> What are the hard problems though?
I mentioned this. E.g. "The hard part is codifying your intention into legalese, and conflict resolution".
But again, I would invite you to talk to some contract lawyers and see what the hard problems are in their space. And carefully listen to how they solve them, and if your cryptosolution maybe not only doesn't solve the problem, but actually makes it worse.
Especially internationally, where you maybe hire a service, but then one of the countries involved has export restrictions, or immigration requirements, or whatever else.
These blockchain things are explicitly made to "go around" all government regulations (that's why they can say it'll be cheaper and more efficient). But the companies still have to obey the law, or they'll go to jail. So no that's not the problem.
> Is your point of view that the system is perfect and doesn't need the technical improvements proposed by blockchain?
I have not seen a solution based on blockchain that solves a hard problem. Nor have I seen one that doesn't make a hard problem even harder.
E.g. when I bought a house I had to prove to the bank and various involved parties where the money came from. And then when transferring I had two people from the bank walk me through it, to make sure this 6 digit cash transfer was legit.
It was annoying, yes. But I understand why it's there. To say "oh if this had been bitcoin you could just have transferred and it would be there in an hour". Or "had this been a smart contract it would have triggered deed transfer". Ok, sure. But what if there were some legal dispute and the seller was about to lose the house? That I would essentially be buying stolen goods?
What if the house had known deficiencies that the seller provably knew about but lied about during selling? If this had been Bitcoin they could simply decline to pay me. They'd launder it in Monero, and sucks to be me.
It's easy to set yourself up to be judgement proof if your assets cannot be seized.
> Credit cards are mostly a US thing btw, I never knew about them before moving here, and even in the US reversibility is not always a thing
I've lived in two countries, neither of which are the US, and credit card extra protection is certainly not US-only.
But that was still not my point. I'm saying reversibility is a feature. That mainstream finance can deliver. And it's good, so cryptocurrencies should too. They mostly do the opposite on purpose, which shows that they are not actually making what people actually want in a currency.
> Again, there are many cryptocurrencies with very different goals and this statement can't apply to all. The statement is at least very wrong for some well-known cryptocurrencies.
zcash, I believe, makes lip service to AML/KYC, but to me as a non-ML-investigator it smells a bit loophole-y, and one that may close.
> BTW I don't think airline security is a good example.
Adam ruins everything (and I've seen it) is entertaining and informative and all, but while yes there are aspects that are security theatre, turns out many of them do add up. The hijackings of the 70s largely went away. But also, Adam's not even saying airline security is security theatre! He even enumerates four added security features that DO stop terrorists. He's talking about the TSA. And then Bruce Schneier says more relevant things.
So the sum of airline security is: good old fashioned police work, infiltration of organizations, wiretaps, anomaly detection, behavior checking (Israel does a lot of this, and the have a good track record despite the obvious targeting), TSA, passengers, air marshals, reinforced cockpit doors, etc..
So if you want to be successful, then you have to get past ALL that.
And while the TSA doesn't do much, any suicidal idiot could just get on a plane with a fullauto in his carryon. At least now he has to weigh the risk of being embarrassedly found in the security check.
So maybe he probably switches to a handgun instead of the AK47. So he's less dangerous.
> cryptocurrencies don't preclude reversing transactions, there's nothing in the technology that would prevent that
Sure. But every time someone tries to sell the benefits of cryptocurrencies they will list this as a feature. And again this is my core point: All of the features they list, are actually bugs. And if you invent a cryptocurrency without the bugs, then it doesn't actually solve anything for anyone.
> I'm not sure I understand your point. A smart contract has its code published in clear so by using it you already choose to trust and obey the code.
It's not your choice to obey an illegal contract. And it shouldn't be. That's the point of contract legality.
And the hard part of writing a contract is not the enforcement, but codifying your inner intent into a bugfree contract, signed in a legal manner.
If you hold a gun to my head and force me to sign a smart contract, and I can prove it, how can a court invalidate the contract if you refuse to sign the invalidation block?
> PoW/electricity use are things of the past for the technology
And the present. I won't celebrate prematurely.