Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by throw101010 1276 days ago
While you address crypto in general I would suggest that instead you go at the root of it: Bitcoin. The "customer" issue is well identified there, cash was already poised to disappear and any form for peer-to-peer exchange of value with a currency will eventually go with it. CBDCs will replace this, whether we like it or not and the writings of this have been on the walls for a long time. If you don't think this is true please observe countries which are well on their way to become cashless like Sweden or even China.

The idea "for the customer" of Bitcoin is to provided them with a digital alternative currency, an opt-in one, not mandated or controlled by a state. The previous attempts like Digicash, E-gold and few others all had the same fate and lasted very short periods of time because they did not combine a strong and independently verifiable data structure with a way to truely be the basis and incentive of a decentralized P2P network.

Bitcoin solved these issues by taking the best of many of the preceding failed experiments. This implies some compromises that apparently make you think it's unsuitable technology applied to a problem that could so easily be solved with a simple database... but that would be misidentifying the issue it is trying to solve, maybe you are not the current "customer" for it (yet), maybe you don't care about P2P transactions without intermediaries, that cannot be censored... but when (note: it isn't an "if") your government will tell you that you cannot pay for x or y with their CBDC which will be the only currency you will be allowed to earn/spend, then maybe you will rethink this position. And the minor inconvenience of Bitcoin will seem suddenly more acceptable (hopefully by that time progress like the Lightning Network will have ironed these out).

And again, do not take my word for it, observe the cases where Bitcoin has already been used and useful under oppressive regimes and in war times.