<story><title>Resources for understanding cryptocurrency and blockchain technology</title><url>https://a16z.com/2020/04/30/explaining-crypto-from-a16z/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Traster</author><text>I thought that A16Z would care about its reputation enough to make sure it&amp;#x27;s fairly trustworthy when trying to &amp;quot;educate&amp;quot; people, but can someone explain this claim to me:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Blockchain Can Wrest the Internet From Corporations’ Grasp&lt;p&gt;In a way that doesn&amp;#x27;t involve A16Z cynically mis-representing blockchain as some people&amp;#x27;s champion. I don&amp;#x27;t see at all, how you could claim there&amp;#x27;s something fundamental to the technology that will lead to more consumer power. Does Facebook&amp;#x27;s Libra look like a great shift towards an open internet? Does Bitcoin decentralize control? Or does it hand that control to the tiny handful of Bitcoin miners and exchanges that handle practically all of the work?&lt;p&gt;What this &amp;quot;educational&amp;quot; blog seems to be doing is telling you what the most ambitious claims of crypto are, rather than telling you where crypto actually is today.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Taek</author><text>&amp;gt; I don&amp;#x27;t see at all, how you could claim there&amp;#x27;s something fundamental to the technology that will lead to more consumer power... Does Bitcoin decentralize control? Or does it hand that control to the tiny handful of Bitcoin miners and exchanges that handle practically all of the work?&lt;p&gt;This is probably one of the biggest misunderstandings in cryptocurrency. Bitcoin &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;does&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; decentralize control, and the miners and exchanges &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;do not&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; have power over Bitcoin. If you control your own keys and run your own full node, then &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;you&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; as the full node operator get to decide what rules you operate by, and therefore what network you participate in.&lt;p&gt;Efforts by miners to change Bitcoin&amp;#x27;s protocol rules can be outright ignored (and have been successfully in the past - see the BTC&amp;#x2F;BCH split), and exchanges can only exert power over entities that are directly dependent on the exchanges.&lt;p&gt;Blockchains are special because they give each individual user direct control over the exact ruleset of the protocols that they use. To the best of my knowledge, no other type of network is able to give this power to users.</text></comment>
<story><title>Resources for understanding cryptocurrency and blockchain technology</title><url>https://a16z.com/2020/04/30/explaining-crypto-from-a16z/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Traster</author><text>I thought that A16Z would care about its reputation enough to make sure it&amp;#x27;s fairly trustworthy when trying to &amp;quot;educate&amp;quot; people, but can someone explain this claim to me:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Blockchain Can Wrest the Internet From Corporations’ Grasp&lt;p&gt;In a way that doesn&amp;#x27;t involve A16Z cynically mis-representing blockchain as some people&amp;#x27;s champion. I don&amp;#x27;t see at all, how you could claim there&amp;#x27;s something fundamental to the technology that will lead to more consumer power. Does Facebook&amp;#x27;s Libra look like a great shift towards an open internet? Does Bitcoin decentralize control? Or does it hand that control to the tiny handful of Bitcoin miners and exchanges that handle practically all of the work?&lt;p&gt;What this &amp;quot;educational&amp;quot; blog seems to be doing is telling you what the most ambitious claims of crypto are, rather than telling you where crypto actually is today.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rwosync</author><text>&amp;gt; In a way that doesn&amp;#x27;t involve A16Z cynically mis-representing blockchain as some people&amp;#x27;s champion.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s precisely the game for these funds to keep that illusion up. They buy up a bunch of tokens in a presale discount, pump the price, and then dump it to a bunch of foreign retail investors based on inside information before the inevitable failure of the &amp;quot;product&amp;quot;. A16z&amp;#x27;s crypto fund has made a killing doing just this and it&amp;#x27;s entirely legal. The SEC is only going to go after the founders and a16z will have long exited their position by the time of the lawsuit.</text></comment>