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jyu

The world and society at large has seen an erosion of trust.

For the naysayers, ask yourself:

- do you trust your government more or less than your parents

- do you trust the mainstream media more or less than your parents

- do you trust big companies to do the right thing more or less than your parents

As we culturally become less trusting, we need different tools to organize and determine value. Protocols that enable decentralized, distributed consensus helps build those tools. Adoption of these protocols, independent of cryptocurrency mania, is bound to happen.

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My parents' generation was far too trusting of the government. The government is just as trustworthy as it was then, but we're aware of some of what it's up to now. I still trust the FDIC and CFPB to protect my interests more than cryptocurrency pushers.

There cannot be economy without trust. There cannot be society. You wouldn't be able to function normally. Imagine walking past a stranger and not having a reasonable expectation that that they won't punch you in the face.

I trust crypto developers and users even less than I trust those other things.

I believe open source software is now the most trusted segment of society. (Prior to a few years ago, I’d say peer reviewed science, but the replication crisis has not been kind to its image.) Most people in the know probably trust Linus and the kernel team far more than the intelligence team or Vitalik more than Janet Yellen or Postgres more than Oracle or Wikipedia more than Harvard.

To that extent there’s going to be a major push, where practically feasible, to replace existing institutions with open software and protocols. Trust is more efficient, and trusted entities will long-term outcompete untrusted.

The technology doesn’t yet exist, but if you could replace JP Morgan with a DAO, how does JP Morgan not watch its business crumble. Why would any stakeholder choose to trust an opaque bank over an open protocol?

Rating services seem to help. If my hotel gets 9/10 on the site it's usually good. Crypto on the other hand seems mostly ponzi scam.

I’m frequently suspicious of the veracity of ratings online.

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