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>We've seen our internet rights to speech and expression violated by companies imposing their values on their user base.

>Bitcoin et al. are a very real promise that the future of banking and finance and money will be decentralized. Which as far as I'm concerned, is about freedom as much as speech is. You don't have any freedom if you have to beg VISA or PayPal for permission to spend your money.

The moral high ground you are trying to claim in your second argument is undercut by your first argument. If this was all about freedom, we would see similar sized investments in open and decentralized platforms focused on free speech. The reason we aren't seeing that is obvious. It is much easier to see a path to profitability in the cryptocurrency space.

Most cryptocurrency investments aren't about freedom, they are about carving out a piece of the pie from the existing financial services industry. There is nothing immoral about turning a profit, just be open about it. It is dishonest for cryptocurrency investors to claim their intent is to save the world especially considering how much electricity and therefore fossil fuels some of the popular cryptocurrencies waste.

Sell the tech on its own merits and accomplishments. There is a reason why the "making the world a better place" pitches have been parodied for years.

> we would see similar sized investments in open and decentralized platforms focused on free speech

This is already a mostly solved problem. There are lots and lots of places on the internet, when I can engage in speech and it won't be censored.

Yes, the big platforms might censor you, but there are still lots and lots of small platforms that won't or can't.

What free speech is he referring to? The only speech I know of that has been censored is terrorist groups. It makes me uncomfortable when I see people here complaining about that.

Daily stormer and Alex Jones?

...unless you think they are terrorists.

The KKK certainly is a terrorist group. Alex Jones is being sued and whatever platforms don't stop him from spreading malicious lies could be liable as well.

Since you brought it up, I would generally agree with you and am not too concerned about free speech on the internet. More than just terrorist groups are being censored, but all of the speech that I have seen disenfranchised has been speech that is in my opinion objectionable in one way or another.

A lot of people in the US don't seem to realize how extreme we are as a country when it comes to free speech. We fetishize free speech in a way that I feel is not healthy. I don't think any country's laws are perfect in this regard, but all the other western democracies seem to be just fine with their laws against things like hate speech. I don't see how the US allowing hate speech is beneficial to the country or its people.

This opinion tends to be an unpopular on HN and I figured I would meet the original OP on their terms.

Western democracies with hate speech laws are less democratic because the range of legally permissible opinions is smaller.

If mere functioning is your goal for the country, then certainly countries without strong free speech protections can function. They can even function without democracy at all.

But most people want more for their country.

Western democracies with weaker free speech protections do function, but they also have a substantial pressure outlet in the form of websites hosted in other countries that don't kowtow to oppressive governments.

Cross reference this list[1] with this one[2]. I just don't see any evidence for a claims like "Western democracies with hate speech laws are less democratic".

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech

The only thing the democracy index gets right are the broad strokes. But then again, so could a high schooler with wikipedia and a free afternoon.

It's not implemented well enough to detect the fine differences between western countries.

Hate speech laws reduce the range of discourse. They suppress dissent. That's inherently undemocratic.

I think the reason so many people feel that it's important to allow dissenting and objectionable speech is that the perception of 'harmful' speech is mostly subjective.

Relegating that permissiveness to a particular entity allows that subjectivity to be enforced in perverse ways.

Many people feel it is better to tolerate the objectionable and hurtful speech than to allow a 3rd party to use subjective judgment to censor.

The problem with decentralized money is that there is no way to manage the supply - you can only commit to a given supply curve, but you cannot adjust it according to the state of the economy.

Money is a collective action problem, a public good - it requires a solution that bounds everyone - just like defence.

Why can’t you do that?

The fundamental problem is probably with the possibility of fork - if it is decentralized then everyone can fork it if he disagrees with the way it works.

But maybe there are some good in-between solutions, less dogmatic, more pragmatic.

Forking is not a problem. It's users voting with their feet.

The possibility of forking is a necessary deterrent in cryptonetwork governance.

If the maintainers of a network become compromised or get coopted by special interests, the collective owners of the network(the holders of the cryptocurrency) have the right to exit.

The right to exit is a necessary part of governance.

You cannot have an binding agreement between everybody if anybody can get out at any time. My thesis is that managing money supply requires such an agreement. Of course you can have unmanaged money - historically we always had that - with gold standard and shells. But it is probably less efficient - because it means you cannot adjust money supply to the state of economy.

Some people think this is a problem. Others, a feature. At least now we have the ability to see what happens.

You can have decentralized money without crypto - just use gold parity - but somehow no country uses it now. Maybe they are all corrupt - but maybe it is just not good way to manage the economy.

> just use gold parity - but somehow no country uses it now.

Thats fine. If you don't like deflationary currencies, then feel free to not use them.

Other people disagree, though, and are preferring deflationary currencies.

Everyone can get what they want.

It's worth noting that because of the power the U.S. has over global finance it's hard for other countries not to follow its lead. So when Nixon went the route he went, the rest of the world was to a large extent forced to follow suit.

