Not anonymous nor decentralized
> p2p payments in various countries
Such as?
>cash
Not digital.
>All digital currencies in one form or another are inferior to existing financial instruments.
Then please explain to me how do I make an anonymous payment online without a third party using existing financial instruments.
Random examples:
- Brendan Eich was purged for being found to have donated to anti-gay marriage campaigns. Therefore, donating anonymously is obviously desirable for many people as your current beliefs may affect your career when the general rhetoric changes. Similarly, anonymous donations, which are very common, may be your preferred choice simply because you don't want the receiver or anyone else to know
- You were diagnosed with a mental disorder in your home country, and you move to a different country. In the new country, the medication you were prescribed is not available for pharmacies to sell. All the alternative medications you tried do not work, and it's illegal to buy your medication that was legal in the other country. With non-anonymous payments, buying the medication through financial services would put you at a high risk, so you would be forced to sacrifice your wellbeing/mental health.
- Your government is aggressively hyperinflating your national currency or capital controls limit the amount that you can cash out daily to $X. Use of credit or debit to pay out of the country is banned. You want to use a decentralized currency that need not be approved by the government or any other third party that you need to trust. Anonymity is optional, but perhaps you don't want to risk having your digital wealth traced back to your real ID.
- You value your privacy. Maybe because you don't want companies to sell your data for machine learning algorithms to track your payment behavior and apply "price discrimination" algorithms to you. Maybe you believe that it is only your business who you pay and what you pay for, and you don't trust that any of these will not be used against you in the future if used via a centralized entity.
All based on real events.
>I think that's where we disagree
We disagree that situations that are not relevant to you may be relevant to others?
I love how the takeaway from this is always, "We need more private ways to exchange money!" rather than, "You know, maybe you should have opinions that respect the human rights of others."
A mere 10 years later you are insulting someone you likely don't know for 'not respecting human rights'!
Example 1: It's possible that eating non-labgrown meat will be considered a crime within fifty years. Who knows? Are you sure you want all of your current actions judged by some unknown future values?
Example 2: How sure are you that future society will agree with the current 'clump of cells' argument? Would you want to be on the record forever donating to abortion clinics? Your political ideology may not always be in charge either (Mike Pence).
Example 3: Society in a decade might consider us brutes for driving cars manually. How do we accept ~1/X000 high school students dying in car crashes, mostly by preventable causes (drinking, distractions, speeding, seat belt, etc).
We have not reached moral perfection as a society. Future society practicing moral relativism is not guaranteed. So, protect your future self, and protect your privacy.
It's a very good point.
Credit cards, p2p payments in various countries, and cash.
All digital currencies in one form or another are inferior to existing financial instruments.