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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?
Nothing will happen .A bunch of VCs and gamblers will lose money, as if they haven't lost enough already. Some developers and exchange operators will be unemployed. Unlike the financial sector in 2008, there will be no systemic risks, because there is no adoption or penetration into the economy. It's just a huge bubble/fad that for some reason captivated the world but is otherwise useless. These huge federal seizures of bitcoin, sometimes many years after the crime was committed, proves that crypto is worse than cash at preserving anonymity.
Always been that way. I think the left is still worse though in this regard. Wilson, LBJ and FDR overseeing some of the biggest overreaches of power ever.
That's what Elon is trying to do with his buyout of twitter.
People in Latin America are getting use out of cryptocurrencies. Does that not count?
Which people in Latin America are those?
AIUI it’s largely getting used as a store of value by workers in high-inflation LatAm countries as a way to store their earnings that won’t halve in value every [time interval] due to the government constantly devaluing the currency.
I believe you are talking about Argentina. When I was there a short while ago green dollars were the king and I haven’t seen any signs of crypto. I honestly doubt it gets much use other than perhaps a simple way to buy something that roughly tracks American dollars in value and might even make you rich if you get lucky.
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