of Stake as an inevitable run in with the law and/or some folly of the crypto community. That's not very sound logic. I person

You present a problem with Proof of Stake as an inevitable run in with the law and/or some folly of the crypto community. That's not very sound logic. I personally believe in apolitical decentralized money winning against fiat which is governed on the whims of central bankers and crony capitalism. Every system where technology brings fairness, power to all, and hard rules wins. This will not be an exception. It is the separation of money and state, not very dissimilar from church and state, monarchy and nationhood etc.

HelloNurse 4y ago
What "hard rules" can compete with actually enforced law? Don't you expect more "whims" (and scams) from private adventurers than from governments?
- silentsea90 4y ago
  I expect all parties to act in their own best interests. I do in fact expect more scams from private bodies, but the government conducts a much larger scam in printing without accountability a currency unbacked by anything and not bound to any rules, a billion ton gorilla that moves the "free" markets at it's whim. The people's interest imo is in fairness to all not asset owners who aren't as affected by money printing etc The law isn't sacrosanct, but of course it needs to be followed. It is malleable and comes from lawmakers who may or may not represent the interest of the people, unwittingly or otherwise
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
manigandham 4y ago
Crypto itself can cross borders as a intangible virtual entity. You cannot. Your physicality means you're bounded by geographical borders to a nation state and thus its laws and regulations.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  That assumes that people are the entities that the economy optimizes for, which hasn't been true for 10,000 years or so. People are disposable to capitalism - there are 7.7 billion of us, which makes individual humans about as significant to the economy as individual neurons are to consciousness. As long as there exist some humans that are in a position to do the crypto-economy's bidding, it'll happen, and it doesn't matter if some of them are thrown in prison or executed or die from poor government policies. From the perspective of world history, this is a BFD. The monetary system of the past 80 years has been controlled by the ruling class of a ~150-300M person nation. The crypto economy imposes uniform rules on ~3B people, which is an order of magnitude greater complexity, and should see further specialization and gains from trade for those that participate in it.
RandomLensman 4y ago
It's fine to want a different society/policies, but you need to expand on how that new society should look like then: How would sanctions work, for example? Or if there are none, will there be other means of defense/offense? Who would set the rules of the monetary system and what would give legitimacy to those rule setters? How to move from the old system to the new without (too much) disruption? ... The endings of proper monarchies weren't always simple and nice events - if that is the magnitude of change you have in mind.
- silentsea90 4y ago
  Sanctions don't stem from the existence of Fiat currency (at least directly), and may still exist depending on power dynamics. The move is on the way and will continue. It will be disruptive but I'm not sure exactly how it'll go. Regular military offense and defense systems will exist but just not ones where the US say prints infinite money for war and incurs sovereign debt. Wars might be a lot smaller scale then. Old world wars required rulers to raise money, taxation etc. They didn't print out of thin air, or bankrupt entire nations (eg Weimar Germany) Non Fiat money has been the norm pre unpegged Fiat. It's been around for 2-3k years at least, whereas unpegged Fiat is 50 years old. I'm surprised we find the fall of Fiat as hard to imagine:)
  - RandomLensman 4y ago
    How is crypto not another fiat? It is not backed by convertability into a commodity either. It's (currently typically) not issued by a state actor but otherwise just like a typical fiat currency brought into being by something akin to a (community) decree. I know from the US perspective often legal tender concepts are brought into the definition of fiat but the legal tender concept doesn't quite exist in the same way in a lot of other countries.
    - silentsea90 4y ago
      It's true that it's not backed, and that's a pro (we'll get to that), but Bitcoin is better than Fiat for many reasons: 1) impossible to confiscate 2) fixed supply and issuance rate - can't just print it away when the fed wants 3) instant permissionless transfer so the government can't interject. If you think they can be trusted, might want to read about executive order 6102 4) not backed by another asset eg gold (say). This is great because gold is extremely hard to transfer physically and easy to confiscate. Read about how Nixon refused to allow dollar convertibility for gold for foreign nations which was the condition for Bretton woods agreement ie where all nations agreed to use dollar as a global reserve freely exchangeable for gold. Also read about how FDR outlawed private ownership of gold when the US had printed more money than their gold reserves and needed to fix their books. Decentralized community decree is awesome. You don't have a central actor making rules that support themselves. Christine Lagarde has no way to get the euro out of the deficit hole. See this snippet from an interview: https://youtu.be/p-X-mIuDYFw https://youtu.be/p-X-mIuDYFw. In a balanced system, the debt would be loaned from and owed to a market participant who cares about their money being returned, not this bizarre broken system where central banks print and then owe to themselves
arlcode 4y ago
The power of law comes from the ability, to confiscate things, kick in doors and arrest people. Usually there is some social consensus such that most comply anyway most of the time. This is true and always and trumps whatever your software says is meaningless if there is any conflict ("you and what army" is a very valid question. Now, the law (a court) can of course allow your software and might even enforce a contract bases on your software In good systems the governed people have a say in how those laws are created. In Bad ones it's literally whatever one person mutters with a mouth full of breakfast cereals and headaches.
- silentsea90 4y ago
  I don't question the law's ability to do this, but believe that the ideal human societal state is one where money isn't controlled by centralized actors, and that the law would change in time to comply with what's best for society. This will happen sooner in functioning states and later in bad ones.

