
Cryptocurrency will always be political - pmcpinto
http://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/the-bitcoin-paradox
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simonebrunozzi
Apropos crypto + political : excellent must read by Yanis Varoufakis, an
economist that I greatly admire (but not always 100% agree with), on "Bitcoin
and the dangerous fantasy of apolitical money":
[https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-
da...](https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-dangerous-
fantasy-of-apolitical-money/)

~~~
travmatt
I probably say this every chance I get but the cleanest insult I’ve ever seen
on the world stage was when, as Greek finance minister, he called eu austerity
measures “fiscal waterboarding”.

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remarkEon
My friend sent me a meme today that illustrated a view (not his) of what
hardcore Crypto evangelists believe. In full disclosure I am not one, but
believe there is probably some utility in it, I own a decent amount of BTC
(not enough to make me quit working...enough to make me think about buying a
house in the near future, depending on taxes), and I understand what the
community is trying to do.

It was a meme of a scene from the Matrix.

>Neo: What are you trying to tell me? That I can trade my Bitcoin for millions
some day?

>Morpheus: No Neo. What I’m trying to tell you is that when you’re ready...you
won’t have to.

This view I think starkly disturbed me because it seems to signal that
hardcore Hodlers really do think that on a long enough timeline the whole
economic system collapses.

~~~
jstanley
That you won't have to sell your bitcoins doesn't imply the "whole economic
system collapses". It just means you can buy all the goods and services you
need directly in bitcoin.

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remarkEon
That makes no sense whatsoever. If I _can_ buy everything in BTC that
demonstrates that something happened very wrong that makes USD untenable for
basic, or any kind of, transaction.

~~~
StavrosK
That's a very American-centric view. The fact that Amazon UK accepts orders in
euros doesn't mean that the pound is untenable for any transaction. Similarly,
Amazon accepting Bitcoin (thus meaning you can buy almost everything with BTC)
doesn't make the dollar obsolete.

~~~
remarkEon
Please. Normal Forex is not the same as a deflationary crypto currency being
trusted enough for normal transactions. If in the future I indeed can buy
everything with cryptocurrency then I stand by my feeling that something
must’ve gone quite wrong.

~~~
jstanley
Why is it not the same? It'll be fine.

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cjbprime
This cryptocurrency article misspells Bitcoin and Ethereum. o_O

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KasianFranks
Yes, lets dismiss it altogether. Crypto is adverse to the core culture of
software engineering. Keep shunning it and it will go away. Lets not be
disrupted.

~~~
StavrosK
This is only tangential, but I really hate everyone calling cryptocurrencies
"crypto" (and Wikipedia "wiki"). These words had meaning before, you know, and
it's really confusing if you start overwriting a term. "currency" was added to
"crypto" to form "cryptocurrency" because the word meant something already.

~~~
y4mi
urm, it did?

i thought it was just a shorthand for cryptography previously?

don't see a problem with shortening something else to the same string, as both
are just terms you use because you're to lazy to actually spell it out.

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s17n
Since currency is created by consensus, it's inherently political. Currently
the political system underlying bitcoin - in which formally, decisions are
made by voting with hashing power and informally, the bitcoin core developers
and a handful of large miners / pool operators have enough power to call the
shots - is a disaster.

However, even deeper than this social/political structure is a value system
shared by bitcoin users - there are some changes to the system that would not
be accepted by users no matter how much hash rate or which influential
community members backed them.

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thisisit
It seems that the article is trying an artsy way to introduce cryptography and
hashing:

 _Communication is easy, but it’s hard to tell who knows what. Messages pass
one another in corridors; conversations fragment. When A replied to B, had she
received your message yet, or was she reading C’s? Did she ignore what you
said because she didn’t like it, or because it had yet to be delivered? When D
proposes a simultaneous attack on the wardens as they deliver dinner, how many
people received it? When A confirms to D that she’s in, will D see the message
in time? Will D know that B saw it?

Here’s one solution, if a strange one. Write a message with a very difficult
mathematical problem on it—a problem so hard that it would take a month of
concentration to solve. Now wait._

And I don't get the point of this. Is cryptography bad because it needs to
ensure things are not intercepted in between?

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xiongwei_13
In the traditional economy, ledger or account are mapping real transaction,
just like a shadow of the truth. We build a huge economic system to make it
work. Whole economic system will be collapse when we use cryptocurrency.

