level09

Anarcho-capitalism is a wonderfully abstract ideal that can inspire innovation. It helped inspire me to help invent cryptocurrency. But real-world cryptocurrencies are not trustless -- they are trust-minimized. Each cryptocurrency has a legal attack surface, representing the kinds of ways governments and/or private entities can practically use law to disrupt their operations. The layer 1 of a good trust-minimized cryptocurrency like Bitcoin can withstand much more interference than centralized technologies could or can, but the technology still has its limits. The kinds of attacks that come from financial law have largely proven to be manageable, due to a combination of the trust-minimized (not trustless) technology, which requires diligent attention from developers motivated to keep it a trust-minimized form of money, and a large army of cryptocurrency industry lawyers who specialize in financial law. The legal attack surface from arbitrary data is far larger and far less predictable. The crypto industry does not have the legal expertise to deal with it. Thinking that Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency or blockchain protocol, is a magical anarcho-capitalist Swiss army knife that can withstand any kind of governmental attack in any legal area is insanity.

The instability was clueless mobs buying shitcoins on robo-trigger margin.