12 ms·

“They’ll Just Make It Illegal”

124 points by erlend_sh 8y ago

tajen 8y ago
I’ve always been surprised that governments don’t do anything against it. After all, currency is a Regalian power, and it’s forbidden to pay using other currencies than the country’s one in pretty much all countries.
- Pyxl101 8y ago
  At least in the United States, as far as I'm aware, you can use any currency that you want. However, the government and IRS only accept tax payments in US dollars. Under these laws, you could transact in cryptocurrency all you want, but you'll need to pay sales tax, income tax, and other relevant taxes in dollars.
- Toine 8y ago
  You buy your Bitcoins in US dollars, that's all that matters. As long as people, companies and organizations do their business in dollars, cryptocurrencies will be ignored. If someday a large chunk of the economy is done using them, the government will do something.
- nhaehnle 8y ago
  This is a common misunderstanding. Using foreign currencies is very much legal almost everywhere. The distinction of "legal tender" is that (1) the state expects payment in the domestic currency and (2) when there is a dispute in court, any fines or financial penalties will have to be paid in the domestic currency. This does mean that if you enter a contract which states that some payment has to be made in a foreign currency, a court can overrule this and force the payment to be made in the domestic currency instead. That basically never happens in practice, but it is possible. As to why governments don't forbid Bitcoin & friends: in the larger economy, they just don't matter, so why bother? Now the ICO craze has caught attention because of securities fraud, and governments have stepped in.
  - CryptoPunk 8y ago
    >>Now the ICO craze has caught attention because of securities fraud, and governments have stepped in. Going a bit off tangent, but I just want to clarify that the concern is primarily over token sales not meeting securities law requirements relating to registering a security before offering it to the public, and not securities fraud. As it is, several token sales that have engaged in fraudulent practices have been pursued by the SEC and no one takes issue with this. Fraud laws are clearly applicable to all financial interactions, including those involving cryptocurrency, and their enforcement is a public good. The controversy is in applying securities laws to token sales and thus placing the SEC as the centralized gatekeeper with which any party wanting to conduct a smart-contract based token sale needs to register with. Further requirements include meeting disclosure requirements designed for traditional securities which have questionable applicability to a project with no central coordinator that aims to create a protocol utility token that confers no legal claims to an underlying asset.
danieltillett 8y ago
It is not crypto currencies that are dangerous, it is the idea of crypto currencies that is dangerous. No government is worried about any of the crypto currencies that currently exist (they are all too crude), but the idea that money could be independent of government (and hence those that own the government) is very dangerous. If this idea were to catch on in the public mind who knows where things could end up. The solution is to let the current crude crypto currencies run wild burning all who touch them creating a hatred in the population towards the whole concept. So much more subtle than just making them illegal.
- alcio 8y ago
  > the idea that money could be independent of government (and hence those that own the government) is very dangerous that's how things were quite recently (before the ~19th century)
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    Yes and once some genius worked out that you could make money out of thin air (John Law) governments became very powerful. Nobody who has control of this system will give it up easily, certainly not to a bunch of nerds with a cool idea.
    - barry-cotter 8y ago
      Government has been very powerful as long as it has existed. The most powerful political organisation in a given territory is a reasonable definition of government.
      - danieltillett 8y ago
        Governments were far weaker in the hard currency days. Not only were they limited to a fairly small tax take (10% max), they had huge problems raising the money to run the state. Governments of the past did little beyond protecting you from other governments. Sure any one individual could end up on the sharp end of the pointy stick of state, but overall most people lived their lives almost completely free of government because the state lacked the funds needed to do much beyond fight wars.
polotics 8y ago
One thing to consider: as per a recent Bloomberg article, with the tax code as it is now in the US, for the really rich with tax exempt structure over family offices, if you are paying any income tax on income that you haven't yet spent, you're not doing it right. Why shouldn't everybody demand to be under the same tax regime as the wealthy? Why is this not a debate? Who owns the debate?
- adwhit 8y ago
  Obviously, the wealthy own the debate. And that is no accident but the result of a highly successful political project that has been instituted over the past 40 years. Hey, there was even a study about it[1]: Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence It wasn't always like this. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    It’s a new nation, really, with a new standard of citizenship. It probably was bound to happen after extending the vote to all persons.
