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Namecoin exists, but governments are never gonna just be like "hey, don't pay taxes, no problem". What would be really interesting is if some day you could buy

Namecoin exists, but governments are never gonna just be like "hey, don't pay taxes, no problem". What would be really interesting is if some day you could buy a self-driving car with Ethereum. With an Uber-like app that accepts payment in Ethereum, and blockchain investments to rapidly scale the business up and reinvest profits, one could see a self-driving car company dominate the market in a far shorter time than it took Uber to do so. Why can't a regular company do that? Blockchian payments are really the very least of your problems if you are trying to create a profitable self-driving car company. What benefit does it offer other than being cool?

anigbrowl 10y ago
Yeah but what if a DAO doesn't have a physical office that can be shut down? It's very difficult to stop the spread of something people want to use, and will only become more so.
- joosters 10y ago
  The DAO didn't need a physical office for it to be 'hacked' and drained. And a car sharing scheme would need physical cars, making it pretty easy to take down the system or haul the car owners to court if the service is breaking laws.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Prototypes fail but clearly people haven't given up on the basic crypto/blockchain idea. A product or service that reliably delivers value (even if imperfectly) will hang around. Look at the draconian penalties for dealing cocaine, or the fairly draconian social sanctions of being caught in possession of it, and yet the trade thrives despite decades of aggressive interdiction. It's going to be politically much more difficult to indict someone for running a gardening or vehicle rental service than a drug kingpin; it's possible of course, but I don't remember a whole lot of public outrage over Kim Dotcom's supposedly nefarious activities.
    - vkou 10y ago
      Cocaine thrives because it is easy to conceal, easy to manufacture, has sky-high profit margins, no legal competition, and because you get paid in untraceable, unrecordable, launderable cash. Stopping crypto-mixing is much easier then stopping money laundering.
      - anigbrowl 10y ago
        I'm sure it looks that way from the outside.
  - drdeca 10y ago
    It ("The DAO") did need a mistake in how it was written though...
- vkou 10y ago
  It's very easy to do, by arresting anyone who will accept transactions from you. The US government can destroy crypto-currencies overnight, by simply shutting down interfaces between the crypto-currency, and the rest of the world (exchanges and payment processors).
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Prohibition drug war etc. suggests this is easier to say than it is to do. If a reliable way can be found to identify and isolate contractual defectors in a mutual system then the currency exchange becomes a sideshow.
    - vkou 10y ago
      This is incredibly easy to do, when 99.9% of the world relies on above-the-board banking to get shit done. My landlord doesn't accept rent payments in bitcoin, just like he doesn't accept payments in hooch, heroin, or pirate treasure - especially if it were illegal. At some point, your internet crime ring will have to procure goods from the rest of the world. If the government wanted to crack down on it, they very easily could. The underground drug markets only work because illegal drugs enjoy enormous profit margins (And because they are incredibly easy to conceal), due to lack of legal competition... And because, unlike crypto-currencies, cash transactions are common and untraceable (Which makes money laundering possible.) How is your illegal self-driving car company going to make those margins? How are they going to be able to afford to pay off all their suppliers (Who will charge a premium due to the legal risk), to keep your operations under wraps? How are you going to get customer to pay you, when it's illegal to drive your cars round town? During prohibition, Al Capone was running moonshine, not beer. There weren't enough margins in beer, to risk federal prison. There aren't enough margins in <Whatever illegal bitcoin business you want to run, that doesn't involve a meth lab, or burning people alive in oil drums>, either.
      - anigbrowl 10y ago
        You're saying that there cannot possibly be large enough margins in anything to risk federal prison, which is self-evidently false. Your whole argument relies on declaring crypto currency as contraband, but contraband items are popular because they have inherent value to the consumers rather than simply being a medium of exchange. It's much easier to proscribe the possession of child porn, hand grenades, or heroin because it's easy to demonstrate the harm of allowing free traffic in such items. Prohibiting voluntary arrangements that don't inherently have first-order harm effects is more difficult. Thus there isn't much opposition to heroin remaining a controlled substance - junkie life sucks - but prohibitions on cannabis use are collapsing left and right because people can see that smoking weed is unlikely to wreck your life. Of course I don't expect you to get familiar with my comment history, but I'm heard all these basic roadblocks to crypto currencies because I've made many of these same arguments myself in the past. The existence of unsolved problems does not mean that the problems are insoluble.

