I can turn this around. I have yet to see some of the characteristics of blockchains being solved by some other technology. You may say it’s irrelevant because they are useless, and I am not going to argue against that. But it’s a technology and as such has potential. Maybe not today, maybe never. It’s like Solarpunk. We don’t know if it will ever be real.
I agree as long as you talk bitcoin. But blockchains are NOT just cryptocurrencies, and not all currencies work as you describe like bitcoin.
BTW, when we have digital USD, say goodbye to your financial freedom. The government can (and will) tax you whenever they want whatever they want for the reasons they want (we need to save the economy, we need to bail out banks, etc.). They can even shut you down completely by closing access to your accounts. Because they will only allow the use of the digital dollar, because they will have full control. A totalitarian regime’s dream.
I thought the same way as validating in Proof-of-Stake works: The devices have a private key (yes there are issues there about securing them for non-authorized access, but they can largely be addressed like also nodes do) which is registered on the blockchain. Then only these registered devices can issue coins. This is critical and there might be a lot of ways this could be hackable, which could or could not be mitigated. However I thought it’s not more of a challenge than running say an Ethereum or any other node.
There’s no mining. Only a few blockchains require mining today. The energy generation IS the mining. Every kwh which has been generated would just issue a token. Sorry if that sounds mumbo jumbo, but these are actually blockchain technology characteristics.
In allowing people generating solar energy to be fairly rewarded. Schemes today are at the mercy of the utility companies. Basically, to incentivize people to generate more solar energy than is already happening. Think of roofs.
I realize this is only meaningful if for some (I guess economic) reason they get more through that than through selling to the grid.
I am not talking cryptocurrency but blockchains. And governments don’t print real money, they just print money you think is real, because they force you to. And there are crypto currencies which are not printed by rich bros. However, the same way as community currencies like LETS or mutual credit, they have just limited impact. I just say this because the all-round attack “it’s all garbage” simply is not true.