Blockchains allow for the immutable encoding of Capitalism.
We are already seeing a vast number of "traditional" finance applications being written on the blockchain. Applications that reinforce the Capitalist mode of production, in a way that is impossible to ever get rid of.
What are these "applications"?
DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations)
DAOs are "smart contracts" (code that exists on the blockchain) that encode an organisation wherein there are voting/participation mechanisms. Members can make proposals to execute some series of transactions, members vote, (upon the proposal passing) the transactions get executed.
Why is this bad?
Two reasons.
The first reason: The sheer majority of DAOs that have been created are traditional private ownership organisations. Your power in the organisation is directly proportional to how wealthy you are. Yes, any run-of-the-mill person can hop on and become a member, but this does not differ from traditional publicly-traded corporations in any way whatsoever. I can become a part-owner of Google if I want, but because I am not rich, I will always be out-powered by the mega-rich. Don't let anyone trick you into thinking these DAOs "help the little guy" by providing lower barriers to entry, more transparency, etc. While they do provide more transparency, I would argue that makes little difference to the fact that these organisations in no way empower anyone other than the rich.
The second reason: While DAOs provide more transparency in regards to what the DAO is doing, it provides the polar opposite regarding who is doing it.
How do I exile a corrupt businessman when their only identity is ihateminorities.eth?
Gone are the days when we were able to hold individual rulers accountable for their crimes against humanity.
Lending and Borrowing
This is probably one of the only areas that I see a non-negligible benefit for ordinary people (kind of). Decentralised lending and borrowing protocols allow you to freely lend your money in a way that doesn't allow you to get ripped off by a big bank. For example, I can put my USD into app.aave.com and get far more interest than any bank would ever give me.
Obviously this only matters if I'm privileged enough to actually be able to save up USD.
It obviously means nothing for most people.
Perpetual Swaps
Gambling for rich people. A good way to lose your life savings if you aren't already buffered with a lot of wealth.
Synthetic assets
Ways to "invest" in to stocks/cryptos/etc without actually owning it. Not much to say here.
Prediction markets
Decentralised betting platforms are still betting platforms. They still allow the average joe to get addicted and lose all their money.
Remember, once the majority of the financial world switches to using blockchain technologies, it will never be possible to get rid of it. Blockchains are "immutable".
Is there any reason why I should not be scared of this?
Provide me with any way you could stop, get rid of, or end this immutable & permanent hardcoding of Capitalism, and I will explain why it is impossible.
Like any network, blockchains are only valuable to people if there's a mass consensus that they are. If no one wants to trade BTC or run miners, then it no longer has any value. It might still exist in some niche way, but it will not maintain value because there is no utility in it if you can't use it effectively. Look at myspace these days or any other network that has waned in popularity. There's a bunch of pumping of BTC and other cryptos recently, but the curve will shift into decline at some point. The reality of the global markets today, is that there's lots of cash/value that doesn't know where to go. The ratcheting of global inequality and the concentration of wealth is driving all kinds of value-store assets to ridiculous levels. This is all related to the financial maneuvers of the imperial core through monetary policy as well as China's wealthy trying to stash their cash wherever they can outside of China. This is affecting all kinds of financial instruments and real estate and commodities. Blockchain is just a cryptographically sound way to launder wealth into a value-store. The volatility of these assets is not really a concern to much of the wealth in the world, because they just want to park it somewhere. This is also very clear to see in the art world. Asset prices are ridiculously inflated. Hell, even EU banks have been selling negative-yield bonds recently. That's parked wealth that actually is guaranteed to lose value (beyond inflation). The ruling class knows shit is unstable as fuck all over the world right now. They know climate change is just gonna keep pushing that instability. But because they all have liberal brain worms, they think they can bury a treasure chest (or a few billions of chests) to access at a later time. And they think that can save them from the terror.
Like any network, blockchains are only valuable to people if there’s a mass consensus that they are. If no one wants to trade BTC or run miners, then it no longer has any value.
The difference here is, on smart contract blockchains, there are financial protocols that actually do something beyond just sending around BTC.
You are correct in saying that if everybody decides they want to start using Dogecoin, or anything else in the world that meets criteria, as a store of value instead of BTC, then BTC would become worthless. However ETH, on the other hand, is a token for participation in a network that actually does stuff. It does stuff beyond just transferring/trading. It allows our entire financial system to become immutable and anonymous (well, pseudonymous, but practically anonymous).
