I read the list of applications. All of them seem pointless, or at least inferior to what we already have. Obviously the people writing these lists are unclear on the basics and probably haven't even read the NIST blockchain technology overview.
What they all have in common is cutting out an inefficient rentseeking middleman that people have been forced to trust. Yes that includes FTX, Binance, Coinbase and governments.
Here is an example… how would you do this internationally without crypto?
It's a stupid idea. There are plenty of good charities already helping refugees. You can just donate cash to them. Using cryptocurrency just complicates things without adding any value or solving any real problems.
Sorry, but no. You don’t seem to be very knowledgeable about what these charities actually get done and their efficiency.
The real problems are making global payments directly to the people on the ground without waste and having confidence in how they are spent.
This works with the existing infrastructure in every city — similarly to point-of-sale machines that VISA and Mastercard did a lot of work to set up over decades. Back then you would be asking why the world needs credit cards and payment systems when there were perfectly good cash based systems and charities on the ground.
Anyway, the vendors sell food, the person shows up and buys the food. We know how the money was spent. The people help people.
To try to show you by analogy… it is as if people said that there should be a decentralized and uncensorable network for uploading videos taken by people’s own dashcams, phones, etc. of rockets hitting buildings, detention campa etc. But you’d keep saying that the Associated Press and the current centralized media is perfectly adequate and reports everything we need to know, and if people wanted they could upload their videos to Telegram or some other adhoc solution that isnt designed like the news agencies. Why decentralize anything? Because the people DON’T get a good system otherwise
Actually I'm more knowledgeable about this stuff than you are, and it's still a stupid idea. It fails to account for all the tax and legal compliance issues that vendors have to deal with.
And real vendors don't want cryptocurrency magic beans anyway. They want useful currency like dollars or euros that they can use to pay their own suppliers.
I doubt that. But hey, if you're so knowledgeable, then you'd realize that the systems do in fact support taxation and make auditing for compliance with any goals far easier.
Technology empowers individuals and smaller communities. That's what it does throughout history. Personal computers. Personal printers. VOIP instead of $3 a minute phone calls. The Web instead of gatekeepers at radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, etc.
In all of those cases, you would probably say "the real vendors don't want the Internet anyway". Who needs email when there are phonecalls? Who needs the Web anyway when there is email? Who needs online dating sites when there are matchmakers?
Nathan Myrhvold at Microsoft told people at Excite that "search is not a business".
Economist Paul Krugman wrote that by 2005, it would become clear that the Internet's effect on the economy is no greater than the fax machine's.
You'd be in good company ... a lot of smug people have always said this newfangled stuff is totally useless because people are perfectly fine using the "useful" systems they've always used, not "magic beans" like this new programmable money.
https://www.nist.gov/publications/blockchain-technology-over...