The profit your employer makes from your work isn't coming from an increase in demand [in the use of a transactional layer] causing the perceived value of a crypto-asset [USD] to go up, and therefore they also are profiting from that increased value -- that'd be "double-dipping" profit in a sense if that's the case, if they're also making money on the increase in demand of the currency.

Profit from what someone is willing to pay above actual cost vs. "profit" derived simply from an increase in perceived value because of demand are two different things; this is why I put profit in quotes to differentiate.

If you're paid in USD, USD being relatively stable and balanced with other fiat currencies, then you're not going to profit from fluctuations -- there are currency traders of course, however banks and governments try to limit this. It would be great to have a single global currency, where everyone is aligned, however

If you held onto your paycheck and didn't cash it for 5 years (assuming the check is still valid then), and the USD went up by 400% -- once you cashed it, that 300% difference in your buying power that you're depositing is getting covered by everyone else now (for no more work done by you). At the surface of it, does that sound fair? And that cash they were paid, it wasn't an investment.

If you're paid in USD, USD being relatively stable and balanced with other fiat currencies, then you're not going to profit from fluctuations -- there are currency traders of course, however banks and governments try to limit this, they decide how much the other currencies are worth in comparison (the exchange rates). It would be great to have a single global currency, where everyone is aligned, however not through reallocating wealth weighted to the earliest adopters -- you're taking advantage of the majority of society then.

The issue is whether reallocating resources/wealth unreasonably/unnecessarily is acceptable or not. I argue it's not. The incentivized structure is one way to get people working together, collaborating - at least to begin with - however at a certain "tipping point", let's say it's 50% -- everyone who adopts or must adopt the incentivized crypto-asset then is covering/realizing the cost of everyone who bought before. E.g. Their buying power is shifted weighted towards the earlier adopters, and if this is allowed then there will be a point where they will be forced to adopt it (and early bad actors are heavily incentivized to reach this goal).

One problem with incentivized crypto-assets is that USD isn't destroyed, instead it's being exchanged - given to someone in return for a digital crypto-asset. If USD was actually destroyed or rather transferred into a crypto-asset blockchain, that would be solving part of the problem.

If you see problems with what I'm writing, I would greatly appreciate hearing more of your thoughts - rarely do people engage with this line of thought on here, I seem to get enough downvotes though (to counter the upvotes I initially get).

People that hold USD have their pie diluted, and they are even lied to about it by using a CPI figured calculated from consumer goods and not a more rounded figure of all asset prices (or actual new money injected/ removed).

"If you mean that when an early adopter sells, this is diluting, then you are wrong."

No, I'm essentially saying the opposite. When an early adopter sells "now" - the "profit" they realized is based off of the current perceived value, and so that's transferring future buying power weighted towards the early adopters (once they sell to realize the "profit"). Essentially the future adopters buying power is diluted in comparison to how much the early adopters would have under normal circumstances (outside of a Pyramid-Ponzi scheme) would achieve, where if someone was simply paid USD (where the volatility is already removed/plateaued and being managed by the government with other governments using fiat currency, where people are keeping track and deciding the exchange rates based on the complexity of a society; yes, I understand the issue with a government printing money (which is real dilution) in order to say, fund a war that no one wants.

E.g. If you're paid $100 for work today, in a year from now, does it make sense for that $100 to now be worth $1,000 -- so you have $900 more of buying power?

Buying power (for people's services and/or resources) aren't in unlimited, immediate supply, and therefore they are also competing with others, e.g. who can pay the most.

If it was just "moving ownership" then the person buying it wouldn't be burdened with the risk associated with the volatility that is inherent to the beginning-to-end point of incentivized crypto-asset structure.

This isn't a very strong point, however it helps paint the picture: If an early adopter tries to say sell $1B worth of a crypto-asset, the price would would crash, right? Why is that? Well, it's reenforcing the idea that current value is only perceived value, and it's because there aren't enough new late adopters coming in to cover the cost based on the higher perceived value.

being extracted, because it's the future adopters that cover the "current" value -- the current value only being a perception and not 100% liquid, like if you had or were using cash.

What about a crypto-asset that wasn't incentivized, have you thought through that as an exercise to contrast incentivized crypto-assets?

What I do agree with is that once literally everyone is on an incentivized crypto-asset structure, then the volatility should diminish completely -- the fluctuations then will happen based on buying power, based on price of products/services and who can afford to pay more: who can afford to pay more will be heavily weighted towards the early adopters who have had let's say 40%+ of society's wealth/buying power transferred to them. I haven't seen these modelled or calculations nor do I have the resources to do them however much I'd love to clearly show what the long-term looks like; I'm sure VCs and companies, like Union Square Ventures and Coinbase, have complex private spreadsheets determining how much "profit" they're targeting with the ecosystem they're trying to create, a walled garden of sorts where you must buy into these Pyramid-Ponzi scheme structured blockchain crypto-assets.

