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> But don't we put this trust into technology already?

No, that's why we have courts as the ultimate arbiters.

> One obstacle you described seems to be very much alive in the blockchain world today which is: what if you lose your key? Who can you turn to? Solving this (somehow) might help us to a more decentralized internet.

Anything short of "not your keys not your life" is a centralization risk and quickly, at the limit, approaches exactly what we have right now but less efficient.



The courts present a large problem though. Most digital crimes happen across borders. Courts are pretty much useless for ransomware, identity theft, and everything else online when the criminals are in an inconvenient jurisdiction.

Blockchain if anything shows the failure of our judicial system. Most of the cybercrimes are enabled by cryptocurrency and our justice system is hopeless to stop these payments.


Nah, they can just ban exchanging fiat for crypto and the problem goes away. It's a lack of political will, not means.


Who is “they”? What jurisdiction?


The country in which businesses are being targeted. Crypto is a payment implement for crime. If the US outlaws buying crypto, companies in the US can't pay their ransomware bills and so will no longer be targeted.


I don't think you can put this genie back in the bottle. The US is a corporation cooperative and the banks are already in crypto and only raising their holdings.

Even if the US bans it, it just moves the market more into the dark. Ransomware will still happen and still require crypto payment. The only difference is the hoops companies will do to acquire this crypto in a semi-legal way (probably by using multinational entities to route payments).


That would be a gift to every other country that doesn't follow suit.


That would be devastating to any country that doesn't follow suit. They would be the ones targeted by ransomware. So not only would they get all the ransomware attacks, they would also get all the negative value crypto creates. Since it doesn't create any positive value, that would be an excellent big brain move.




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