[TheDudeMan]

> "a fine metaphor for what ails crypto as a whole. The technology is cryptographically secure, but not at all robust to much simpler betrayals, hacks, etc."

I think you mean "crypto exchanges". Cryptocurrency itself is not subject to betrayals/hacks, for the most part (depending on how dumb you are at key management). And depending on how badly you selected your cryptocurrency (pro tip: just pick Bitcoin).

[tsimionescu]

Bitcoin is actually a perfect example, since it's impossible to do anything with it except moving it from one account to another without requiring trust of the other party.

[TheDudeMan]

Sending it is kinda the main point of it.

Also, you can mine fresh bitcoin without trusting another party.

[tsimionescu]

Normally, the main point of money is to exchange it for goods. But you can't securely and trustlessly exchange bitcoin for goods, since goods are not on-chain. So all the fancy cryptography is not solving the main problem that it would have been useful to solve.

[TheDudeMan]

You can buy lots of things with bitcoin. Why would the goods need to be on-chain?

[dangerlibrary]

I believe the parent was elaborating on their point here:

> it's impossible to do anything with it except moving it from one account to another without requiring trust of the other party.

Goods may need to be shipped, they could be counterfeit, etc. Bitcoin provides no facility for escrow or refunds - just moving tokens from one wallet to another. So you need to trust your counter party even more than you would with e.g. a credit card in order to transact.