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Paid in Full: an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction

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11–20 of 183 posts

Re: Paid in Full: an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction

#12

Imagine if blockstream hadn’t stunted Bitcoin. Nanotransactions could be our reality.

That sounds good, except transactions dont have to be replicated in every single node. Partitioning may helps.

Bitcoin was designed for big blocks. Nodes are miners. Downvotes don’t change this, and you can’t suppress these ideas forever.

Re: Paid in Full: an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction

#13
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An internet that is drastically less tied to surveillance capitalism, and where participants directly exchange value with each other instead of through privacy intrusions? Sounds perfect to me.

We do exchange value. Real value. I would not read webpages if I did not get value. Webpages would not be offered if those making them did not get value. Even when there was no commercialism on the Internet at all. Or why people do a lot of things without any money involved. Basing everything on "money" is a scourge. Not to mention the height of inefficiency. Our brains have to deal with something very different inst…

People do things for free when it benefits them. Relying on people to do things for free as a way to organize society is doomed to failure. The moment you have to do something, whether you want to or not, is when it becomes work. And people don’t want to be required to do things they don’t want to do for free. It has never worked in the history of humanity.

P2P networks and decentralized services have historically suffered because they relied on generous volunteers who donate their time and money (via resource allocation) to benefit the network. Blockchain / crypto is a mechanism to introduce financial elements into p2p networks. The experiment is ongoing, but there has been more advancement in p2p tech in the last 5 years than previous 20.

Re: Paid in Full: an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction

#14
Thanks, I hate everything about this future internet. Let's just have a world where every single Internet transaction involves burning absurd amounts of energy to perform proof-of-work. It'll be great. Yes, sure, sure, ETH is trying to move to something else less absurdly wasteful, get back to me when that's not being pushed back on by miners who're pissed they'll make less money if that happens.

Not only memes but individuals’ identities can become speculative assets via platforms like Clout Market and BitClout, which allow creators to mint themselves as NFTs.

I especially hate this part of it. Ye gods.

Oh and the part where the current web is dismissed as largely controlled by large corporate entities, with absolutely no words spared as to why the future all-crypto hellscape will be a perfect utopia inherently resistant to the sticky, hungry fingers of corporations, is a good part to hate too. We all thought "Internet 1.0" was going to be gloriously free forever, then corporations stepped in. "Internet 2.0" was gonna save us from them and now we just have new corporations mining our eyeballs for ad profits forever. "Web3 is decentralized and inherently monetized at its core through tokenization" - well that sure looks like a great place to build a middleman who provides part of that service, with their hands out for their take on both sides of every transaction, doesn't it? How much of every "art" "sale" on an NFT platform goes to the platform?

I'll stick to putting my stuff online for free and having enough folks supporting me on Patreon to pay my bills, thanks anyway.

Re: Paid in Full: an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction

#15
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An internet that is drastically less tied to surveillance capitalism, and where participants directly exchange value with each other instead of through privacy intrusions? Sounds perfect to me.

We do exchange value. Real value. I would not read webpages if I did not get value. Webpages would not be offered if those making them did not get value. Even when there was no commercialism on the Internet at all. Or why people do a lot of things without any money involved. Basing everything on "money" is a scourge. Not to mention the height of inefficiency. Our brains have to deal with something very different inst…

Money is an abstraction of value. So I don't see how you praise "real value"(whatever that is) on the one hand and disparage monetary valuation as a scourge. Assessing something's value to you on a personal level is functionally no different than attaching a figure to something's worth whether that be in dollars, gold, time, or some other quantity or unit.

Re: Paid in Full: an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction

#16
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Webpages would not be offered if those making them did not get value. If you’re not paying, you’re the product. Ads are a bigger scourge than “basing everything on money” which is just value made fungible.

This isn't strictly true. It's only true if the entity creating the website needs to extract a monetary profit. Plenty of people make websites (and other products) and happily share them in a community. The benefit they draw is in the act of creating and sharing.

Yep. Real communities exist, and when they do we enjoy contributing time and energy to support the group. For better and worse, the opensource ecosystem depends on this community spirit. So does HN and the tech blogging sphere. I don’t take the time to write a blog post for money. I do it because I want to be part of the conversation happening amongst my peers.

Adding explicit commerce to every conversation devalues and corrodes our social bonds.

Re: Paid in Full: an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction

#17

Imagine if blockstream hadn’t stunted Bitcoin. Nanotransactions could be our reality.

There's zero reason to care about Blockstream Bitcoin. If you want the original design of Bitcoin, that's called Bitcoin Cash now. But there are so many alternatives to choose from. Blockstream Bitcoin has the largest market cap, but literally no other advantages.

Re: Paid in Full: an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction

#18
post #7
post #3

This was part of the Xanadu dream. Everything is pay per view in Xanadu. Turned out there was no real market for that.

Wasn't that decades ago? Times change and sometimes ideas are too new for its times.

I can't imagine the situation has gotten better. How many pieces of web content does a person view in a typical day? 50? 100? Imagine making fifty purchase decisions every day. I think anyone would be exhausted.

Re: Paid in Full: an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction

#20

Thanks, I hate everything about this future internet. Let's just have a world where every single Internet transaction involves burning absurd amounts of energy to perform proof-of-work. It'll be great. Yes, sure, sure, ETH is trying to move to something else less absurdly wasteful, get back to me when that's not being pushed back on by miners who're pissed they'll make less money if that happens. Not only memes but i…

Why not proof of stake?
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