I was kind of sympathetic to Bitcoin in the early days. Despite the awful politics of the community surrounding it and the obvious grift angle, it seemed a positive that we might possibly be able to escape the stranglehold that payment processors are currently demonstrating online.
Obviously, the incentives at play inevitability led the project to become a series of pyramid schemes within pyramid schemes, and anyone who has actually used the Bitcoin network will tell you that it did not scale well, with slow transfers and high fees.
However, could it be done well? Is it conceptually possible to have a left cryptocurrency? How would that work, technically, politically, practicality within this economy?
To be perfectly honest, these were the questions I wished our glorious thought leaders in left media would grapple with a decade ago, but maybe we all have enough perspective on this thing now that there is some fruitful discussion to be had on here at least.
i was wondering this basically too cause i was trying to theorycraft some kind of alternative to itchio which is open and decentralised and not beholden to the profit motive. the big problem i think is lots of people have a rightful aversion to using crypto. so i have no idea what the solution is.
It would be great to have some sort of decentralized exchange system to build alternative platforms on, but the problem isn’t just adoption ime — Bitcoin isn’t fit for purpose.