There is value in having core functions of society like social medla and money decentralized and running on open source software even though it will not fix wealth inequality.
Like the rest of society, some people get ridiculous wealth by luck of being at the right place at the right time. That is no reason to not have open source money.
There are many issues with bitcoin but that one I do not buy.
It is similar to open source social media. No single entity is in control. No single company or government that can use that power to control the users. For the end user the result is that bitcoin is more like paper cash than other digital money. You and only you are in control. It is extremely hard to stop you from sending or receiving money.
Just like with the fediverse, there is no Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to kick you out. With bitcoin there will be no Putin or Trump to freeze your bank account.
thats federation, not open source. reddit was open source for a while, but not federated – and now we are here. whatsapp uses an open source protocol, but isnt federated – some asshole hawaiian (resident of hawaii, not the other option) controls it. Signal is open source, but won’t federate, its controlled by people who are way more into crypto than helping their users (moxie was actively against federation, using such examples as email to prove how federation is a failure)
this is a truly perplexing statement. what about a currency that is controlled predominantly by early adopters has anything to do with open source?
Bitcoin Core is MIT licensed.
There is value in having core functions of society like social medla and money decentralized and running on open source software even though it will not fix wealth inequality.
Like the rest of society, some people get ridiculous wealth by luck of being at the right place at the right time. That is no reason to not have open source money.
There are many issues with bitcoin but that one I do not buy.
the software is, but what relevance does that have to people using it as currency?
It is similar to open source social media. No single entity is in control. No single company or government that can use that power to control the users. For the end user the result is that bitcoin is more like paper cash than other digital money. You and only you are in control. It is extremely hard to stop you from sending or receiving money.
Just like with the fediverse, there is no Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to kick you out. With bitcoin there will be no Putin or Trump to freeze your bank account.
thats federation, not open source. reddit was open source for a while, but not federated – and now we are here. whatsapp uses an open source protocol, but isnt federated – some asshole hawaiian (resident of hawaii, not the other option) controls it. Signal is open source, but won’t federate, its controlled by people who are way more into crypto than helping their users (moxie was actively against federation, using such examples as email to prove how federation is a failure)
100% that being open source is not enough. Just like the fediverse the protocol is really important.
But if the fediverse protocol and all servers and clients are proprietary we would be in a bad place.
The bitcoin protocol makes it possible for everyone to run a bitcoin core node very similar to that anyone can run a fediverse server.
Btw, that signal is actively working against federation makes me so incredibly disappointed…