Crypto’s failures are massive and obvious. Yet it’s hard to see how it has delivered the goods. That might be a matter of how it’s portrayed in the media.
So I’d ask you: how many of the unbanked has it banked? What fraction of remittances are via crypto, and how have the people using crypto remittances been affected by the volatility in crypto? Is it making progress on providing decentralized property rights in lawless nations, and are we pleased with the way that benefits and costs have been distributed in these populations? What control will I have over my employment history or medical records via crypto, when my doctor has my medical records and I have to publicize my employment history to get hired? Why do I need a decentralized, secure, hard-to-fake weather report?
I don’t expect you to have answers to all these questions, but I will openly say I was skeptical of crypto before this crash, and it’s even easier to lean into that skepticism now. The specific thing I think crypto seems good for is funding real-money prediction markets. But I’d trade that away in a heartbeat to get rid of the ills I’ve seen come of crypto.
Convincing people like me to come ’round will require showing that there really is a large magnitude of realized practical benefit. It takes time, I am patient, but right now, it seems right to me for EA to keep crypto at arm’s length in most cases.
Crypto’s failures are massive and obvious. Yet it’s hard to see how it has delivered the goods. That might be a matter of how it’s portrayed in the media.
So I’d ask you: how many of the unbanked has it banked? What fraction of remittances are via crypto, and how have the people using crypto remittances been affected by the volatility in crypto? Is it making progress on providing decentralized property rights in lawless nations, and are we pleased with the way that benefits and costs have been distributed in these populations? What control will I have over my employment history or medical records via crypto, when my doctor has my medical records and I have to publicize my employment history to get hired? Why do I need a decentralized, secure, hard-to-fake weather report?
I don’t expect you to have answers to all these questions, but I will openly say I was skeptical of crypto before this crash, and it’s even easier to lean into that skepticism now. The specific thing I think crypto seems good for is funding real-money prediction markets. But I’d trade that away in a heartbeat to get rid of the ills I’ve seen come of crypto.
Convincing people like me to come ’round will require showing that there really is a large magnitude of realized practical benefit. It takes time, I am patient, but right now, it seems right to me for EA to keep crypto at arm’s length in most cases.