I didn’t know the final report had been released already, but after an interview on RNZ National today I went looking for the actual report.
Some very interesting recommendations. Here are some highlights:
Policy settings
- We recommend that the Government adopt policy settings to encourage developments in digital assets and blockchain in New Zealand.
Regulatory frameworks 2. Because it is early in the development of digital assets and blockchain, we recommend that the Government and regulatory agencies proceed carefully and do not design and implement a fully integrated and consistent regulatory framework for digital assets at this point in time.
Primary regulator role 8. We recommend that there should be no primary regulator for digital assets, as digital assets cover a spectrum of use cases, well beyond investment.
“Blockchain-sprints” 11. We recommend that the Digital Assets Cross-Agency Working Group hold “blockchain-sprint” equivalent or similar events to develop new ideas and strategies for industry growth.
Education 14. We recommend that secondary and tertiary educational institutions consider developing courses in relation to digital assets, blockchain, and the broader Web3 context, as part of a wider focus on technology (and its place in New Zealand’s future).
Central bank digital currency 22. We recommend that the Reserve Bank continue with design work on its central bank digital currency.
Interesting things here. Clearly the recommendation is for the government to embrace and encourage Blockchain technology, and not to regulate it too heavily.
I’m curious to see what comes of this.
This is… depressing.
Ask any other software professional and you’ll get the same answer: Blockchain offers very little actual utility over existing techniques, and comes with a raft of new problems.
All the info is public. Forget having any privacy for your transactions - once it’s on the blockchain, it’s there forever visible to everyone.
There’s no appeal process. Granny got scammed into sending all her money? Too bad. It’s gone forever.
Right now it’s almost exclusively used for scams, pyramid schemes and illegal transactions.
There is no legal use case which cannot be met and improved on with existing web2 technology.
Privacy in blockchain is a (mostly) solved problem with entire privacy chains (eg Monero) where it’s absolutely impossible to track transactions, and multiple updates to Bitcoin have happened over the years to make privacy easier.
If a scammer tricks your granny out of cash, it’s lost in the same way. Reversable transactions are a feature of banks, which have custody of your funds. Custodial solutions exist for blockchain assets too (though it mostly defeats the purpose).
There are plenty of benefits of blockchain, decentralisation is a huge one.
Crypto bros and trying to force adoption in stupid ways (eg NFTs) are annoying as hell though.
You’ve pretty much made all the points I wanted to, so I’d just like to add another couple of uses for Blockchain tech:
Smart contracts. You can design smart contracts that run on protocols such as Ethereum that are completely hands off once signed.
Completely transparent tracking of data or physical goods, or provenance of physical objects. This is the best use-case for NFTs. Imagine buying a piece of art and being able to check the complete purchase and sale record of that artwork.
Decentralized digital fiat currency. There is nothing stopping this from being a reality. Tx fees are set to encourage miners/nodes, but if a digital currency is run by a central bank this is not required as the nodes could be run by them. Imagine fee-free transactions as easy as any crypto, but it being identical to fiat currency.