National cryptocurrencies/ blockchains, limited to a national territory, are contradictions of the system. Freedom of speech does not mean you can force people to listen; when you speak, sometimes what you say is boring. You don't get a guarantee of an audience, you only have the right to say something.
If governments want to create national blockchains, they are engaging in boring speech that ignores the realities of borderless, open alternative that exists. If you take this technology and try to wrap it in restrictions, it is not open-innovation, open-access, censorship-resistant, or neutral -- it is business as usual. We already have digital money like that; over 92% of all money in circulation is digital and stored in someone else's database.
Transcript
[AUDIENCE] I have a question for you, Andreas. Some governments are studying the possibility... of issuing national cryptocurrencies. What would be your thoughts on that?
And as a corollary question, when we think about national information... on a blockchain, the government will say it should be in their territory, which is a total contradiction... with distributed ledger principles. [ANDREAS] One of the magical [aspects] about freedom of speech, it is not freedom to force anyone to listen.
When you speak, sometimes what you say is boring or idiotic, and then nobody listens. You are not guaranteed of an audience, you only have the right to say something. If governments want to create their own national blockchains, they are engaging in boring speech. That system ignores the realities of a borderless, open alternative that exists.
It is crippled and limited in its abilities by definition. If you take this technology and try to wrap it in restrictions and controls, you will have something that is not open, borderless, open access, innovative, neutral, or censorship- resistant.. So what is it? It is business as usual.
We already have digital money like that; about 92% of all money in circulation is in somebody else's database. If that database is built by the government, that doesn't change fact that I would consider it boring. You can't impose geographical restrictions on these things. If you do, you cripple them.
[A national blockchain] is an oxymoron, I would guess.