- Arnt 8y ago
  Define "rich". IMO the correct threshold is "earns more than needed over some longish period of time", which is another way of saying "has income that isn't spent". If you use that definition, everyone who spends all of their income gets that treatment, because their unspent income is zero and the tax on that is zero.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Not really. The very lowest level I would consider someone rich is that he/she has enough passive income (income independent of any day to day activity) to support himself anywhere they want to for an indefinite period of time. Very rich is to be able to do that for both themselves and a staff. Also: you should broaden your economic knowledge ... it's cute that you think unspent income isn't taxed. Directly taxed ... perhaps not. Now what happens if you want to do anything with that money (different from spending it). Tens of different taxes suddenly apply.
KarlRutnick 8y ago
Collect taxes? I'm a leftie but you don't actually need to have taxes for a government to operate. Prevent money laundring and terrorism?? Lol as if that don't happen in the current system. It's more of a question of what group is allowed to do those things. Basically the state today are just eliminating competition. Andreas Antonopolous is pretty much dead on here. There are consumer protection and security aspects which we also should have with decentralised crypto solutions but for the most part the state we have today creates more problems than it solves. On top of that they just throw the rules out of the window if that benefits the little club at the top, not to mention millions of poor brown people who suffer when a state yields the total power of the population and economy to act like evil psychopaths against out-groups for financial gain.. but yes we must make systems that make their power impotent and obsolete
amriksohata 8y ago
Just like the dot-com bubble and burst, economics always wins, someone will find another way to make it work. The resistance of banks is short term and futile
Taek 8y ago
The blockchain allows two strangers to interact without needing to trust eachother, and without needing to bring in a trusted third party. That is an incredibly valuable service, and one that adds a lot of consumer protection to services that are able to leverage it well. For example, using blockchain based contracts, we are able to empower consumers and enterprises to store data on foreign machines, without needing to know much about those machines besides their IP address. Using the blockchain's native currency, we can ensure that all payments are guaranteed, that no unfair chargebacks can happen, and further that the storage providers on our network cannot make money unless they actually keep the files for the duration of the contract. No fraud, no chargebacks, no payment for unfulfilled services, with lawyers or courts or claims processes required. We can protect our users much more easily and cheaply than traditional services or marketplaces, and this is made possible through a blockchain.
- empath75 8y ago
  Is there a huge amount of fraud in the online storage industry now? You can put as much as you want on s3 or whatever for almost nothing right now.
- Pyxl101 8y ago
  > That is an incredibly valuable service, and one that adds a lot of consumer protection to services that are able to leverage it well. From my perspective, the blockchain significantly reduces consumer protection. If I buy a product online, to be shipped to my house, how does the blockchain provide consumer protection? It doesn't. If the seller absconds with my money, and fails to ship the product or ships a counterfeit product, then there's absolutely nothing that I can do about it. With a credit card, I can report that fraud to the credit card bureau, who will reverse the transaction by default, then investigate and require the merchant to provide proof that the transaction was authorized and legitimate. I can take a photo of an obviously counterfeit product and send that to the credit card company as evidence of the fraud. Or if the product never arrived, it's on the merchant to prove that they shipped something to my address, and they'll need to provide a tracking number. As a consumer, this is a significant protection for me, and it's a significant fraud deterrent. Merchants who are bad actors and engage in fraud will be cut off from the network. Furthermore, buyers who are bad actors and issue an unreasonable number of chargebacks will also be cut off. There is no similar oversight of blockchains. If my credit card is stolen and used by a thief, then that's no problem for me. All of the fraudulent transactions are reversed, and the only real inconvenience is waiting for the replacement card to arrive. That's another important consumer protection: my money can't be stolen. With blockchain technology, thieves can steal anyone's money in an irreversible way if they get access to it. Chargebacks are one of the most valuable and most important consumer protection capabilities of the traditional banking system. Removing chargebacks significantly reduces consumer protection. Blockchain-based payment systems that do not involve a trusted central party will have worse consumer protection, not better. The only circumstance in which they'll be better is if the entire transaction, and delivery of goods and services, can be validated by a smart contract. That will only be possible for a small number of real-world transactions. It will not apply to the majority of day-to-day commerce. I am not claiming that the blockchain has no redeeming qualities. It has a bunch of valuable characteristics and benefits that I'm not mentioning here. However, consumer protection is not one of them.
cornholio 8y ago
Cryptocurrencies are not "just like cash". I cannot teleport 1 billion dollars in cash across state borders. I cannot store it my head while imprissoned. I cannot manage it without accomplices and theft risk. The whole premise "exchanges as identity gatekeepers" is in contradiction with the promise of stable world wide cryptocurrencies that ar just as good as fiat. When that happens, nobody needs exchanges and money laundering becomes a fundamental feature of the financial system.
