Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies
&gt; what a nightmarish step backwards it is for developers concerned with cost, speed, privacy, safety, and ease.<p>1) There&#x27;s a lot of research and development into blockchain technology by very smart people. The systems are improving. What technology we&#x27;ll have 5, 10, or 25 years from now is going to be much different than what exists now. It&#x27;s a lack of imagination to think that because crypto is &quot;slow&quot; now (and not all of it is by the way), that it will always be the case. The equivalent is looking at a 5.25&quot; floppy disk in the early 80s and thinking that all physical media is forever going to be too small and too slow to be usable.<p>2) Low cost, speed, privacy, safety, and usability are great attributes to have: and in many cases are currently superior on established centralized systems. But don&#x27;t other important attributes exist?<p>* What about resistance to censorship? A centralized system can ban you because of what you say or even because of who you are. Maybe a purely decentralized system cannot. I guess that&#x27;s one reason why a lot of people fear it.<p>* And what about trust? Many people do not trust a lot of centralized systems from powerful groups: such as how many shares of stock are even in existence given the practice of naked shorting. Check out this story.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Superstonk&#x2F;comments&#x2F;rsaevv&#x2F;in_march_of_2005_this_guy_bought_100_of_shares&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Superstonk&#x2F;comments&#x2F;rsaevv&#x2F;in_march...</a><p>&gt; In March of 2005 this guy bought 100% of shares (1.1M shares) in a traded company to prove the corruption. The next two days that same stock traded 50 million times and dropping the price 99% in two hours. All this with LITERALLY NO SHARES AVAILABLE TO BORROW OR SHORT.<p>Isn&#x27;t it possible that the drawbacks of blockchains might be worth it if they can prove perfectly transparent and reduce or eliminate corruption? Imagine a stock market that ran on some next generation blockchain tech that was perfectly transparent without any doubt about the number of shares in existence. No more dirty tricks or fraud possible. Are the upsides of this not worth any discussion?