Not really, quite the opposite in fact. If humans were robots they’d trust each other completely, meaning all financial transactions could be done instantly with a simple database.
Humans are messy, so the solution we’ve arrived at is a database enforced by a complicated legal system + state power/violence (and arguably private power/violence via the mob). This works pretty well and powers trillions of dollars around the world.
Crypto is a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes modern finance hard. It’s not about trust, it’s about enforcement. I don’t need to trust my bank, but I need to trust that somebody will make things right if my bank takes my money. That allows me to trust my bank with my life savings, even though I’ve never met my banker or even know a single employee at the bank.
Crypto is missing this point and it’s why, despite following it since the beginning, I’ve never thought it has a future. It’s fundamentally solving the wrong problem.
That's a very eloquent way of putting it, thank you. It's possibly even worse than just a misunderstanding though. I'm sure there are people in the Crypto industry who see core issue of enforcement, because the second wave (after Bitcoin first became mainstream) was all about smart contracts. E.g. there was an effort to move the subject of enforcement into the framework. After all, if the contracts that need enforcement are part of the crypto system, then enforcement can also happen in the same system. Right?
Of course, this still falls short because no amount of mathematics will bridge that gap. At some point, the financial system (whether classical or based on blockchains) has to interact with the mind boggling mess of the real world. In the real world, 2+2 is not certain or deterministic at all. It can be debated, social implications weighed and the judge might say it's 4 and a bit, or slightly more than a pie.
In some sense it feels like crypto would work perfectly in a world that is completely deterministic, measurable and is populated wholly by algorithms interacting with each other. The second order question then is: would such a world even need crypto?
Humans are messy, so the solution we’ve arrived at is a database enforced by a complicated legal system + state power/violence (and arguably private power/violence via the mob). This works pretty well and powers trillions of dollars around the world.
Crypto is a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes modern finance hard. It’s not about trust, it’s about enforcement. I don’t need to trust my bank, but I need to trust that somebody will make things right if my bank takes my money. That allows me to trust my bank with my life savings, even though I’ve never met my banker or even know a single employee at the bank.
Crypto is missing this point and it’s why, despite following it since the beginning, I’ve never thought it has a future. It’s fundamentally solving the wrong problem.