This was kind of a revelation to me a long time ago. When you're 20, you're a totally different person than when you're 10. When you're 30, different than 20. Just like the linked article suggests, you really tend to underestimate how much you're going to change in the future. At 10, you can't really consider how you're going to be when you're 20.
I may be more skilled, better informed, and care a great deal about people who didn’t exist back then, but I think my basic personality is shockingly close to 10 year old me.
The blog uses decentralized storage (IPFS) and uses a decentralized ENS domain (vitalik.eth).
If you use a web3 browser like brave browser vitalik.eth resolves natively in the browser without the need to use the ENS+IPFS (eth.limo) gateway.
I’m not sure how you could read this post and conclude that “the cool thing” about it is that it is decentralized.
By far, the coolest thing about Vitalik’s blog is his writing, in its thoughtfulness and humility.
That it’s decentralized speaks to his commitment to his beliefs.
- For IPFS see the other current thread on HN [1]
- For ENS I can say that it was and it is ridiculous. My company was relatively well known in the decentralized space when the ENS launched and obviously someone registered our name before us. This is not a support of the current DNS system but the "decentralized" nature didn't add any decentralized feature (e.g. DAOs) that enable you to protect your brand. It was decentralized as a bad anarchy is. This can be easily check on Reddit discussions about the issues I pointed. For example [2] and [3].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39208673
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5zmg76/serious_co...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5z4iiw/ama_we_are...
Neiman is a PhD in mathematics and idealist. The solution he wants goes beyond just hosting a decentralized blog.
As far as ENS, I’m a fan. Though it’s too bad someone registered your well known business name you can always import your DNS into the ENS protocol (ENS is not the .eth extension, rather .eth is the native ENS blockchain extension but is reverse compatible with DNS).
Going back to neiman, for a time he was working on his own naming protocol named Woolball. Might be a fun read for you: https://neiman.eth.limo/2022-10-25/Woolball_a_name_system_wi...
> Now, five years later, I finally realized that (i) I had been complicit in legitimizing a genocidal dictator, and (ii) within the crypto space too, I no longer had the luxury of sitting back and letting mystical "other people" run the show.
Congrats on congratulating yourself on being the Benevolent dictator (in contrast with presumably genocidal dictator) and inventor of your own decentralised financial institution that enabled everything imaginable around money schemes, not matter how average and worst it is compared to regulated traditional banking. How much is you worth by the way ?
> I was getting excited about every new cryptography protocol, and economics too seemed to me to be part of that broader worldview: it's the mathematical tool for understanding and figuring out how to improve the social world.
No, it isn't. This kind of hubris is what hides what Crypto is, which is a game of greater fools and nothing more.
At this point it is no longer reasonable to just claim it is a greater fools game without an argument for why. The evidence right now seems to put it in a similar category to gold in that people generally don't like that it has value, but nonetheless value is present.
I also draw people's attention to the parallel with something like a RAID array - it is possible to make robust systems out of unreliable parts. The abundance of scammy and scummy operators in the crypto space is quite consistent with the similar prevalence in traditional finance. The system is robust regardless.
1. People see it as a store of value
2. It has some useful physical properties
3. People use it as a decoration
Possibly there are other reasons as well, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind. As far as I can tell, Bitcoin only shares attribute #1. It doesn’t have intrinsic properties that make it useful into larger systems (though perhaps we just haven’t found the right systems yet?), and people don’t feel it’s intrinsically valuable. Not to completely bash Bitcoin though — if enough people find it valuable it can become a useful way to exchange value. Right now it’s just pretty bad at that.
The underlying model is corrupt and nakedly stupid.
Money is a form of mind control. You use money to get people, groups, institutions, to do what they normally wouldn't. Economics is the study of manipulating that power.
Cryptocurrencies would then be, or was supposed to be, about radically resetting economic priorities, in part by washing away the old incentives (by cutting the institutions that perpetuated them out of the money->behavior loop). It actually did manage this, to a limited and chagrin-inducing extent: 2-3 years ago, you could have convinced someone to pony up 2 year's worth of the average American's income for a picture of a cartoon monkey. Even today, people are paying "money" for digital art that they never would have a decade ago. The potential to have people value things differently because the means underlying that valuation had changed was there.
The issue, to my eye, is that the traditional financial "megaliths" (as he put it) sunk their claws in, with people on the inside ready to sell out the space to become filthy rich (only to be betrayed, both by their own hubris and the incumbent power structures). This is where your "game of greater fools" comes into play, as well as the oft-noted notion that Capitalism subsumes and commodifies everything it can.
Hello! Your friendly neighborhood economist here. Economics is the study of resource allocation under scarcity.
In your comment, I think you actually mean Game Theory and Mechanism Design, which are about assessing strategic behavior (Game Theory) and about creating mechanisms that align with strategic behavior to result in preferred outcomes (Mechanism Design, sort of the opposite approach to Game Theory).
Alternatively, based on your comment here:
> The potential to have people value things differently because the means underlying that valuation had changed was there.
you might find your thoughts more appropriately align to sociology and social psychology than economics, as economics doesn't care where your valuation or preferences come from--just that you have them.
Up, up, and away!
In the end all the ways Bitcoiners thought the system would come after them never happened. Ironically they got exactly what they wished for and what critics thought could never happen. Because the establishment has a much easier way to suffocate emerging uprisings: Buying off the leaders and incorporating the movement into the mainstream. Crypto has gotten assimilated.
But nice try to lower your buy in price.. ;)
Broadly speaking, you can’t live on crypto alone. Most people aren’t able to buy food and shelter with it.
So the goal, in those majority of cases, is to buy in low for the exact purpose of waiting for a “greater fool” to purchase it from you for more.
If you disagree, comment!! Let's discuss!
I guess I apologize for the little joke at the end if that's the problem.. sorry everyone!
Also, sorry for my opinion! Darn, it does just happen to be contrary to some of y'all's, I'll be more careful!!
