this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 106 points 3 months ago (24 children)

Turns out the one thing Blockchain is good at, building out decentralized strings of commonly agreed upon immutable transactions, is actually not that useful. For small items we need an "undo" button because people make sloppy mistakes or get scammed, for large items we want the government to act as enforcer of the property (house, dollars, car) in question so it doesn't actually help us to decentralize.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

And for donations to Wikileaks, we don't want the government to be able to reverse or block them. That's what PayPal did with then before Bitcoin was invented.

I don't think that Bitcoin can or should replace the current system, but it can be an addition for rarer cases.

But yes: Most of the other blockchain stuff is just completely useless and therefore not used.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Crypto actually is really useful for evading the law, yes, and so it's good for donating to underground organizations (or to buy drugs or illegal services)

But that's about the only real use-case as far as I can tell

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Crypto actually is really useful for evading the law

That's the only use case I've heard that makes sense. To be clear, sometimes it's moral to break the law, but still..

This came up in an episode of Cartoon Avatars and the specifics were basically, "I'm fleeing from my country and want to bring all my wealth with me over state boundaries without the possibility of it being stolen en route".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes, sometimes it is good to evade the law, because the law might be immoral, for one reason or another, and ranging in severity from not being able to buy weed that helps you, to not being able to flee from a country that might kill you

So there is some legit and morally acceptable use-cases for crypto, but still, it's not much

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I agree that it's not much. That was my attempt at steel manning crypto's use case. The single one I know of that makes even a little sense. 99% of it is bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

with Monero there's also the use case of just, paying for things. it's like cash but digital because it can't be tracked. The issue with Monero is that it uses a lot of energy per transaction, a lot less than Bitcoin but still a lot. This would go down if more people adopt it tho iirc

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Well, there are countries like Turkey with a currency that lost 95% of its value during the last 10 years. In such countries, Bitcoin is a way to have a currency that does not have a guarantee to ruin you. When your country has 60% inflation like Turkey, the deflation currency might be seen as a gift. So, this might be a legal use case..

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Alternative monetary systems that allow local communities to create elastic money based on trust or assets.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If you can rally a local community behind you, it's better to look beyond the limitations and negative influences of money

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Well that’s what an alternative monetary systems are.

Like local exchange trading systems with a local currency.

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