> Community funded. Pure mine. Rust, inflationary economics, cuckoo cycles. No governance, but that is debatable. Small team making decisions. What is that?
Somebody has to do the work to bootstrap and develop the network. Whom do you expect to govern the project? Governance meetings are public, bi-weekly, in the Gitter Lobby chat, you are free to join.
Also since I am into nitpicking, economics are inflationary for the first couple of decades gradually switching to deflationary (1 grin per second forever).
What about the waste generated by the banking system? Banks have to use electricity in order to operate, right? I haven't seen anybody complain about them as if they are eco-friendly or something. Or is it that since we are depending on our banks, they can do whatever they like but bitcoin being a ponzi scheme (or that's what I read on reddit) is an easy target to comment about on the Internets? As if Chinese miners have hooked their ASICs in your neighborhood's power supply. It is fascinating how people turn eco-friendly just to bash something but are part of a totally anti-ecological society.
> Remember Usenet? Remember email? Remember IRC? I think there's a false dichotomy in the mind of many nowadays, mainly that the internet is either centralized or "blockchain based", whatever that means. It's a lie. The internet is fundamentally decentralized, the centralization is a relatively new phenomenon that started in the early '00s.
The internet started in the early 90s so you are talking approximately about two thirds of its lifespan hence "new" doesn't really apply.
Does this mean that we should sit back and enjoy the show because "actors with under-handed intentions" and "precedent"s? Wake up. We can only get through collectively.
None of the above. What the parent comment is sarcastic about is a line of argument people use, especially politicians who want to promote their agendas.
Generally, I try to avoid criticising others but this logic is really disturbing and dangerous and I am very worried about people who stand behind it. It hasn't gotten us anywhere. It never will.
Yeah, sorry, I replied to the parent while thinking forward. I agree that in order for cryptos to succeed, merchants have to use them first. It is definitely not simple and we are far from it because it involves rendering the current system obsolete and a mental shift in how we think about money and governance. Eventually I expect governments to be affected, too.
Once LN is established, I expect that this is going to be opaque for an end user. Example: Today, you don't need to specify http:// in order to use it in a browser.
I think that the area where you want fault-tolerance the most is decentralized cash. If you are going to take control of your money you better do it in a fault-tolerant system. Many people don't care about it today but there are those who do. That's why cryptocurrency is the real killer app for blockchain, like it or not.
To your comments re bitcoin, it sounds to me like somebody complaining that Internet is slow back in the 90s/00s.
EDIT:
I am not pontificating in favor of bitcoin. It's just that the technology is still immature but there is a lot of great and promising work happening today.
I happen to read Walden these days (almost done) and I am questioning the critic of Thoreau in this article. For one, Thoreau admits that he is not pure (also questionable is his definition of 'pure' and whether it matches the authors definition) and also mentions throughout the book that he sometimes would dine as a guest somewhere but it's unclear whether he rooted for those occasions from an eating standpoint or merely a social one (maybe a combination of both? maybe he tricks us to believe the later? Or he really didn't care about his food as long as he wasn't starving?).