HelloNurse 4y ago

What "hard rules" can compete with actually enforced law? Don't you expect more "whims" (and scams) from private adventurers than from governments?

silentsea90 4y ago
I expect all parties to act in their own best interests. I do in fact expect more scams from private bodies, but the government conducts a much larger scam in printing without accountability a currency unbacked by anything and not bound to any rules, a billion ton gorilla that moves the "free" markets at it's whim. The people's interest imo is in fairness to all not asset owners who aren't as affected by money printing etc The law isn't sacrosanct, but of course it needs to be followed. It is malleable and comes from lawmakers who may or may not represent the interest of the people, unwittingly or otherwise
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

manigandham 4y ago

Crypto itself can cross borders as a intangible virtual entity. You cannot. Your physicality means you're bounded by geographical borders to a nation state and thus its laws and regulations.

nostrademons 4y ago
That assumes that people are the entities that the economy optimizes for, which hasn't been true for 10,000 years or so. People are disposable to capitalism - there are 7.7 billion of us, which makes individual humans about as significant to the economy as individual neurons are to consciousness. As long as there exist some humans that are in a position to do the crypto-economy's bidding, it'll happen, and it doesn't matter if some of them are thrown in prison or executed or die from poor government policies. From the perspective of world history, this is a BFD. The monetary system of the past 80 years has been controlled by the ruling class of a ~150-300M person nation. The crypto economy imposes uniform rules on ~3B people, which is an order of magnitude greater complexity, and should see further specialization and gains from trade for those that participate in it.

RandomLensman 4y ago

It's fine to want a different society/policies, but you need to expand on how that new society should look like then: How would sanctions work, for example? Or if there are none, will there be other means of defense/offense? Who would set the rules of the monetary system and what would give legitimacy to those rule setters? How to move from the old system to the new without (too much) disruption? ... The endings of proper monarchies weren't always simple and nice events - if that is the magnitude of change you have in mind.

silentsea90 4y ago
Sanctions don't stem from the existence of Fiat currency (at least directly), and may still exist depending on power dynamics. The move is on the way and will continue. It will be disruptive but I'm not sure exactly how it'll go. Regular military offense and defense systems will exist but just not ones where the US say prints infinite money for war and incurs sovereign debt. Wars might be a lot smaller scale then. Old world wars required rulers to raise money, taxation etc. They didn't print out of thin air, or bankrupt entire nations (eg Weimar Germany) Non Fiat money has been the norm pre unpegged Fiat. It's been around for 2-3k years at least, whereas unpegged Fiat is 50 years old. I'm surprised we find the fall of Fiat as hard to imagine:)
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  How is crypto not another fiat? It is not backed by convertability into a commodity either. It's (currently typically) not issued by a state actor but otherwise just like a typical fiat currency brought into being by something akin to a (community) decree. I know from the US perspective often legal tender concepts are brought into the definition of fiat but the legal tender concept doesn't quite exist in the same way in a lot of other countries.
  - silentsea90 4y ago
    It's true that it's not backed, and that's a pro (we'll get to that), but Bitcoin is better than Fiat for many reasons: 1) impossible to confiscate 2) fixed supply and issuance rate - can't just print it away when the fed wants 3) instant permissionless transfer so the government can't interject. If you think they can be trusted, might want to read about executive order 6102 4) not backed by another asset eg gold (say). This is great because gold is extremely hard to transfer physically and easy to confiscate. Read about how Nixon refused to allow dollar convertibility for gold for foreign nations which was the condition for Bretton woods agreement ie where all nations agreed to use dollar as a global reserve freely exchangeable for gold. Also read about how FDR outlawed private ownership of gold when the US had printed more money than their gold reserves and needed to fix their books. Decentralized community decree is awesome. You don't have a central actor making rules that support themselves. Christine Lagarde has no way to get the euro out of the deficit hole. See this snippet from an interview: https://youtu.be/p-X-mIuDYFw https://youtu.be/p-X-mIuDYFw. In a balanced system, the debt would be loaned from and owed to a market participant who cares about their money being returned, not this bizarre broken system where central banks print and then owe to themselves

arlcode 4y ago

The power of law comes from the ability, to confiscate things, kick in doors and arrest people. Usually there is some social consensus such that most comply anyway most of the time. This is true and always and trumps whatever your software says is meaningless if there is any conflict ("you and what army" is a very valid question. Now, the law (a court) can of course allow your software and might even enforce a contract bases on your software In good systems the governed people have a say in how those laws are created. In Bad ones it's literally whatever one person mutters with a mouth full of breakfast cereals and headaches.

silentsea90 4y ago
I don't question the law's ability to do this, but believe that the ideal human societal state is one where money isn't controlled by centralized actors, and that the law would change in time to comply with what's best for society. This will happen sooner in functioning states and later in bad ones.