Oddbean new post about login | logout You can't verify that the federation members aren't just sybilling, can you?
In Fediment, the mitigation is that the guardians are a set of designated known community leaders. It seems that Sybil attacks would be more of a risk in anonymous federations.
Known community leaders are vulnerable to regulator pressure as they are obviously money transmitters. Choose your poison.
Nothing stops people in oppressive jurisdictions from using federations with community leaders who reside in other safe jurisdictions. I’m also expecting signing schemes where you don’t know who the actual guardians are, but you know that they are within a specific set of trusted individuals.
this is one of those arenas where people really underestimate the "then they fight you" stage. Fiat hegemony is global. They're not going to let a few pesky nerds provide other options just because they live in Romania. Iow there a very few jurisdictions that will not bow down when threatened with exclusion from the current monetary system. Like you indicate, its all going to come down to decentralized anonymous communities. Everyone 40 and younger needs to learn key control and good online privacy habits.
Yes, true. I’m hopeful because I can see the world shifting to more multipolar. This makes it more likely that countries will compete against each other.
Concerned this is still underestimating their resolve. If Russia or China tries to oppose USD hemegony in any meaningful way, there will be a kinetic war and it will not be good.
Russia announced using cryptocurrency for international payments, and has been doing well despite the sanctions, and the majority of Chinese exports are now paid in RMB. There probably will probably be a (hotter) war but that should decentralize things further. The US has a sovereign debt crisis brewing. I’m not saying there won’t be challenges and attacks. I’m just saying that I’m watching things moving towards decentralization and I’m encouraged by it.
They are at the same time cracking down on their own citizens using crypto no?
Maybe? I don’t really know what’s happening on the ground. My friends in China say that anyone who wants to buy bitcoin there can. They’ve recently approved the ETF in Hong Kong. I hear that folks are still mining within China. It sounds like Russia is discouraging it for average citizens but we’ve recently seen some legislative progress there too. Not sure if there any actual crackdowns. Things seem to be making positive progress.
What is great is hashrate distributed between enemies.
Absolutely! 💯
It's worthwhile to note that Russia announced its *central bank is allowing "approved entities" to conduct (no doubt heavily surveiled) transactions. Not really a great example of decentralization. https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/russian-bitcoin-mining-payments-law/
Some positive progress. Yes, not yet embracing the decentralized aspect for average folks but it seems that they recognize the decentralization benefits, at least for themselves as a country against the US and Europe. The benefits for Russia are significant. As they move to a bitcoin standard for international trade, I suspect it will percolate throughout their society. Maybe they look like El Salvador eventually. Bitcoin changes people.
I appreciate the positivity but there's not really any evidence they're moving to a bitcoin standard even for trade. And certainly none that its going to percolate through their society.
Zoom out to appreciate how far we’ve come. Civilizational change takes time. They just approved bitcoin for international trade last week? What do you anticipate will happen when they realize, like we do… …it’s freedom from seizure and censorship? …that they can receive digital verified payment for billions in minutes? …that they no longer have to invest in foreign fiat bonds? …that it’s making their country wealthier and more prosperous? I suspect they’ll start using it more often.
In other words, you just hope that politics and governments will solve this? Hope in politics and governments should never be part of Bitcoin's security model and the fact that they're being in competition doesn't change anything. This has never worked out. In fact, governments know very well to stick together, when it comes to defending their monopoly on money (i.e. look at the FATF members, look at who pays into the IWF fund or the BIS members and which central banks from how many countries come together for a meeting) . If governments didn't want to steal our purchasing power, surveil and impose capital controls and tax upon us, why would they need Bitcoin for that? They could just stop doing all that shit. They don't refrain from doing it, because they don't want to. Hell, they're cracking down on their own government cash money. Why the hell should they embrace their citizens doing anonymous, untraceable and borderless payments? This doesn't make any sense.
Then why bother 🤷🏼 With ecash, game theory is borked unless dark market murky mints or mints being able to transcended regulatory burden, such as a country. Creating sovereign soft currencies with fedi makes me bullish, the rest seems pointless.
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It's the quality of federation and how the funds are secured. So far I wouldn't trust the federations being discussed. Early days tho. Liquid go to great pains to secure their federation, for now that seems like a better solution to me. Or trust a high signal team, like Galoy and Blink.
Yep, expecting all types of federations and some rug-pulls too. I think that they mature into something that looks like credit unions eventually.
National federated stablecoins to be used by nations and wiggle out of fiat hegamony. El sal dollar rather than USD. We could use in Wales to create a Welsh pound, and escape Bank of England. People get stable and private money, that's harder to corrupt than current fiat.