
Blockchain isn't about democracy and decentralisation – it's about greed - jrepinc
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/15/blockchain-democracy-decentralisation-bitcoin-price-cryptocurrencies
======
sremani
>>>

A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the
blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs for the world’s impoverished,
marginalised and unbanked masses claim to have created billions of dollars of
wealth out of nothing.

>>>

I do not agree with the entire statement, but the amount of "self-
congratulatory" shit that goes in Blockchain conferences is mind boggling. I
went Ethereum Devcon 3, and its not hyperbole when I say ONE entire day of 4
days of conference was about patting on the back.

~~~
liquidise
At risk of tangenting the conversation, comments like that from the guardian
continue to drive me nuts. I understand that an identity-driven narrative
suits their politics. But to say the crypto community is started by "white
men" really rolls up a _ton_ of geographical and cultural diversity between
even the founders of the top few coins: Bitcoin (unknown), Ethereum (Russian),
Litecoin (Asian-American).

~~~
gojomo
While "The Guardian" published this, it did so as a signed commentary piece,
by Nouriel Roubini (which further appears to have come via a syndication
service, 'Project Syndicate').

Such pieces are not the publication's opinion any more than a "letter to the
editor", and papers will publish many contradicting opinions this way.

So it's not really accurate to attribute quotes from this article to "The
Guardian". Only a very few, typically _unsigned_ (or signed 'the editors')
commentaries in a publication are officially the outlet's house opinion – and
these often contradict or reference-but-highly-qualify any differing signed
opinions (like this Roubini piece) they've separately published.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
That's really beside the point and the people at The Guardian know that
anything under their masthead is ultimately going to affect brand perception.

~~~
gojomo
Maybe they're hoping online readers will eventually become as smart as paper
readers, for whom this distinction between "signed guest commentary" and
"house opinion" was clear for hundreds of years?

~~~
laretluval
Blaming the users is usually not the most effective way forward.

~~~
gojomo
Blaming those making false attributions is the only way to correct those
misattributions!

------
brink
All you need to do is spend 10 minutes on CryptoTwitter to figure this out.
It's immediately apparent that it's a relatively unregulated stock market on
steroids. Glorified gambling.

For every 1 part honest decentralization, it's 9 parts greed.

~~~
paulsutter
According to Sturgeon's law, that's almost unremarkable ;)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law)

"Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash,
crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods,
etc. is crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction
is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the
same trends of quality as all other artforms"

~~~
simias
That's not really the same thing, the parent says that all cryptocurrencies
are 90% greed, not that 90% of cryptocurrencies are only about greed. If it
turns out that even 10% of cryptocurrencies are actually not crap it will be
huge news. I'm not holding my breath.

~~~
jmull
Yes... in sci-fi (and other arts and media and consumer goods) you can mostly
recognize the crap when you see it and avoid it without doing a lot more than
ignoring it. That's why the 90% crap doesn't matter.

With bitcoin though -- and other crytocurrencies and blockchain products
generally -- you can't ignore that almost everyone around you is trying their
best to get your money.

With sci-fi you can separate the good from the bad without too much trouble.
Not so with blockchains.

------
maxxxxx
Blockchain reminds me a little of the history of the internet but worse . The
internet started with good intentions but then in the late 1990s it was all
about greed and it took much longer for the value to really show. The main
problem with blockchain is that they jumped straight to greed and get-rich-
quick schemes before it showed any real world use.

~~~
scabarott
One thing though, the internet was/is solid technology. Underneath the
internet bubble was something that worked. Blockchain is promising technology
but without solving the scaling issue it will always be just that.

~~~
tim333
The scaling issue is close to solved - there are a number of rival solutions,
time will tell what wins out. There are other issues though such as money
laundering regulations.

~~~
TeMPOraL
So we've been told for the past couple years now.

I expect that the problem won't be solved, and instead we'll get a formal
proof that you can't build a fully decentralized, trustless system without
Proof of Work, at which point I hope Bitcoin & others will get labeled for
what they are: crimes against climate and sustainable energy economy.

------
dragontamer
Blockchain was once about using technology to solve a problem in a new and
exciting way. Then people started to make money off of it. Lots of money. Then
it became greed, and the technological progress halted.

Hopefully, enough people lose money so that the technical aspects can return
to focus.

