BlockChain

Quora Answer : How can we stop block chains getting into the wrong hands?

Sep 28, 2016

You can't. Blockchains are just a technique, not things.

(You might compare "encryption". While the government would LOVE not to let you have encryption, it's very hard to stop you as long as you have a general purpose computer and connection to the rest of the world.)

Blockchains are the same.

I'm personally disturbed by various moves to reduce our access to general purpose computers eg the rise of phones as managed devices that can only run software that Apple or Google approve of.) And the attacks on net-neutrality. (ie. a world where people only have access to the part of the internet that Facebook / Google provide access to.)

Blockchain technology may well be suppressed if we end up in a world where people won't be able to install the clients - because clients aren't welcome alternatives to Apple and Google's own payment solution (they'll say that the third party blockchain apps are dangerous and they're protecting their users); or download the blockchain data - because the phone company allocates all the bandwidth to streamed movies and VR games.

Quora Answer : What are the risks of physical money becoming obsolete? How would we ensure money wasn't lost in cyberspace?

Jul 2, 2018

Blockchains are meant to solve that problem.

Bitcoins etc. can't be "lost" or "disappear". What can happen is that the id numbers needed to access and manipulate them can be lost or stolen. If stolen you really HAVE lost your bitcoin in a way that you've really lost your gold bullion if someone steals that. Except you get the frustrating experience of watching the thief spend your bitcoins at a later date, without being able to do much about it. (As long as they protect their identity.)

But a lost access. Or a stolen access that the thief never then uses, really is gone from (or neutralized in) the economy forever.

Nevertheless, this is better than a non-blockchain based virtual currency, where you have no idea what someone can be doing in the database. They can be creating new money. Deleting existing money. Whatever.

This is true even for "fiat" currencies, which are, in principle, "printed" by the government or central bank. In practice without the physical thing, you don't know.

Blockchains are the only way (we currently know) to have a reliably fixed / tracked virtual currency.

And even they are susceptible to theft. Or people losing the ids to control them.

OTOH, this is a trade off.

The world economy couldn't work with just shipping physical currency, whether that's gold or bank notes, around. Shipping physical money around is waaaay too slow.

So no system is perfect. A money just has to be "good enough" that enough people will use it.