I don't understand how a forum called Hacker News is so dismissive of an invention that should be right up a hacker's alley. Innovative, technical, cryptographic and decentralized. Cryptocurrencies feel like something straight out of a cyberpunk novel.
I wish it worked! It does feel like something out of a cyberpunk novel. I loved "Crypronomicon." There's nothing punk about Bitcoin anymore, though. IBM, the least punk organization in the history of mankind, wants to sell you a blockchain. The promise of Bitcoin is the idea that individuals, not large financial concerns, have the power. Coinbase just IPO'd for an eye watering amount of money on the premise that people who want to buy and sell Bitcoin are probably going to have to do it through them. What's less punk than an IPO?
> The promise of Bitcoin is the idea that individuals, not large financial concerns, have the power.
Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency out there.
Besides, the fact that coinbase just had an IPO doesn't mean they control bitcoin, I don't need them or anyone else to move around cryptocurrencies however I want.
That's the weirdest take on why blockchain doesn't work I've seen so far. The entire point of these projects is that people do whatever they want with them. Monero exists if you want a purist approach and so does ergo.
> At least among ones that I encountered cyberpunk is strongly dystopian.
Back in the day when we were sitting in dark basements with big Unix beards drinking Jolt cola, we all dreamed of living in a crypto-anarchy, becoming cyborgs with chip implants and fully submerge in the Metaverse. I guess times have changed.
As someone who started reading cyberpunk as a young teenager this is definitely the future I imagined, just with different names.
Cryptocurrency, the internet, mobile devices, huge powerful corporations, Anonymous, black hat hackers, hi tech protests like DDoS, electric vehicles, shady IT security companies, Moxie Marlinspike, billionaires going into space...
Wasting massive amounts of mostly carbon-producing electricity as the planet dies to do absolutely nothing productive is a pretty cyberpunk evil megacorp thing to do, agreed.
