Cryptocurrency - a revolutionary technology?

[Dildo Argentino]

A pretty different take on Bitcoin. Perhaps the connotations of "crypto" in the direction of clandestine and secretive are misleading? What do you think?
Disclaimer: I don't know much about this, but I'm pretty sure the picture is not as rosy as it is painted in this video... and I wonder why.

[Junkenstein]

I for one am glad this isn't in the giant fucking thread about bitcoins being a scam and the various associated fuckery.

No friends, THIS link is life altering. It'll alter your wife to be your husband and change cats to dogs. Thought you were silly for dismissing fake money as fake money? NO. It's clearly all not bullshit and bluster and totally worth your undivided attention to listen to yet another idiot with no idea about why various financial regulations exists and the reasons for them being there.


To be honest, I've not even bothered with the link, I'm assuming I'd get more sense from a rickroll.

[Dildo Argentino]

Oh, go on, it's six minutes and I think very different to what you expected (you'll be able to tell in 40 seconds). I did think about putting it in the Necronomicoin thread, but that has diverged quite far. The angle is completely not doing away with government and online black markets.

[Junkenstein]

I'm considering the other things I can spend six minutes doing.

I think I'll scratch myself and whistle, I'll probably learn more and be more entertained.

[Pæs]

TL;DR: The manner in which the blockchain distributes consensus and trust has applications outside of bitcoin and rules on how property can be exchanged can be programmed into the currency.

Unfortunately, our current models of business/finance/government aren't a suitable foundation for any of these distributed trust networks to be built on top of, as our current experiments with bitcoin are illustrating.

Even if the tech were disruptive to the point where it caused change in those institutions instead of being changed by them, by the time we're in a position to adopt this tech en masse, I imagine we'll also be in a position where our computing power causes us to have to rethink the cryptographic foundations of the protocol anyway.

The basic problem with bitcoin is that people are motivated to profit from trading in it. Applications of distributed trust/consensus that don't inspire people to trade/hoard/establish dodgy exchanges for whatever they are trusting each other about are a more realistic application, and non-bitcoin uses of blockchain technology exist but the trick there is getting people to adopt them without the incentive of trading cashdollars.

Lol, posting in a holist thread.

[Pæs]

Please don't take this as an insult to your intelligence but (and I admit that I haven't done much research on this) I wonder whether you noticed that THESE bitcoins are wearing VR goggles.

[Dildo Argentino]

Okay, thanks, I think I get all of that, but just to make sure: blockchain-based trust networks may be a good idea (for transparency and for removing a lot of middle-men, I guess), Bitcoin is one particular instantiation of the blockchain idea, which is likely to be broken by the time it could be usefully adopted, and it has the added problem of motivating people to hoard and to use it for dodgy exchanges. Is that roughly correct? Thanks again.

[LMNO]

Huh.  Interesting take.  I like the idea or "trust networks" and how it fits into economic theory.  It reminds me of this TED talk, and as brief as it is, really delves deep into the psychological aspects of trade and trust.

[Doktor Howl]

More fucking fantasy.

[Doktor Howl]

Please don't take this as an insult to your intelligence but (and I admit that I haven't done much research on this) I wonder whether you noticed that THESE bitcoins are wearing VR goggles.

[Eater of Clowns]

Cryptocurrency absolutely is a revolutionary technology.

But then, so were vibrating dildos.

I know my answer, but which would you rather fuck yourself with?