But in an increasingly computational world it seems useful, probably inevitable, that digital programmable money will play a bigger part in the future.
So do we want p2p borderless networks, built on a history of foss and the internet, with varying mixtures of privacy and transparency? or do we want government digital coins that will likely be fully surveilled and centrally controlled?
which is more resilient? which is harder to corrupt? which provides everyday people with liberty and control? which removes power from rulers and pushes it to participants?
"We should keep cash" doesn't seem like a reasonable stance to take at this point. We need to defend our rights to publish free open source code, to freely associate over networks with other individuals and organisations, and to maintain/develop our privacy in our private interactions.
I dont see the version made by the government respecting those concerns, it is too easy to throw up a patriot act, to say "what about the paedophiles/terrorists/drugdealers" and suddenly law abiding citizens have their rights restricted and power becomes ever more centralised and hierarchical.
It is surprising to me to come to a site called hackernews, and see such little hacker spirit. It really feels that "crypto is icky" idea has taken hold so strongly that people are happy to give up their rights because the people they dont like will be less profitable. That is incredibly sad.
It seems if you post a SAAS website for finding rare sneakers you get HN praise as though that is peak culture, but if you choose to hack on money, ownership, provision of public goods, voting, borderless systems, and anonymous organisations, to actually address what power and democracy looks like in our future you are too close the dirty people. No we must stay as we are, we must trust the institutions, because everyone was happy before bitcoin, right?...
This is the real reason people get so irrationally mad about crypto. There's no difference between the importance of encrypted communication and encrypted transactions, except that there's money involved. There's many people using web3 hype and bullshit as a grift, and many (most) people who see crypto as a speculative bubble they can get in on but neither of these things change the fact that it's the only trustless form of digitial payment we have. Terrorists can kill thousands of people, governments can kill millions, so I'm much more worried about one than the other.
And this is why it's important not to build a system which will allow sanctions evasion by Russia or North Korea. One crypto advocate already forgot that and ended up jailed for complicity in North Korean sanctions breaking.
https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10999#...).
(French government source)
You should not have knife at home, because you could kill somebody with one. <-> We should allow full privacy on crypto, because the government could kill cash.
