The idealistic purpose of distributed ledgers is to democratize money creation. Right now money creation is in the hands of a financial elite who, perhaps with

The idealistic purpose of distributed ledgers is to democratize money creation. Right now money creation is in the hands of a financial elite who, perhaps with best intentions and perhaps not, observably engage in considerable self-dealing. I'm willing to bet the average person would be flabbergasted if they understood how bank loan origination actually works, to say nothing of how Treasury auctions are structured in a way that makes it impossible for them to fail. We can imagine a world where some, for example African, community could monetize its own productive capacity in an internationally current way that doesn't put it in debt bondage to bankers in the USA or China while costing them a double digit vig. I think that would be an improvement over the status quo and some form of cryptographically trustable distributed consensus is currently the most plausible way to get there. Any centralized ledger, no matter what form it takes, indisputably privileges its controller.