Cryptocurrency Apple Antitrust Lawsuit

“send payments to each other without any intermediary at all.”

That is factually false. The complete lack of understanding most crypto hypers have for how crypto actually works never crease to amaze me

@Kristoffer Don’t they obviously mean “central intermediary,” in which case it’s true? I mean, if you want to be pedantic, the Internet is not a point-to-point network, so every transmission has multiple intermediaries, but that’s an abstraction that we usually ignore.

I think it's very important to be pedantic about what crypto does and doesn't. When someone says "without any intermediary at all." it sounds like me handing over some cash to a friend to most people.

I bet even most people who think they know crypto thinks this is true to some extent.

Then they invest because this is obviously such a good idea!

Bitcoin is run by what... five mining-pools. So similar to the World Bank or some such. Bitcoin requires a shit ton of intermediaries doing a shit ton of pointless number shuffling (at a price) and in the end all you've done is changed a number in two places. If you want to actually use it for something other than changing numbers in two (tracked and labeled) places you need to turn it into actual money. And then the fun really begins.

For crypto-currencies or digital payments, it is mathematically proven that "send payments to each other without any intermediary at all" is not possible.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem

The problem is double-spending. Just imagine the sender makes a copy of the digital coin, and gives that to a third person. Which of the receivers has the real coin now?

Last month, I even had to remember the ECB of that, when they claimed the Digital Euro would be capable of doing this:
https://twitter.com/taler/status/1767621751825907879
Political intentions are not always compatible with the laws of nature...