Look at myspace these days or any other network that has waned in popularity. Because other networks came along that were deemed as "better". That doesn't mean the fundamental idea of "social media" stopped being widely adopted.
There’s a bunch of pumping of BTC and other cryptos recently, but the curve will shift into decline at some point. I am not referring to the prices of individual cryptocurrencies. I would argue that this is irrelevant.
There’s a bunch of pumping of BTC and other cryptos recently, but the curve will shift into decline at some point. The reality of the global markets today, is that there’s lots of cash/value that doesn’t know where to go. The ratcheting of global inequality and the concentration of wealth is driving all kinds of value-store assets to ridiculous levels.
I agree. As it stands today, cryptocurrencies are mostly used as gambles.
Blockchain is just a cryptographically sound way to launder wealth into a value-store. I'm sorry, but blockchains have way more use-cases than that. If you replaced "Blockchain" with just "Bitcoin", then you would have more ground.
If you want to learn more about why I am saying this stuff, a good primer I just found is here: https://ethereum.org/en/defi/
what about a blockchain the simulates the existence of an infinite number of consciousnesses, and tortures the ones who understand blockchain but don't donate 100% of their possessions to creating this blockchain?
Sounds like you're spending too much time on the blockchain and not enough time being terminally online.
The post was a reference to Roko's Basilisk, which is a bizarre and hilarious theory / thought-experiment that arose on LessWrong. I highly recommend reading about it, if you're into philosophical speculations about the future.
You can totally destroy it. Just persecute anyone who runs a bitcoin miner (aka the thing that processes transactions). Which as far as I know is as simple as just tracking internet traffic using the bitcoin network protocol. At some point, the system has so few bitcoin miners that it becomes unusable. Also, stop people from converting bitcoin into currency. I don't think it's really that much harder to dismantle than any other banking system.
First of all thank you for providing actual real examples as a rebuttal to my claim. Honestly, I appreciate it!
Just persecute anyone who runs a bitcoin miner
If you can achieve this for everywhere on the planet, this would completely work.
Which as far as I know is as simple as just tracking internet traffic using the bitcoin network protocol. Unfortunately, anonymous internet access would make this very difficult.
Also, stop people from converting bitcoin into currency. This is the main thing I was thinking for a long time.
Despite how illegal it is to buy hard drugs online, you can still do it with relative ease and risklessness if you know what you're doing.
I just don't see how it is feasible to eliminate this completely.
It obviously begs the question of if we ban it at the legal level, is that not sufficient? In the context of traditional finance, yes, of course it is. For blockchains? I don't think so. The use-cases that DeFi provides (which if you are not aware of, please lmk) means that there will always be demand for it. On top it being technologically infeasible to stop anyone from accessing/running blockchains.
I do believe that it might be possible to achieve all of this if blockchains are banned in enough countries that it becomes less desirable to the extent that nobody wants to use them. But I believe that achieving this would be an astronomical task.
More what I am asking is "is it feasible to stop people participating in decentralised finance protocols?" It is possible, but without completely turning off the internet, I can not see any actual activities that a government/group/whatever could carry out that would stop participation in decentralised finance.
In traditional finance, it is easy. Just seize banks, the stock market, etc. How do you seize the blockchain?
I agree with this as a whole, and I read the OP in a similar way
Also, you can’t like, put physical productive assets in a buttcoin wallet. So if the people successfully empower themselves and decide that [x] thing is theirs, it doesn’t matter whether some turd has a nfc or whatever that says it’s his. Of course bourgeois law is designed to support alienated ownership and elites “owning” something that they’ve never used for even a single day, so I guess it can make a difference in the moment.
But at the end of the day cryptocurrencies are just another funhouse casino that’s been grafted onto the way our society is organized. I don’t think it poses any real threat to our ability to radically change the world
NFTs, as they stand today, are obviously completely useless.
DAOs are far from useless.
in a way that is impossible to ever get rid of
:anprim-pat: :anprim-pat: never say never conrade
Blockchains produce a lot of value. It is ignorant to think otherwise.
When people get the opportunity to perform every financial activity they currently perform, but in a completely autonomous and private way, they will flock to it.
Don't get me wrong. As it stands today, the main smart contract blockchains are not scalable enough to support the entire world's financial transactions. It is infeasible for every financial institution to switch to Ethereum. Within the next two years max, that will no longer be the case.
Edit: Within the next two years maximum, Ethereum 2.0 (sharding, PoS) will be finished, a multitude of EVM-compatible optimistic rollup protocols will be finished, I don't want to guess where will be with zero knowledge rollups, but if I had to I would say we're probably going to be pretty close to an EVM compatible ZK rollup protocol.
