> Centralized institutions do provide a safety net, but is there anything necessarily wrong with a group of people saying they don't want or need that?

Not at all! However, within the context of cryptocurrencies, I can't help but note that there seems to be a certain tendency to blindly idealize decentralization, and especially to blindly demonize regulation, without giving any thought as to why things are what they are right now.

> regarding the Mt. Gox situation. You present it as something that should have never happened in civilized society, but I think it's growing pains on the way to something better.

Here, I disagree. Growing pains are no excuse for being as reckless as they were. If your clients entrusted you with hundreds of millions of their USD (either directly, or through Bitcoin), then I don't see "but startup" as a valid excuse; you owe them a certain amount of diligence in your conduct.

Note that this isn't investors losing hundreds of millions on some innovation gamble (à la Uber), but on an operation where there are literally hundreds of years of precedent to learn from, namely: exchanges.

I didn't mean to use growing pains as an excuse for Mt. Gox. What should come about because of this is more focus on decentralized exchanges, seeing as this was a painful example of the problems we still face with centralized exchanges. We're now seeing more decentralized exchanges coming into existence for this very reason, there are a lot of drawbacks to centralization when it comes to wealth, and all of those are felt by the people/customers and not the institutions. And they are the ones who can afford to make the rules and pay off politicans to make sure it doesn't change. You say there's a tendency to blindly idealize decentralization, but are you sure you're not missing all the very real drawbacks to centralization by taking that position?

I'm just saying, before we leap to regulations that will take decades to roll back when we actually understand what this crypto space is all about, maybe we can improve on what we have and take a different route. Which is what bitcoin, ethereum, and now the third generation crypto projects are trying to do. Incremental improvements are the only way to explore this new frontier, not regulating the shit out of it from the very beginning.

>Centralized institutions do provide a safety net, but is there anything necessarily wrong with a group of people saying they don't want or need that?

That depends on a case by case basis. If the actions of this group of people negatively and significantly affects others who are not part of the it then regulation becomes necessary. As an example if a group uses cryptocurrencies for money laundering, smuggling, or other similar activities then they can't claim they must be left alone because they don't want central control by choice. On the other hand if all people want to do is avoid mega banks, the PayPals etc. then all power to them.

That said, it is equally important for people to make sure that the central authority is a representative of society, at large, of their own choosing and not some dictatorial regime, corporation, party, or what have you.

>Centralized institutions do provide a safety net, but is there anything necessarily wrong with a group of people saying they don't want or need that?

Unfortunately, there is. Until pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes came under strict regulation, enormous social harm was caused when people lost their life savings to such schemes.

You might think, as a technically sophisticated HN reader, that you don't need the nanny state to protect you in this way. But well-educated people tend to be one of the biggest victims of these schemes, because 1) they have newly-acquired wealth; 2) they are too arrogant to realize that their expertise in their own field does not translate to expertise in investing; 3) they probably know people in their social circle who have gotten rich (temporarily) on one of these "investments", and then let greed and envy override common sense.

Even Isaac Newton is reputed to have lost a large fortune in the South Sea Bubble (though sources are unclear) [1]

So no, you are not allowed to waive the safety net.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/isaac-newton-lost-a-fortune-o...

> as a technically sophisticated HN reader, that you don't need the nanny state to protect you in this way.

Thanks for your compliments, but I think of myself more as a fairly well-informed American who graduated college in 2010, the same year I found myself in a lecture hall for a career planning class and 5 out of 300 students raised their hands when asked "Who here has a job lined up after graduation?"

So no, I don't accept that we must submit to a nanny state controlled by centralized banks, and I will continue fighting for these projects to exist and thrive. And not just for a quick buck like you seem to think this is. You can see it as "investments" and miracle money or whatever, but it's more than that. It's a way for people like me to finally say "fuck you" to the banks that have ruined so many lives (and for what, exactly?) and finally in a way that makes them listen.

I understand the sentiment; there is a lot wrong with the current system. But any new world that you create should have at least the same level of protection against fraud, theft, and speculative bubbles as the current (imperfect) world; otherwise even more people will be hurt. The world of crypto-currencies has not been very reassuring in this regard, unfortunately.

I agree. Most of the issues you describe are related to the terrible experience of what to do with your currencies after you've bought them. None of them are very useful at the moment, so there needs to be a safe way to store them, and the easiest thing to do is just leave them sitting in your exchange accounts. There are ways store them properly (hardware wallets, which aren't perfect either), but there's no way any non-tech/non-determined folks will consider a free solution like a paper wallet. I'm looking forward to seeing what Omise comes up with on their multi-currency wallet and supposedly instant conversion via a decentralized exchange.

However, I think the real hope for this (and yes, a community-driven approach rather than government-controlled) is what's already changed the world in my lifetime through open source communities.

The most successful distributed ledgers have so far been open source. This is another sentiment, but I started using Linux in 1996 because I hit too many brick walls in Windows as a kid. Just simply learning how it works always resulted in at least one headache (I recall trying to learn C++ in windows at that time, and then seeing a friend's Debian environment, and that was that)

Since then I've seen those philosophies (more social than technical I think) creep into so many previously off-limits proprietary areas. It blows my mind what we've achieved, not just creating a system where we have more control but forcing the "evil" companies many of us hated at the time, like Apple and Microsoft, to adapt. I never thought Microsoft would open source anything, yet here we are with dotnet core and more. I don't see any reason why we can't carry that over into banking and fintech, and this does feel a lot like the clunky early days of Linux. But a well-organized decentralized movement can topple major centralized institutions, and while a complete takeover by the people probably won't happen, already every major bank is adapting to this new world. And they have much less control in this one, too.

"edit: regarding the Mt. Gox situation. You present it as something that should have never happened in civilized society, but I think it's growing pains on the way to something better."

But they're growing pains that don't need to happen. They've literally already happened in the past. There is nothing new about BTC that makes those lessons irrelevant.