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Comment by WFHRenaissance | Hacker News Reader

Smart contracts, DAOs, payments, self-sovereign identity, tokenization of real world assets, a few security use-cases, operating markets for prediction and asset-trade outside the control of external authorities (libertarian wet dream stuff), insurance and legal arbitration outside of the control of external authorities (more wet dreaming, but it’s happening), supply chain / provenance of assets…

All of these could probably be done using a database, but it’s more about the trust aspect than the mechanics of storing data.

Crypto will succeed because the rich among us want it to. Crypto will succeed because the corrupt among us want it to. Crypto will succeed because the libertarians among us want it to. Crypto will succeed because it makes exit a reality.

How big of a success will it be? We’ll see.

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>Crypto will succeed because the rich...corrupt...liberarians want it to

Just because you want something to happen doesn't mean it will. Especially when you have to assume that we live in some fantasy world where nobody can be trusted and everything has to be done outside the influence of government (i.e. illegally) so we have to use a decentralized append-only database where nothing can be reversed because while you can trust nobody you also can trust people to not do decisions which need to be reversed.

>Crypto will succeed because it makes exit a reality

What does this even mean?

>Smart contracts, DAOs, payments, self-sovereign identity, tokenization of real world assets, a few security use-cases

these are all buzzwords or further tech that actually needs explaining as to what it's useful for (hint: it's nothing)

> Especially when you have to assume that we live in some fantasy world where nobody can be trusted

I think the value of crypto is that trust is not required to participate in the system and transact. You don't need to be second guessing every single person to benefit from this. It doesn't hurt to have a system that minimizes the consequences when trust is abused. It is a bit like the adage of wanting privacy even if you have nothing to hide. I might not want someone to have the option of stealing my money in a transaction, even if I don't think that they actually will.

All of my stated use-cases are already in use.

Society will evolve towards being trustless as the moneyed-class pursue sovereign citizenship and shop for preferential territory on a global scale. They will need a secure way to trustlessly store and exchange funds. Cryptocurrency literally exists nearly entirely for this reason.

Ignore the stupid coins.

Have you considered writing in the horror genre? You have a knack for it.

I’m actually a well-known author and this is a pseudonym.

This really isn’t that crazy of an idea though.

Read “The Sovereign Individual” by Davidson & Mogg. Written in 1999/2000.

Thanks for the recommendation. Having skimmed the book, yes, it would be fantastic to give the material the same treatment Paul Verhoeven gave to Starship Troopers specifically in its reappraised interpretation.

I think that a Sovereign Individual movie made today would likely be a documentary… we are so close to the reality portrayed in that book

Oh lord, a hybrid cross of "sovereign citizen" and "cryptocurrency geek". This is an unholy combination. No, none of your fantasies are correct or true in any way. Rich people don't need to escape government, they can influence it just fine.

Nice ad hominem.

Sure, in a state where the legislature/executive are captured by domestic industry, you’re right that that’s the case.

It’s clear you live in the USA.

Outside of the USA, governments tend to predate on wealth, and having globally portable money secured in accounts of your choosing is a huge asset.

> Society will evolve towards being trustless as the moneyed-class pursue sovereign citizenship and shop for preferential territory on a global scale.

Then I believe it is up to the rest of us to put a stop to this, rather than facilitate it.

Hmmmm sure I can maybe agree with this, maybe? I don’t think you can stop it though… any ideas?

Regulation of the cryptocurrency space, for example, such that huge amounts of funds can't be kept and moved anonymously and without consideration of (for instance) local taxes in these countries the rich shop between.

Those who do so must be held to the same standards as those already resident.

In the UK recently we have seen (yet another) backlash against this in the form of the outcry against the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was using "non-Domiciled" status to avoid masses of tax, despite having been resident in the country for multiple years.

I've no issue with people moving around, but moving around specifically to avoid contributing to the country you're actually residing in needs to be ended, and regulating cryptocurrency may have to be part of that.

You have a good heart, and I’m not saying I entirely disagree with you, but think of it this way:

If I’m paying taxes, I want it to go to something I care about. “Non-dom” status is blatant fraud for sure and I can’t entirely support that. But, shopping around for preferential territories is kind of what everyone is already doing, right? Imagine if your town made it illegal or expensive for you to move to a neighboring town? That’s the problem cryptocurrency is solving for the rich

If my town did that, and did that for everyone, I would be trying to change the system rather than raising my middle finger to others who live there and who don't have my resources to avoid the consequences.

Sure, it's solving a 'problem' for them, the 'problem' is that they have to follow the same rules as the little people. I can see why they might pursue such a thing, and as I say - it's incumbent upon the rest of us to stop that behaviour, and force them to contribute as others do.

I'm not aware of any serious supply chain or asset provenance efforts that rely on cryptocurrencies or DeFi. Lots of serious work uses Merkle constructions, but it would be a remarkable distortion to spin something like Certificate Transparency as a form of DeFi.

I’m aware of a use case where person/asset location is being determined using a distributively owned set of radio transmitters so that proof-of-location can be established without use of GPS.

Plenty of supply chain use cases already exist using private chains/ledgers — this will skew more toward public chains or hybrid solutions as demands for transparency amp up.

> I’m aware of a use case where person/asset location is being determined using a distributively owned set of radio transmitters so that proof-of-location can be established without use of GPS.

...why?

GPS is spoofable… you’re a security guy, you should know this :p

Yes, I am. I'm not aware of a threat model in which you can't trust the frequencies GPS is on but you can trust the frequencies that the FCC allows personal radio transmissions to be on. Seems like a lot of added complexity (and, notably, no legal recourse) for essentially the same failure mode.

https://www.wired.com/story/spoof-jam-destroy-why-we-need-a-...

Yes, GPS is not particularly secure. But I don't think that addresses the threat model above.

(In general, jamming is always a possibility with anything wireless. That is just not going to change. What might change is spoof resistance, which can be accomplished with schemes that are a lot simpler than anything DeFi can conjure. There's a decent amount of work on related schemes in the vehicle-to-vehicle communication space.)

Aren't those use cases mentioned for blockchain not crypto which seem the original article seem to be about

The so called rich people are trying to get more rich by investing in dog coin, cat coin and other crazy stuff instead of using the brains for greater good of humanity like CRISPR etc

Beyond issues of PoW and energy consumption, the bigger crime is the brain cycles wasted getting rich trying to find the next shitty coin and chest thumping that they are rich.

I know it can be hard for even the most equanimous individual but See crypto rich as a lottery which was earned without much hardwork. only thump your chest when it is put to use for greater good

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