All of this will provide scalability in the factors of hundreds of thousands, not even mentioning the ability to create new, completely robust, Arbitrum networks as seen fit by protocol creators.
No, they produce zero value whatsoever. Labor produces value. Some people getting rich by trading Bitcoins doesn't mean that the value was created by the blockchain, any more than people getting rich via a Ponzi scheme means the Ponzi scheme created value.
Can I live in blockchain? Can I eat blockchain? Their use value is zero, same as naked money.
They can switch to solana/matics of this world rn, but it’s a change of form, not substance.
Can I live in blockchain? Can I eat blockchain?
What kind of fallacious argument is that?
Can I live in supermassive conglomerate? Can I eat supermassive conglomerate?
No, but they sure as hell provide a lot of value to some very rich people.
They do? If I strand bezos tomorrow with a pile of amazon stock certificates, how long he will last? If all money tomorrow changes to blockchain, what do you think will change, exactly?
You are basing your entire argument off an idea that for something to "produce value", it has to have a direct & physically tangible benefit.
If I strand bezos tomorrow with a pile of amazon stock certificates, how long he will last?
Do you think that Bezos hasn't benefited greatly off being the largest owner of Amazon?
You're correct; he can't eat Amazon stocks. But he can control one of the largest companies in the world with them.
Because everyone (and the military) agrees that he does. If tomorrow he disappeared what would change? Conversely, if everyone decided he is a bum and isn’t to be listened to, what control would he have?
pretty sure that this ownership ultimately is enforced by force if that force was taken away then there would be no reason to respect the fact that the ledger says you own a thing
Unfortunately, there is a lot more to Decentralised Finance than just "this ledger says I own a thing. Please trust it and respect my ownership."
When you have written code that exists on the blockchain, it exists forever. When you are a DAO that governs this financial protocol you have written, there is an immutable connection that provides the DAO with ownership.
But the financial protocol and transaction are a metaphor ultimately for physical commodities the connection being enforced by law which ultimately is enforced by force.
If you decide to ignore what the financial protocol says then what the blockchain says is irrelevant.
its still ultimately backed up by the capitalist government recognizing this stuff as valid money or a valid contract or whatever, a socialist government would recognize it as peepeepoopoo and send people with guns to physically take your assets from you, no amount of internet contracterinos with your fellow cyberkulaks will stop that.
I don't know that any 20th century communists proposed to overthrow capitalism by destroying all the money. Whether your idea of revolution involves state coercion or mass popular insurrection, I'm not clear on why this mode of finance is more entrenched than centralized structures.
overthrow capitalism by destroying all the money. I am in no way saying that.
I’m not clear on why this mode of finance is more entrenched than centralized structures. It is not more culturally entrenched, because mass adoption has not happened yet. It is far more technologically entrenched because of its immutability.
Is there any reason why I should not be scared of this?
It's all bullshit and no one in their right mind would use it. Database > blockchain.
Database > blockchain.
Could you provide a bit more elaboration for why you say that?
I miss when the only time I had to worry about blockchains was when I was buying drugs
How do I exile a corrupt businessman when their only identity is ihateminorities.eth?
Gone are the days when we were able to hold individual rulers accountable for their crimes against humanity.
Seems like a law against anonymous investors (at least of a certain size) could deal with this pretty easily. Companies already have to be tied to identifiable individuals in various ways. In the U.S., your articles of incorporation generally have to list a few names and have to be on file with your state's Secretary of State, there are additional names required if you're a public company, and there's still more scrutiny (at least functionally) if you're a public company over a certain size.
Even if the penalties for accepting anonymous investments have trouble reaching the anonymous investors themselves, you can still penalize the company and its officers (and by proxy, the remaining, named investors), which will mean that no legitimate company will want to bother with them.
How do I exile a corrupt businessman when their only identity is ihateminorities.eth?
This isn't going to happen. The entire ethereum block chain is publicly searchable. People on Twitter right now are already tracking down institutional addresses in order to try to outwit them. Outside of dedicated privacy coins like Monero, the whole "everything will be anonymous in the ancap Crpyto universe" is a fundamental misunderstanding of the tech.
Cryptocurrencies will likely exist as another speculative asset class for a long time. There's a lot of excess Capital sloshing around that has to go somewhere. I could see them replacing junk bonds tbh, especially given that 0% interest rates are the norm.
