Bruce's take can be summarized like this: with a blockchain, you're choosing to trust code and cryptography instead of a person. And when immutable code does the wrong thing, you can't trust them to fix it like you could a person.
This is a good take, and underappreciated - but there's a larger point being missed.
In high-social-trust situations, there are fewer benefits to blockchains. In low-social-trust situations, people aren't a good option. Bockchains provide an entirely new and welcome option for that scenario.
Relatedly, there are different kinds of distrust: mistakes and attacks are one, but platform risk is another that blockchains can alleviate. Putting it another way: I trust Twitter/YouTube/PayPal to generally work without issues, but I don't trust them not to change their offering in an exploitative way or become rent-seekers.
This is a good take, and underappreciated - but there's a larger point being missed.
In high-social-trust situations, there are fewer benefits to blockchains. In low-social-trust situations, people aren't a good option. Bockchains provide an entirely new and welcome option for that scenario.
Relatedly, there are different kinds of distrust: mistakes and attacks are one, but platform risk is another that blockchains can alleviate. Putting it another way: I trust Twitter/YouTube/PayPal to generally work without issues, but I don't trust them not to change their offering in an exploitative way or become rent-seekers.