> What problem / which problems are being solved here?
I guess all crypto-currency is an attempt at digital cash. I.e. the ability to send "money" between people who do not trust each other digitally; with secrecy/privacy in manner which cannot be taken away by states/governments/banks etc.
Why people want to solve this problem through a scheme of chained hash-values and mining (which I guess is just padding the data you compute hash-values from until it hits a certain number of 0's at the end), is still unclear for me.
> with secrecy/privacy in manner which cannot be taken away by states/governments/banks etc.
I don't have a need for that kind of secrecy. I understand the Silk Roads of the world would like it though. But that doesn't sell cryptocurrencies to me.
If you need to hide stuff from the government, there are bigger problems that cryptocurrencies can't solve, as I can tell.
> How does a cryptocurrency actually solve the lack of trust?
I said it was an attempt, I'm not sure it solves it..
> If you need to hide stuff from the government
All governments are not good. The US government for instance "froze" (basically took) all the money WikiLeaks had, and made it impossible to send them money through traditional banking systems. So crypto-currencies have already been important in funding an organization that uncovered war-crimes; which is a good thing.
Not all secrecy/privacy is criminal behavior, sometimes it is actual journalism. I guess we have seen so little journalism in the last few years we barely remember what it looks like.
Although I do harbor an iota of skepticism of states and banks, enough to entertain the idea that cryptocurrencies could possibly maybe a-little-bit a point, the general public does not at all. I feel like the biggest thing standing in the way of cryptocurrencies is that the general public (not just me) needs a reason to use them other than “You don’t really trust banks to store your money, do you?”
> the ability to send "money" between people who do not trust each other digitally
How is this solved with crypto? I bought a few things with crypto that they were never delivered, so I got scammed. Yes, crypto helps the part receiving money, not the part sending money. This is not a solution, it's just moving the problem to the other side.
I guess all crypto-currency is an attempt at digital cash. I.e. the ability to send "money" between people who do not trust each other digitally; with secrecy/privacy in manner which cannot be taken away by states/governments/banks etc.
Why people want to solve this problem through a scheme of chained hash-values and mining (which I guess is just padding the data you compute hash-values from until it hits a certain number of 0's at the end), is still unclear for me.