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> As I said, I see cryptocurrency as a very complex technology that requires a bordering-on-academic understanding of privacy, autonomy, sovereignty, macroecono

> As I said, I see cryptocurrency as a very complex technology that requires a bordering-on-academic understanding of privacy, autonomy, sovereignty, macroeconomics, the shortcomings of FIAT currency, centralized banking, the federal reserve, fractional reserve banking, asymmetric cryptography, computer security, and a litany of other topics to fully appreciate and realize the benefits offered by Bitcoin, Monero, Ethereum, etc. > I understand it probably comes off a little misanthropic, but as I also said, I suspect (many? most? majority? plurality?) of the people involved in crypto really don't even care about any of that, let alone understand it. The unstated corollary to this is that I would presume the people who aren't involved in crypto, on average, understand and appreciate all of these things even less. As a rough guess you could probably fit all of the people on the planet who could have a remotely coherent conversation across all of those topics on a mid-sized airplane. But here's the thing - do you think people who use their cell phone to upload vides to their YouTube channel understand how the optics of the camera work? The intricacies of the HEVC codec? The baseband of the cell modem? Any clue of the internet? Payment processors for their subscribers? The ACH system for their payments? The logistics of UPS for the merch they send out to their fans? The broader economic effects of the gig economy? No, they don't and they shouldn't. They're off doing their own exceptional things of interest just like Kim K or some professional athlete. All of our lives run on stacks of research papers even far more complicated than "the technical, economic, political, and philosophical aspects of electronic peer-to-peer distributed ledgers". The important thing here is none of this matters to them - what matters is they have this YouTube app, they make videos with it, and people watch them. They don't understand or appreciate the benefits of the obscure component parts but what they appreciate is the sum - they got to quit their crappy job to be a YouTuber (or whatever). The hundreds of millions of people who "follow" Kim K presumably do so because they see value in it too. My point is (other than getting fined by the SEC for unlawfully promoting crypto scams) when will the crypto ecosystem deliver something of value/utility to the masses - from Kim K to your grandmother? On the flip side, what benefits does crypto actually offer? Before talking about economic policy, privacy, owning data, whatever, lets remember a few things: - People play the lotto because they're bad at math and don't understand economics. - Everyone has known the US government has been spying on them for decades and no one cares. - People happily hand their entire lives to giant corporations that sell their data, abuse them, etc so they can post photos online "for free". - So, so, much more. For most of the benefits I hear of crypto (like what you've mentioned) my response is "No one cares about any of that". On the contrary - how many password resets do you think Facebook does everyday? Bank of America (60m customers)? How many credit card transactions are reversed? The fundamental properties ("benefits") of crypto are an ANTI-ADOPTION pattern for people other than those in the airplane with you. They just don't align with fundamental human behavior (forgetting stuff and making mistakes). I see it like Linux on the desktop. I love Linux. I've run it on the desktop since 1997. For a while there people were saying "Year of the Linux Desktop" because it was going to dethrone Windows. Well, obviously that's a joke for a reason. The crypto community says the same (ridiculous) things - "replace fiat", "rebuild the entire web with web3 and displace literally everything", "get rid of banks", etc. It's delusional, wishful thinking largely driven by personal financial interests with roots in the economic desperation we referenced earlier. Oh btw, for the record I NEVER thought Linux was going to have any considerable success on the desktop either ;).

