> If you can't trust the government then what are the chances they'll buy into using a blockchain that takes away their corruption powers?
OK well I can't speak for Asia or Africa but I am familiar with the Americas...
Aside from the fact that governments always look for PR campaigns that make them look fair, they also know they aren't going to be in power forever, and they suffer (get fired, thrown in jail, you name it) when power changes hands. If you can insulate the financial system from those shocks then it's beneficial for both parties because they each protect their financial downside. Also, the country as a whole grows when markets get healthier and can attract more investment. That's good for everyone.
It's not that you can't get the government to set up and use a particular system. It's that individual corporations within the country affiliate with a particular faction/party and try to bend the system to take advantage of other participants. The corruption happens under the skin. You can establish a competent central actor but you can't trust him not to bend the rules, like a horny professor when an attractive student with a B asks for a low A. The third world is one big hackathon for the misuse of institutions. Look at Morales' successful efforts to wriggle out from the grasp of term limits; he went to the Supreme Court and asked his buddies there to declare him eligible due to "human rights." He didn't say "I don't care about the Constitution," even though he wanted to violate its rules. They don't want the institution to look like it's crumbling, even when they're the ones chipping away at it.
If you elevate the exchange to a multinational blockchain then you have competing factions, lots of ebb and flow, and the potential for outside participants. And you get the "i don't have to trust the others" aspect of blockchain.
The whole point of developing robust systems is to make them failure tolerant in the face of perturbations, so we should apply them to the perturbed applications instead of building blockchain for rideshare/dildoes/whatever that helps nobody with an actual problem.
OK well I can't speak for Asia or Africa but I am familiar with the Americas...
Aside from the fact that governments always look for PR campaigns that make them look fair, they also know they aren't going to be in power forever, and they suffer (get fired, thrown in jail, you name it) when power changes hands. If you can insulate the financial system from those shocks then it's beneficial for both parties because they each protect their financial downside. Also, the country as a whole grows when markets get healthier and can attract more investment. That's good for everyone.
It's not that you can't get the government to set up and use a particular system. It's that individual corporations within the country affiliate with a particular faction/party and try to bend the system to take advantage of other participants. The corruption happens under the skin. You can establish a competent central actor but you can't trust him not to bend the rules, like a horny professor when an attractive student with a B asks for a low A. The third world is one big hackathon for the misuse of institutions. Look at Morales' successful efforts to wriggle out from the grasp of term limits; he went to the Supreme Court and asked his buddies there to declare him eligible due to "human rights." He didn't say "I don't care about the Constitution," even though he wanted to violate its rules. They don't want the institution to look like it's crumbling, even when they're the ones chipping away at it.
If you elevate the exchange to a multinational blockchain then you have competing factions, lots of ebb and flow, and the potential for outside participants. And you get the "i don't have to trust the others" aspect of blockchain.
The whole point of developing robust systems is to make them failure tolerant in the face of perturbations, so we should apply them to the perturbed applications instead of building blockchain for rideshare/dildoes/whatever that helps nobody with an actual problem.