astralcodexten.substack.com
I made this a top level post because I think people here might want to discuss it but you can remove it if it doesn't meet your standards.
Edit: removed my opinion of Scott from the body
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Notes -
Every time I encounter a post like this I have to wonder if we live on the same planet. Have you just not been paying attention?
The center is failing. Absolutely necessary for life central entities are being turned against political enemies. Canadian truckers had their ability to transact removed. Websites have seen what were once bedrocks of the internet open up and swallow them whole at the behest of people who were obviously lying. And this is in the advanced and liberal world.
That you discount centralization risk can't even be described as a failure of imagination because it's happening publicly right in front of you. People are trying to sell you fire insurance in front of your burning home and you are calling them paranoid.
And we can talk about the other benefits if you want, zero cost public and programmable escrow, third party markets for proprietary licenses, cutting out nearly every conceivable middle man or censor for supporting content creators, much more. But you seem to place zero value on decentralization and I can't get you over that hump, you have no plan and don't want one. Good for you. Enjoy your bliss.
I'm find with custodial exchanges existing, I think they're probably the correct option for most people in the mean time. But uncertainty of payment is not crypto, it's centralized entities that can unilaterally tell you to pound sand. And you buy your pizza with your hot wallet obviously, what an absurd question.
On Reddit I made a doomerpost when Trudeau declared his state of emergency. I pulled cash out of my credit union and waited. I'm certainly not uninformed of the problem. I even went to a convoy political meet-up quite recently.
And even in this self-selected audience of people who this is immediately relevant, I heard nothing about crypto. Crypto did not stop the chilling effect of the government declaring martial law. These are relatively affluent blue and white collars and they're keeping their money in relatively traditional investments (gold, real estate, small business) and not crypto. They still bank at Scotia, BMO, etc, for Christ's sake.
And it is because the benefits vastly outweigh the negatives. You can talk all day about things you value but revealed preference shows that most people do not hold the same interest in the technology or in the concept of decentralization. People want to know if it's convenient, cheap, and safe in the real world. If you are a normie with no idea of what crypto is you would have been better off trusting the system because political and free speech rights are secondary to, you know, making sure you don't lose everything to a rugpull.
People who prefer trustless systems are, on the whole, one part tech-libertarian and nine witches.
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