~~~
nwah1
That is curious, because with every other exciting new technology, having gobs
of money thrown at it generally helps it get realized.

Makes you wonder if there's something more fundamentally wrong about the
assumptions going into it.

~~~
api
Is that true?

Gobs of money transformed the Internet from an engine of open communication
and information sharing to an engine of privacy invasion, mass manipulation,
and disinformation.

The web was created at CERN and TCP/IP was created by DARPA long before the
dot.com bubble and for significantly less money. The people who got rich
during and after the dot.com bubble did so not by greatly improving on these
technologies but by using them to commoditize human beings and monetize
peoples' data. The biggest growth industry on the Internet today is the
leveraging of that data toward active deception and con artistry.

I'm speaking of the Internet as most people experience it. You can still of
course use the pipes for productive things, but the bulk of the user-facing
Internet is now a giant surveillance and manipulation machine targeted at the
average user.

~~~
nwah1
Your point is true, but internet technology is now certainly proven, and money
has been instrumental in proving it.

Blockchain technology is unproven for use cases beyond speculation or
fraudulent/illegal activity.

~~~
tim333
Beyond proving it a lot of money was needed for servers, cables, 4G masts and
the like.

------
dumbfoundded
It's great how much the potential of cryptocurrency depends on the market cap.

The scariest part to me about cryptocurrency is not the greed, lies and
manipulation. It's a centralized cryptocurrency by a major government. Imagine
if instead of cash, you had to pay for everything with a digital currency
controlled by the US Govt. It'd be all the immutability of cryptocurrency with
the monetary policy of the Fed Reserve. I'd bet the IRS and NSA would love the
additional data.

------
ehrtt
> Gini coefficient of 1.0 means that a single person controls 100% of a
> country’s income/wealth, North Korea scores 0.86, the rather unequal United
> States scores 0.41 and bitcoin scores an astonishing 0.88.

This was a bizarre section, and I wanted to make some points about it:

1) The distribution of bitcoins among individuals is not known, any claim to
the contrary is false. If you want to make estimates, include the massive
uncertainties.

2) Assets do not have Gini coefficients, groups of people do. The
distributions of helicopters or Google stock are also very unequal. If you
care about wealth inequality among crypto hodlers you should measure that.
Conflating the distribution of an asset with the distribution of wealth seems
meant to confuse.

3) When bitcoins had 0 value they were much more unequally distributed than
now. People starting to value them _is the mechanism by which they get
distributed_. The process is gradual. The more people value them, the more
value they accrue.

~~~
dumbfoundded
> 1) The distribution of bitcoins among individuals is not known, any claim to
> the contrary is false.

How can this be true? Bitcoin is a public ledger and you see every accounts
balance. If anything the publicly available account balances seem like a lower
bound for the Gini coefficient as it is very likely people have multiple
wallets (especially with large balances) where it's unlikely any group of
people shares the same wallet (creating and distributing funds among multiple
wallets is more secure and trivial).

~~~
ehrtt
Lots of people (millions) share the same wallets (technically addresses), as
they hold coins on exchanges. The richest bitcoin addresses are the cold
storage for the exchanges.

[https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-
addresses....](https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-
addresses.html)

~~~
dumbfoundded
That's a great point.

------
andrewla
It's strange how much vitriol the author spends against "Blockchain" while
being dismissive of its technical merits. In short, I agree -- Blockchain is
not the end-all and be-all. It's a natural evolution of the idea of git (and
its predecessors) of using a one-sided Merkle tree to compactly store an
unforgeable chain of information.

But let's take the word "blockchain" out of this. Is the claim really,
"Cryptocurrencies aren't about democracy and decentralisation -- they're about
greed."? I mean, the set of cryptocurrencies isn't a short story, they're not
"about" anything. So let's assume that we're talking about cryptocurrency
supporters.

"All cryptocurrency supporters are not interested in democracy and
decentralisation -- they're just greedy". Okay, better, but let's get rid of
absolutes.

"Many cryptocurrency supporters are not interested in democracy and
decentralisation -- they're just greedy". Okay, now I think we have a
statement that is likely true, but is so bland as to be meaningless.

His testimony to the Senate [1] makes a lot of similar points, but the one
that I find most annoying because I don't know how an economist can say it, is
the line about bitcoin being deflationary:

> That means if a steady- state supply of Bitcoin really did gradually replace
> a fiat currency, the price index of all goods and services would
> continuously fall.

