scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2crkhm.md

[EDU] Harry Potter And The Cryptocurrency of Stars

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• u/Escapement:

  I started reading this hoping, based on the title, that it would be about Harry Potter and financial instruments designed to work over interstellar distances and times, like the schemes written about by Charles Stross in his *Neptune's Brood* - a distributed interstellar cryptocurrency based around transmitting and receiving to peers located lightyears away, with transaction times measured in decades or longer. I was sort of disappointed when this was not the case.
  
  That said, this explanation become super technical super fast, and seems to rely on people already fully understanding the underlying concepts and terminology a lot of the time, which makes it less than useful for beginners. If you were going to introduce new people to the concept, this isn't how I'd do it - If you don't already know and understand the underlying concepts, putting them into stories with Harry Potter characters' names is not sufficient - a glib glossed-over jargon-laden example doesn't seem like good enough explanation to actually teach, you actually have to explain things in depth.  The obfuscation around specific incidents and names and the "Things that can't be named" seem to also hinder it's useability as an introductory/teaching work - I am broadly familiar with the ongoing saga of e.g. Magic The Gathering Online eXchange and the like, but if I wasn't this sort of thing would probably leave me more confused for no reason.
  
  It's interesting and amusing for people already familiar with bitcoin and the various spinoffs to some degree, but I would not use this particular piece as an actual way to teach others.
  

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