I don't see any cryptocoins that I regard as a success, but I am watching three that might be a success:
1. Filecoin: It was well-motivated from the start, to provide a cheap way to get counterparties (by default, a multiple of six) to pin content in IPFS. I don't regard it as a proven technology yet, but it's usable as it stands;
2. Brave's BATs: Brave annoys me with its cryptocoin boosterism, but in principle this provides an way for content providers to profit from gaining a readership that doesn't involve nasty ad-tech. I don't think the system provides good enough incentives for users to mint BATS as it stands, but I think that in principle the Brave team have a viable solution to this problem.
3. The Stellar payments infrastructure has a cryptocoin used to grease its wheels. I don't see Stellar's choice to mint their own cryptocoin as principled here (they could have allowed nodes to choose), but using some cryptocoin here is driven by use.
None of these coins use Bitcoin / present-day Ethereum style proof of work, so they do not appear to have the negative externalities you deplore.
Is there any reason this needs to be on a public blockchain? What are the benefits? Why is this a better solution than Brave keeping points/payments data in their own database?
What if the Taliban downloads and starts using your browser? Do you want to keep their ledgers and start processing payments for them using your centralized DB?
The use of crypto here has the same reason as use of crypto almost anywhere else, to sidestep regulations and liabilities. Doesn't matter whether those regulations are there for very good reason.
If the Taliban trades on a public blockchain, aren't their ledgers being kept and their payments being processed by every miner? I don't see how that sidesteps liability at all; it just externalizes it.
It's just regulatory arbitrage. I am not a lawyer, but until there are clear laws about it, why can't you just claim that this is just funny money with no real world value, and it has no more seriousness than an in game gold/xp?
> why can't you just claim that this is just funny money with no real world value, and it has no more seriousness than an in game gold/xp?
That might work in a jurisdiction where the trade in cryptocurrency is illegal but its possession is allowed, but I can't imagine a US or European court would take that argument seriously when crypto has a demonstrable market value. The court would almost certainly treat crypto like a commodity in that case. Wheat doesn't have KYC requirements, but if you knowingly and demonstrably facilitate wheat trades on behalf of a sanctioned entity, you can expect some legal trouble.
It could be done via a centralised database. However, Brendan Eich is a cryptocoin enthusiast. He thinks that BAT is more valuable because it can leverage DeFi infrastructure. It also drastically reduces worries about that database's availability, making the job the Brave team has to do easier.
I'm not sure what your point is here. Interesting as these things might be I honestly don't care about in the context of the argument over wether power wasting networks such as btc and eth are a good idea.
They're not good and I want the waste to end and the cryptohucksters to get burned. But the story is called "why all cryptocurrency should die in a fire" and the badness of btc & eth doesn't lead to that broader conclusion.
Yeah, I was specifically commenting on the "specifically the energy intensive kind", which is the kind that I suspect draws the ire of the majority of people.
Blockchains are interesting, they're useful sometimes.
1. Filecoin: It was well-motivated from the start, to provide a cheap way to get counterparties (by default, a multiple of six) to pin content in IPFS. I don't regard it as a proven technology yet, but it's usable as it stands;
2. Brave's BATs: Brave annoys me with its cryptocoin boosterism, but in principle this provides an way for content providers to profit from gaining a readership that doesn't involve nasty ad-tech. I don't think the system provides good enough incentives for users to mint BATS as it stands, but I think that in principle the Brave team have a viable solution to this problem.
3. The Stellar payments infrastructure has a cryptocoin used to grease its wheels. I don't see Stellar's choice to mint their own cryptocoin as principled here (they could have allowed nodes to choose), but using some cryptocoin here is driven by use.
None of these coins use Bitcoin / present-day Ethereum style proof of work, so they do not appear to have the negative externalities you deplore.