this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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So true.
With LLMs, I can think of a few realistic and valuable applications even if they don’t successfully deliver on the hype and don’t actually shake the world upside down. With blockchain, I just could never see anything in it. Anyone trying to sell me on its promises would use the exact words people use to sell a scam.
I think blockchain, as a concept, had some promise, but those damn buzzword vultures killed anything it had going for it.
Crypto's main draw was being decentralized and unregulated. Once that was taken away, it just became another speculative investment. NFTs as a token of ownership for things that actually have inherent value like a car, or a house, makes sense on paper, but would require a lot of standardization before it became feasible digital asset management (i.e. reduce blockchain theft scams). Ownership if a jpeg stollen from deviantart doesn't even make sense on paper and I'm convinced those prices were mainly driven by money laundering.
But does it though? A blockchain is the ultimate zero tolerance policy. Lost your password? Grandma gave the house to a scammer? Too fucking bad
Cryptocurrency is basically like digital cash. No one can control how you spend it, or take it away. But you can't undo transactions without tracking down the recipient, and getting them to give it back. If you don't trust anyone, cash and crypto are the only real ways to pay for stuff.
Cash doesn't leave you holding worthless numbers when the founders cut and run.
Well, it does in some economies, but not the ones that cryptocurrency advocates actually choose to live in. If you live in Menlo Park or Toronto or Phoenix or Dublin, you live in conditions that would not be possible without a stable "real money" economy.
This is exactly the same thing as cash. If you buy a major currency, like usd, euro, bitcoin, ethereum, etc, then it will be much more stable than some random currency. Would you trust a cash currency that was created by some random dude in an alleyway?