Blockchain: The Regulators and Governments Wet Dream

[fuzzy]

I see the blockchain voting advances providing significant improvement to the status quo). The optimist in me sees the efficiency improvements that the new tech provides as leverage to get governments to compromise a little on regulations (because they may believe that the very nature of the tech requires the compromise for the sake of getting access to the greater efficiency it provides).

Blockchain voting will only be as valuable as the people who make meaning of the data.  I do agree it will be amazing and a first for humanity, but the problem still resides in humanity itself.  I mean how many times did you see Fox news and all the other news outlets completely ignore Ron Paul, or manipulate the rankings to make it look like he was not doing anywhere near as well as he was?  Facts are generally pretty easy to find these days, yet we still see the vast majority of the population easily manipulated. 
I think incentive structures and "gamification" methods are going to be VERY important moving forward for these reasons.

[fuzzy]

There is much more than this that makes me concerned about blockchain technology, but that is even more why we have no choice but to fight for it to be used properly (to empower people).   We should never kid ourselves in thinking that the current paradigm power players (the same ones that illegally capture nearly all our data because we are all "potential terrorists") are not going to try to utilize blockchain tech for the same reasons. 
In fact, mix the capturing of all our "metadata" with the capturing of all transactional data and what is left to capture? 
This is the part of blockchain tech that personally scares the sh*t out of me.  Do we really think that the people who write books like "the technotronic era" care about using this to empower humanity?
Make no mistakes...this is the next Jekyll Island.  The only question is if we are going to enslave ourselves to greed like they want...because then we become overseers in their new world of slavery.

[arhag]

I've thought about this a bit. There is a lot that can be done with the technology to provide users with cheap and convenient access to wonderful financial contracts and systems (as well as other fancy digital services) with some amount of privacy, while still providing the regulators better and more efficient control and regulation than they probably could have imagined possible. I just hope that they don't realize the possibility of this "win-win" anytime soon and start demanding it through law. The problem (and why it is not truly a "win-win" for people like us in this forum) is that implementing all of that will take a global decentralized system and divide it into a bunch of silos for each jurisdiction (keep in mind these could be virtual silos existing on the same global blockchain). This goes against the blockchain spirit of a global system that transcends these arbitrary divisions of nations and their respective governments.

One could in theory create accounts that exist outside the silos, but then they are forced to only interact with other people outside the silos. Considering that the vast majority of users would likely stay in the silos because the government they live in would have strict punishments for stepping out of the silos they create unless through very strict approved methods (and it wouldn't be that difficult for the government to get sufficient proof that one of their citizens is attempting to secretly interacting outside their silo), there might not be much available for those around the world daring (or desperate) enough to step outside the silos.

So the pessimist/realist in me sees all this blockchain tech providing a more efficient and convenient way of operating business as usual (although even in this pessimistic view I still see improvements like more financial transparency and less ability for private organization to break their own rules, and also I see the blockchain voting advances providing significant improvement to the status quo). The optimist in me sees the efficiency improvements that the new tech provides as leverage to get governments to compromise a little on regulations (because they may believe that the very nature of the tech requires the compromise for the sake of getting access to the greater efficiency it provides).

[CLains]

tl;dr version?

[Pheonike]

You are going to have your public blockchains for transactions with governments and employers/business. Then your private blockchains for your cash/anonymous transactions. The problem/trick will be acquiring funds to use on your private chains that don't have any association with the public chains.

[Ben Mason]

Depends a lot on the specific blockchain tech I think.

Absolutely

[Ander]

Depends a lot on the specific blockchain tech I think.

[rgcrypto]

That somehow made me lukewarm about blockchain technology. 

Adam Vaziri on Decentralized Financial Systems - A Regulatory Perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJwBjBaqSqc