http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2015/01/23/why-bitcoin-is-.htmlThe core developers are different as well. The founders of the Internet may have been slightly hippy-like, but they were mostly government-funded and fairly government-friendly. Cutting a deal with the Department of Commerce seemed like a pretty good idea to them at the time.
The core Bitcoin developers are cypherpunks who do what they do because they don't trust governments or the global banking system and are trying to build a distributed and autonomous system, one that is impervious to regulation and meddling by anyone at any time. At some level, Bitcoin was designed to not care what regulators think. The miners have an economic interest in Bitcoin having value, since that's what they're paid in, and they care about scale and the network effect, but the miners probably don't care if it's Bitcoin or an alt.coin that ends up winning, as long as their investments in hardware and plant don't disappear before they make a return on their investment.
Regulators clearly have an incentive to influence the rules of the network, but it's unclear whether the core developers really need to care what the regulators think. Having said that, without some sort of buy-in by regulators, it's unlikely to scale or have the mainstream impact that the Internet did.
What this quote identifies is that with the Internet there was a willingness to work with all stakeholders and create diverse stakeholders. There wasn't the fear of making regulators into stakeholders, or making governments into stakeholders. But with Bitcoin the core developers seem scared of the government or in an adversarial attitude.
This prevents blockchain technology from receiving funding from government grants, it prevents communities from acquiring some of the top academic or professional minds, it limits stakeholders to being only the crypto-anarchist fringe. Unfortunately this reputation from Bitcoin is affecting the entire crypto industry and unfortunately it's from irrationality due to ideology (on all sides).
So I see a problem here. Any blockchain technology which is to go mainstream and survive must co-opt the people who currently have close ties to the government. The way to do that would be to allow blockchain to regulate more effectively than any government regulator. It also would require building distributed governance technologies which allow blockchain based networks to be self governing which would make the mission of regulators easier through useful features that appeal to their demographic and personality types.
The governance model of the Internet is ICANN. The blockchain has "consensus" which has the potential to be the most effective and efficient form of governance of information systems. So by making the network self regulating then individuals who work as regulators will see that their services aren't needed and sooner or later realize that whatever they do might be done better in new ways.
At the same time if an anti-governance, anti-self regulation stance is taken, and if the top blockchain communities basically just throw their hands up and ignore their leadership responsibility in this space, then of course the legally official regulators are going to think that only they can solve the problem.
Did MtGox have to happen? I don't think it did. It happened because people went with an outdated centralized exchange model even when better models were being conceptualized.
As for Silk Road, I would say that is more a political protest and experiment. It's not the kind of experiment which would attractive positive attention from individuals in government. On the other hand I think BitNation or something similar which can improve the ability to govern, or perhaps Bitshares VOTE, have the ability to attract positive attention from individuals in government because it makes their job easier.
So what is the point here? People in government get upset when we develop technologies which make their jobs harder but get happy when we develop technologies which make their jobs easier. There has to be a balance between the technologies which make governance harder and technologies which make governance easier.
In specific my position is that I'm not against governance, but prefer a distributed and decentralized form of it for cyberspace. So we can create our own tools for governance which are superior to anything a centralized government could do. This would change the perception of blockchain technology from something which increases risks and danger to something which removes risk and danger.
Then you can show with numbers how multi-sig and transparent blockchains are statistically more secure per dollar than centralized solutions. The numbers do not lie and it's a fact that distributed mechanisms improve information security when price is considered.
At the same time when it comes to governance that is really just the ability of a blockchain to comply with it's own regulations or which allow it's users to comply with their local government's regulations. It's most important that a blockchain comply with the regulation of it's participants as it is soverign but just as any sovereign entity it's going to have more allies and less enemies if it's not set up specifically to attack the laws of some other sovereign entity.
So if the United States, China and all of these countries are like persons then the blockchain best able to win them all over will win just because it has the least enemies. This doesn't mean the blockchain has to be their friend, but merely it should not be set up to be an enemy from it's genesis. So for that reason I see Darkcoin/Dash having some problems because every government is going to publicly denounce it but at the same time I recognize these private blockchains are important.
For Bitshares it's about finding a delicate balance. It has to be integrated enough into the current flawed legal systems to not instantly make too many enemies in order to better it's chances at becoming mainstream but it also has to maintain it's sovereignty so that it doesn't become the possession or puppet of any of them. Not so easy to do that but that is what I think it would take to make Bitshares go mainstream. To go mainstream it has to avoid the mistakes of Bitcoin and not become a "political statement" blockchain.
Show Posts
