I think blockchain, as a technology and as concept, had some promise, but those damn buzzword vultures killed anything it had going for it.
Crypto’s main draw was being decentralized and unregulated. Once that was taken away, it just became another speculative investment. NFTs as a token of ownership for things that actually have inherent value like a car, or a house, makes sense on paper, but would require a lot of standardization before it became feasible digital asset management (i.e. reduce blockchain theft scams). Ownership if a jpeg stollen from deviantart doesn’t even make sense on paper and I’m convinced those prices were mainly driven by money laundering.
Imagine, if you will, a blockchain interface, where the container the user interacts with is a bank-like system, and the blockchain account password is tied into the “bank” account itself. The user would then be able to interact with it in a mostly familiar and secure way, and though it wouldn’t eliminate scams, it would certainly reduce them.
Now obviously there’s a lot of “if, and’s or but’s” with what I just said as a “top-of-my-head” concept, but if you’ve ever worked in systems engineering, you’d understand that you start with a high-level concept that’s meant to play to a technology’s andantages, and keep working through the issues in the design process, either by working in existant technology that can mitigate issues, or designing to systemicallt avoid those issues.
My point is, blockchain’s strict security could be considered a massive advantage, but it never got the benefit of tech firms to look at it objectively and figure out a way to work with that in a rational manner, because of how quickly it became a super-hypey technology. And I 100% blame Silicon Valley tech bros for that.
Cryptocurrency is basically like digital cash. No one can control how you spend it, or take it away. But you can’t undo transactions without tracking down the recipient, and getting them to give it back. If you don’t trust anyone, cash and crypto are the only real ways to pay for stuff.
Well, it does in some economies, but not the ones that cryptocurrency advocates actually choose to live in. If you live in Menlo Park or Toronto or Phoenix or Dublin, you live in conditions that would not be possible without a stable “real money” economy.
This is exactly the same thing as cash. If you buy a major currency, like usd, euro, bitcoin, ethereum, etc, then it will be much more stable than some random currency. Would you trust a cash currency that was created by some random dude in an alleyway?
Honestly I never bought that cryptocurrencies could remain unregulated long, there was just no reason for governments to want it to stay that way. It probably took more time for the regulator to catch up than I initially thought, but the writing was on the wall from day 1.
For NFTs; yeah, I see what you mean. And digital asset management don’t feel to me like it particularly needed that kind of disruption. Like, there isn’t significant business upside or value to my house title’s ownership being stored in the blockchain, rather than in my county’s private database like it is today. And since there wasn’t a reason for people to assign any perceived business value to the NFT vs the private DB record, therefore the NFT had no value, by definition. I could just never see it.
I think blockchain, as a technology and as concept, had some promise, but those damn buzzword vultures killed anything it had going for it.
Crypto’s main draw was being decentralized and unregulated. Once that was taken away, it just became another speculative investment. NFTs as a token of ownership for things that actually have inherent value like a car, or a house, makes sense on paper, but would require a lot of standardization before it became feasible digital asset management (i.e. reduce blockchain theft scams). Ownership if a jpeg stollen from deviantart doesn’t even make sense on paper and I’m convinced those prices were mainly driven by money laundering.
But does it though? A blockchain is the ultimate zero tolerance policy. Lost your password? Grandma gave the house to a scammer? Too fucking bad
Imagine, if you will, a blockchain interface, where the container the user interacts with is a bank-like system, and the blockchain account password is tied into the “bank” account itself. The user would then be able to interact with it in a mostly familiar and secure way, and though it wouldn’t eliminate scams, it would certainly reduce them.
Now obviously there’s a lot of “if, and’s or but’s” with what I just said as a “top-of-my-head” concept, but if you’ve ever worked in systems engineering, you’d understand that you start with a high-level concept that’s meant to play to a technology’s andantages, and keep working through the issues in the design process, either by working in existant technology that can mitigate issues, or designing to systemicallt avoid those issues.
My point is, blockchain’s strict security could be considered a massive advantage, but it never got the benefit of tech firms to look at it objectively and figure out a way to work with that in a rational manner, because of how quickly it became a super-hypey technology. And I 100% blame Silicon Valley tech bros for that.
Cryptocurrency is basically like digital cash. No one can control how you spend it, or take it away. But you can’t undo transactions without tracking down the recipient, and getting them to give it back. If you don’t trust anyone, cash and crypto are the only real ways to pay for stuff.
Cash doesn’t leave you holding worthless numbers when the founders cut and run.
Well, it does in some economies, but not the ones that cryptocurrency advocates actually choose to live in. If you live in Menlo Park or Toronto or Phoenix or Dublin, you live in conditions that would not be possible without a stable “real money” economy.
This is exactly the same thing as cash. If you buy a major currency, like usd, euro, bitcoin, ethereum, etc, then it will be much more stable than some random currency. Would you trust a cash currency that was created by some random dude in an alleyway?
Honestly I never bought that cryptocurrencies could remain unregulated long, there was just no reason for governments to want it to stay that way. It probably took more time for the regulator to catch up than I initially thought, but the writing was on the wall from day 1.
For NFTs; yeah, I see what you mean. And digital asset management don’t feel to me like it particularly needed that kind of disruption. Like, there isn’t significant business upside or value to my house title’s ownership being stored in the blockchain, rather than in my county’s private database like it is today. And since there wasn’t a reason for people to assign any perceived business value to the NFT vs the private DB record, therefore the NFT had no value, by definition. I could just never see it.
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