Oddbean

My argument is two parts. a) It’s not money. Because many of these things I use are not “money”, they are decentralized businesses doing a service that take in revenue. We have to separate purely sending funds and a programmable commodity coordinator doing a business. So when you’re attempting to haze it (weakly and failing), you’re essentially trying to force the use of traditional businesses that are corrupt and reduce end-user freedom, such as Cloudflare, WhatsApp, Google Drive, Gmail, and lending from banks. b) Bitcoin isn’t either. On top of that, because Bitcoin’s blockchain was purposefully crippled in a way Satoshi did not want, the market is clearly disputing that it’s the best money. Now you can type the word “shit”, but that doesn’t convince someone to want to use it. If you go into Gucci, they don’t call the other purses “shitbags”… they win with adding value and creating desire. Today Bitcoin is winning, but not as money. It’s winning as a BlackRock ETF. And people don’t feel comfortable doing KYC then withdrawing it from the exchange to then spend it as money with tax effects that can be seen. And that's why your attempt to pull the moral high ground isn't working.

I got a little lost with your response but I'll speak to 2 things. I agree that the 1st world tax laws currently make it not very good money in many situations and for most people in the 1st world, it's not good in most situations. I don't agree that an ETF with less than 4% of circulating supply is the only way it's winning. A big part about what makes a money useful is being able to spend it in more places. Most places in the world only accept fiat. So the way that I see it, we are currently trying to build out the Network so for more groups of people, it can become better money. Hopefully the tax laws improve in the mean time🤷

We are having two debates. The first is “non-money” crypto, which collects revenue as a business. For example Arweave collects revenue into a pool to distribute for a service. This isn’t “just units of currency”, its a decentralized business. (And yes we can debate how decentralized) Our second debate is Bitcoin the best cash. Do you agree that the purpose of cryptocurrency is self-sovereign control? That people should control the private keys to their own funds?

1. Is it impossible for arweave to work without their creating their own money? If so, I'm willing to learn more. 2. Bitcoin is currently terrible cash for me because I only know 1 person that accepts it from all the people i buy from often.

Right, they need to create a programmable unit to follow the rules. We’re going to be releasing some articles on it in the next week. There’s also docs.arweave.org with a lot of good info. Bitcoin lightning could be good money if people actually self-hosted their liquidity and owned their private keys, but these are big obstacles for the average person. Fighting Bitcoin lightning vs Monero vs others, is in my opinion not that great, it just divides the community. Instead, we focus on accepting all of them, and encouraging people to get off banks.

Some quick suggestions. For decentralization, check out IPFS or LBRY. While IPFS isn't specifically a blockchain, it does make use of blockchain for its Filecoin token which incentivizes people to contribute to the IPFS network (which, itself, offers a potentially better version of the internet in the long run). Meanwhile, LBRY runs off of the LBRY blockchain and allows users to upload content that's decentralized and solely under the control of the person who uploads it. It can't just be taken down arbitrarily. And in terms of governance, that's the area where things are still developing but it's related to the concept of a DAO and the utility purposes that NFTs CAN offer. A DAO can allow decentralized and democratic governance of an app or organization. NFTs don't have to just be "owning a JPG", they can be tokens that offer an individual voting rights, among many other purposes. Again, this area is developing and far from perfect but it offers a lot of potential. Despite that last one being a WIP, the first two are objectively ethical and important purposes that non-Bitcoin blockchains can offer, and there are many other examples as well.

Considering the fact that money is central to the human existence, it's usually not completely separate. IPFS, as a network, functions on its own without Filecoin. However, with Filecoin, it incentivizes more people to host, making the network stronger. Voluntary hosting can only do so much. This is similar to how Session, as a messaging app, is just an end-to-end encrypted messaging app running over an onion routing network, and you never have to even think about the crypto side of things, yet the nodes in that onion routing network are hosted by people who stake the OXEN cryptocurrency (though they're switching over to a new token called Session Token). By staking this token, it locks down that node while also earning the host some income over time. This reduces the likelihood of sybil attacks (one of Tor's only inherent anonymity weaknesses) because governments would have to stake OXEN/Session Token and, well, the blockchain transparency means we'd be more likely to know about it as a community. In terms of LBRY, they probably would have been better off NOT having their token (LBC) since that's what the SEC went after to shut down the company, but the network lives on because it's driven by the LBRY blockchain. It's also what allowed Odysee, which was once just LBRY's main web front-end (and spun off into its own company ~2-3 years ago), to regroup and start switching over to a new framework that's operating on Arweave. I can also give another example of blockchain being used like this: MeWe. Previously just a centralized, privacy-friendly alternative to Facebook, they've recently completed a migration over to Frequency, using Decentralized Social Network Protocol (DSNP). Frequency is specifically designed to be a utility blockchain that hosts decentralized social networks. Frequency tokens aren't worth any money, yet they will eventually offer voting power over the way the blockchain is governed over time. In general, I totally get the skepticism over crypto. I also agree that Bitcoin is undoubtedly the best cryptocurrency and blockchain. However, we also have to be fair and recognize some of the weaknesses, as well as the fact that there are definitely still ways that blockchain and altcoins can be useful to a future digital society. Not all of them are ponzi memecoins, some of them have some really awesome potential that we can use side-by-side with Bitcoin.