[brendanw]

I am excited about the technology. I had taken a light look at the space 4-5 years ago and did not form a strong impression. I didn't take a look at the technology again until last September.

One of the topics I enjoyed deep diving on the most was the lightning network. The two pain points I observed for lightning were: (1) It takes a non-trivial amount of energy to understand hashed time lock contracts well enough to be able to prove the concept to yourself. Not having as easy mastery of a topic off the bat leads to feeling less secure about one's ability to reason about security. (2) The specter of rising on-chain fees for commitment transactions to open payment channels.

With regard to Nano, I was happy to see a different approach to the same problem that was more intuitive. I run a small business and am waiting for the desktop and mobile wallets to come out of beta before I offer the ability to pay with Nano.

I'd be happy if something came along that was better than Nano. I have it on my todo list to look into Byteball Bytes. I am optimistic about larger scale benefits that society will enjoy from the cryptocurrency space if certain projects are successful (eg improved ease of financial auditing, information-sharing platforms with strongly reduced odds of astroturfing, disappearance of credit card fees, increased financial transparency, reduced exchange fees when traveling, banking for the unbanked, etc). Since I am optimistic about the societal benefits from the space as a whole, I want to see more developers interested in getting involved.

[nosuchthing]

Thanks for explaining where you're coming from.

It's a weird space. I see the general concept behind cryptocurrencies as bringing the same benefits you've outlined and from a technology and software perspective these projects are fascinating.

My contention with most of these projects and users is that in these specific implementations nearly every single one of the cryptocoin projects are designed to enable oligarchical wealth extraction from downstream investors - especially in the case of uninformed users/speculators who join the network later.

The question becomes of sustainability - if there's no underlying value to the asset and it relies on speculation and the supply is heavily centralized among a small pool of early adopters than there will likely be a point where buy pressure runs dry and most of the late adopters will be unable to exchange the same amount of wealth they traded into the system.