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The crypto phase ended up accidentally showing us why centralized authority is important. It sounds great on paper: If we can simply enforce a protocol, then we don't need authority, right? But we still have to trust who enforces the protocol. If we rely on trusts and exchanges to any degree, for example, to enable faster, more convenient transactions, or for user experience, then those trusts (banks) cannot be running off with the customer deposits like BitConnect and FTX did. The trust should be insured and should have to follow normal bank and currency exchange regulations. When you add in all the banking infrastructure that would be needed to bring cryptocurrencies up to speed we'd end up with a clunkier version of what we have (we already have fast digital banking, and cash is already anonymous and instant). Regarding crypto for content chains: Basically the same ideas, if certain peers are trusted to host, serve, and/or broker content in some way, how do you trust those parties, or if there are content "vaults" off-chain to enable faster access to data, how do we know it wasn't tampered with off-chain? Can't store it on chain feasibly either, especially if the content is say full-length films. I think blockchain for both cryptocurrencies and content chains is better suited for smaller peer networks where you know you can trust the node hosts and the cryptography is used more for keeping nodes in sync, and for lower-level security, not as a replacement for trust. Or if you don't trust the node hosts, then the trusted party is whoever maintains the "peer list" - but that's just a road toward what our Federal Reserve, or our Wikipedia, can already do much better with consumer banking and open-source contributions (respectively). |