- fineng123 8y ago
  Why would the powers that be allow this to happen? I don't understand this fairy tale view
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    I don’t see how a government could stop it without basically banning writing code. Also, if blockchains prove to be a valuable technology then jurisdictions that ban them will be at a competitive disadvantage. I make the same argument about self driving cars: yes they could be banned, but SOME government will allow them and then global media will make that difference stark.
    - fineng123 8y ago
      The ecosystem is quite dependent on fiat crosses... the U.S. government alone has the power and the tools to destroy crypto. You can't hurt the rentiers, e.g. large American banks, and expect them to not get compensation or destroy you in turn. They are the law. To think that it matters that the technology is better (and it's debatable that it really is) is ludicrous.
alcio 8y ago
Resistance to state control is one of the axioms Bitcoin is built upon. If you think it is not possible, then Bitcoin cannot make sense to you. https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin/wiki/Axiom-of-Resistance https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin/wiki/Axiom-of-Resis...
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Bitcoin is not an ideology, it’s a technology. Dread Pirate Roberts was an ideologue and an idiot and now he’s behind bars. Plenty of others have run darknet markets and made their pile without ending up in jail. The European Parliament and the Chinese government can be hostile to the ideology of the internet without renouncing the technology. Ideology is downstream of economic realities.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    I don’t want to get into a pedantic debate about where “Bitcoin” specifically starts and ends, but can you agree that Bitcoin presented a solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem which is more of an idea than a technology? And can you also see that if a person starts trying to apply that solution broadly to systems of control throughout their life that this becomes a kind of ideology?
- andai 8y ago
  > If one assumes it is not possible for a system to resist state controls, conclusions do not make sense in the context of Bitcoin;[...] For example, without the axiom, how can Bitcoin be trustless and a sound money? Does not sound money in this case require trust that the state will not subvert its foundations?
- 21 8y ago
  Let's assume that the axiom is true, and despite bitcoin being declared illegal by all jurisdictions, people still use it. What do you think it's market cap will be? What number of people will willingly use an illegal good with harsh punishments? So yes, bitcoin will still exist. But it will be kind of meaningless if it gets declared illegal, at the fringes of society.
andrepd 8y ago
>The status quo comes at great cost — high rents paid to financial intermediary institutions along with other various and protected oligarchies. So far so good. >However, it also provides benefits in the form of public goods. Hmm. >It generates and sustains core functions of the broader state and economy such as tools to capture tax revenues, prevent money laundering and terrorism financing, capacity to control the money supply, protect consumers and investors, and ensure market integrity and even (a degree of) financial stability. Tools to capture tax revenue, prevent money laundering, and prevent terrorist financing? I thought tax evasion and money laundering were some of the services they offered! Protect consumers and investors? Secure financial stability? What?? Did everybody forget about 2008 already? A small elite set of people KNOWINGLY wrecked the world economy, calculatedly corrupted our political, regulatory, and academic bodies to ensure no responsibility ever come to them, let alone demands of repayment, flipped the incentives around to become fabulously rich and rewarded for driving their companies into the ground and ruining their clients, got paid to lie and deceive, to give lectures and papers and audits saying everything was a-OK, to lie to clients about the junk they were peddling, to take regulatory roles and stand aside... If you want to see it this way, doubtless millions of excess deaths are attributable to their actions. Make no mistake, if they could get away with it they would murder your entire family in cold blood for a hundred bucks. The current financial/banking scheme can very well go fuck itself. It's difficult to do worse than this; it's a broken in almost every way, except in securing power and vast wealth to a select group of people. Note, I'm not saying blockchain will surely bring about anything better.