It's a completely unnecessary reallocation of wealth/buying power, and the only people that want it are those motivated because they're in early enough - before the "50%" tipping point. It's a very clever design, however it's unfair. If it is somehow necessary, no one has shown or explained why - and of course there isn't very much money/investment/time going towards an alternate to the popular incentivized crypto-assets.

It's completely the beginning-to-end period when these incentivized crypto-assets are being "distributed" that is the problem, the very end point is good, along with the immutable ledger - however the solution needs to meet/reach the end point without the unnecessary reallocation.

Most people would be happy (as is the system everyone in the world currently uses, except for bartering) being paid a salary of say $100k/year to work on blockchain-related technology, however greed and hype has really excited people to unsurprisingly join and perpetuate a Pyramid-Ponzi scheme structure that's been built into what should be a neutral, unprofitable transactional layer; a somewhat parallel comparison relating to transactional layers: people who adopted email early didn't make money from using email and especially not being reallocated more money/wealth/buying power because future people started using email.

The solution isn't creating a new currency, especially not that's incentivized, the solution is converting existing currencies into perhaps multiple immutable ledgers, or combining existing currencies into a single immutable ledger. This process would respect the sovereignty of governments around the world and allow them to join the system when they are ready, without force. Through diplomacy this is possible.

What do you think about the idea of converting fiat currencies into immutable blockchain ledgers, where the currency paid is removed from regular circulation and converted into a crypto-asset, where the currency isn't simply handed over to the other party selling it?

I hope my further thoughts helps you better see my view point. I look forward to your response.

The important word here being "seems". Seeming is a thing that happens in someone's head. So the fuller version is "seems to an anonymous person who has tied their identity to a particular technology and a specific political vision".

It does not seem like that to me. Or to 99.9% of companies, who start out tying their companies to the reach of a specific national or regional financial system and then move happily beyond it.

In practice, starting with the use of the US financial system provides much more reach than Bitcoin, which has a much smaller user-base, something more like Bolivia or Switzerland, and whose "residents" do much less of their economic activity through that financial system than those in developed nations do.

Email is already open and international and doesn't need bank accounts. This is paid for email solicitation, and nobody needs to do that without access to payment networks, unless perhaps they wish to conceal their true identity because they're spear-phishing.

For years and years I've said, "Yes, that is a pretty cool technology, but what real-world value is it currently providing?" One common answer is, "But it's a really cool technology!" No argument, but that seems to miss the point. Another is, "I'm sure it will be amazing!" Which again, misses the point. A third is, "It might be great for X," but without any real proof that people doing X want the technology, without demonstration that the current alternatives are inadequate, and without apparent recognition that a future hypothetical does not in any way satisfy somebody looking for traction.

Plenty of technologists think they have a good thing going. Right up until the investor money runs out and customers have failed to show up.

As an example, look at 3D movies and TV. 3D has been about to change the way we see things since the 1950s. There is no denying the technology is very neat to technologists. Early adopters even get excited! And then it turns out once again that customers don't really care. This pattern goes at least as far back as the Brewster stereoscope in the 1850s.

So please, don't be shocked that people are tired of blockchain/cryptocurrency hype. That you find the technology interesting does not mean that anybody else will find the (lack of) actual deployed use interesting.

If the review I read is correct, that's an ordinary debit card that one refills by selling bitcoin. Which has approximately no value to most people, because they already have debit cards that work just fine.

It could be that bitcoin will eventually end up being useful as a currency, but its high volatility means that day hasn't come yet, and won't come soon. Prominent bitcoin advocates are happy to give up on it as a currency altogether. E.g.: http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/

We don't actually let markets make decisions for the big stuff. Take banking: in fact by a lot of measures it's the most highly regulated industry, and most of the fundamentals (like the interest rates) are not set via markets, but via elected (or sometimes not) officials. We don't actually want market economics to run the vast majority of our systems, which is why we've never built frameworks for it before, not because it's particularly complicated.

> Because until now, you'd have to do it for free.

Why wont specialization of labor take over again, and make it so crypto just turns into a different set of centralized players running the infrastructure with a ton of consumers? What happens when it turns out the vast majority of people don't actually want to be involved in running their own banking infrastructure?

> (whether that's a good thing or not is an interesting discussion that I wish were had more often).

Totally agree, upvoted :)

I actually don't think blockchain-based ledgers are irreversible. The most exhaustive account for how these ledgers are reversible is captured in the Blockchain Folk Theorem paper [0]. We can brainstorm all kinds of fun use cases for irreversible digital cash, but given the growing evidence, I don't believe such digital cash exists.

[0] https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/...

You're right that some nations will be more oppressive than others, but you're forgetting that those places will more easily ban public blockchains than in places you've hinted don't need it. See Pakistan, Bangladesh, or China as examples.

So you either live in a place where you can fight for your right at a political and social level, and don't need the blockchain (eg. USA), or you live in a place where you cannot easily affect policy, in which case your government has probably also decided you cannot use tools that would circumvent their enforcement... such as the blockchain.