This statement, along with so many others talking about Bitcoin is exactly
equivalent to saying that "Bitcoin will always increase in value". I'm as big
a fan of the potential of Bitcoin as the next person, but even I find this to
be ridiculous.

[1]
[https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Roubini%20Testi...](https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Roubini%20Testimony%2010-11-18.pdf)

------
charlesdm
I stopped reading when I saw Nouriel Roubini. He's a smart economist and while
I think he has good points on certain things that are wrong with crypto, the
way he fundamentally delivers his views in this matter are ridiculous and
bitter.

He's been overly passionate (and aggressive?) on trying to make sure he's
right. He's shouting it from the rooftops. He keeps repeating it's all a
bubble. All good and well, and it very well might be, BUT that in itself
doesn't give him credibility. You can say the same thing about the stock
market, and once every economic cycle when we see a major correction, you'll
be right. A broken clock is also right twice a day.

At the same time, economists usually aren't very wealthy people.. maybe they
are overly sceptical of new developments.

~~~
dubya123
Shocking, people that dedicate themselves to research don't end up very
wealthy. Whoda thunkit.

~~~
go_blue_13
Usually people who research a field are masters of that field. A poor
economist...

~~~
adamch
Are all the AlphaGo engineers also top-level Go players?

~~~
scabarott
Or doctors the healthiest, fittest, most disease-free individuals?

------
Synaesthesia
When bitcoin came out I was excited at the prospect of s free, egalitarian
money. While it is free there’s not really anything egalitarian about it
unfortunately, and I don’t see it solving huge problems like poverty.

Maybe a coin which is evenly distributed among the population to start would
be better.

~~~
tomjen3
Such a coin wouldn't be evenly distributed for long, unless you banned free
exchanges with it.

~~~
Synaesthesia
No but it would still be an interesting experiment.

------
erikb
I technology is not about anything. There are people who try to use it for
good of humanity and there are people who try to use it for their personal
gains on the cost of others. It's always like this. And if we wouldn't develop
technology, they would still use the old ones (e.g. horse riding).

~~~
TeMPOraL
Technology by definition makes some tasks easier at the expense of making some
other tasks more difficult. A spoon will help you eat, but it won't help you
play football. A gun will help you project power and kill, but you won't eat
soup with it.

Similarly, the blockchain is a technology that makes it easier to a) burn
through shit ton of electricity, b) propagate scams and get-rich-quick
schemes. It doesn't seem to make easier any task that's worth doing and
already not better done with another technology.

~~~
erikb
The goal of a spoon is to make soup eatable. The goal of a blockchain is not
to burn through a shit ton of electricity. Therefore I'd argue that your
points a and b are mostly side effects, and not even side effects of
blockchains. If you run high quality computer games on your system you will
also burn through a shit ton of electricity. If you go to another unregulated
market you also get a lot of scams and get-rich-quick schemes. Blockchains not
even necessitate crypto coins, they can live without it. If you for instance
like Kafka but don't like that it's centralized, you could run it on a
blockchain as well.

PS: I'd argue that, depending on the type of gun you use, eating soup with a
gun is still easier than eating completely without any tools. And does having
a spoon really makes you worse at soccer? I'm not sure the intial thesis
holds. A tool can make X easier and not make Y harder.

------
mcs_
I wonder if publishing in read-only mode the banks databases will stop this
feeling that blockchain will solve the world economy.

------
writepub
> A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in
> the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs

When I intended to read the article, I was fairly certain identity politics
wasn't an axe the author wanted to grind, but he went straight for the
jugular!!!

China - which is neither white, and comprises a racial minority in the west,
has seen the largest wealth creation in this space. So - the author's
statement is technically wrong.

Unlike the Guardian - where an opinion piece isn't approved unless 'White Men'
are blamed, the blockchain holds no opinions - you're free to start a
feminist-coin without the editor of the Guardian thought policing your piffle
into narratives palatable to the Guardian's target audience

------
olivermarks
I like Roubini despite his arrogance but surely everything to do with currency
speculation is about greed? That's essentially what bitcoin is, it has little
practical utility in day to day life. The blockchain world - which as others
have pointed out isn't short of cliques and boasters - is more like the early
days of the internet IMO. Lots of interesting ideas and ways to leverage new
technologies and ideas. Lots of terrible ideas, incompetence, corruption and
greed, just like the internet circa 2000...and a few ideas that changed the
world

~~~
nickik
Has lots of utility for the people buying drugs.