- giantsloth 8y ago
  The crisis was largely due in part to deregulation and private companies getting kick backs for their ratings. Crypto currency is mostly unregulated and rated on a private market. Also, there is a small elite group of people who own most of the crypto currency, which very quickly and easily could result in market manipulation at the expense of small holders. While your anger is understandable and banks are indeed criminal, cryptocoins are just as susceptible to criminal behavior as any other market place and even more so do to the lack of regulation. And I’d just like to note that major banks like Goldman are saying that btc is bullshit while quietly buying a massive stake in it. So, the fact is, the banks will get involved if it’s worth money and they will manipulate the market, so we will be right back where we started.
minpur 8y ago
There is a valid case where crypto will occupy the place of black-money in countries like India. There is a minimum rate fixed by the government, especially for land. But the market rate is (many times) a multiple of that rate. So when you buy land, you pay the minimum government rate (plus tax) so you can enter into ‘legally binding’ sale agreements. The rest you pay in crypto. In other worlds fiat currency issued by governments will continue to the extent of the legal sanctity they provide to any transaction. The rest is crypto.
Zigurd 8y ago
Sometimes the right answer is to change the regulation or taxation rather than tighten it. If tax evasion is the problem, for example, shift the taxation toward meatspace. Secondly, the answer is to take the great plank out of our conventional economy's eye before examining the mote in the eye of cryptocurrency. Real estate is a large vehicle for money laundering, and it goes on largely unexamined until it becomes a state actor problem in the news. Elizabeth Holmes probably thinks, correctly, she is a piker when it comes to white collar crime. Cleaning up the world of conventional money would leave less room and incentive for crimes using cryptocurrency.
- CryptoPunk 8y ago
  Money laundering means concealing the origins of illegally obtained money. The effort to eradicate it results in terrible laws that necessitates the institution of a surveillance state that requires you to report how much money you have and everything you do with it. Those convicted under anti-money-laundering laws are often only found guilty of flouting one of these privacy-violating reporting requirements, rather than actually illegally obtaining money. This is an important distinction. The state does not need to prove you obtained money from an illegal enterprise to convict you under anti-money-laundering laws. So technically, no money laundering needs to be proven to have been committed, for someone to be imprisoned for violating these laws. The scope of such laws is therefore enormous, and goes far beyond the traditional limits of due process. If the concern is people obtaining money from illegal enterprises, then the solution is to shut down those enterprises and convict people for running them. But it's hard to fight real crime, so we sacrifice the basic liberties of the entire population, by making it a crime for anyone to conduct a transaction above a certain size without reporting it to a financial surveillance agency. Naturally, with such an expansive idea of what constitutes crime, and what liberties the government is entitled to restrict to stop it, any technology that enhances privacy will be viewed as dangerous, whether that be encrypted communication, cash, or cryptocurrency. But the problem is not these technologies. The problem is with laws like those created under the umbrella of stopping money laundering, which accept as a priori that people have no right to conceal from others the origins of their money.
  - 8y ago
emilsedgh 8y ago
What an amazingly well thought and balanced article. Exceptionally level-headed. I wish we had such attitude towards different challenges that our societies are facing.
fatanpur 8y ago
I guess soon we will have the concept of separation of state and money much like the separation of state and religion.
CryptoPunk 8y ago
A lot of these issues come down to trade-offs. For instance, there is the potential for criminals to use e-cash to do crime, just as they use physical cash. But the flip-side of that is the cash empowers individuals and serves as a guard against encroachments of their liberty. Cryptocurrency allowed people to donate to Wikileaks when the financial blockade was imposed on it. It's not hard to imagine a future where blockchains are far more scalable, and large numbers of people who are discriminated against by the banking system rely on it for economic integration. Individuals and organisations on the fringes like Wikileaks are important guarantors against centralized tyranny. Without a payment system outside the control of centralized authorities they can be more easily snuffed out. In other words, cash is an important institution, and arguably the price of criminals having an easier time getting away with crime as a result of its existence is worth paying, to avoid a future where the only financial system is the one subject to anti-money-laundering-laws, and thus subject to warrantless mass-surveillance system over all private financial transactions. Perhaps someone on the inside of the political system their whole adult life, like the article's author, can't really empathize with this view point that we should distrust the political elite and its governing structures, but perhaps he can see the danger of not having a healthy apolitical form of finance in a future dominated by a government like China's. As for the argument that the centralized financial system provides stability and market integrity, it's not clear that this is true. The US had a free-ish banking system in the 19th century, but it was made more fragile than it would have been under a free market by 1. Civil War era banking regulations that required banks to hold US bonds as reserves and 2. laws against interstate branching. The former resulted in an unstable centralized money supply that fluctuated with the volume of outstanding US bonds and the latter prevented more diversified banks from emerging that could better weather localised shocks. Canada had neither of these mandates and consequently had a far more stable banking system. There were proposals before the Fed was created to make the US financial sector more like Canada's, but the banking cartelists won the argument, and the Federal Reserve mandates were passed to cartelize the banking sector under a centralized hierarchy. A couple of good talks by George Selgin on pre-Fed era and the 100 year performance record of the Fed: https://youtu.be/Z0J_Ai2sSmY https://youtu.be/Z0J_Ai2sSmY https://youtu.be/P0E7I4URW5o https://youtu.be/P0E7I4URW5o
