I've noticed some otherwise very smart people have developed an almost cult-like antipathy to blockchains. The closed loop logic looks like;
Them: blockchains are evil and wrong because use huge energy
Me: point to peer-reviewed evidence that different blockchains have wildly different energy usage and that usage per user or transaction actually drops off after a certain scale is reached
Them: blockchains use huge energy for no legitimate uses
Me: points out a couple of arguably legitimate uses
Them: these projects are bad for using a blockchain because huge energy use
Me: points to earlier post about energy usage.
Them: but that's still huge energy use for no legitimate uses
Etc etc
Trustless transactions have interesting applications, but the low transaction cost trust gives you makes it entirely superior for human-to-human and human-to-organization transactions.
Moving from a high-trust society (Sweden) to a low-trust society (Hong Kong) was a real eye-opener for me in terms of how much trust buys you in terms of efficiency, even between fiat-based markets.
> but the low transaction cost trust gives you makes it entirely superior for human-to-human and human-to-organization transactions.
Until that trust is abused and then you're screwed.
Otter countries aren't going to easily replicate a high trust Scandinavian system and trust between people from different countries will also always be lower.
Infact trust can be very effective AND safe if it's easy to reassign and can only be used transparently.
#Blockchains are NOT trustless systems: you are just blindly trusting strangers you cannot easily hold accountable.
This is particularly blatant in a "permissioned" #blockchain and in those based on #PoS, but it's also true for #PoW based ones: exchanges, developers, mining pools...
So people using the blockchain are basically trusting the least trustworthy people out there without any effective mean to remove such trust (without loosing money, obviously).