~~~
sleepybrett
I'm not sure that's true at all.

------
interfixus
> _A few self-serving white men_

How nice for Guardian readers and writers alike to have a safespace where
certain varieties of blatant racist sexism can thrive.

~~~
ravenstine
Serious question, what exactly is stopping women and non-whites from creating
a blockchain currency and having their own crypto conventions if that's what
they wanted? One can do this immediately by sitting at home in one's underwear
and forking an existing coin on GitHub.

~~~
MCrekt
Nothing at all. My black ass did just that, minus the convention. There are
enough of those.

------
ruffrey
To me, cryptocurrency is about greed to the same extend money or stocks are
about greed. There just aren't as many regulations yet.

------
AnaniasAnanas
I find it annoying how people equate blockchain with cryptocurrencies. GIT
repos are basically blockchains, yet they have nothing to do with greed nor
cryptocurrencies.

> But it has also become the byword for a libertarian ideology that treats all
> governments, central banks, traditional financial institutions, and real-
> world currencies as evil concentrations of power that must be destroyed

Would you blame them for wanting that though? Admittedly most people who moved
to cryptocurrencies only care about greed, but is this not simply the side
effect of the whole scheme becoming popular?

> there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe

I don't know how true or false this is (especially when considering that there
are many cryptocoin farms in china and Russia, as well as the likely Japanese
ethnicity of the creator of bitcoin), but I fail to see how this is the fault
of cryptocurrencies themselves (with the exception that one already needed
money in order to invest in the GPUs).

------
loourr
No, it isn't.

It operates in an environment of intense greed and crypto economics is about
trying to make systems that are antifragile to greed.

~~~
mindfulplay
Which cryptobook is this nuance from?

Cryptodefenders have ready-to-go wisdom and complicated words to defend their
BS....

~~~
sremani
Any one talking Crypto and Anti-fragile in same sentence seems to have read
the book, "The Bitcoin Standard".

To be honest, it is one of the best books that makes case for Crypto
specifically Bitcoin or its ilk from historic currency stand point. Let us not
forget the President of United States has the right to mint a Trillion Dollar
Coin, and some very intelligent people asked him to do that no too long ago (4
years ago?), when there was debt crisis looming in Washington.

~~~
mindfulplay
Again, all this sounds super complicated economics. There are a ton of facts I
can cook up that are legitimate but are meaningless.

The president of the USA can also legally fart in an elevator with CNN and
MSNBC reporters in that elevator... But I would guess the president probably
won't do that even if they are entitled to.

------
johndevor
It's both.

------
f055
Well to be honest all human history can be described down to greed - all wars,
conquests, colonisation, banking, investing, stocks and more. It's all about
making profit.

Whatever bad you can say about blockchain and coins, one is undisputed - it's
the first time in hundreds of years when an individual can print money and not
be called a criminal. And that's a big shift of power.

To elaborate: thanks to blockchain there's nothing stopping you to create a
coin for your group, your neighbourhood or your town - or the internet - that
if adopted, will be accepted. And thanks to blockchain that coin actually
works, is hard to forge, crack or counterfeit.

And the mainstream electricity argument is short-sighted. Humans need energy
to evolve (fyi Kardashev scale). Bitcoin et al is the best incentive to
actually create innovative, powerful and cheap energy sources.

~~~
NickM
_it 's the first time in hundreds of years when an individual can print money
and not be called a criminal...thanks to blockchain there's nothing stopping
you to create a coin for your group, your neighbourhood or your town_

Local currencies have been created and used in many places all over the world
for a long time, without needing anything like crypto. Nobody is being called
a criminal over this, it's quite common.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currency)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_in_the_United_States)

~~~
f055
Yes, but which of these currencies are not operated by a registered or
regulated entity?

~~~
pjc50
Trick question: all of them are regulated, because they're operating within
the legal environment of some country, plus the US tends to claim global
jurisdiction on anyone selling things to Americans.