drawkbox 8y ago
Governments make money on the movement of money. For this reason they encourage all types of money movement from spending to investment, much of the latter is encouraged by adjusting interest rates so that wealth needs to invest to gain or lose out to inflation. It doesn't matter if it is a state run fiat currency like the USD or a cryptocurrency or a foreign currency or any type of gain that isn't a loan, gains and money movement are taxed and will always be. Taxes are collected on spending (sales tax), on earning (income tax), on gains from investment (dividend/capital gains) on gifting and more. Governments are there to collect on those areas no matter the currency. If anything cryptocurrencies are a hedge on state issued fiat currencies in case they crash or ones that stop transactions, that doesn't mean money isn't moving and that doesn't mean governments aren't there to collect. The IRS sees no difference in USD or BTC gains or any other currency. Money laundering is also part of even very well controlled fiat currencies, sure they might get the small fish but large fish are money laundering in real estate, art, political campaigns (with Citizens United), offshoring hoarding, offshoring investment, banking fraud and all sorts of fronts even in fiat. Cryptocurrencies also have that aspect but every currency known to humans will have some amount of money laundering. You might argue that many benefit from this type of behavior as well including banks, real estate and more regardless of currency. If anything money laundering increases market values, up to 30% of high end real-estate even with fiat currencies or the USD is suspect to money laundering. [1] There are also major holes in hoarding with our current fiat currencies in findings such as the Panama Papers. [2] In a way, money laundering is bad but in another way money laundering legitimizes money and that money goes on to be spent, thus some collection of taxes eventually happens down the line, hoarding or discouraging investment is the real problem. The only real issue of a cryptocurrency would be hoarding and a non fiat currency that is constantly increasing in value that would discourage spending and investment. Right now fiats have interest rates controlled so that they lose value to encourage wealth to invest to retain and advance their wealth, money sitting in fiat currencies is slowly losing value due to inflation. Investment must take place to gain through creating revenue streams and collecting interest/gains on investments. Poor people pay interest and rich people collect it, that is the compounding difference in wealth almost solely regardless of starting wealth. Fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies all are gains and money movement that governments will collect. In a least case scenario, taxes may have to shift to more sales tax and VAT tax type of systems but governments will get their cut of the money movement no matter the currency, nothing really to worry about. The argument of too much money laundering is also moot when things like the Panama Papers and offshoring exist and are allowed, or the bulk of money laundering in real estate, art, political campaigns and more via shell companies and foreign infusions whether incoming or outgoing. Hoarding and inequality is the major problem as it leads to stagnation and lack of investment, money laundered eventually becomes legitimate and is the money re-entering the system which isn't always bad. Right now we have a hoarding problem or in inequality problem that is worse than money laundering, the latter which legitimizes money again to be taxed somewhere down the line. Right now the M2V is at all time lows, money movement is stagnant and that is a major problem [3]. If governments and economies make money on the movement of money we need to do better, crypto helps that problem rather than exacerbates it. Even if there are more 'hidden' transactions in cryptocurrency there is still movement into income for income tax, spending via sales tax and transaction fees. You'll never have to worry about the government getting their cut, they will get their cut. What you should be worried about is money movement in the lower/middle class which leads to stagnation if hoarding and inequality are prevalent, which in the end harms all including the wealthy. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/a-third-of-luxe-real-estate-deals-involve-suspicious-activity.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/a-third-of-luxe-real-estate-... [2] http://www.newsweek.com/panama-papers-finance-business-mossack-fonesca-443648 http://www.newsweek.com/panama-papers-finance-business-mossa... [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V
A1kmm 8y ago
All of the same concerns also apply to cash. Businesses can conceal payments they receive in cash. Money laundering doesn't really depend on the currency or form - explaining where wealth cames from is probably easier to fake with cash than with Bitcoin. In terms of providing stability and market integrity, both cash and cryptocurrencies have mechanisms to prevent counterfeiting - for cash, it is by incorporating features that are hard to duplicate, and for cryptocurrencies, it is through the use of digital signatures and proof of work schemes. Many cash transactions are inherently high risk for consumers (and anyone who invested in cash would also be taking a high risk). The solution is the same as for cash, and is already happening - people will create financial derivatives, and people will have accounts with financial institutions rather than directly holding Bitcoin themselves. So just like how the existence of cash doesn't stop banks from having a value proposition, similarly the existence of cryptocurrencies won't either.
