scyclow

This is a very strange scenario you're describing where: a) the global economy has moved onto the blockchain; b) the government has repealed all the major points of the legislation that we were originally talking about; c) the government has also exhibited complete dictatorial control over the logic of the major stablecoins, and banned all of the functionality that makes them actually useful; d) people decide not to use the blockchain's native token to settle transactions for some reason.

Remember, issuers want people to use stablecoins because they get to invest the funds in treasuries and hold onto the interest. If everything is blacklisted then no one will want to use them and the issuer won't make any money.

Okay, I'm simplifying a little bit. It wouldn't work exactly like that. You'd lock up $100 (or approve the contract to spend up to $100), specify the time I'm unix timestamps, and leave it up to the recipient to claim their money.

That's sort of besides the point though. I'm just saying that you have the ability to implement whatever ad hoc or arbitrarily complex payment logic you want without relying on a middleman.

Yeah, but the idea is that you can eliminate the middleman or implement some as hoc logic that the middleman doesn't support.

Again, not saying this is a totally crazy scenario, but you're describing a level of control that the US government can already exercise using the current banking system. Good luck using fedwire/swift without a bank. The difference is whether the rules are encoded in public infrastructure and are easy to see, or they're hidden within private systems and institutions.

Also, you can always write wrapper coins for other stable coins that don't have any spending restrictions. And yeah, issuers can play whack-a-mole and ban those contracts. But at that point we're talking about a coin that no one would even recognize as money any more. Why would anyone use it? If they're already on the blockchain it would be a pretty seamless switch to just use the native token.

And at the end of the day, if you can exchange your dystopian stablecoins for USD (as the legislation requires) then you can functionally spend your money with the same restrictions that are on your bank account anyhow.

I haven't, but it sounds like they can restrict their employees' spending just fine without crypto. Also, if they can exchange their Company Stablecoins for USD (as the legislation requires) then it makes it pretty hard to restrict their spending.

All valid concerns for the dystopian world we already live in, but crypto doesn't make any of this any more likely. You can make all the same arguments against existing bank accounts or credit cards. What's to stop Visa from spending more than $200 on "bad" products? At least stablecoins are managed by a smart contract, so you can see if that functionality even exists in the first place. If it doesn't then they can't add it in later. If it does, then you can swap you money for a stablecoin that doesn't have spending limits.

Also, there's nothing stopping foreign banks from issuing their own stablecoins. Owning a US bank-issued stablecoin is like having an account with that bank. If you have a problem with that, then you can swap your balance for a EUR-backed stablecoin issued by a European bank. Or better yet, you could sell it for real USD or EUR.

Sure, but we already have something similar to that in NY called SNAP. And honestly, it would probably be easier to keep doing that without getting the blockchain involved.

In any case, I don't think that's the sort of product that commercial banks are itching release when they launch their new stablecoins. I'm sure a lot of coins will have a deny list for AML/KYC reasons, but an allow list would be pretty cumbersome to maintain and probably turn off most users.

You could do something about it in the same sense that you can opt to be paid in dollars instead of itunes gift cards of chuck e cheese tokens. If someone has the power to decide how they're paying you then they can screw you just as easily without crypto.

I'd say that the risk of the US defaulting on Treasuries is definitely higher than zero... but if that happens then we'd probably have bigger fish to fry than stablecoins.

I think this is why regulation is so important. As the GENIUS Act is written, all funds backing the coin need to be held in cash or Treasuries. And if they go bankrupt, coin holders would have a higher claim on that money than creditors. If stablecoins aren't regulated then what's to stop issuers from creating stablecoin products without those protections?

Sure, you could technically wire something together that does this, but maybe the other party wants a strong reassurance that the payment will actually go through. They don't want to rely on your server making the right API call.

Well, the good news is that you could also program event ticketing logic with a blockchain and build a TicketMaster competitor. But now we're venturing outside simple examples :)

Sure, but banks can lock your account without the blockchain, so you're not enabling any new dystopian behavior here. And if you're worried that they can restrict your transaction behavior, then don't hold that coin! Swap your money into a stablecoin that doesn't have spending allowlist logic encoded into the smart contract.

Like what? It's just a streamlined and versatile way to escrow money.

I said it was a contrived example! But people have really specific payment logic that doesn't seem to make much sense from the outside.

What you're describing can only be achieved by encoding specific logic into the coin's original contract, so you'd know what you're getting yourself into ahead of time. And this is tantamount to agreeing to be paid in a specific gift card with a really small payment network. No need to get crypto or stablecoins involved.

I wanted to pick an example that is slightly more complicated than what existing banking software provides out of the box. But my point was that you can just write your own logic without relying on the bank or another third party.

I want to buy an event ticket from you, but we're strangers. So I write a contract that releases the money to you once you send the ticket, or vice versa.

I think what a lot of people are missing about stablecoins is that it's not just about clearing transactions faster than SWIFT. With stablecoins you get programable money without having to deal with the wild fluctuations of crypto.

A simple (and contrived) example: Let's say I want to send you $100 on Tuesday, but only on even-numbered hours. This is a trivially easy smart contract to write. Sure, you could do this with crypto, but if you want to protect yourself against price fluctuations it makes sense to use a stablecoin.

I'd imagine that anyone who's sophisticated enough to use a yubikey would just buy a hardware wallet and self custody.

That commercial for Dior is wild. It's like an outtake from Inland Empire... but still very obviously a commercial for a handbag.

There's a good clicker game based on this https://everest-pipkin.com/barnacle-goose/

I feel like a lot of the use cases listed here (which, to be fair, were often touted in 2019) misunderstands what blockchains are actually useful for, which is the ability to index information without a third party. Instead, they conflate digital objects with physical objects... which obviously leads to nonsensical business models. So, I think the author is rightly picking out the things that don't make sense, but is missing the forest for the trees.

