Technology

No, I’m just a Democratic socialist software engineer with an economics background. I’m pretty much exactly who would think blockchain is unimpressive tech and would be suspicious of the libertarian utopian economic theories behind it.

A lot of it is that I see most of the mistakes of the 1800’s American free banking era being repeated. There’s a lot of intuitive-seeming economic ideas that have been discredited by real world events. Most crypto enthusiasts buy into one, whether it’s goldbugism or Austrian economics or whatever. Most of the economic theories behind bitcoin were things we usually learned the hard way are not effective.

And so, of course it’s ripe with scams. Sometimes, what sounds like common sense is actually just some mistake humans make every time we forget history. I was originally hopeful the tech would make things like international remittances cost-free (and disrupt Western Union or whatever) but it really hasn’t.

And, like it or not, we have a carbon budget. Off-grid Bitcoin mining using solar or wind doesn’t bother me. Have fun with that. But if any part of it requires more burning of coal or natural gas, it’s a net negative to humanity even before we get into money laundering and scams.

I think I have considered the merits — you mentioned avoiding government oppression — and still think the negative outweigh the positives. But I sometimes smoke so what do I know?