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Re:Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentr... by purvis on Monday May 28, 2018 @10:57AM (#17172731)
Your argument against crypto is one of the more compelling I've read. I like the "deep local optimum" visual you painted. I definitely agree if you're comparing "crypto" directly to centralized companies doing traditional things -- they're not going anywhere.

However, I think it solves a different problem. It's a geopolitical problem. Blockchain technology provide a bulletproof (so far) way of exchanging value across borders without having to trust any middlemen.

There's a quote, I believe by Erik Voorhees, saying roughly: "Bitcoin is separation of money and state".

Re:Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentr... by smilesnd on Monday May 28, 2018 @11:38AM (#17172993)
But currently this only works in third world countries where the government lacks resources or care to combat it. Plus their is still a middleman if you don't mine the cryptocurrency yourself. I still have to pay a exchange if I cannot find someone willing to take cash/check from me. You also have the opposite effect where you need the exchange and a bank account to turn that coin I sent into usable cash.
Re:Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentr... by whiskers08xmt on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @05:35AM (#17177687)
Most of the world's population lives in third and second world countries. You're absolutely right that the centralized fiat gateways are the obvious, censurable bottlenecks of crypto-currency, and there's no good way around that, but crypto-currency itself is still an attractive way for many people, to move their money out of very restrictive regimes. The centralized exchange problem is mainly a problem of creating a black/grey market economy, with crypto-currency as it's main unit of value transfer, which of course is a whole other can of worms.
Re:Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentr... by purvis on Monday May 28, 2018 @09:47PM (#17175866)
Correct, but you only have to trust a centralized company within your own country. You don't have to trust a bank or money transmitter in a foreign country. In the case of people in countries where they don't have an adequate level of government protection over financial transactions, I think it becomes more interesting. In cases like those, it's possible they don't even value their own local currency as a store of value and might feel a cryptocurrency has better odds of being worth more than zero by the time they need to spend it.
Re:Ask HN: When is federation a better solution than decentr... by gota on Monday May 28, 2018 @12:07PM (#17173139)
Maybe that's enough of a use case for an established following that supports a long-term 'market' for cryptocoins. Maybe the ideal (or something closer to ideal) would be that people in too-strong States got to use it; but there are enough people in too-weak States with dreams of authoritarianism