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What makes internet commerce any different from any other commerce? I will absolutely make this bet. We already see it. Countries who don't like to play by the
by mlsu 4y ago
What makes internet commerce any different from any other commerce? I will absolutely make this bet. We already see it.
Countries who don't like to play by the rules of US trade -- those who resist signing trade agreements and using our currency develop or attempt to develop alternatives, and if they lack the capability to do so, they turn to other powers (basically: China). Economic activity gets silo'd into blocs, depending on which large power you want to depend on. Some countries are very cozy to the United States and participate in its trade agreements, joint ventures, currency, etc. Some countries do not.
Internet commerce is not any different at all, and cryptocurrency does not change this one bit. For example, China notably separates its internet traffic from the United States by giving heavy advantages to its own enterprises and internet infrastructure.
No country at all runs their internet economy on some cryptocurrency or cryptocomputation stack. And they never will, no matter how "decentralized" it is. The exception, maybe, is North Korea. Cryptocurrency has allowed them to be sort of digital pirates through ransomware payments. And you can see why they do that (it's not because they're building a productive internet economy on cryptocurrency!) and what the result ends up being (nobody is collaborating on a crypto venture with North Koreans, despite the heavy flow of bitcoin in and out of that country!).
- spaceman_2020 4y ago> No country at all runs their internet economy on some cryptocurrency or cryptocomputation stack. And they never will, no matter how "decentralized" it is. Yep. They won't. They will centralize control even more and things that are not as conducive for the ruling power will likely get delisted and deplatformed. Which is precisely why building out the decentralized web matters. At the very least, there should be an alternative available to citizens. Even if its hard to access. The penalty for not building it out is walled gardens everywhere. If it ends up being adopted by governments and companies, great. If it's just used by a bunch of nerds to send messages or money to friends outside the walled garden, then, too, it is worth building. Surely, a reader of HackerNews would agree.
- pwinnski 4y agoWe have a decentralized web, right alongside the centralized web. It does't require any sort of crypto to function, and functions better without crypto added. Crypto is just another variety of wall.
- mlsu 4y agoSo I understand this. But "used by a few nerds" isn't what most defi/cryptocurrency purports to be. We are talking about web3 -- a paradigm shift for the entire internet. The equivalent to JS for the interactive web, or email for communication... this ain't that. And that's kind of the point: this ain't that, AND it never will be that, AND can we stop breathlessly declaring that it will be that, AND can we stop scamming people based on the promise that this will be that.