RE: https://mastodon.social/@aboutsignal/116296187044136063
This is freaking awesome. The amount of work the global cryptographic community is putting into keeping our conversations out of the hands of our adversaries is monumental and under-appreciated. Respect. If you’re technical at all, scan through the paper summaries.
Really?
I do with with giddy delight in knowing how much it annoys the person.
@inthehands but seriously, what's wrong with using cryptography to safeguard financial transactions? Or with the idea of decentralising finance?
The grifting boring apes have really given that basically decent idea some seriously bad rep, I get that, but the underlying algorithms (also a tainted word now 🤪) are pretty cool I think.
I wish we could decouple the maths from the crimes...
I have no problem with digital currency. The problem is that cryptocurrency takes a minimal understanding of economics and accounting, applies really crappy scaling, and insists that it's the perfect solution to everything. (It's not. By a lot.)
Is there value in "the block chain"? Yes. Of course. Not at Crypto's scale, but it's already in use for things like parts tracking. Could you tie financial info to it? Sure, but then you're dealing with unregulated speculative markets (basically modern beanie babies, POGs, or tulips), and the grifters are gonna grift.
Hilariously, we already have a well handled, fully understood, decentralized, and anonymous financial system. It's called cash. It's just hilarious to me how tech-bros insist on re-inventing things "but with computers".
@jrconlin "central" in central bank makes me think cash is not decentralized at all. Or grifters gonna grift, as you said.
I tried printing my own money as a kid, and the older I get, the more I believe that was the best idea after all 😁
No, it's not. By design. Because you want it to be.
Right, so let me see if I can explain this. It's true that "money" is a concept. It's chit that you use to exchange value because bear skins and fruit don't fit in mailboxes. That's the point where the crypto folk stopped paying attention to economics.
The thing we figured out around 7,000 BC or so is that you want stability in the exchange. This is the ECON201 class. Stability means that the the $1 you have today is worth about $1 tomorrow. It means that your chit carries value. Having that tied to a large body (e.g. a country or a union) means that risk is diversified ensuring that the value also remains constant enough that you can use your chit as actual currency. This is why chit offered by larger entities (be it countries, empires, federations or hell, Canada Tire) has more intrinsic value than, say, you passing around IOUs in crayon.
Finance REQUIRES stability, above portability in some cases (see Yap Rai stones), but that stability allows for things like investments and growth. Crypto does not have that. It can't have that. It's a medium of exchange, and a crap one at that, because you do not want to invest in it, for the same reason you don't want to invest in Turkey right now, or the reason I have a Zimbabwe $100,000,000,000,000 bill hanging on wall.
(Mind you, it's also why a lot of folk are going to discover why I am horrified about the Treasury's recent announcement, and with nothing backing crypto, a lot of folk with digital currency are in for one hell of a surprise too.)
Tim Bray
Bodil
Paul Cantrell
tom jennings
j-r conlin
iwein