[foofoo4u]

The ubiquity of social media has made me more reserved with the embrace of new technologies. The promise of social media was that by having everyone in the world connected, it would develop increased understanding, compassion, and empathy for each other. It seems the very opposite is happening. It seems to amplify anger and hatred. It is driving polarization. After observing this hard-learned lesson, one of which we are still in the midsts of resolving, I now have a different attitude when a new technology is proposed to transform society. We nerds/geeks love technology. We are excited about the potentials for improvement they can bring to our society. But we are often overly optimistic. We neglect all the ways in which things can also go wrong. Instead, we should have a nuanced discussion about the pros and cons of a potential technology before we adopt it. We should decide if the benefits outweigh the potential risks. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general promises the benefits of decentralization: privacy, anonymity, access to the global economy, immune to seizure, transparency, etc. But there are also potential pitfalls that can be catastrophic to society if they were to occur. I am not a bitcoin/crypto expert. But we have plenty of smart people here that are. My question to you is, of all the things that can go wrong with the adoption of crypto, where it to happen at a national or global scale, would it be worth it compared to the existing model? And are you certain that you have thought of all possible things that can go wrong? We likely don’t know what we don’t know until we adopt it. Our existing model of handling money has had its ups and downs through the course of the past several hundred years, but at least it is a system that we know works and has brought about great prosperity to the world. We’ve implemented safeguards (laws, regulations, policy) along the way as we come to discover pitfalls with the model, slowly improving it with time. Are we certain that our existing model is so poor as to justify an adoption of a radically new system?