Begin forwarded message:
> From: byfield <[email protected]> > Date: December 29, 2017 at 12:05:02 PM EST > To: "Florian Cramer" <[email protected]>, "Morlock Elloi" > <[email protected]> > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: <nettime> Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for > blockchain > > On 29 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Florian Cramer wrote: > >>> The *goal* of the Bitcoin proof of concept was 'an electronic payment >>> system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two >>> willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a >>> trusted third party.' So when the author of this avid-reader essay >>> complains 'but Visa... but FDIC... but NASDAQ,' one reasonable response is: >>> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The point of Bitcoin wasn't to succeed to the degree that it >>> has, or in the way that it has. >> >> Hi Ted, >> >> If that had been Bitcoin's only goal, then it would have sufficed to create >> a crypographic peer-to-peer payment system based on/supporting existing >> currencies and their exchange rates. >> >> Things got politically murky with the introduction of Bitcoin as its own >> currency based on Hayek's and Mises' economic theory, i.e. with built-in >> deflation and absence of political control except through owners. > > Well, the difference is your addition of 'only,' as in it's 'only goal.' If I > say I love you, Florian, that would be special, wouldn't it? But if I say I > love *only* you, Florian, that's a different kettle of fish. 'Only' is one of > those tricky words that serves as a mule for smuggling entire ideological > apparatuses. 'Still' is another one: 'You *still* believe that? > > As someone who's thought a lot about design, you probably understand better > than many what a proof of concept is: an implementation — or we'd maybe we > should think of it in more anthropological terms, as an *artifact* — that, > more or less, tests a specific proposal. How that test is constructed, and > the context in which it's conducted, involve a lot of artifice. Many of the > assumptions that shape that artifice go unstated. The questions we're left > with, in the case of Bitcoin, are what those assumptions were, and what they > might mean. > > If I'd said that goal was Bitcoin's *only* goal, then I'd agree with your > objection, but I didn't: instead, I talked about the explicit ideological > beliefs that dominated the cypherpunks milieu, including their implacable > hostility to the state, their all but explicit aim of attacking models of > trust anchored in ~public institutions, the ambiguity of their use of the > idea of honesty, and — crucially — their interest in Vernor Vinge's novella > _True Names_. It didn't seem worth the effort to say they were libertarian > free-market extremists, because that's widely discussed. So your point is > right on, but it seems like more of an elaboration ('and') than an objection > ('but'). They didn't think talking about Hayek or Mises in the original > Bitcoin paper, but as you say those ideas were baked into it from the > beginning. > > Whoever designed Bitcoin assumed that 'currency' and 'an electronic payment > system' were interchangeable or even identical. They (and I'm pretty sure it > was a group, not an individual) didn't set out to design better banknotes > *or* to develop a better PayPal, they set out to create something entirely > new that could function as either/both but wasn't *only* limited to meeting > those specifications. > > That brings us to Morlock's point about whether Bitcoin succeeded or failed. > Two responses, one good, one bad. \_(ツ)_/¯. > >> This reminds me of discourses on theory and practice of communism. One good, >> the other bad. >> >> Bitcoin failed for practical/mundane reason: it ceased to be distributed >> long time ago (today 4 Chinese mints control 50+% of hash power), while >> talking heads deceivingly ignored this, and continued to proselytize the >> initial but long extinct 'distributed' meme. It's more centralized than US >> dollar. >> >> PoW concentration is mandated by its technological nature and there are no >> signs that anything will change any time soon. Every other 'proof' >> introduces either benevolent coordinating authority (which is utter bs), or >> switches CPU for something that has not been demonstrated as >> concentrate-able yet because no one bothered (such as proof of space - big >> disks are naturally distributed ... right.) >> >> There is little more to say. Bitcoin is a big lie, for many too big to be >> acknowledged. >> >> Possible futures and promises will continue to be built on the miserably >> failed premise, with non-working workarounds (But maybe the next workaround >> will work? ... Bitcoin is just the first try, the concept is good? ... It's >> such great idea and must be revisited? ... etc.) > > Morlock, your point about its concentration nails it, and in that sense, yes, > Bitcoin was a miserable failure. That structural tendency toward > concentration was obvious in many of the experiments that contributed to > Bitcoin, like the distributed cracks of RC5, which were dominated by actors > with immense computing power at their disposal. Cypherpunk-types loved > heartwarming talk about how Zapatistas and victims of sexual abuse would use > PGP etc, but that was just playing to the crowd: they were much more > concerned with systemic architectures and their baked-in biases because they > knew cryptography was and would remain inevitably *politically* asymmetric. > > But as you may remember (if you're the same Morlock Elloi who was kicking > around in those circles), all that talk about crypto-anarchy was, at its > heart, about class. Much of what normal people think about 'class' depends on > the state: if there's no state, there are no classes, there are just > arbitrary individuals and groups who are more or less adept at navigating and > negotiating whatever resources are available to them. Whatever human > potential gets lost in the fray is just the cost of doing business — and > 'twas ever thus. > > So...if Bitcoin has made some people fabulously wealthy, enabled new 'free > markets' (including dark commerce, a growing parade of ICO cons, etc), and > generally moved a bunch of Overton windows, do you really think some of them > — Tim May, for example — would be upset that it was eventually dominated by a > few Chinese mints rather than being equitably accessible for > sheeple-to-sheeple use? If all of history a single catastrophe that keeps > piling wreckage upon wreckage, what's a few more as long as they make you and > yours rich? > > What engineer ever objected if his/her/their proof of concept failed on a > specified front but succeeded in creating a dozen new ones? It's as if the > Wright Brothers' plane crashed — on the moon. > > Cheers, > Ted > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
