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Andreessen on Crypto

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#51

Post by nixpulvis »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #41
nixpulvis wrote: post #37

> — the ability for many untrusted participants in a network to establish consistency and trust. This is something the Internet has never had, but now it does, and I think it will take 30 years to work through all of the things we can do as a result. Wow, when you put it like that, it's amazing that I can shop, bank, and safely talk with my friends and family online. Pretty much all my messages are encrypted and/or c…

you don't have to trust the vendor, the bank, or the social media company.

Really!? How!?

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#52

Post by lottin »

jyu wrote: post #42

The world and society at large has seen an erosion of trust. For the naysayers, ask yourself: - do you trust your government more or less than your parents - do you trust the mainstream media more or less than your parents - do you trust big companies to do the right thing more or less than your parents As we culturally become less trusting, we need different tools to organize and determine value. Protocols that enab…

There cannot be economy without trust. There cannot be society. You wouldn't be able to function normally. Imagine walking past a stranger and not having a reasonable expectation that that they won't punch you in the face.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#53

Post by lowkey »

lottin wrote: post #48
lowkey wrote: post #40

From the article, the use case discussed is distributed consensus. With cryptocurrencies we as society have the option of a new way of organizing labor and capital to achieve a goal. Instead of kings, politicians, corporate owners or middlemen - we have the opportunity to build systems based on the idea of rules without rulers. Bitcoin eliminates the need for central bankers to control the money supply. Ethereum repl…

The questions that you fail to address is what problem this "distributed consensus" is solving and what advantages and disadvantages has compared to existing solutions.

Distributed consensus eliminates a whole host of problems associated with centralized middlemen.

For example, with Bitcoin the rules of the system are transparent to all participants and cannot be changed by any single party. 21 million coins is the limit and the emission rate is fixed. With traditional fiat, no one can promise or predict the supply or debasement rate this year, next year or ten years from now.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#54

Post by TiberiusC »

inglor_cz wrote: post #23
luma wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there someone out there campaigning on "increase taxes on small business"? I think this is a strawman, "tax the rich" doesn't mean "tax the corner baker".

IDK how is it in the US, but where I live, additional regulations are more of a burden than taxation per se, and compliance with new regulations is usually easier for established big players than for the corner bakers.

This is true in the US too, but reducing taxation is easier than reducing regulation. That said the same rings true for regulation as it is predominately a weapon used by the left

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#55

Post by lowkey »

mypastself wrote: post #47
lowkey wrote: post #40

From the article, the use case discussed is distributed consensus. With cryptocurrencies we as society have the option of a new way of organizing labor and capital to achieve a goal. Instead of kings, politicians, corporate owners or middlemen - we have the opportunity to build systems based on the idea of rules without rulers. Bitcoin eliminates the need for central bankers to control the money supply. Ethereum repl…

How does real-life information enter a smart contract, and how do you make sure all sides make good on their dues?

One option today is Chainlink which uses a host of oracles to achieve distributed consensus on real-world prices, weather or other signals.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#56

Post by rvieira »

> Peter Thiel has made the characteristically sweeping observation that AI is in some sense a left wing idea — centralized machines making top-down decisions — but crypto is a right wing idea — many distributed agents, humans and bots, making bottom-up decisions.

I enjoy philosophical discussions as much as the next person, but this kind of sweeping postmodern categorical generalisations just smell like a new Sokal affair.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#57

Post by luma »

TiberiusC wrote: post #11
luma wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there someone out there campaigning on "increase taxes on small business"? I think this is a strawman, "tax the rich" doesn't mean "tax the corner baker".

the corner baker is a llc last I checked

Meaning? You do realize corporate taxes are also marginal, yes?

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#58

Post by DSingularity »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #41
nixpulvis wrote: post #37

> — the ability for many untrusted participants in a network to establish consistency and trust. This is something the Internet has never had, but now it does, and I think it will take 30 years to work through all of the things we can do as a result. Wow, when you put it like that, it's amazing that I can shop, bank, and safely talk with my friends and family online. Pretty much all my messages are encrypted and/or c…

you don't have to trust the vendor, the bank, or the social media company.

The conservative vs liberal angle is interesting but it just feels so contrived. So far the only thing cryptocurrencies was used for was to speculate on value of tokens and digital currencies. And my conclusion from that case-study is that cryptocurrency as a whole is a system unworthy of trust. Who owns BTC/ETH?

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#59

Post by diroussel »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #38
nixpulvis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are only synonyms to coinheads.

I don't own any crypto and barely keep up with the happenings in the ecosystem. Cryptocurrency is just more commonly talked about than cryptography.

Yet cryptography is far more widely used.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#60

Post by diroussel »

timdaub wrote: post #31

I think it's pretty ignorant from both Thiel and Andreessen to put cryptocurrency and AI on the political spectrum. And generally I doubt the usefulness in classifying things into right and left. At the polar ends of each are people that have conflicting norms on how the world should work. These usually arise once again through ignorance as a norm carries the expectation to be accepted by everyone. To someone that ha…

It's also a very strange characterisation of left and right wing. In the UK centralisation is thought to be right wing, and consensus is considered left wing.
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