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Blockchain technology has historically claimed several innovations:

1. Decentralized currency

2. Immutable ledger

3. Transparent transactions

4. Streamlined transactions (no T+2 or T+1 settlement)

5. Borderless transactions (between people in other countries)

6. Microtransactions (transactions a tiny fraction of a cent)

7. Smart contracts

These are innovations, the question is do they solve real world problems without creating more? For example, decentralization is great until you lose your keys or the government wants to shut down money laundering.

I have yet to see a real world benefit from blockchain / cryptocurrency technology. web3 is the closest to reality but I feel like it goes against human nature and the concept of decision fatigue. I don't want Netflix to prompt me, "Want to watch the next episode for 4 cents?"

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> I don't want Netflix to prompt me, "Want to watch the next episode for 4 cents?"

Neither does netflix. Vast amounts of under-used subscriptions paid at a full rate would suddenly get a huge discount. At the other end they wouldn't be getting much more revenue out of those that watch more than average because they'd likely cut down.

There must be plenty of ways of making a microtransaction in ways customers don't mind, many of those haven't been invented yet. I have no idea why blockchain is necessary for microtransactions nor why we all have to pay a microtransaction sized spending tax to the owners of the payment systems every time we spend our money now. Will blockchain fix this? I have my doubts about blockchain but damn, someone should. It seems popular amongst the powerful that they can cancel someone's ability to raise funds on the basis of an accusation alone. Most people hate that idea as stated, except for "$that_guy who I've just heard of and is clearly a creep so that's fine." Who is it today? How did that work out in the past? Maybe it will be more like justice this time than before? Who knows?

Where are the innovations? Every bullet point has other solutions or a very major asterisk that is always conveniently left off.

I've been a big proponent of crypto over the years and think its pretty cool technology. I just can't think of any problem it solves that isn't better solved by some other solution.

Enshittification is the problem that crypto solves. When you have a giant shared transaction log, many forms of information that were formalized services are now self-servicing, aggregated by the chain.

The usual rebuttal to crypto is that something else is cheaper, faster, more safe, more convenient. And within the crypto space itself, the worst actors have sold themselves on being cheaper, faster, more safe, more convenient. And then, much like the early railroads, they exploit anyone who buys in, and do nothing to deliver on the principled part of the tech.

Well, you do this for a while, and it does seem like it's scams everywhere. But the bull cycle creates a round of scattershot investments in the core tech. Some of them become survivors and succeed at some kind of pro-social function, if only in proof-of-concept. We can even extend this cycle back to the pre-Bitcoin electronic cash ventures. Bitcoin proof-of-concepted the idea that it was actually possible. Of course now it's a chain inhabited by laser-eyed prospective future masters of the universe. But the people working on the tech have largely moved on from it.

Crypto's real allure as a tech is not that it has to be good at the things that are already good(as much as that tends to be the inclination), it has to be not bad at the things that are presently hopeless and normalized as unsolvable nature-of-man type problems. And it has to be roughly as boring as a train running on time.

Is there a better solution for the performance of atomic swaps between antagonistic traders each operating in a different legal jurisdiction?

An antagonist seller can still fail to deliver after accepting payment. Unless what's being sold is digital and payment embeds flawlessly written smart contracts and no one has 51% of mining.

> I don't want Netflix to prompt me, "Want to watch the next episode for 4 cents?"

No prompt needed - just as your electricity company doesn't prompt you before you watch TV either. You trust the rate to be reasonable and you just get billed for it.

This pricing model is the consumer's ideal pricing model for most things - pay close to what it actually costs at a reasonable rate - because that's the most efficient and keeps decision fatigue minimal. We just don't have it for everything because the industry hasn't matured yet.

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