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rogert2 t1_j79s1da wrote

Crypto will create big problems.

It's a terrifically bad foundation for an economy, but the people behind it have enough money and clout to crowbar it into our lives.

When that happens, it will matter that the crypto economy makes basic consumer protections literally impossible, and that "payment processors" who are the equivalent of PayPal are charging anywhere from 50% to 1000% of purchase price for each transaction. (It would be the equivalent of a hyper-regressive tax, but made worse because it would be paid to private profit-seekers rather than a government that has positive obligations to the populace.)

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[deleted] t1_j7a9nkp wrote

Eh, personally don't see where crypto has any future or really any useful application for the vast majority of consumers who are perfectly happy with credit cards.

It's far more like a trend that didn't catch on than game changing tech.

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Remarkable-Hall-9478 t1_j7azu1l wrote

Yeahhhhh, no. Crypto in its current iteration is fucked and will never be the basis for anything but infinite scams of the uneducated.

There are still some good ideas buried really, REALLY fucking deep in there, but they’ll never make a difference due to how drowned out they are by regarded moon-boy shit from the uneducated the entire system preys on.

Crypto in its current and foreseeable future forms will never reach a meaningful fraction of the “goals” that well-meaning people pointlessly superimpose on top of it.

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Vergeingonold t1_j7bd2iz wrote

I think too much attention is paid to the “currency” and finance aspects of blockchain and not enough to the immutable ledger opportunities that blockchain technology can bring to record keeping in areas like land registry, parts tracking and authentication, supply chain, ticketing, health records, voting, etc. it has huge potential to improve efficiency and reduce bureaucracy while being a powerful tool to combat corruption and fraud, but sadly there’s less money to be made from developing those applications outside the financial sector.

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rogert2 t1_j7bvtxn wrote

Putting medical and voting records in an immutable public datasource is a colossally bad idea.

Nothing about supply chain can be done better by blockchain. It doesn't have the ability to track anything that isn't already being tracked.

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Wooden_Original_5891 t1_j7c4wwg wrote

This guy gets it. Voting and heath records I'm not so sure about, but the potential is there to massively shake up and destroy whole industries as we know them and rebuild them hugely more efficiently.

I can't explain it well enough in a single reddit reply, but what bitshares was doing with DACs and the "music credits" (I can't remember exactly what they were called ATM) where a musician would sell them to their fans as future credits to buy their albums, tracks, records, samples, swag or tickets to see them live had the potential to dissolve what we are currently know as the record industry

The idea is to remove everything and anyone between the fans and the artist as far as money middle men go.

If implemented correctly it would make artists millions where that money would regularly go to a dinosaur industry.

The same thing can go for insurance industry. Say life insurance. The death certificate would be similar to a crypto cert as long as the implementation can follow and properly authenticate the death cert and who issued it. People would pay into a Blockchain instead of into a life insurance company.

Think about how much more payouts could be if not only life insurance CEO bonuses were no longer a thing, but there were also zero employees to pay, no buildings to buy or rent, no office stationary needed, no more 3 year lifecycle of IT Hardware to replace, no janitorial staff to pay, no land tax, and no office electric bill.

That's not to say that there would no longer be maintenance required, but its no longer on a corporate scale but rather on a computer program.

I don't think that a Blockchain based industry should completely take over, but I think it would be cool to see something like that compete with current industry solutions.

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