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> things like Monero or Ethereum I guess it comes down to how far you're willing to stretch "like" there. Progress is glacial, but crypto is becoming more use

> things like Monero or Ethereum I guess it comes down to how far you're willing to stretch "like" there. Progress is glacial, but crypto is becoming more useful. Meanwhile, traditional finance appears to be getting worse. Eventually those lines will cross. Although I doubt the cryto's of that time will look very much like what we have today.

bigtunacan 3y ago
How is it becoming more useful? Arguably it is more difficult to use for buying selling, plus if I spend it I'm taxed as if I sold an equity. It's value is pegged to the dollar so we can see massive shifts in its "value" constantly happening. There are almost an infinite number of cryptocurrencies and new ones still being created. Each is a different currency, so how should we determine which of these fake currencies actually have value and which don't?
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I mean that the set of systems that you can build which require neither custodial trust nor have single points of failure is increasing. To name a few instances of this: This is old news, but I remember when zcash introduced halo and got rid of trusted setup--that's a legit increase in what's possible. NFT's as ownership of digital assets is maybe a silly application of the tech, but the sort of uniqueness constraint that they enforce is useful in centralized databases and I expect it'll find a similar niche in the distributed systems of the future. TCL's that use token price to encourage curation appear to be a non-starter, but coupled with a web of trust I think we can use the same concept to have consensus on a wide variety of useful things. Their use as money? Sure, wildly inconvenient. But like... duh. Emulated systems are slower than ones running on bare metal because you have to embrace the constraints of both systems--it's the same with the use of cryptocurrencies within the existing financial system. The point was never to make something that's just as good as traditional money--why bother? The point is to make traditional money obsolete in favor of something else. Something whose rules matter not because the guy who wrote them own has a gun, but because people consent to participate based on their merits. > how should we determine which of these fake currencies actually have value and which don't? By their side effects. If you value the endless consumption of electricity and zero sum games, you should value bitcoin. If you value politicians playing chicken over the debt ceiling, you should value USD. As it stands, the options are all pretty bad, but the ability to craft new ones is getting better and the cancer that our current one has is getting worse, so eventually there will be something worth switching to.
kd913 3y ago
The BTC whitepaper was introduced what 15 years ago? There hasn't been anything useful that has come out of that space.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Turns out, nothing needed a solution to the damn byzantine generals problem, and business actually prefers to have trusting relationships with their counter-parties and trust in a system that exists to mediate any breaking of that trust.
smcl 3y ago
I'm not sure how crypto is becoming more useful, or how traditional finance is becoming worse.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  There's a cousin post where I explain how crypto is becoming more useful. As for traditional finance becoming worse... Suppose somebody approached you in the grocery store and offered to buy your shoes. I assume you have a price, right? I'd walk home from the grocery store shoeless for $100. Why do we participate in a system which empowers this guy? What about the abstraction he's handing out makes us willing to exchange it for something with less abstract value (there's broken glass on the way home, I'd be taking a risk)? The shallow response is that we can later exchange the abstraction for, for instance, a nicer pair of shoes. But that'll work with anything, so far as somebody else is likely to accept the trade down the line. We could use pebbles or bottlecaps or dogecoin or whatever. But why USD in particular? What is it about the US government's (or if you prefer, the banks') behavior that entitles them to issue the tokens that we use for bullying people into giving up their shoes (or you know, whatever other economic activity we chose to engage in). Do you dispute that trust in the government and the banks is steadily declining? They're fundamentally harder to improve than to erode. It's why nature came up with reproduction: eventually the parasites take over and you have to start fresh. It's why there are very few companies around today that were also around 100 years ago. Entropy wins, it's just what happens to centralized systems over time. Or to put it less abstractly: We've got banks collapsing and politicians playing chicken over the debt ceiling. Does that not threaten the idea that we can walk home with that $100 and buy a nicer pair of shoes with it? Wouldn't we be better off with a system that was less susceptible to the kind of cancer that ours has?
  - CaptainZapp 3y ago
    Why this whole long winded explanation when I can walk into any shoe shop and buy a new pair of shoes for $ (or Euro or CHF)? Can I do that with crypto currency? Not so much, really.
    - 3y ago

