this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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You don’t want decentralization? Your argument against crypto is that we still use centralized systems? We will do that until we don’t. That’s like way back before cars were ubiquitous, seeing a car and saying, “we use the horse and buggy.” Yes we do. The car replaces the horse and buggy in many important ways. It takes a while to catch on, though. In the same way, IMO technology should always be guided toward further decentralization unless we WANT the powers that be to be the gatekeepers of information.
Honestly, even without crypto attached to it, I’d say the next version of the internet WILL be more servers running by independent operators and less centralization in data centers. It is inevitable regardless of anything I wrote here. Centralization is bad for so many reasons…the most damning of which is censorship.
There are lots of arguments against crypto, but the main one is that it is inferior to the current system in every conceivable way.
-It's slower -It's harder to use -It's full of scams -It's backed by nothing -There is no consumer protection -It amplifies the existing problems of the financial system instead of solving them (money laundering/scams/financial inequality) -It's dominated by the same rich cunts you're trying to escape, but they're even worse in crypto -All networks generally need L2s because they're so shit and slow
Those are just some off the top of my head.
Additionally, it's been around for a long time now. Everyone in crypto is so involved in solving the problems that are unique to crypto and Blockchain that they've missed the fact that no one gives a shit because it literally offers nothing we don't already have that works better.
The only reason anyone has ever cared about crypto is because it potentially offered a way to get rich quickly and 'easily' and get out of the grind.
It's a casino. That's fine, you might make money. But that's all it is.
I'm not saying the current system is ideal, or even good, but crypto is nothing like a viable alternative.
I'm all for decentralisation, but you do realise that all systems end up centralising to some extent over time because it's just more efficient, right? Maybe we can find a good balance and make sure accountability actually means something in our systems, whatever industry they're in, but the answer isn't crypto from what I've seen.
Interesting you talk about gatekeeping information when you're literally parroting crypto echo chamber rhetoric because if you dare suggest anything other than crypto is the future you will instantly get shut down. It's a cult, basically.
Interesting that you don’t even have enough self-awareness or knowledge of the problem domains you claim to understand to see that you’re doing the EXACT same thing.
You parroted partially true (cherry picked) all the way down to completely untrue things about the properties of this technology. If you understood the technology in the first place, you’d recognize that. There are so many different permutations of it and you paint it with the broadest brush possible.
Tell me, do you know about proof of stake? Do you know what proof of work is? Do you understand the concept of an oracle?
Of course it doesn’t solve every problem (it won’t ever be used to stream video…of course..did anyone ever say it would?)…but the ones it DOES solve (that you pretend it hasn’t) are not achievable with any as of yet known technology.
Here’s just one that I’d love to see you pretend could exist on any other technology: Digital Identity and Land Deeds in war-torn (or even no longer existing) countries. Let’s say bombs destroy any paper deeds or even deeds on the servers all around a country. A person fleeing the country might return to the country and be homeless because they couldn’t prove that they owned that land. On a decentralized public blockchain, those deeds can be minted and henceforth can never be erased. Even if the official body that authorized them to be minted goes under or out of power, they are, in fact, IMPOSSIBLE TO ERASE SINCE THEY ARE ON A DECENTRALIZED BLOCKCHAIN and would be very hard if not impossible to discredit. The person would be legally able to get their house back.
Another one is voting. Electronic voting on a PUBLIC DECENTRALIZED blockchain would be literally the ONLY way to achieve a fully-open, auditable election. Furthermore, if you’re proposing that a similar centralized government solution (equal in all other ways other than one being truly decentralized and the other not) is even remotely similar in its robustness and trustworthiness, you’re SURELY being disingenuous.
There are TONS more but I don’t feel like wasting my time writing a term paper for someone that is clearly being disingenuous, parroting some world bank wage-slave neoliberal nonsense in the first place.
Thanks for proving my point by responding with the classic go to 'rebuttal' when anyone challenges crypto: "you don't understand the tech!"
Cool. Let's save both of our time then. All the best.
No problem.
Thanks for proving mine as well.
I even ended up writing you a stupid term paper but you just couldn’t hang I guess.