this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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I don't think that I'll be able to change your mind. I get the bad blood with crypto, really, but I guess I just don't share the absolute conviction that the whole thing is a scam.
The way you're breaking down ownership is true, but it's true about every form or ownership. The deed to your house? You don't own anything, that's just a piece of paper that someone says prooves that you have a right to live there. Whether that's saved in a county records department or a blockchain that doesn't really change. Point taken, but I think it's a broader point than how you were using it.
I'm not really sure what makes saving your deed information on a blockchain less valid than in a county records department though. I mean breaking it down, a blockchain is really just a ledger that keeps track of information in a cryptographically secure way. I think that this has gotten out of hand because of all of the get rich quick schemes, and that's fair. It's happened....a lot. But does that invalidate the whole endeavor?
The current exchange system has rent seeking vultures sitting on top. Visa, MasterCard, these fuckers sit there and take a percentage of every transaction that theY fascilitate. What are they doing? Keeping a ledger. We trust them to do it accurately and pay them steeply to do it. Now we have a self managing ledger that requires no trust from anyone. Can you really tell me there is ZERO use case potential here?
It's not always a scam (just mostly), but it's most certainly not the gigantic shift NFT shills have been suggesting.
Well, for one, not literally everybody on earth with an internet connection can go through my deed and personal information.
Also, if the records get stolen, they can authenticate and give ownership back to me. If the ownership gets stolen from you on the blockchain, you're SIL.
I don't really look forward to ransomware that targets deed and other such information, do you?
And with NFTs, all we'd be doing is add another layer on top of that.
The thing is, they're central authority figures. Which means they're the authority on the ledger.
What happens if your deed gets stolen on the blockchain? Who do you turn to to get it back?
What happens if you lose access to your wallet? If it's a hardware wallet, what happens if it geta stolen. If it's a software wallet, what happens if it's hacked?
Yeah that's true about losing access to your shit for sure. There are options like multisignature accounts that could reduce the possibility of theft, but really the danger in crypto is shooting yourself in the face and losing your keys. Theft comes from bad software around the crypto like browser extensions and shit like that, the blockchain itself though makes theft numerically impossible on timescales like the existance of the universe. But your point stands that it isn't user friendly, which isn't new to emerging technology.
On a personal note, I very much like the model of self custody of assets, and this is coming from someone who almost fucked up and lost their keys. Loss of assets is a possibility and should be in the mind of users, but the tradeoff here is that you always have access to your funds and control over them.
Another commenter stated that crypto is solution in search of a problem, and I don't think that's not necessarily wrong. I see that as optimistic because it's still a solution. It potentially broadens the space of possibilities from our sole option of centralized control by existing wealth/power structures.
Sure, but you NEED software to interact with the blockchain, and that software WILL have bugs. That's just a fact.
Whatever wallet you use will have security vulnerabilities, and if combined with say a windows 0-day, it can cause huge amount of damage.
The theft stuff isn't a user friendlyness issue, it's a built in thing. You can try to prevent it, but it will happen, and when it does, whoever it happens to is in huge trouble.
Depends on what your assets are. As soon as it touches any other system, you lose self custody. And if it doesn't interface with other systems, it will be pretty limited.