21–30 of 103 posts
I understand the advantages of this for the government. It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money and ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. What is the advantage for me as a citizen?
> ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. Is that a bad thing? (The end, not the means)
Crypto was always mis-marketed as decentralised. It’s not. The American banking system is decentralised. Credit is created and balances maintained at the edges. Blockchain is centralised. This brings many efficiencies. But it also empowers those at the centre.
You lost me here. What exactly about "blockchain" is centralized? The fact that there's a central ledger?
I understand the advantages of this for the government. It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money and ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. What is the advantage for me as a citizen?
Will be? will in future ? The majority of my GBP transactions are digital already - they are not pieces of paper with picture of the late Queen changing hands, they are database records, mediated by a "buy" button in the web browser, or the tap of a card onto a reader.
The currency is mostly digital, already.
I understand the advantages of this for the government. It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money and ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. What is the advantage for me as a citizen?
The UK government, and Western governments more generally, have a terrible history of lies about who they are going to use this sort of capability on. It starts out being sold to catch child rapists, murderers and foreign agents then a few years later we get to discover who is actually going to be targeted. The US's system of anti-terrorist laws have turned out to be for internal use and it is a stroke of justice that they are more threatening to the right wing, who championed bringing them in.
People really need to get it through their thick skulls that centralising power => your political enemies will have more power when it is their turn.
I understand the advantages of this for the government. It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money and ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. What is the advantage for me as a citizen?
Not only that, they will have a much more fine grained inventory of things you own. Convenience might be a personal advantage.
Crypto was always mis-marketed as decentralised. It’s not. The American banking system is decentralised. Credit is created and balances maintained at the edges. Blockchain is centralised. This brings many efficiencies. But it also empowers those at the centre.
Crypto was always mis-marketed as decentralised. It’s not. The American banking system is decentralised. Credit is created and balances maintained at the edges. Blockchain is centralised. This brings many efficiencies. But it also empowers those at the centre.
Are you standing by your statement with a serious face?
Crypto was always mis-marketed as decentralised. It’s not. The American banking system is decentralised. Credit is created and balances maintained at the edges. Blockchain is centralised. This brings many efficiencies. But it also empowers those at the centre.
IMO the fundamental misconception about cryptocurrencies, that I know about, is that trust can be replaced by an algorithm. The most important ingredient of money is trust