anigbrowl 10y ago

Yeah but what if a DAO doesn't have a physical office that can be shut down? It's very difficult to stop the spread of something people want to use, and will only become more so.

joosters 10y ago
The DAO didn't need a physical office for it to be 'hacked' and drained. And a car sharing scheme would need physical cars, making it pretty easy to take down the system or haul the car owners to court if the service is breaking laws.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Prototypes fail but clearly people haven't given up on the basic crypto/blockchain idea. A product or service that reliably delivers value (even if imperfectly) will hang around. Look at the draconian penalties for dealing cocaine, or the fairly draconian social sanctions of being caught in possession of it, and yet the trade thrives despite decades of aggressive interdiction. It's going to be politically much more difficult to indict someone for running a gardening or vehicle rental service than a drug kingpin; it's possible of course, but I don't remember a whole lot of public outrage over Kim Dotcom's supposedly nefarious activities.
  - vkou 10y ago
    Cocaine thrives because it is easy to conceal, easy to manufacture, has sky-high profit margins, no legal competition, and because you get paid in untraceable, unrecordable, launderable cash. Stopping crypto-mixing is much easier then stopping money laundering.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      I'm sure it looks that way from the outside.
- drdeca 10y ago
  It ("The DAO") did need a mistake in how it was written though...
vkou 10y ago
It's very easy to do, by arresting anyone who will accept transactions from you. The US government can destroy crypto-currencies overnight, by simply shutting down interfaces between the crypto-currency, and the rest of the world (exchanges and payment processors).
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Prohibition drug war etc. suggests this is easier to say than it is to do. If a reliable way can be found to identify and isolate contractual defectors in a mutual system then the currency exchange becomes a sideshow.
  - vkou 10y ago
    This is incredibly easy to do, when 99.9% of the world relies on above-the-board banking to get shit done. My landlord doesn't accept rent payments in bitcoin, just like he doesn't accept payments in hooch, heroin, or pirate treasure - especially if it were illegal. At some point, your internet crime ring will have to procure goods from the rest of the world. If the government wanted to crack down on it, they very easily could. The underground drug markets only work because illegal drugs enjoy enormous profit margins (And because they are incredibly easy to conceal), due to lack of legal competition... And because, unlike crypto-currencies, cash transactions are common and untraceable (Which makes money laundering possible.) How is your illegal self-driving car company going to make those margins? How are they going to be able to afford to pay off all their suppliers (Who will charge a premium due to the legal risk), to keep your operations under wraps? How are you going to get customer to pay you, when it's illegal to drive your cars round town? During prohibition, Al Capone was running moonshine, not beer. There weren't enough margins in beer, to risk federal prison. There aren't enough margins in <Whatever illegal bitcoin business you want to run, that doesn't involve a meth lab, or burning people alive in oil drums>, either.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      You're saying that there cannot possibly be large enough margins in anything to risk federal prison, which is self-evidently false. Your whole argument relies on declaring crypto currency as contraband, but contraband items are popular because they have inherent value to the consumers rather than simply being a medium of exchange. It's much easier to proscribe the possession of child porn, hand grenades, or heroin because it's easy to demonstrate the harm of allowing free traffic in such items. Prohibiting voluntary arrangements that don't inherently have first-order harm effects is more difficult. Thus there isn't much opposition to heroin remaining a controlled substance - junkie life sucks - but prohibitions on cannabis use are collapsing left and right because people can see that smoking weed is unlikely to wreck your life. Of course I don't expect you to get familiar with my comment history, but I'm heard all these basic roadblocks to crypto currencies because I've made many of these same arguments myself in the past. The existence of unsolved problems does not mean that the problems are insoluble.