And maybe it's not, and the government is taking advantage of it's position of power?

Competing tethered currencies aren't gone because they're a bad idea, they're gone because they've been made illegal.

Crypto gives the power to operate such a currency back to the people in a way that can't be stopped.

> you can only commit to a given supply curve, but you cannot adjust it according to the state of the economy.

Why do you think this? Ethereum has changed its inflation schedule a few times recently.

It seems you are basing this on the hard capped supply model of bitcoin which is not the same as every cryptocurrency.

Then it’s not decentralized?

that's a feature to combat hyperinflation. to whoch country's economy would it be adjusted to if its a global financial instrument? individual currencies will be adjusted for sure. Bitcoin can act like a global Gold reserve

decentralized finance has a place in the present and future of our planet

There is no guarantee that decentralized anything has a place in the future. So far the trends have been depressingly centralizing, whether it's government, finance, manufacturing, or even our great hope, the Internet.

What do you think decentralized finance even is?

The costs of centralization is starting to seep into people’s day to day life though. People tend not to act to abstract threats but rather tangible issues.

Tech people have been warning about this forever because they have a strong grasp of the consequences and they also better understand what we have (or had) with the internet and other parts of the economy and politics.

I’m starting to see far more ‘regular’ people outside of tech concerned about the top down centralization of communication and payment networks.

It's not a tech thing. "Small/big government" / hegemony / balance of power is an age old debate.

Some interesting players in the defi space:

https://compound.finance/

https://makerdao.com/en/

https://dydx.exchange/

https://0x.org/

Nuo.network

> Ethereum has successfully navigated core upgrades and has a clear path to scalability.

And for all this technical progress there's still the human problem that the core team/individuals decided exploiting vulnerable contracts' and hard forking the failed DAO were morally right ideas.

As long as those team members are involved then the truth is that no one in the Ethereum ecosystem can escape the Spectre of their will. They've historically proven to be operating as simply a different centralized body of power that isn't a government issuing fiat.

They've historically proven to be operating as simply a different centralized body of power that isn't a government issuing fiat.

I can imagine at least a couple of scenarios where it might be in the interests of (some?) investors to spruik such a thing.

There’s a lot of power being generated by, and flowing within and between, various organisations throughout the world. It’s probably possible to tap in to that a gather some of it close to you, especially if you are a group of tech minded wealthy folk.

>>> There’s a lot of power being generated by, and flowing within and between, various organisations throughout the world.

Could you clarify? Do you mean flowing as in transactions between major banks or major manufacturers? Or something less obvious?

This is the Vitalik jump request. All the miners immediately ask how high. Centralized in a Slack channel.

That's democratic consensus. It's not centralized. You can fork if you want.

>You don't have any freedom if you have to beg VISA or PayPal for permission to spend your money. That alone should be enough to justify the existence of block chain technology and we should all be cheering on its eventual success.

Where is it you live that Internet service is provided by a free market, that can't be disabled?

I can think of more cases of Visa and PayPal cutting off payments (e.g. to alt-right media organizations, Backpage, gambling) than ISPs. It's of course their right not to process payments for whomever they want, and I personally haven't shed any tears over the organizations I've mentioned, but I do wonder whether it is a good thing that payments are so centralized they effectively become an extragovernmental regulator, especially because their motive is loss prevention and public image rather than public interest.

Most of the inhabited Earth actually... https://blockstream.com/satellite/

The article doesn't say much about it in relation to a16z. There is a16zcrypto.com . I am very involved in this space, I am wondering how a16zcrypto is structured compared to traditional VC. For many crypto startups it probably doesn't make much sense to base in US.

Decentralized finance is a myth. Governments only exist because they control the money on behalf of the country. Decentralization of finance would remove that control and hence fundamentally undermine the governments control

Substitute “religion” for “finance” and the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages would agree with you.

> But to the core of the argument that crypto has no use case.

Oh come on, this american-centric meme has to die off already. Drugs. Every drug-related transaction I know or heard off for the last ~2 years have been done through bitcoin.

In some aspects, US is ahead of the globe. In others, though - like having people such as drug dealers who meet their clients in person and make transactions in cash - it's way behind.

How, exactly, does Bitcoin (and other shitcoins) being nominally 'decentralized', and whose main use after 10 years is still speculation and scams, relate to nazis and right wing trolls occasionally get kicked off twitter?

>How, exactly, does Bitcoin (and other shitcoins) being nominally 'decentralized', and whose main use after 10 years is still speculation and scams, relate to nazis and right wing trolls occasionally get kicked off twitter?

Perhaps because the people you label "right-wing trolls" are, sometimes, actually just people with different opinions, and deserve (at least in their minds) some protection? They aren't merely getting kicked off Twitter; in some cases they are being demonetized.

It's all well and good to sit back and say, "too bad for them", but it would be diligent to at least concede your "side" may not win this fight, and one day you might be getting the label.

That doesn't explain why Bitcoin is useful for anything other than relieving stupid people of their money?