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Circling back on the crypto FTX fiasco, Noah Smith has a new piece out theorizing, what happens if crypto just dies? Unfortunately it's paywalled so I couldn't read the whole thing, but I have been wondering this myself. More and more crypto exchanges have been dying off, especially over the last couple of years. FTX seemed to resemble one of the last exchanges embodying the spirit of crypto, and now it's gone.
By spirit of crypto, I mean the original cypherpunk, decentralized idea of a currency that operates outside the bounds of the State. As @aqouta and others have mentioned, big exchanges like Binance are actually more centralized, and if they continue to grow they can easily be incorporated as organs of the existing State apparatus.
As someone who has always been wary of censorship and centralized power, especially in light of the recent escalation in terms of woke social norms being shoved down everyone's throat, this is troubling to me. Both the right and left seem to care less and less about the overreach of the powers that be - in fact folks like Tyler Cowen think that the main difference in the 'New Right' is that they are more trusting of elites.
I'm curious for takes on either side of this issue. If you don't think we have anything to worry about with regards to State power, why is that so? Do you just think that with the rise of the internet/technology States are impotent, or is centralized power a good thing?
If you disagree with the premise above, then how can we work to push back on centralization? Especially with the rise of powerful tools like LLM and the rise of AI, is there any hope for the individual classical liberal ethos to survive the next century?
I'd argue FTX didn't really have much of a reason to come into existence at all. The role of centralized exchanges in the Cypherpunk ethos is pretty much just fiat on ramps. The most crypto way to exchange crypto are decentralized exchanges(DEX).
As for the doomsaying we've been through this cycle before, it's probably healthy. The last two crashes have generally improved the quality of projects and a lot of the stuff we're seeing die was rotten to begin with. The next cycle with start with millions more people having native wallets built into their browsers, mature side chain/L2 options for scaling, healthier skepticism of tokens (especially NFTs) that don't have a purpose, answers to the environmental waste criticism(Pow=>PoS), and many other infrastructure projects.
This reminds me of the hype over browser toolbars that were popular in the early 2000s.
I remember one of those toolbars, I think it was for this new company gewgal, or something.
which makes hundreds billions in profits for shareholders, unlike crpyto
What were they returning to their shareholders in the early 2000s? Apologies if I can't find your point, I was temporarily disoriented by the sudden shifting of the goalposts.
bitcoin will never return anything
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