[post-]

> The problem with that article is not that it makes 0 valid points, it's that it makes some terrible correlations as an attempt to prove cryptos won't be huge.

Actually, the article doesn't set out "to prove cryptos won't be huge," and ends on a crypto-positive note:

> Bitcoin has shown us the promise of blockchain technologies despite its design shortcomings.

> The future of the technology will probably evolve towards a model that more resembles real world needs, rather than the needs of “cyberpunks”.

To diverge from the article a bit and respond to your final point, I don't know that the mantra of individual empowerment in the Bitcoin world amounts to anything other than solipsism. Bitcoin, as far as I can tell, ignores structural biases preventing people from accessing the cryptocurrency. We can see evidence of this in the "Bitcoin in Africa" startups, which on the surface seem benign and even benevolent, but are hiding an uninterrogated colonialism: their chief assumption, it seems to me, is that the developed world will always control more of Bitcoin's limited resources, and the value of spreading a small portion of those resources to the developing world comes from lock-in. It's a classic unfair trade agreement, and it doesn't take much thought to see how problematic this situation can become.

eBay can bend you over with fees because they control the market; Bitcoin's limited resources are susceptible to the same kind of market control. That's the discussion I wish more people were having.

[ynd]

Bitcoin is not susceptible to market control like eBay. eBay is a single entity so it is easy to coordinate self-serving decision. Bitcoin is multiple agents that have to co-operate. That prevents any one agent from making unilateral decisions.

Another huge difference is that anybody can become a new agent in Bitcoin. You just buy the hardware. You cannot influence or join eBay in the same way.

[Frondo]

I like your ideas about the colonial aspects of Bitcoin in the developing world. That is an angle I haven't heard anyone else mention before. It pairs nicely with another critique I don't often see, that Bitcoin is undemocratic; there are economic assumptions baked in that, if it were a government-backed money, people could discuss, vote on, and ultimately change. With bitcoin, there is no way that the people whose lives could be affected by those assumptions can have a say in them--the design and operation of bitcoin doesn't answer to the people in a democratic way.

[innguest]

That Bitcoin is undemocratic is a good thing. Look around in the world at what democracy has done to currency. Not a single democratic currency has withstood the test of time. It's time for a different approach.

[Frondo]

I am unable to agree with the statement, "It is time for an undemocratic approach to money".

[innguest]

I want an undemocratic currency and I don't want to forbid you from using a democratic currency if you prefer it. I doubt those that like you, who are unable to agree with the statement above, will willingly extend the same courtesy to those like me, who disagree with that statement.

I wonder which group might be in possession of the right idea, the group saying "you don't have to use it if you don't like it" or the group that is already forcing the new currency to be under the same democratic rules of the old, "democratic" currency.

Statism, ideas so good we have to force them on people.

[aminok]

There's nothing wrong with the developed world providing a service to the developing world. It's a symbiotic relationship, as both are better off from the arrangement. Mining farms in the developed world giving Somalians in the developing world a secure currency that can't be expropriated, and lets them receive international remittance at a fraction of the fees they paid before, is a good thing.

With respect to fairness, what's important is the characteristics of the framework within which the resource is used, that enable rent-seeking. With Bitcoin, each individual is their own bank. They control their own private key, meaning access to money is not intermediated by rent-seeking third parties with their lock-ins and closed networks.

Mining is ultra-competitive, because there are no barriers to market entry to the open mining network, ensuring transaction fees are driven down to the maximum extent possible. The algorithmic money supply ensures that no powerful organization and its host of satellite institutions can inflate the currency on a perpetual basis, to slowly the tax the people over generations.

Any way you look at it, Bitcoin is a force for distributing power and control, by eliminating the roles of rent-seekers.