> Since you asked, yes. I do. To me, it's like asking if a beehive will always have a queen. It's in our DNA.

Not the asker, but thank you for answering this--it goes a long way toward understanding where your arguments are coming from.

Places without a functional government have a history of doing pretty poorly.

I think the burden of proof that there is a possible future without government lies on those making that claim. That burden has definitely not been met and the thus the feverent belied in that claim by cryptocurrency bulls is not rational.

Couldn’t it similarly have been said some hundreds of years ago that, places without a functional monarchy have a history or doing poorly?

It would be accurate, for the time, but hugely short sighted.

This is kind of a straw man… while I’m sure there are some fringe John McAfee-types who think crypto is the door to anarcho-capitalism, I don’t take any of them seriously. So I’m not sure who you’re directing your argument towards.

All humans enforce laws with physical interactions, especially violent ones. If you have no central governing body then every human makes their own rules and laws and when they enforce these rules they will be just as violent as the governments they wanted to run away from.

You should probably read some philosophy. There are much more sophisticated and nuanced ways of thinking about government and law than your comment seems to endorse.

Really enjoyed this convo, if you want a bit more of a long form of my thought process on this, read the Sovereign individual (With a grain of salt, it gets a bit wild)

My main point is don't completely dismiss a nescient technological field based on it's lack of utility now. Sustained development effort with real venture capital only dates back to around 2017, 2018.

All major silicon valley firms have launched funds to develop early research teams, nobel prize winning mathematicians developing protocols and some of these people are currently the richest individuals on the planet, just no one really know how much they actually have and obvious issues with liquidity withstanding.

> SHIB for instance

As many (If not more) of the crypto industry is marketing teams riding the 'Wave'. However, some of the projects have 100's of employees building infrastructure for the new internet. Check out Parity if you want an example of a true crypto company.

Is there any short form version of something someone can read to get a sense of the value you’re seeing? I followed this conversation with interest, but still find myself unenlightened as to what there is I haven’t understood yet about the space. Whenever I talk to a proponent it seems very theoretical.

There are often analogies to the early internet, but I was alive then and remember some of the early, tangible use cases which had me hooked:

* You can look at Nintendo’s website. It has information about games, which you are currently getting from magazines (my first exposure)

* You can buy books you can’t buy locally (Amazon)

* You can mail a friend from another location, for free (hotmail, gmail)

* You can call a friend in another country, for free (skype)

* You can call a phone in another country, for cheap (skype)

What are some crypto equivalents, today, that would convince someone who is not already invested in crypto that they need to get into crypto to use it?

E.g. saying “you can get a loan of 66% of your Bitcoin holdings!” is a use case for people already in crypto.

I would also exclude stablecoin yields because the risks there are massive, and there exist plenty of investments with high risk and high return in normal land.

I think two of the coming applications that has me most excited (of which there are many others on the horizon), are permission-less stock markets where shares are fully accounted for at all times in real-time (an actually transparent financial market), and proper third party markets for digital goods whereby goods bought online can essentially be treated like you do physical goods.

Both are applications of NFTs and both have significant players developing them.

I can elaborate more on these two applications if you want. Currently on mobile.

> permission-less stock markets where shares are fully accounted for at all times in real-time

We can already achieve this without blockchain technology! Indeed that's not the way the system works, but that's not due to technological limitation. What makes you think that once "permissionless stock markets" are available on the blockchain then secondary derivative markets won't spring up, making the ownership situation as murky is it currently is for stocks?

Transparency is always a sliding scale, and right now there is very little transparancy with regards to who owns what stock and how much of it. The system is currently more paper based than digitally reconcilled. And the onus is on every financial firm (bank, hedge fund, brokerage, settlement house, etc.) to maintain their own books and report back as best they feel inclined to. What they volunatarily report back can be ammended, or late. And when you add up all the human induced delays / data entry mistakes, what the public has available to look at can be months out of date or just plain wrong.

In principal, yes, the trusted parties could have stepped up and implemented a more transparant and automated system. No, they did not need to base such a solution on a blockchain. But the reality is that they were not inclined to change the status-quo, and now we find ourselves in a world where every relevant financial system is looking at, testing, or in the process of rolling out a blockchain based solution.

For anyone asking where the value in the technology lies, the proof is in how seriously the large players [1] are taking it.

[1] just one of the many public facing examples of a blockchain-based stock market (under the CHESS replacement program): https://www2.asx.com.au/markets/clearing-and-settlement-serv...

I’m much more interested in something already happening, now. Crypto is full of “wait and see, this is the future” but the early internet had immediate utility.

What can I do, today that should make me want to buy the crypto to do a thing with crypto. Rather than buy crypto to hope for an increase in value.

I love discussing both this topic specifically, and all sorts of things I have a strong opinion on with folks who disagree. I'm always open to being wrong; I've added The Sovereign Individual to my Kindle library and my reading list. Hope you have a great evening. Enjoyed the back-and-forth as well.

Just want to chime in and say I enjoyed reading this interaction. Both well-reasoned points, politely and maturely presented (one of the things I love about HN.) I happen to agree entirely with your side, but that's irrelevant. Thanks!

Just want to chime in (on the flip side) and say I enjoyed reading this interaction. Both well-reasoned points, politely and maturely presented (one of the things I love about HN.) The opposite of what i wrote below: I happen to not agree with your point, but that doesn't matter. Thanks for sharing your perspective!