[cornyNetHandle]

What I never understood with the blockchain is the idea that it would change the politics of finance in favour of the little guy.

As far as I can tell, financial institutions are exceedingly well practiced at co-opting new monetary systems, as they have been doing exactly that for a very long time, so I never thought that a new model of ledger was ever going to really faze them.

[Certhas]

It should be a bonanza for them. Unregulated market. Every trade/contract they want.

[Demiurge]

I don't think anyone wants unregulated markets for everyone, just like no one really wants anarchy. There are criminal, or rebellious elements in every group, but co-beneficial arbitrage is what we've evolved to.

[cornyNetHandle]

Do you mean anomie? I know a few Kropotkin fans who are fairly certain that they want anarchy.

[ummjackson]

Absolutely, and that's what is happening right now. I honestly don't have a solution for this problem... other than trying to make it as least appealing to these institutions are possible.

[cornyNetHandle]

The only 'solution' I can see to this problem, is to develop an alternative to the floating monetary unit, of solving the calculation of exchanging goods and labour.

Money is useful, because it solves for the 'n' of a given trade by using all the pricing of transactions as a form of parallel computation, so the fact that it may often give sub-optimal results is outweighed by the fact that it has such a low overhead, compared to the traditional alternatives, such as planned resource based economies, which have historically been plagued by both sub-optimal results and a very high overhead.

The revolutionary work in economics isn't being done on the blockchain, or in any other new currencies for that matter. It is being done in the world of AI and big-data, when applied to logistics.

If you really want to revolutionise money, you have to try and make it obsolete.

edit: Also, seeking sources of funding may be problematic for such an enterprise - "Please can you invest in this plan to destroy capitalism." - being a particularly difficult sell.

Perhaps if it can be reframed as - "Please can you invest in this plan to destroy capitalism that also has excellent quarterly returns." - then it might get somewhere.

[avs733]

>The only 'solution' I can see to this problem, is to develop an alternative to the floating monetary unit, of solving the calculation of exchanging goods and labour.

So...communism?

[cornyNetHandle]

That was an attempt at it, though one made in bad faith by many of the leading proponents. If you are genuinely making something obsolete, you don't usually need to go to the bother of banning it.

[bitoneill]

They are doing that now with Ripple/XRP but I don't see it as a threat but more as a welcome competitor to other crypto currencies. Not every coin needs to be decentralized and anonymous.

[C_J_H]

Wouldn't the new model dramatically lower the cost of entry into that industry?