The existing finance system is largely reputation based, with a light side of contract enforcement and a heavy dose of middlemen. It mostly works, but one of the biggest advantage of crypto stuff is removing the need for reputation and trust.
Except it doesn’t. That’s exactly what we’ve learned over the last decade. It never did either of those things. What it did is that it clouded reputation and trust just about enough to trick people into the illusion of a “trustless” system. There is no such thing. In the end you trust the coders trusted by the people who use the apps implementing the blockchain. There’s no tangible difference to trusting the coders trusted by the banks you use. Yes, with some cryptocurrencies they’re not associated directly with a centralised organisation. But that will absolutely change over time if the cryptocurrency ever becomes relevant to the big corporations of the world. Just as the WWW in practice now is controlled by Google and Apple.
The point of selling the idea that a cryptocurrency is “trustless” is to trick you into trusting it just long enough to pull off a Ponzi-scheme or rug-pull. And yes, that goes for Bitcoin too.
> one of the biggest advantage of crypto stuff is removing the need for reputation and trust.
I don't think it does that, though, at least when used as a currency. The irreversibility of crypto transactions means that you have to have some trust that the person you're dealing with will be willing to make things right when erroneous transactions happen.
wongarsu|2 years ago
audunw|2 years ago
Except it doesn’t. That’s exactly what we’ve learned over the last decade. It never did either of those things. What it did is that it clouded reputation and trust just about enough to trick people into the illusion of a “trustless” system. There is no such thing. In the end you trust the coders trusted by the people who use the apps implementing the blockchain. There’s no tangible difference to trusting the coders trusted by the banks you use. Yes, with some cryptocurrencies they’re not associated directly with a centralised organisation. But that will absolutely change over time if the cryptocurrency ever becomes relevant to the big corporations of the world. Just as the WWW in practice now is controlled by Google and Apple.
The point of selling the idea that a cryptocurrency is “trustless” is to trick you into trusting it just long enough to pull off a Ponzi-scheme or rug-pull. And yes, that goes for Bitcoin too.
JohnFen|2 years ago
I don't think it does that, though, at least when used as a currency. The irreversibility of crypto transactions means that you have to have some trust that the person you're dealing with will be willing to make things right when erroneous transactions happen.
doliveira|2 years ago