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0 pointsmattdesl4y ago0 comments

This is an interesting line of thought. Which currency is more democratic: USD, or BTC/ETH?

With ETH for example, I can create a new EIP, and if the majority of users agree with it, the currency can evolve. For example see EIP-1559 adoption despite it going against miners best interests, or even EIP-721 which has led to profound changes in the way the network is now used. This is pretty much "majority rule" but obviously it is being driven primarily by developers and those with the technical knowledge needed to propose and shape these EIPs.

On the other hand, with USD (or any state currency) I have nearly zero chance of influencing its policy, inflation, and so on. The only option I have is to write to politicians and hope they take it further. If the politicians (governing body) in place do not currently agree with this policy despite a large (user) backlash, there is no way for users to "fork" the USD, and so they are forced to adopt whichever decisions are made by their current government and policy makers. This is especially true if you live outside the US (as I do), but are still required to use USD by virtue of working with US clients, US customers, and primarily USD-based payment systems (e.g. as Wikimedia is stepping closer toward with this change).

This is mostly just presented as a thought experiment in response to the idea that USD is far more democratic than an open source + decentralized currency.

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gibrown4y ago

Agree that this is an interesting line of discussion. I think you missed a few options of why USD are more democratic. You can also: - run for office - organize people politically

The open source point is important, but any individual crypto seems very hard to change once it is in place. Feels like it assumes you can predict how it will be used and what the consequences will be. The law isn’t easy to change but there is a clearly defined abs democratic process for doing so (assuming you are in a democracy).

mattdeslOP4y ago

> You can also: - run for office - organize people politically

I think parallels to this are also happening in crypto networks, e.g. a user deciding to participate more directly in Eth protocol governance by sitting in on R&D and core dev calls, joining EIP discussions, using merge testnets, and generally just becoming a sort of public figure within the Eth community.

(Also, this may go back to citizenship, I cannot run for US office if I am living in another country, but crypto currencies aim to be effectively borderless internet networks.)

> The open source point is important, but any individual crypto seems very hard to change once it is in place. Feels like it assumes you can predict how it will be used and what the consequences will be. The law isn’t easy to change but there is a clearly defined abs democratic process for doing so (assuming you are in a democracy).

There is also a pretty clear process for changing ETH, and it does change often[1]. Sometimes these changes are at the protocol level, requiring consensus among core developers (different client teams, protocol engineers) and a fork. Other times the changes are at the application level, like the EIP 721 standard that many wallets and smart contracts are now adding compatibility for due to user interest.

[1] https://ethereum.org/en/history/

rcMgD2BwE72F4y ago

You seem to discard that in a democracy, one person should get one vote. In crypto, you vote with your wallet – due to network effects – so the richest/most powerful weight the most.

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