[KSteffensen]

> In the case of Ethereum, digital scarcity secured by a blockchain enables a turing complete state machine that the world can use

This sentence is completely opaque to me. I have no idea what you are trying to say.

> In the most basic terms, this will remove clearing houses for transactions of asset

So I will be able to go to Starbucks, buy a cup of coffee, pay for it with Ethereum and not involve my bank?

> Imagine building a stream of passive income based on the shares you've earned in projects you've worked on throughout your life.

I can currently buy shares in companies I work for. Why is Ethereum different (other than I don't understand it)?

[gnarcoregrizz]

No KYC

Offline account creation

Instantly liquid programmable assets

Programmable banking

Financial censorship resistant

Micro finance

Anyone can use it, it’s surprisingly simple

You could create your own company+shares if you want and they can be instantly available on any market. Ever tried trading a penny stock, or an international stock? It takes forever to open an account at a brokerage where they may or may not allow you to trade certain types of assets, or at certain times. Trades can be reversed and assets confiscated. It’s a million times easier with crypto. Yes it’s a “dark forest” for now (buyer beware) but there are some legitimate platforms like aave and uniswap. Install metamask and check it out! Feels incredibly futuristic to me

[KSteffensen]

> No KYC

I don't know what KYC is but I'm not US based. Sounds like some fee that's peculiar to US banking environment (which I have heard is extraordinarily bureaucratic).

>Instantly liquid programmable assets

Another example of opaque blockchain jargon. Maybe it makes sense, but not as a way to convert the sceptical.

>Programmable banking

I can currently program transfers to happen regularly every month on a certain date, or every tuesday or on soem other timebased trigger. This pretty much covers my personal needs. Everything else I want to double check before approving. I program for a living. Looking around at my family, I don't see anyone capable of writing a simple Python program in order to e.g. pay a bill and my wife has a PhD.

> Financial censorship resistant

Is this a feature? Don't we as a society want a way to control e.g. drug lords and tax evaders moving their money around?

I have never tried buying penny stocks or any type of stock, but is it really such a big deal that you have to wait a day or week before you can place your bets? And that your bets are limited to the roulette and not the blackjack?

[microtherion]

> I don't know what KYC is

KYC = Know Your Customer

> but I'm not US based

When sufficiently large sums of money are involved, it's hard to conduct legal business and not play by US rules. Swiss banks discovered this, at considerable expense to themselves and their customers. Cryptocurrency exchanges are going through the same discovery process right now, in both the legal and the philosophical sense.

> > Instantly liquid programmable assets

The unfortunate property of the liquidity of cryptocurrency assets is that they have a tendency to get siphoned away or evaporating in ways not anticipated by their owner.

> > Financial censorship resistant

> Is this a feature? Don't we as a society want a way to control e.g. drug lords and tax evaders moving their money around?

That's precisely one of the questions at stake here. Some folks appear to pine for the benevolent overlordship of the likes of, say, Ross Ulbricht.

[selectodude]

>I don't know what KYC is but I'm not US based. Sounds like some fee that's peculiar to US banking environment (which I have heard is extraordinarily bureaucratic).

KYC stands for Know Your Customer, basically anti-money laundering regulations. Banks need to have a decent grasp on whether or not the money they're working with was "earned" legitimately.

>Is this a feature? Don't we as a society want a way to control e.g. drug lords and tax evaders moving their money around?

See above :)

Disclaimer: I think cryptocurrencies are a spillover from a couple decades of inflationary monetary policy from the fed causing people to seek yield in more and more esoteric forms. I also think they're stupid.

[sickygnar]

KYC = know your customer = anti money-laundering. Yes, it is bureacratic, and it can be a pain for regular, non-money-laundering customers. With crypto, you can instantly create an account offline and trade around the globe.

As far as programmable banking, I meant it in the sense that people can create "bank apps", aka contracts. It goes way beyond simple routing of funds, since it's turing complete.

Financial censorship is a feature, since the finance industry does exclude people and countries. For example, in the US you need to have a $1M net worth or something to be an "accredited investor" which grants you certain privileges. Ethereum doesn't make such distinctions - you can interact with and create any financial product/contract (depending on its rules). Brokerages also regularly halt trading, and make you answer a bunch of questions before trading certain financial products. There are 2 sides to the financial censorship coin so I'm not going to pretend this is always a great feature.

I'm focusing on finance because so far it is the main use case for ethereum. There are a lot of decentralized financial products and derivates now, that even trade in a "USD"-backed crypto (USDC, DAI). Honestly, it all works pretty well, but its not without its downsides and pitfalls.

One of my favorite things about the whole thing is that it gets rid of ACCOUNT CREATION. It's so nice to visit a website/app and just approve it with your wallet. It's the ultimate SSO - there is no email verification crap, its all so instant and frictionless to play with financial products that would otherwise be a bureacratic maze. It's even easier than logging into hacker news.

[KSteffensen]

Anti-money laundering regulations are a good thing to me. I want this, even though it means I had to get a passport made for my 4-year old son so that the bank could see he actually existed and his account total of $50 was not being used by some ukrainian oligarch.

I also think it's ok to put in some speed bumps and force a tiny bit of due diligence before allowing people to gamble away their savings. I'm assuming there is a different risk profile to trading Kazakstani stocks as compared to German stocks, and I think people should be made aware of what they are getting into.

[literallycancer]

Wirecard and Volkswagen are German companies, you can buy their stock easily.

[Acrobatic_Road]

>Instantly liquid programmable assets

Since nobody really answered this one I'll explain it.

Let's say you create 1,000,000 Blah-Tokens. Problem: your new asset has 0 liquidity. Right? Because there isn't a market for it. If you get it listed somewhere, there still won't be a market until people start placing buy and sell orders. So, can ethereum fix this? Yes! With an automatic market maker like uniswap. Put your 1M fresh tokens in a pool alongside some ETH. We'll say this pool will obey the law xy=k, x and y being the two tokens. We'll also say that the exchange rate shall be x/y.

Now anyone can come along and transact with you and the liquidity is already there! No order book is required. The price is quoted and tokens are added/removed from pool in accordance with xy=k. You get a fee for being nice enough to supply the liquidity. Oh, and anyone can supply their own tokens and split the fees with you. Wa-la.

[KSteffensen]

So liquidity here means whether there is a demand for my Blah-tokens, whether people are willing to buy it for their hard earned cash, gold bars, coffee beans or whatever.

How does Ethereum help create a demand for my Blah-tokens? I can already open a web-shop that sells Blah-tokens. I'm fairly sure the demand will be very low, though. Please explain further how an 'automatic market maker like uniswap' will create demand for my Blah-tokens.

[literallycancer]

You should probably read up on how automated market makers work. It's going to take a long time to get to the interesting parts if you just guess randomly and expect people to correct you.

[Acrobatic_Road]

It doesn't create demand, it just makes it liquid which would otherwise be a tremendous hurdle.

Liquid markets enable demand though.