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by ecoeconomy 1588 days ago
The decentralized aspect of blockchains is mostly smoke and mirrors. Moxy Marlinspike recently wrote a really good blog post about all the hidden central points of failure in the ecosystem but it doesn't look like anyone was paying any attention.
2 comments

These are the wild west days of crypto finance. Fortunes will be made and lost. There’s hype, fads, bubbles, and spectacular blowouts. The crypto finance tech ecosystem will evolve, consolidate, then eventually be diluted and homogenized into standard investment frameworks, and tamed by onerous oversight and regulations. In the meantime, if you can’t resist the urge to place a bet then don’t bet more than you can afford to lose without regret.
And ultimately, every sort of trust system requires bootstrapping on points of centralization.

People are like 'well yeah obviously' but no, not obviously in everyway to everyone. And the statistics will not save you when someone finds the next oopsie that can steal your investment, and there will always be a next one. Neither will any institutions.

What's worse, crypto is actively marketed as "trustless".