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I'm intrigued by the idea that cryptocurrencies can exist and may help alleviate economics crises, but in a dark plot twist can't governments essentially own th
by dpflan 9y ago
I'm intrigued by the idea that cryptocurrencies can exist and may help alleviate economics crises, but in a dark plot twist can't governments essentially own the majority of computing power, start their own cryptocurrency, and outlaw all others? What does the world look like when a decentralized concept like this is appropriated and brute forced into a more-or-less centralized concept? (Or perhaps I'm way off track...)
- wereHamster 9y agoSure they can try to "outlaw" cryptocurrencies. Or the internet as a whole. Good luck with enforcing it though…
- akhatri_aus 9y agoIf you can control the traffic in and out a country, you can control both the internet and block off extra-sovereign chains.
- gruez 9y ago...because censorship (in general) work so well in the past? the bitcoin blockchain generates 6 one MB blocks per hour, that's 1.6 KB/s. i can think of multiple ways to smuggle data in at that bandwidth. blockstream apparently also has satelites broadcasting the blockchain. good luck shutting that down. transactions are even easier. they're less than 0.5KB, something you can easily fit in a few SMS, or in a envelope.
- akhatri_aus 9y agoEveryone would need to smuggle data out, 50%+ of the chain within the country is all that's needed to win. You're not going to get everyone to use satellites to get data in and out. If you've ever been in an African country you'd know SMSs aren't on the cheap side either. You'd also know they have tools that can track and catch your VSAT dishes and fine you heavily.
- Retric 9y agoIt's easy to ban mining in a country when you control the backbone infrastructure. At which point there is no difference between cryptocurrencies and any other foreign currency.
- freeloop3 9y agoForeign currency can be confiscated. A brain wallet cannot
- dragonwriter 9y agoA brain wallet can be confiscated by rubber-hose cryptanalysis. It is more resistant, perhaps, to detection than cash on hand in foreign currency (though not necessarily particularly more than a foreign currency account where access information is memorized, depending on the threat profile of concern.)
- freeloop3 9y agoTorture may be used to find out the user has bitcoin, but you can never be sure you got it all. If they give you access to n wallets, how do you know they don't have n+1? A foreign currency account is not as easy to setup as a brain wallet.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Torture may be used to find out the user has bitcoin but you can never be sure you got it all. That's also true of caches of foreign currency in cash (not to mention remote accounts.) Of course, the difficulty of the subject proving full compliance is more of a problem for the subject than the torturer.
- freeloop3 9y agoA home can be searched and caches found. A foreign account is difficult to open. It's not hard to see why bitcoin has its appeal, no?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoOr you outlaw changing cryptocurrency into fiat currency or providing any goods or services in exchange for cryptocurrency. What would bitcoin's value be right now, if it was illegal to convert into any fiat currency? No established exchanges (just black market ones). In addition, due to the power requirements, it is probably pretty easy to figure out who is mining.
- mtgx 9y agoThey can outlaw exchanges and then cryptocurrencies would "simply" become a black market or "shadow" economy. But they can't stop it.
- matthewbauer 9y agoBut at that point wouldn’t people just use cash?
- jstanley 9y agoCash doesn't work over the internet and is not immune to central bank meddling.
- pc86 9y agoIt seems to be working pretty well for China, and certain people within North Korea.
- AJRF 9y agoThat would require the government being able to coordinate controlling; 1. Internet access 2. Sales of computers 3. Imports 4. Citizens not revolting against that (including people using and accepting currency, so buy and sell side) All of which are possible but not trivial. I actually think it becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to do this with a decentralised system like BitCoin than it is with fiat currency issued by a central bank.
- justboxing 9y ago> All of which are possible but not trivial Isn't China doing #1 - #4 to about 25% of the world's population already?
- cheez 9y agoYou missed step 0: disarm the population.
- zanny 9y agoChina is trying to do all that, but about 90% of bitcoins growth in the last 4 years has come out of Chinese investment in it for both speculation and mining. Even outright attempts to outlaw it has not slowed down participation practically at all. The fundamental problem is that it is incredibly hard to provide only some Internet access, be they a state actor, public school, parent, etc. The design of the protocols impairs censorship efforts. If you want to censor the Internet, you pretty much have to start with a whitelist approach of allowed IPs and domains, and then stringently audit those to insure they don't act as proxies.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ared38 9y agoAll you have to do is arrest people converting rebel cryptocurrencies into the one you can use at the grocery store. Since every transfer of legitimate money is now in the blockchain, they'll be able to identify them pretty quickly. Not sure if a government in turmoil could do it, but it's easy for a stable repressive regime. I agree the government doesn't get any benefit from decentralization and would just have a MySQL DB in real life to make corruption and whatnot easier, but cryptocurrencies only work if the government tolerates them.
- Sir_Substance 9y ago>start their own cryptocurrency, and outlaw all others? This would be a waste of resources. If you're not going to be decentralized, it's way less complex to have a mysql DB of everyones bank accounts somewhere, and much easier to hide corruption.
- dpflan 9y agoYes, if the government backed CC becomes the new fiat, and I assume only federal participants for mining/computation, then yes, shortcircuit straight to federal Excel spreadsheets!
- zanny 9y agoThis right here is what is so frustrating about the general engagement with blockchains in the last half decade. On one hand, I am knowledgeable about the subject domain and witnessed businesses offering some ludicrous compensation for working on blockchains for them, but to be informed is to know how misguided all these people are about why blockchains are useful, and talking to peers who did get involved in some of these projects (especially circa 2013 ones) companies spent a lot on a fad and just as quickly ended the experiment because blockchains are not magic money machines. They are only beneficial to establish a trustless data store. That is the only function they serve. If you don't need trustless consensus, you don't need or want a blockchain. If you are a state actor or some major corporation, you trust yourself already, and you don't need trustless data stores, and at corporate scale any interaction with other entities that might validly use trustless data (like money tracked between banks) has the entities involved capable of influencing force of law to maintain systemic trust. That is why Zimbabwe citizens value it, and why a Fortune 500 or European state power doesn't need one.
- justicezyx 9y agoOne person already controlling an overwhelmingly large portion of Bitcoin, and you are still worrying about government... Logic, people...
- erikpukinskis 9y agoThere’s a nonzero probability Satoshi burned it. They could’ve burned everything they mined and just buy small amounts during the ramp and they’d still be a multi multi millionaire now, while maintaining heir anonymity, and helping secure the stability of their creation. Not saying that’s what happened, just that logic hardly precludes it.