Haven't seen anyone print Bitcoin like this. Centralized entities will always be able to print money out of thin air. Fiat money has the same issues. Bitcoin doesn't have this problem. Conflating Bitcoin and crypto doesn't really help IMHO.
> if this mistake had been made on banking system, you wouldn't have heard about it, because it gets fixed and its gone without a trace.
And then you edited it to
> if this mistake had been made on banking system, you wouldn't have heard about it
I was going to reply that if gets fixed and doesn't cause anyone problems, you're making a case for it. I guess you must have understood that too and backtracked :-) I actually loled at the dishonesty.
I didn't want to discuss whether the banking system provides or not a trustable audit trail when someone screws up, because I don't know about it and I don't want to speculate whether stuff gets sweeped under rug or not.
with the blockchain you can't hide the mistakes, that was my point.
Banks wouldn't have made an error like this public. Maybe if there was an investigation an audit trail exists that could bring that to the public. With crypto this isn't an option, you screw up in public by default, there's no possibility to hide it.
> What you wanted to avoid is the fact that because the system works well, it doesn't cause anyone problems.
I don't know what you mean by the system. But banks, and their ability to create money on the spot, have been the epicenter of uncountable economic crises.
> you screw up in public by default, there's no possibility to hide it.
It doesn't matter, because as you admitted yourself, it gets fixed so fast it doesn't cause anyone problems. Better than the alternative, which is if you screw up it's a problem for all eternity.
That's a good point, but the nuance matters and understanding why matters too.
Without being too specific about the who, I think your concern boils down to:
1) authoritarian leaders like crypto that they create themselves because it's not regulated and they can use it to raise funds from the gullable and uninformed.
2) authoritarian leaders who can move markets tolerate crypto that is decentralized because it's also unregulated and they can trade against their own words and actions. (E.g. short and then cause a crash, buy and then cause a spike, etc.) Very few authoritarian leaders have this kind of influence, and as adoption increases the influence one person can have over the market will diminish.
I think these authoritarian benefits are temporary artefacts of where it is in its lifecycle. The technology resists authoritarianism the more decentralized and ubiquitous it is.
Vanguard won't allow clients to even buy anything crypto related in their accounts. That should tell you something right there. If it's so great, why isn't one of the leading wealth management brokers on board?
I once worked with a guy who was an Ethereum "millionaire" which I knew because he couldn't stop telling people. He was a nice guy, just really, super annoying. Anyways, he was so well off he sold his house and bought an RV and was going around the country, family in tow, doing whatever. I don't really know what to believe there. Wealthy people don't usually sell everything they own and go live in an RV. Who knows?
crypto assets like BTC and ETH are insanely volatile, I agree with this, don't put your retirement money there.
crypto coins issued by an entity, like in the article, you can trust them as much as you trust the entity, the difference with electronic or paper money is that it cannot be created in private, the ledger is public and it cannot be modified.
I think this is a LMGTFY question, but: If Paypal started doing this maliciously, or otherwise failed in custodianship, would the community have any recourse? Specifically, can they fork the coin? The ledger is public, so I imagine yes?
Do you know what consumer banking was like in it's first ~50 years?
the only reason this is public is because the blockchain ledger is public and unmodifiable.
if this mistake had been made on banking system, you wouldn't have heard about it
You first wrote
> if this mistake had been made on banking system, you wouldn't have heard about it, because it gets fixed and its gone without a trace.
And then you edited it to
> if this mistake had been made on banking system, you wouldn't have heard about it
I was going to reply that if gets fixed and doesn't cause anyone problems, you're making a case for it. I guess you must have understood that too and backtracked :-) I actually loled at the dishonesty.
with the blockchain you can't hide the mistakes, that was my point.
You did want to discuss it because you said
> you wouldn't have heard about it
What you wanted to avoid is the fact that because the system works well, it doesn't cause anyone problems.
> What you wanted to avoid is the fact that because the system works well, it doesn't cause anyone problems.
I don't know what you mean by the system. But banks, and their ability to create money on the spot, have been the epicenter of uncountable economic crises.
It doesn't matter, because as you admitted yourself, it gets fixed so fast it doesn't cause anyone problems. Better than the alternative, which is if you screw up it's a problem for all eternity.
I see a lot of crypto as a scam, but immutable distributed ledger technology sure seems like a societal defense mechanism against authoritarianism.
Without being too specific about the who, I think your concern boils down to:
1) authoritarian leaders like crypto that they create themselves because it's not regulated and they can use it to raise funds from the gullable and uninformed.
2) authoritarian leaders who can move markets tolerate crypto that is decentralized because it's also unregulated and they can trade against their own words and actions. (E.g. short and then cause a crash, buy and then cause a spike, etc.) Very few authoritarian leaders have this kind of influence, and as adoption increases the influence one person can have over the market will diminish.
I think these authoritarian benefits are temporary artefacts of where it is in its lifecycle. The technology resists authoritarianism the more decentralized and ubiquitous it is.
I once worked with a guy who was an Ethereum "millionaire" which I knew because he couldn't stop telling people. He was a nice guy, just really, super annoying. Anyways, he was so well off he sold his house and bought an RV and was going around the country, family in tow, doing whatever. I don't really know what to believe there. Wealthy people don't usually sell everything they own and go live in an RV. Who knows?
crypto assets like BTC and ETH are insanely volatile, I agree with this, don't put your retirement money there.
crypto coins issued by an entity, like in the article, you can trust them as much as you trust the entity, the difference with electronic or paper money is that it cannot be created in private, the ledger is public and it cannot be modified.