> Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society
Decentralization doesn't benefit society? umh...
Decentralization doesn't benefit society? umh...
Centralization is what enabled today's societies to thrive. So when talking about decentralization you have to get into the specifics to show the value.
Centralization could be good, sometimes (if it works idk). The problem is that the financial world has been monopolized by certain entities and the barrier of entry is enormous. It is never fair to not play by the same rules when regulation favors big institutions, etc... Access to credit is difficult sometimes and unfair. But that is just a reason you could give in the US.
Decentralization ensures that countries that condemn their citizens to raising inflation can access other types of income. Some argentinians get paid in USDC, because their currency is just worthless in other countries, and they would never be able to access USD in their banks.
Decentralization (I have in mind something like Hyperliquid or even BTC) ensures that everybody in the world have access to the same economy without intermediaries asking for a fee. Which means, a person in Indian can access to income the same way a person in the US would. Or you could do a transfer overseas with less fees or regulation problems.
And do they? In practice? The theory is always sweet, but in practice once you take away "crime" and "hold to sell high" you'll be hard pressed to see too many, or widespread instances of usefulness. You don't make society better by just building a taller peak for a few if at the same time you're digging even deeper troughs for the many.
> Or you could do a transfer overseas with less fees or regulation problems.
Every time someone gets swindled out of their "deregulated, decentralized" money, every time someone loses a finger for their million dollar wallet, you have one more voice asking a centralized organization for protection, maybe with some regulation.
You handwave away all the obvious problems, even though technology or time won't solve any of them. Without protection most people will be screwed out of their belongings. Ask that person in India if they're eager to "access to income the same way a person in the US would" (whatever that means) if this means there's no recourse when they lose the money.
Yes, they have access to the same economy.
> you have one more voice asking a centralized organization for protection, maybe with some regulation
I don't want regulation, thanks. Just have backups or smth. Only looking for governments to not ban it in order to allow users to convert their BTCs to fiat currency. But that is already kinda in place, because old school investors are asking for it.
> Ask that person in India if they're eager to "access to income the same way a person in the US would" (whatever that means)
It means that they can also earn a 100K salary in USD, thus not being affected by inflation
Regulation is key, quality decentralized finance can only happen with quality regulation. Ditto for plain old centralized banking. My question is, why we don't have anything of reasonable quality?
That lack is the reason fraudsters can peddle their fraud-coins and bait people with bombastic arguments like "the value of decentralization". Crime is decentralized, does that make it good?
>>(by grr19) everybody in the world have access to the same economy without intermediaries asking for a fee.
There is a fee, quite high in fact, and energy cost.
Depends on the L1 that you use. If you think of BTC, yeah, fee could be high (not if you are sending 1M), if you think of a proof-of-stake L1 then not much. Also depends on the TPS. Again; thinking about Hyperliquid.
No, you don't need to worship Amazon in a libertarian system, Amazon lives thanks to regulation (Amazon supports raising the min wage), and other import fees & tax exemptions that smaller businesses can't afford to bypass.
I personally don't to live in either possibility, neither in "nothing exist" libertarian dystopia, nor in the current normal society where i would need to pay for a bunch of selfish freeloaders who avoid taxes.
The only thing keeping the billionaire class from extruding you through a nozzle, drying out the paste, and then distributing what used to be you in powdered form as a daily ration to their indentured servants is the government.
A bad government can also enable this, but examples of bad governments are far outweighed by good or at least mediocre examples to the point of absurdity.
Whenever I talk to libertarians about this they respond "we'd just band together to make rules against this to protect ourselves" -- that's a fucking government.
(or they have some fetishistic fantasy about guns and shit)