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In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

vitalik.ca

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Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#211

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #64
justinpowers wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~22% of the US population if you equate being unbanked or underbanked with holding your wealth in cash. Worldwide, the percentage is similar. Of course being unbanked isn’t equivalent but it’s likely very nearly so. Not to mention, the chances of being unbanked are higher for vulnerable populations, especially those who might benefit from uncensorable money.

Given the required internet access, transaction fees, and general tech sophistication required to use crypto (even more to use it safely), does it seem like it would be a good fit for those people?

I hate to see this repeated argument, because it seems to indicate an unimaginative, or perhaps altruistic?, perspective regarding the future of tech's role in society.

Centralized internet is not long for this world. The Internet is being fractured, both ideologically and physically, right now, by world war.

This only gets worse before it gets better, which probably means mesh networks will be adopted soon enough. Anyway,

This is why adopting distribution of responsibilities is so important in projects like Ethereum — your offline handhelds will be able to make provable transactions without having immediate communication with every star in the constellation, so to speak.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#212

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

kragen wrote: post #95
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the required internet access, transaction fees, and general tech sophistication required to use crypto (even more to use it safely), does it seem like it would be a good fit for those people?

I know a lot of "those people" who are using Bitcoin already, but I would never refer to unbanked people as "those people," being for all practical purposes one of them. We mostly aren't using it safely (a lot of us don't know the difference between Binance and Bitcoin) but we are using it. The last transaction fee I paid was 33¢, and the average transaction in the last Bitcoin block was 913 bytes, so your internet a…

How long before there's safe tech for relaying your transactions via other people's connections, as a cooperative distributed mesh, to improve confirmation and delivery speed of your own packets?

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#213

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

nyolfen wrote: post #147
NoblePublius wrote: post #9

Why is uncensorable money worth the risk of permanently losing your money because you forgot a password or lost a thumb drive?

you are welcome to offload that responsibility to a hosted wallet if you don't think you can handle it

Or an attorney.

Or five different parties you trust.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#214

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

popcorncowboy wrote: post #45
buildbuildbuild wrote: post #3

It's no coincidence that some of the strongest criticism against cryptocurrency happens here, in a community mostly of banked, relatively prosperous people in stable countries. May you never personally experience being unbanked or otherwise financially oppressed.

Not that you're wrong about anything that you've said, but your implication (and that of the blockchain punditry) is that somehow crypto is the solution here, without ever exaplaining "how". The idea that crypto is "out of reach" of governments, regulators, law and oppressive regimes is one of the fairy tales that crypto pundits believe that is simply not true. In a country that is unbanked and financially oppressed,…

> Nevermind the transaction fees that make this untenable anyway. ... Of course, L2 networks, problem solved.

We've already agreed on our dominant L1s.

What happens when we've agreed on our dominant L2(s)?

Say, with the UX help of a large corporate entity with financial interest in actually helping their consumer remain financially secure?

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#215

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #122
caffeine wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real-world situations aren’t binary. They don’t just automatically go to the extreme edge case. It’s a common mistake of programmers whose brains are trained to think that way (mine included!) So when the government is bad people who have guns, it might be tempting to think “There is no mitigation for this because they have guns! They can just exert infinite leverage at any point to squelch any mitigation to their co…

Using cryptocurrency to avoid financial oppression is only really viable when it's obscure. If a small number of people are using a crypto black market, it isn't really worth the effort for a government to try and shut it down. The more popular it becomes, the bigger the target, and the more likely it will be shut down. An obscure cryptocurrency black market is the only one that can really exist for any length of tim…

It's the cost of enforcement, both politically and financially, that decides this, not much else.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#216

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

stickfigure wrote: post #118
popcorncowboy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that you're wrong about anything that you've said, but your implication (and that of the blockchain punditry) is that somehow crypto is the solution here, without ever exaplaining "how". The idea that crypto is "out of reach" of governments, regulators, law and oppressive regimes is one of the fairy tales that crypto pundits believe that is simply not true. In a country that is unbanked and financially oppressed,…

> no-one explains how they'll just "bypass" the financial system The concept you seem to be reaching for is "black market".

Gateway to which can be a 10bps modem and/or a school calculator Bitcoin wallet...

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#217

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

lottin wrote: post #78
seanw444 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, if you protest an extensively corrupt government, they could just call up and say "Hey, shut 'em down." And they'd happily oblige. That doesn't happen as easily on the blockchain. You are fully in control of your funds with cryptocurrency. There is no middleman that can say "no, sorry, you can't use your money today."

> You are fully in control of your funds with cryptocurrency. There is no middleman that can say "no, sorry, you can't use your money today." Don't blockchains rely entirely on transaction processors, i.e. middlemen, to process transactions?

https://cryptoslate.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/loopring-...

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#218

Post by enkid »

game_the0ry wrote: post #54
enkid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does being fully sovereign mean for something that's only used as a medium of exchange? It's value is always only meaningful when at least two people agree on it's value. At best you only control half of the equation.

> It's value is always only meaningful when at least two people agree on it's value. Is it not totally obvious that bitcoin has market value? If not, consider these points - bitcoin was not created by MIT and Uchicago STEM and econ PhDs, it was born out of an anonymous internet "white paper." It proved itself as a type of "money" in the internet dark markets, and continues to do so. It wasn't "lab tested," it was tes…

Market value is having someone else have control over the value of what you control. Market value may not be centralized, but it is the definition of something you do not control. This is my point. You cannot have full control over something that's value is dictated by an external entity, the entity being the market in this case. The concept of having "full sovereignty" over something that you don't control the value of, and the only purpose is to exchange for something of value, is non-sensical.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#219

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

rvz wrote: post #60
Cobragri wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

''Eth fails miserably '' Ethereum failed already at beginning. A blockchain; Mutable ,premined and ICO is already there. Eth is the target for regulations and censorship sooner or later. And i agree with that scalability is very important part of decentralization. Privacy and scalability well balanced in MimbleWimble.

Well Ethereum has enabled a sea of scams and a carnage of Web3 hype, ICOs, NFTs, Tokens, DAOs, DeFi rug-pulls and everything else using so-called 'smart contracts' (that are not what they say they are) that all ruined it from the very start. 90% of the creations on Ethereum are useless and there is little there that is worth looking at. From the start, it was not designed to scale at all hence its sluggish throughput…

> 90% of the creations on Ethereum are useless and there is little there that is worth looking at. From the start, it was not designed to scale at all hence its sluggish throughput and high fees.

Sounds like early internet BBS boards!

RE: ETH decentralization, they've prioritized decentralization of the settlement layer over the decentralization of money in the world, which does somewhat reflect the current state of the world.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#220

Post by prohobo »

xigoi wrote: post #197
prohobo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchains require systemic buy-in to reveal their instrinsic value. That means government implementation and enforcement, or at least some widespread system that recognizes a particular blockchain as law. It's coming, but slowly. You talk about it as if there's a well-worn path that every viable technology must follow to succeed. Cue discussions about the first automobiles, the internet, the smart phone, etc. But h…

>That means government implementation and enforcement There goes the decentralization.

The government wouldn't be able to control it, if it were decentralized. They would only be able to enforce blockchain decisions.
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