> 1. Supply chain management

I don't really know enough about supply chain management to go one way or another on this, but I suspect it could be more useful as a realtime marketplace for goods than as a source of truth whether a certain even happened. I think the author is right that verifying events is largely an IoT issue. But maybe there's some value in having the assurance that "A says X event happened" as opposed to "X event conclusively happened".

> 2. Object authenticity guarantee

I always thought this was stupid as it relates to physical objects. Again, the author rightly notes that this is more of an IoT issue. But I think the value proposition is much clearer for digital objects such as NFTs. Whether or not NFTs are inherently stupid is a different discussion, but it's pretty clear that you get very strong authenticity guarantees with them.

> 3. Statement authenticity guarantee

As noted, you don't need a blockchain to make the guarantee. That's just cryptography. But if you want to timestamp it or the ability to revoke it, then a blockchain would be more useful. I'm sure a lot of authenticity guarantees could be managed by decentralized databases, but I can see some value to putting them on chain if you want to allow the guarantees to interop with other applications.

> 4. Voting

It really depends what you're voting on. In many cases simply collecting digital signatures is fine. Again, that's just cryptography, not blockchain. But if you want flexible realtime governance to a system with complex voting rules, then smart contracts could be a good way to manage that. As noted, this isn't suitable for private votes, but there might be some ways to pull it off with ZK proofs.

> 5. Proof of authorship

My point here is more or less the same as with 2.

> 6. Land registry

Really, the use case here is "deeds and ownership registries of other financial assets". I don't think there's anything wrong with the enforcer having special permissions over the asset. The use case here isn't " protecting you against the fraudulent activities of both the regulatory authorities and any individual officials". The asset only has meaning in the context of a larger institution, so it doesn't make sense to try to strip it form that institution. I think the real use case here is more that you can interop your asset with other onchain applications. Additionally, it allows you to pick and choose which specific permissions belong which parties. Everything doesn't automatically default to whoever is running the infrastructure

> 7. Interbank transfers

I don't buy the premise that banks would necessarily need to defer to a private chain in order to obfuscate payments. Applications like Tornado Cash exist and ZK technology has come a long way since 2019. But even if they did, I don't think "setting up a distributed database and resolving any disputes in court" is a great outcome. I think there's value to having the system settle (and avoid) disputes automatically without having to wait for things to be resolved in court.

> 8. Token for token’s sake

Sure. I think memecoins are stupid, but I have a hard time seeing them working outside of a blockchain.

> Blockchain as a trigger

Having worked at an enterprise blockchain company where most of the clients were using blockchains as a trigger, I can say that this is almost always a bad idea. For most use cases, blockchains are a straight up bad fit, and would lead to a worse application.

> Money

I actually think that bitcoin is terrible money, but I can see blockchain-based payment systems using stablecoins taking off.

> Smart contracts

I think there is definitely a lot of unexplored territory here, partially because a lot of the product development in the crypto space is driven by idiots. But you can't tell me that there are no use cases globally decentralized, censorship-resistant, general purpose computation. If nothing else I think there were a lot of ideas thrown around several years ago that weren't possible due to scaling issues, which are now possible due to L2s (ex. disintermediating online marketplaces like uber + airbnb, social media with sovereign identity, gaming state + asset management).

Romance scams are pretty wild. A few years ago someone attempted to catfish me on hinge by impersonating WWE wrestler Mandy Rose. I think the irony or impersonating a professional wrestler (whose job is to act within an artificially constructed kayfabe universe) was lost on them.

I ended up turning the exchange into an interactive website: https://0ms.co/sexydating

I think the move is less having a central thing and more advancing wallet and multisig technology. ByBit was pretty reckless by using a simple majority multisig to hold $1.5b. At that level you should probably have a few speed bumps. Like, maybe a majority of signatures allows you to make a proposal, but you can only accept the proposal after a couple hours, which would give you the chance to see the malicious transaction and bail on it.

Something like that would probably be overkill for individuals, but most people would definitely benefit from some added on chain bureaucracy regarding how their accounts are managed. And yes, for many this would lead to a system that isn't notably less centralized than the traditional banking system. But people would at least have a choice as to where their wallets gets to sit on the bureaucracy <> complete freedom spectrum. And even if they end up closer to the bureaucracy end, they'd have a lot more flexibility and lower administrative fees than what they currently have.

Great website. I love that it treats each page like a physical room in a museum. The landing page directs you to the "reception foyer". The foyer has a floor plan of the other pages. Each era has its own "room" (this links to 1930Room.html).

Yes, but BTC can only be used as gas to power the transfer of gas. Meanwhile, ETH can be used as gas to power the storage and indexing of information on world computer. If we're talking about creating underlying value, I feel like the former is tautological and latter has an application outside of itself.

You can always hold the ENS in a multisig wallet, or hold it in a smart contract with whatever arbitrary custom logic you want.

I agree about Bitcoin, but other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum or Solana have use as gas to power transactions on their respective networks. So it's interesting to see Vanguard nix those two as well and then say "We do have a lot of interest in blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies. We believe its application to a number of other uses besides crypto will make capital markets more efficient, and we’ve been actively involved in research to use blockchain technology."

This is amazing, but I find it disappointing that the NYSE (current owner) hasn't collected interest on it since 2004. Given that most of the charm is that this is still an active financial document, I don't understand why they wouldn't keep it going. Otherwise it's just another defunct historical document.

I was thinking that if I ever do an expansion or DLC, then maybe you'll be able to open the door to the roof.