bigtunacan 3y ago

How is it becoming more useful? Arguably it is more difficult to use for buying selling, plus if I spend it I'm taxed as if I sold an equity. It's value is pegged to the dollar so we can see massive shifts in its "value" constantly happening. There are almost an infinite number of cryptocurrencies and new ones still being created. Each is a different currency, so how should we determine which of these fake currencies actually have value and which don't?

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I mean that the set of systems that you can build which require neither custodial trust nor have single points of failure is increasing. To name a few instances of this: This is old news, but I remember when zcash introduced halo and got rid of trusted setup--that's a legit increase in what's possible. NFT's as ownership of digital assets is maybe a silly application of the tech, but the sort of uniqueness constraint that they enforce is useful in centralized databases and I expect it'll find a similar niche in the distributed systems of the future. TCL's that use token price to encourage curation appear to be a non-starter, but coupled with a web of trust I think we can use the same concept to have consensus on a wide variety of useful things. Their use as money? Sure, wildly inconvenient. But like... duh. Emulated systems are slower than ones running on bare metal because you have to embrace the constraints of both systems--it's the same with the use of cryptocurrencies within the existing financial system. The point was never to make something that's just as good as traditional money--why bother? The point is to make traditional money obsolete in favor of something else. Something whose rules matter not because the guy who wrote them own has a gun, but because people consent to participate based on their merits. > how should we determine which of these fake currencies actually have value and which don't? By their side effects. If you value the endless consumption of electricity and zero sum games, you should value bitcoin. If you value politicians playing chicken over the debt ceiling, you should value USD. As it stands, the options are all pretty bad, but the ability to craft new ones is getting better and the cancer that our current one has is getting worse, so eventually there will be something worth switching to.

kd913 3y ago

The BTC whitepaper was introduced what 15 years ago? There hasn't been anything useful that has come out of that space.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Turns out, nothing needed a solution to the damn byzantine generals problem, and business actually prefers to have trusting relationships with their counter-parties and trust in a system that exists to mediate any breaking of that trust.

smcl 3y ago

I'm not sure how crypto is becoming more useful, or how traditional finance is becoming worse.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
There's a cousin post where I explain how crypto is becoming more useful. As for traditional finance becoming worse... Suppose somebody approached you in the grocery store and offered to buy your shoes. I assume you have a price, right? I'd walk home from the grocery store shoeless for $100. Why do we participate in a system which empowers this guy? What about the abstraction he's handing out makes us willing to exchange it for something with less abstract value (there's broken glass on the way home, I'd be taking a risk)? The shallow response is that we can later exchange the abstraction for, for instance, a nicer pair of shoes. But that'll work with anything, so far as somebody else is likely to accept the trade down the line. We could use pebbles or bottlecaps or dogecoin or whatever. But why USD in particular? What is it about the US government's (or if you prefer, the banks') behavior that entitles them to issue the tokens that we use for bullying people into giving up their shoes (or you know, whatever other economic activity we chose to engage in). Do you dispute that trust in the government and the banks is steadily declining? They're fundamentally harder to improve than to erode. It's why nature came up with reproduction: eventually the parasites take over and you have to start fresh. It's why there are very few companies around today that were also around 100 years ago. Entropy wins, it's just what happens to centralized systems over time. Or to put it less abstractly: We've got banks collapsing and politicians playing chicken over the debt ceiling. Does that not threaten the idea that we can walk home with that $100 and buy a nicer pair of shoes with it? Wouldn't we be better off with a system that was less susceptible to the kind of cancer that ours has?
- CaptainZapp 3y ago
  Why this whole long winded explanation when I can walk into any shoe shop and buy a new pair of shoes for $ (or Euro or CHF)? Can I do that with crypto currency? Not so much, really.
  - 3y ago