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Governments are not going to be able to stop this from happening without massively invasive laws against what software people can run on their computers, public

Governments are not going to be able to stop this from happening without massively invasive laws against what software people can run on their computers, public access to encrypted communication and private exchange. Governments will hopefully be forward thinking about this and accept the changes that technology brings. Ultimately it's government's responsibility to accommodate social and technological trends, not vice versa. Some of the worst chapters in human history came about when political authorities tried to resist the tide of change, like President Franklin Pierce who pushed back against the abolitionist movement pre-Civil-War by approving the expansion of slavery westward, and thus setting the stage for the war to come. In recent decades Western governments have been reasonably enlightened when it comes to technological change, as in the case of abandoning export control laws barring wide dissemination of strong cryptography in the 1990s, and the institution of safe harbor laws, both of which facilitated the growth of the internet. I hope they carry that philosophy toward cryptocurrency.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
> Governments are not going to be able to stop this from happening without massively invasive laws against what software people can run on their computers, public access to encrypted communication and private exchange. Hopefully they'll be able to stop this and other problems with emission taxes.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  Whatever the tax is, I hope it is on some kind of physical consumption of scarce resources, rather than on economic transactions that are inherently private and increasingly out of the bounds of any jurisdiction.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Yes. In my imagination, a widely deployed CO₂ tax would rise electricity prices just enough to wipe the profits off Bitcoin mining and make maintaining the blockchain that much less profitable for people, killing the currency outright. But then again, it might only delay the inevitable... (And to be clear - I don't mind innovations in finance, new kinds of money, new mechanisms of social consensus, etc. I only dislike systems with huge energy waste, especially one unsustainable in long-term, as such systems grow.)

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> Governments are not going to be able to stop this from happening without massively invasive laws against what software people can run on their computers, public access to encrypted communication and private exchange. Hopefully they'll be able to stop this and other problems with emission taxes.

CryptoPunk 9y ago
Whatever the tax is, I hope it is on some kind of physical consumption of scarce resources, rather than on economic transactions that are inherently private and increasingly out of the bounds of any jurisdiction.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Yes. In my imagination, a widely deployed CO₂ tax would rise electricity prices just enough to wipe the profits off Bitcoin mining and make maintaining the blockchain that much less profitable for people, killing the currency outright. But then again, it might only delay the inevitable... (And to be clear - I don't mind innovations in finance, new kinds of money, new mechanisms of social consensus, etc. I only dislike systems with huge energy waste, especially one unsustainable in long-term, as such systems grow.)