ephbit 4y ago
> My point is (other than getting fined by the SEC for unlawfully promoting crypto scams) when will the crypto ecosystem deliver something of value/utility to the masses - from Kim K to your grandmother? > On the flip side, what benefits does crypto actually offer? > For most of the benefits I hear of crypto (like what you've mentioned) my response is "No one cares about any of that". On the contrary ... Right now admittedly, the benefits of Bitcoin are relatively hypothetical. I think the chance that in a few decades (say 20-30 years) Bitcoin will have turned out to have been a system/technology that will have assisted the world's financial system with converging to principles that'll have brought with them significantly more stability in this financial system and following from this more stability of society .. this chance is greater than zero. I'd argue that one key problem of the world's current financial system is its (in my opinion) inherent dependency on economic growth. As most people will agree, economic growth has been a good thing for centuries, but humanity has reached a level of (ab)use of natural resources that far outstrips the capacity of ecosystems to recover. Many people would be content with less material goods but for the sake of economic "stability" (and also because voters like presents) governments decide to hop from one growth stimulus package to the next, subsidizing consumption and thus nudging people to buy new stuff instead of maintaining/repairing existing stuff and incentivizing companies to churn out one new variant of an existing product that's often only minimally better and sometimes even worse than the previous one after the other. Jobs/unemployment is _the_ justification for the never ending growth/stimulus policy that almost no voter will argue against, which is why politics isn't really able to solve this. From this follows the key solution: for the sake of our ecosphere, the (IMO) inherent dependency on economic growth has to be done away with. Fiat currencies (through the expansive monetary policies they enable) are the basis for the growth dynamic and Bitcoin is a system that enables opting out of it. You might say: now that's one vague kind of benefit. Agree, it's vague. But the possibility that Bitcoin can help solve one of humanity's fundamental and existential problems _because_ unlike politicians it cannot easily be corrupted by big money is IMO enough hypothetical benefit to justify its adoption and use.
anonym29 4y ago
Outside of the long-term possibilities mentioned by ephbit, I largely agree with your take here for the realistic short-term and mid-term (before 2033). In fact, I think the only thing I disagree with in this post is the size of the pool of people who can really dive into these topics at a professional level - I think we could at least manage to fill a conference center or small cruise ship :)

ephbit 4y ago

> My point is (other than getting fined by the SEC for unlawfully promoting crypto scams) when will the crypto ecosystem deliver something of value/utility to the masses - from Kim K to your grandmother? > On the flip side, what benefits does crypto actually offer? > For most of the benefits I hear of crypto (like what you've mentioned) my response is "No one cares about any of that". On the contrary ... Right now admittedly, the benefits of Bitcoin are relatively hypothetical. I think the chance that in a few decades (say 20-30 years) Bitcoin will have turned out to have been a system/technology that will have assisted the world's financial system with converging to principles that'll have brought with them significantly more stability in this financial system and following from this more stability of society .. this chance is greater than zero. I'd argue that one key problem of the world's current financial system is its (in my opinion) inherent dependency on economic growth. As most people will agree, economic growth has been a good thing for centuries, but humanity has reached a level of (ab)use of natural resources that far outstrips the capacity of ecosystems to recover. Many people would be content with less material goods but for the sake of economic "stability" (and also because voters like presents) governments decide to hop from one growth stimulus package to the next, subsidizing consumption and thus nudging people to buy new stuff instead of maintaining/repairing existing stuff and incentivizing companies to churn out one new variant of an existing product that's often only minimally better and sometimes even worse than the previous one after the other. Jobs/unemployment is _the_ justification for the never ending growth/stimulus policy that almost no voter will argue against, which is why politics isn't really able to solve this. From this follows the key solution: for the sake of our ecosphere, the (IMO) inherent dependency on economic growth has to be done away with. Fiat currencies (through the expansive monetary policies they enable) are the basis for the growth dynamic and Bitcoin is a system that enables opting out of it. You might say: now that's one vague kind of benefit. Agree, it's vague. But the possibility that Bitcoin can help solve one of humanity's fundamental and existential problems _because_ unlike politicians it cannot easily be corrupted by big money is IMO enough hypothetical benefit to justify its adoption and use.

anonym29 4y ago

Outside of the long-term possibilities mentioned by ephbit, I largely agree with your take here for the realistic short-term and mid-term (before 2033). In fact, I think the only thing I disagree with in this post is the size of the pool of people who can really dive into these topics at a professional level - I think we could at least manage to fill a conference center or small cruise ship :)