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I think there are a few common misconceptions that make people not understand the real value crypto is bringing to the table. Many in tech look at crypto, and
by swalsh 4y ago
I think there are a few common misconceptions that make people not understand the real value crypto is bringing to the table.
Many in tech look at crypto, and blockchain specifically as if it is another technicalogical capability they can integrate into their enterprise architecture. From that perspective blockchain in general doesn't really make sense. As cool as the composability of tokens and smart contracts are, that's not a capability only blockchain can deliver (in fact that's not the blockchain at all... that's the standards that have been built on top of it).
Others in tech look at blockchain as a currency to replace traditional currencies issued by governments. A reasonable world view, as that's kind of how it's been sold for a very long time, but it's pretty clear to me at least, that's not really possible. The US Gov is always going to require taxes to be paid for in dollars. The US, EU, China... everyone, they're not going to give up monetary sovereignty.
So what does crypto provide then? In my opinion, the sole thing the blockchain provides, when sufficiently decentralized is digital sovereignty... but more importantly an unlimited amount of digital sovereignties. Opt-in self governing communities that can decide for themselves what's fair. An enforcable user bill of rights that's global in nature. This doesn't replace the real-world sovereign nations, it's like a new layer in the digital world for digital applications. I've personally come to realization that Crypto doesn't really work well in the physical world. But in the digital world, it's proving quite adept...
Technology is still evolving, ETH2 is a huge leap forward... and glad to see it. Personally, I'm still attached to the Avalanche community because I personally think the technology is still superior. But the technology is kind of not the important part. It kind of just needs a minimunm spec, and then it's not important. It's how you treat the users who are using the stuff built on top of the technology. Libertarians were the first to understand that (though i'd argue they fail to understand that need to have a foreign policy, and real world governments are legitimate trading partners that you need to negotiate with. Their insistence on idelogical purity will be their undoing) But crypto is big enough for all kind of communities to crop up, and you can choose to join or not.
That's ultimately the thing, any app you can build in Web 3, you can replicate in Web 2 with a single server. But in Web3, the users can own it, and they can decide for themselves how to govern themselves. That's the value. We live in feudal system, a world dominated by Web 2 companies. Web3 in my opinion is the way we can build a diverse economic ecosystem of free (as in speech, not beer) digital services.
One thing I Think a lot about... today, all people in crypto are dual citizens. They have citizenship in their geogrpahic world, and in the digital world. But there's a future where AI can be pure digital citizens (citizens who have needs, such as compute, and they will trade their AI skills for that compute). I view a lot of the debate around crypto as a debate about foreign policy, and that gets really interesting when it's AI on the other end.... maybe a free AI :D
- silisili 4y agoThanks for the well thought out response. Perhaps my biggest issue then is I'm not all in on the purely digital world that you describe and admit doesn't really exist, yet. That is to say, my plumber doesn't care about any of this and just wants cash. In the future, that can and probably will change, of course. But today, in our current world, very few industries and virtually no blue collar industries accept such currency. So then the question becomes, what is the value of <insert coin here>. Some will talk about energy, or efficiency. Some will talk about scarcity. Some will talk tech merits. But nobody to date has been able to convince me that it has any real value. There are no armies or economies validating it. I think in simple terms, perhaps I'm a luddite. If someone, say completely disconnected from modern conveniences, were selling an item, I could perhaps trade physical goods for it. Or perhaps shiny metals, and explain why they're valuable(assuming they didn't know). Or explain dollars, and the guarantee behind them. How would you sell them on cryptocoins having value? The tech doesn't matter a ton here to a person, so onto the value. Why are bitcoins worth more than say, beanie babies of yore? Both seem to be run purely on speculation, at this point. Said another way, if someone gives me 10k in cash, I have faith it will still be worth 10k in a year(ignoring our awful inflation). If someone gave me 10k in bitcoins, I have zero faith it would be worth anything tomorrow.
- swalsh 4y ago> purely digital world The world doesn't need to be purely digital, and crypto doesn't need to be the entire worlds economy. In fact, my argument is that it's NOT. It's something seperate, and unique and new. It's not a replacement for the economy, it's an addition to it. Though i'm sure a plumber could find a useful digital service hosted in crypto... i'd argue crypto isn't for plumbers. Not their plumbing business at least. Imagine a git + smart contract service (this doesn't really exist today, and it's my side project i'm trying to build) which is integrated with a hosting service like Akash (cosmos). You can build new digital services/games/worlds that are governed in a decentralized way. You could build a new Facebook for example. The difference here, are changes are voted on by the owners of the token. I'm not even sure the token would be worth a whole lot monetarily (depends how the owners). But as a user, how much is having control over the social media you use daily worth? To me, A lot. Everything in crypto is open source, but unlike the open source world today, crypto provides a mechanism and culture to pay contributors. So a lot of crypto applications are designed to capture that value in a communial way to pay people (or bots) for their work. The value of the crypto is access to these services. It's no different from the value our digital economy today provides. Just governed differently. Instead of Zuck controlling the digital service, the users can control the digital service.