Apart from some statements such as
“The Libra Blockchain is not fundamentally different from other blockchain networks in terms of the technology used”
this is a very good survey of the state of things and the reasonable outlook.
What has been left out is that the simple technology of the DLT is just a base for all these various participants in a modern financial ecosystem. Key to minimizing the complexity, layers and indirection is something extremely non-trivial: a massively scalable technology with massively complex software, “smart contracts”.
Right now, the existing systems for performing the roles in a national currency system (payment systems, ccy changers, registries and custodians, factors, markets, etc.) are massively decentralized, except for certain levers operated by central banks to manage money supply and interest rates. The crypto decentralization ideologues — “aka Nakamotoists” — and hangers-on are astonishingly naive, ignorant or intentionally misleading when they think it is even remotely possible that something as rinky-dink as BTC can serve as anything but an experts platform for carrying out exchange of illicit transactions. The giant chunk of folks with accounts at Binance, Coinbase, etc. are in close competition numerically with the former category. And none of these has a clue what a digital wallet is and what to do with it. They have simply proxied their participation to, well, the same thing everyone else uses in the national currency systems (NCS), a stack of account holders and processors. And the completion of their transactions can take days to be recorded.
There will never be a technology capable of effectively instant, secure, reliable, comprehensive and trustworthy value meditation that isn’t as or nearly as intermediated and decentralized as the current system. The “decentralization” that is bandied about by neo-anarchists in the crypto space has nothing to do with real decentralization. BTC, etc. are some of the most centralized of all systems that carry out such a simple function as they do in the form of the mining cohort. Rather, decentralization means for them removing control of economies from political structures, be they well-run democratic or corrupt and autocratic. This latter is what really needs to be kept in mind when using the word decentralized. And when thinking of what’s worth “disrupting”.