Technically everyone running a bitcoin miner is violating securities law. It's
just that SEC enforcement of this is going after the most fraudulent crypto
enterprises first.

~~~
jki275
That's a stretch. Bitcoin hasn't been defined (and probably won't be for a
variety of reasons) as a security.

------
rmrfrmrf
From a socialist lense, this article reads like a neoliberal greatest hits
piece:

* Conflating anarchism and libertarianism

* Calling a technology racist and sexist

* Russiophobia

* A full-throated support of big banks and the privacy rights of the enterprise.

Furthermore, there are some outright flaws in the piece itself:

* Conflating usage of cryptocurrency in vivo with blockchain as a technology

* Claiming that decentralization of the ledger is a lie because big crypto traders control most of the economy

* Claiming that you can "just fork" the blockchain to fix programming errors, when in reality (at least with Bitcoin) you need a majority to do that (there are initiatives to chang Bitcoin that have failed, afterall).

* Calling an electronic ledger an Excel spreadsheet without any mention of the data integrity benefits.

Really at the end of the day, the author claimed to be attacking blockchain
but really just ended up attacking cryptocurrencies.

~~~
haroldp
From a libertarian lens, I find blockchain technically interesting, and see
some promise in it's usefulness, but I own zero bitcoins (etc) because the
whole cryptocurrency landscape looks immature, treacherous and fraught with
peril. Each of your points seems absolutely spot-on. I think readers of any
political point of view should be able to spot this as a notably poor article.

------
jankotek
Yet blockchain is the only way to transfer money in "paradises" such as
Venezuela.

~~~
exitcode00
Exactly, you only need to look as far as Dash's effort in Venezuela to realize
how crypto can benefit society, and if you trust governments not to turn the
global stock markets into a glorified casino then look up the terms CDOs, HFT,
"Dark pools", ZIRP, bail-ins, etc...

[https://www.dashforcenews.com/dash-adds-aggressive-
venezuela...](https://www.dashforcenews.com/dash-adds-aggressive-venezuela-
marketing-push-to-comprehensive-merchant-support/)

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> glorified casino

Are you saying that this isn't the case for crypto?

~~~
exitcode00
I suppose the stock market would be more like a "rigged casino" since the
government's central banks can print money and confiscate funds (see Cyprus),
but with pretty much all market leading crypto such things are impossible if
you dont store you money on exchanges.

~~~
pjc50
Keeping your cryptocurrency in your own wallet guarantees nothing about its
exchange value, though; the "price level" of cryptocurrency absolutely is set
by the fraudulent practices of the exchanges even if you don't go near them
yourself.

~~~
exitcode00
There are "fraudulent practices" in the real world exchanges - look at how
LIBOR was/is rigged
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal)).
And I certainly hope its "exchange value" isn't exactly the same as a
government currency as that would defeat the purpose of having something
different in the first place...

------
iamgopal
Is anybody else wonder, how Bitcoin rise to 10000USD+ align with india's
demonetisation.

------
wbazant
Georgia is pretty democratic. Also: food, wine and parties there are
fantastic. And the mountains are epic. Hi Georgians!

------
eaenki
I don't really get it. Are the people commenting about how useless and stupid
Bitcoin and Ethereum are, really putting themselves above Marc Andreessen, Ben
Horowitz and Peter Thiel's predictions? I mean. At most, you could be
skeptical.

Thinking that it's a joke when even those kinda guys (First successful
browser, first cloud computing, first online payment service) are all-in it's
mind blowing.

I remember reading the same comments on HF when I was a kid. And even before,
about LR.

Guess who found (and will find) himself on the wrong side of history?

~~~
ballenf
It doesn't require comparing one's own intelligence to those guys. One can
pick any number of Warren Buffetts who think cryptocurrencies are not good
investments. Even though I think Buffett's at least partially wrong on this
subject, in a vacuum I'd trust him over all the guys you named combined. But
that's just personal preference.

(I have no idea what 'HR' or 'LF' are.)

~~~
tomjen3
Buffett has always preferred businesses that he can understand, so on that one
alone I can see why he doesn't like crypto.

Secondly, I don't think crypto is good as an investment (as opposed to a
vehicle for speculation) but I see all sort of opportunities in killing the
middle men of banks. No more boom and bust because the fed won't read Hayek;
No more having to beg and scrape to be allowed to send a transaction through
the archaic inter-bank transfer system; No more inflation forcing people to
put savings in riskier and riskier businesses to keep up with the printing; No
more dirt poor refugees who have to leave every thing behind; No more
hyperinflation because dictators needs to be the sole source of food.

