The only useful cryptocurrency have proven to be stablecoins. The “crypto industry” is the world’s largest mafia-run casino.

I notice a lot of uncharitable takes focus on whether something is technically needed, charitable takes focus on what's wanted.

Do we *need* stablecoins? Not technically. We can use volatile assets, it just sucks. We want stablecoins, obviously.

Do we *need* blockchains? Well actually yes, to get the things we want.

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS.

shazow.net

Currently: WhatsABI

One might argue that we do need stable assets because many people won’t make non-essential trades where they gain an asset that loses value quickly or lose an asset that gains value quickly. Stability aids tremendously in the ability to transact, on a psychological level.

writing stuff about tech + decentralization

Maybe the line between charitable and not is need and want?

Like, we don't need credit cards, we can just mail cash around 🤪

Yea, that sounds right, though I still haven't seen a sufficiently convincing restructuring of commerce that doesn't reduce to some forms of money.

Anything in a vacuum might be a "want", but wants may "need" things in order to be possible. So ultimately we can just launder needing by wanting things? 🙃

I think I've lost the thread of my original point, not sure if there's anything here.

You could argue that it’s not that “we” need these things, but that society as it is currently structured requires fast, final (or secured, as in the case of credit), payments.

To pull your argument to the extreme, we don’t need money, but we’d have to submit ourselves to the restructuring of commerce as we know it, without.