neoliberalism-nightly said: I mean I agree with the first part with the squatters, but cryptocurrrency does provide an robust way to record the transfer of the currency in question. But it does change the logistics in a way that will probably change the political economy provided it doesn’t get crushed by state control.
nightpool said: Hmm. I think I disagree. Cryptocurrencies provide a marked improvement in the state of the art in the technological recording of accounts, in that they’re independent of any given authority (although not ALL authority, but you can almost always swap one out for another one and maintain the same underlying technology, and most of the time even the same blockchain) and their full transparency in transaction processing.
How is being independent of mainstream finance / government an advantage for anyone who isn’t trading in contraband?
Because you’re trading one authority for a different authority (the dev team and various mining pools) with a much shorter track record.
Counterpoint: the military designed the Internet to be independent of a central authority, they seemed to think it was useful.
IP address blocks are centrally assigned, so no :P
The advantage is pretty obvious to many: they expect the dev team and the mining pools to have less of (motivation * opportunity) to abuse their authority in certain ways. That with the correct incentives in place, the length of the track record wouldn’t matter as much, and instead it would be about whether the devs and pools would do the shit the state does. Mainstream finance and the government treat a lot of things effectively like borderline contraband (eg. payment processors giving trouble to the sex business) or exploit even legal actors (eg. the perception that the state is fucking around with the money supply to help undeserving cronies is a pretty strong ideological motivator behind alternative currencies).
1 week ago · tagged #seriously i wasn't expecting people to be actually wondering this #i thought it was obvious to anyone who has actually read about it #one doesn't need to _agree_ #but one seriously should know _why_ people disagree · 14 notes · source: argumate · .permalink