[FRIAM] Fwd: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

[Marcus Daniels]

"Crypto currencies seem to have the most appeal with people are essentially antisocial, or at least, anti-government. "


It seems clear to me that even the governments of several robust democracies could easily go off the rails, and increasingly not be concerned with the general welfare.  In that case, legal or illegal are not necessarily statements of good or bad or fair or unjust -- they become definitions powerful people employ to control others.   When governments fail or become insensitive to the needs of people, then alternative tools may evolve to cope.  Obviously the proof-of-work approaches like Bitcoin are becoming very expensive for small transactions and need to be extended and reworked.  Even so, in their current form, they can be useful for exchanging resources in bulk to individuals living under oppressive circumstances.   It does not imply that all other currencies should not exist or that regulation is unwelcome when a government is actually functioning.  And of course, one person's defiant distributed community is another's criminal and/or terrorist organization.   Nonetheless, distributed ledger systems provide a way for cooperation to restart even when everything is on fire.


So I'd revise your assertion to be "Crypto currencies seem to have the most appeal with people that ultimately do not give full trust to the majority."

I mean, look what the (near) majority did last November.


Marcus



________________________________
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Gary Schiltz <gary at naturesvisualarts.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2017 11:42:27 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

Very good article. Crypto currencies seem to have the most appeal with people are essentially antisocial, or at least, anti-government. I loved the statement early on in the article, "Bitcoin is what banking looked like in the middle ages — 'here’s your libertarian paradise, have a nice day.'"

On Thu, Dec 28, 2017 at 12:08 PM, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net<mailto:owen at backspaces.net>> wrote:
Nice contrarian view on bitcoin and blockchains in general:
​  ​
https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100

​I suspect blockchains will go the way torrent file systems went: they'll be great for IT infrastructure, so folks like Amazon Web Services will use them:

  *   Torrents: redundant, secure storage
  *   Blockchains: redundant, secure transactions​

​   -- Owen​


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