One of my favorite things said about crypto by famous german hacker Linus Neumann about crypto was something like: They where so obsessed with whether they could make digital money work, and the technical is super smart. But they forgot to think about if they should.
I think the concept is solid, personally. I’ve had a lot of issues with international payments and just not having that is already appealing. Not to mention some countries still somehow deal in cash?
You may not always have interner and power but need goods
You may send money to the wrong wallet -> gone forever (doesn’t even have to be yout fault, great target for man in the middle attacks)
You may forget your passphrase or your grandpa dies and you inherit nothing as nobody can access the money
You want to pay in you supermarket. Great you have to wait till you transaction gets processed as this is super slow. And wait until many more people use this currency.
It’s pseudonymous not anonymous. Everyone you send money and know in real life knows about your financials in detail 👌🏻
Macro things:
It’s great to freeze assets of people who are shit
It’s great to be able to control the amount of money in the system to counter crisis or just keep the economy healthy
It’s great when people pay taxes
Fixed amount of coins means deflation in the long run and deflating economies die faster than you can blink
Proof of Work burns our world and Proof of Stake is oligarchy. Today the distribution of most coins is worse then normal currencies. (Richest have almost everything)
“You may not always have interner and power but need goods”
^^ Credit/debit cards have this same problem. Besides, when was the last time you didn’t have your cell phone with you and had to pay in actual cash?
“You may send money to the wrong wallet -> gone forever (doesn’t even have to be yout fault, great target for man in the middle attacks)”
^^ Ok fair. But most exchanges in the future will probably support some degree of transaction reversibility. Most people will not self-custody but will instead use a bank, exchange, etc to help “soften” the experience of using crypto.
“You may forget your passphrase or your grandpa dies and you inherit nothing as nobody can access the money”
^^ There are many solutions to this problem including social recovery, keeping backups, or trusting a third-party custodian like an exchange or in the future banks will probably help manage your crypto assets.
“You want to pay in you supermarket. Great you have to wait till you transaction gets processed as this is super slow. And wait until many more people use this currency.”
^^ You know how long a credit card transaction takes to fully settle? 30 days. Any vendor is just going to accept a one-confirmation transaction which occurs in seconds if not picoseconds. This is really not an issue unless you are buying a house. If you are buying a house, you can wait 30 minutes for a full multi-block confirmation.
“It’s pseudonymous not anonymous. Everyone you send money and know in real life knows about your financials in detail 👌🏻”
^^ Monero and other privacy-respecting cryptos solved this, and there is talk of adding more privacy to Bitcoin.
“It’s great to freeze assets of people who are shit”
^^ You can still have court orders to seize all their money and assets, their house, their car, etc the only thing you arguably lose access to is their bank account. People with enough assets to justify seizing their bank account usually have somebody else manage their assets, that somebody else can be compelled with a court order.
“It’s great to be able to control the amount of money in the system to counter crisis or just keep the economy healthy”
^^ If you believe this is true you should know that blockchains can make their own economic policy. They can set the inflation rate and redistribute wealth however they like, some of them even have their own on-chain voting mechanisms to automate this. The difference is who gets to make those decisions: the participants of the network or some oligarch hack who finds it politically expedient?
“It’s great when people pay taxes”
^^ Crypto is not immune to taxes, you have to pay taxes on it like all other assets and foreign currency. Taxation works exactly the same.
“Fixed amount of coins means deflation in the long run and deflating economies die faster than you can blink”
^^ Only a few coins have a fixed amount, many have a built-in inflation rate. Land is a fixed asset. Diamonds are a fixed supply asset. Are they destroying the economy?
^^ Proof of Work burns our world and Proof of Stake is oligarchy. Today the distribution of most coins is worse then normal currencies.
Proof-of-stake has many varieties, not all of which inherently end in oligarchy. Even those are infinitely more democratic than our current financial system. PoW typically uses green energy sources as they are the cheapest and can be used to balance energy demand curves. The root problem is not that PoW uses energy, but where that energy comes from. Some PoW coins require “proof of useful work”.
One of my favorite things said about crypto by famous german hacker Linus Neumann about crypto was something like: They where so obsessed with whether they could make digital money work, and the technical is super smart. But they forgot to think about if they should.
I think the concept is solid, personally. I’ve had a lot of issues with international payments and just not having that is already appealing. Not to mention some countries still somehow deal in cash?
In theory. But then real life happens:
Macro things:
FUD. FUD. FUD.
“You may not always have interner and power but need goods”
^^ Credit/debit cards have this same problem. Besides, when was the last time you didn’t have your cell phone with you and had to pay in actual cash?
“You may send money to the wrong wallet -> gone forever (doesn’t even have to be yout fault, great target for man in the middle attacks)”
^^ Ok fair. But most exchanges in the future will probably support some degree of transaction reversibility. Most people will not self-custody but will instead use a bank, exchange, etc to help “soften” the experience of using crypto.
“You may forget your passphrase or your grandpa dies and you inherit nothing as nobody can access the money”
^^ There are many solutions to this problem including social recovery, keeping backups, or trusting a third-party custodian like an exchange or in the future banks will probably help manage your crypto assets.
“You want to pay in you supermarket. Great you have to wait till you transaction gets processed as this is super slow. And wait until many more people use this currency.”
^^ You know how long a credit card transaction takes to fully settle? 30 days. Any vendor is just going to accept a one-confirmation transaction which occurs in seconds if not picoseconds. This is really not an issue unless you are buying a house. If you are buying a house, you can wait 30 minutes for a full multi-block confirmation.
“It’s pseudonymous not anonymous. Everyone you send money and know in real life knows about your financials in detail 👌🏻”
^^ Monero and other privacy-respecting cryptos solved this, and there is talk of adding more privacy to Bitcoin.
“It’s great to freeze assets of people who are shit”
^^ You can still have court orders to seize all their money and assets, their house, their car, etc the only thing you arguably lose access to is their bank account. People with enough assets to justify seizing their bank account usually have somebody else manage their assets, that somebody else can be compelled with a court order.
“It’s great to be able to control the amount of money in the system to counter crisis or just keep the economy healthy”
^^ If you believe this is true you should know that blockchains can make their own economic policy. They can set the inflation rate and redistribute wealth however they like, some of them even have their own on-chain voting mechanisms to automate this. The difference is who gets to make those decisions: the participants of the network or some oligarch hack who finds it politically expedient?
“It’s great when people pay taxes”
^^ Crypto is not immune to taxes, you have to pay taxes on it like all other assets and foreign currency. Taxation works exactly the same.
“Fixed amount of coins means deflation in the long run and deflating economies die faster than you can blink”
^^ Only a few coins have a fixed amount, many have a built-in inflation rate. Land is a fixed asset. Diamonds are a fixed supply asset. Are they destroying the economy?
^^ Proof of Work burns our world and Proof of Stake is oligarchy. Today the distribution of most coins is worse then normal currencies.
Proof-of-stake has many varieties, not all of which inherently end in oligarchy. Even those are infinitely more democratic than our current financial system. PoW typically uses green energy sources as they are the cheapest and can be used to balance energy demand curves. The root problem is not that PoW uses energy, but where that energy comes from. Some PoW coins require “proof of useful work”.