I am always amazed how little knowledge and cargo culting of 2017-era bitcoin knowledge is prevalent on HN. Whatever you monetary feelings towards crypto is, the technical aspects are fascinating. But most of the time HN gets it wrong.
TBH, the more you know about the technical aspects the less fascinating it gets.
Smart contracts and stablecoins by extention sound technologically interesting, but at the end you always rely on trusting people.
The core of the financial system is about managing trust and therefore a social issue, not a tech issue. It'd be nice if more tech nerds would internalize that tech can't solve social issues on it's own
Stablecoins are centralized and of course rely on trust - you need someone to exchange whatever asset they promise to guard for your tokens. I find them fascinating (in conjunction with the lighnint/taproot assets over bitcoin) and not necessarily unsafe.
In the freebanking era that the US had (before the FED was founded) every bank emmitet their own dollar. And, of course, there were banks over-issuing and bank runs left people without their assets. But that was before we had free flow of information and the internet. In todays world you can monitor and trade stablecoins, market cap, exchange rates in a freebanking system in sub-seconds. Any erosion in trust will immediately result in price fluctuations. We need a digital freebanking era, and it is a shame the genius act fell through. Exporting the dollar to people without access to banking would benefit the US (but I get that it currently mostly benefits trumps family).
I don't think you're using that term right. Not knowing how something works doesn't mean you're cargo culting.
People are not so knowledgeable about the other coins because the whole point of magic internet money is that it can't be controlled by anyone. If your entire account exists in some box somewhere under the control of some entity, how is that any different from a bank (which also mostly doesn't operate on cash but just moves bytes around)?
I am always amazed how little knowledge and cargo culting of 2017-era bitcoin knowledge is prevalent on HN. Whatever you monetary feelings towards crypto is, the technical aspects are fascinating. But most of the time HN gets it wrong.
TBH, the more you know about the technical aspects the less fascinating it gets.
Smart contracts and stablecoins by extention sound technologically interesting, but at the end you always rely on trusting people.
The core of the financial system is about managing trust and therefore a social issue, not a tech issue. It'd be nice if more tech nerds would internalize that tech can't solve social issues on it's own
Stablecoins are centralized and of course rely on trust - you need someone to exchange whatever asset they promise to guard for your tokens. I find them fascinating (in conjunction with the lighnint/taproot assets over bitcoin) and not necessarily unsafe.
In the freebanking era that the US had (before the FED was founded) every bank emmitet their own dollar. And, of course, there were banks over-issuing and bank runs left people without their assets. But that was before we had free flow of information and the internet. In todays world you can monitor and trade stablecoins, market cap, exchange rates in a freebanking system in sub-seconds. Any erosion in trust will immediately result in price fluctuations. We need a digital freebanking era, and it is a shame the genius act fell through. Exporting the dollar to people without access to banking would benefit the US (but I get that it currently mostly benefits trumps family).
> cargo culting
I don't think you're using that term right. Not knowing how something works doesn't mean you're cargo culting.
People are not so knowledgeable about the other coins because the whole point of magic internet money is that it can't be controlled by anyone. If your entire account exists in some box somewhere under the control of some entity, how is that any different from a bank (which also mostly doesn't operate on cash but just moves bytes around)?