- mrunkel 8y ago
  Except that it's much harder to transfer large sums of cash across borders. This is the drug business hardest problem, getting the drugs into the country is easier than getting earnings out.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - wslack 8y ago
    Cash is also harder to collect and manage. It has a scaling problem that cryptocurrencies do not.
    - dingo_bat 8y ago
      Also cash is issued by the government at will. And nobody else can create cash. It's diametrically opposite to bitcoin's decentralized approach.
      - lagadu 8y ago
novalis78 8y ago
I would highly recommend to anyone interested the newly released book ‘The Bitcoin Standard’ which goes into great detail regarding the current financial system and its origins and discusses the Bitcoin impact from an economics perspective.
int_19h 8y ago
This piece seems to be arguing from the same position as people who want to ban strong crypto in general. The gist of the argument is, "you can't do X, Y and Z if this thing becomes pervasive, and we really want to be able to do X, Y and Z, so we need to ban it". Look, cryptocurrency - like cryptography itself - is just math. You don't argue with math. If it makes it impossible to reliably catch money laundering, or to tax transactions, then we'll have to figure out some way to structure our society such that these things simply aren't relevant. And we know this can be done, because that's how the world functioned for most of its history.
- ineptech 8y ago
  You seem to have skipped the first paragraph of the article. Governments can't keep BTC from existing with the stroke of a pen, but they can certainly keep it from becoming the primary currency and replacing the dollar.
- drngdds 8y ago
  >If it makes it impossible to reliably catch money laundering, or to tax transactions, then we'll have to figure out some way to structure our society such that these things simply aren't relevant. Why? Banning cryptocurrency is definitely possible. It wouldn't be 100% effective because making things illegal is never 100% effective, but it would probably be made even more marginal than it was before it got popular.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Banning anything is possible. Effectively enforcing that ban is another matter.
notahacker 8y ago
The biggest public good provided by financial services providers that's missing is credit creation and allocation. Crypto does have a mechanism to grant people who need to borrow access to spendable funds in the form of the ICO, but the problem is ICO investors are going to make subprime mortgage investors look like Warren Buffet (and also the comparative lack of development of solutions for short term borrowing with predictable returns). And the problem isn't that some ventures will fail (which no financial system can or should even attempt to prevent), and more that the entire ethos of crypto - everything from code is the contract principles to the next big coin/ICO hype - is that if the digital assets and growth in their spot price can be verified, real world assets and risk estimation are comparatively unimportant.
motohagiography 8y ago
> But the blockchain community’s trumpeting of features they love without attention to the public goods that citizens actually value is dangerous for the future of this technology. Steinbeck's famous quip about Americans, "socialism never took hold in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires," can be adapted for Canadians as something along the lines of, "libertarianism isn't plausible in Canada because the middle class see themselves not as minor property millionaires, but as a nation of deputy ministers and professors on sabbatical." As a non-cryptocurrency holder, and non-libertarian, some critics take a a tone that I think prevents meaningful debate and discussion. The strength of cryptocurrencies is that they facilitate capital flight, so regardless of their localized legality, so long as this use case is viable, they will have both liquidity and value. Arguments that they cannot exist if they do not provide an intrinsic mode of enforcement with appeals to "crime," are relative to jurisdiction. Nobody would care if Putin, Mugabe, Maduro, or many other leaders complained something was being used for crime against their states. We'd probably even advocate it. The argument of, "build something that facilitates the existing distribution of privileges among current coalitions or we will round you up for prison," is what many might call "on the wrong side of history."
flatfilefan 8y ago
The "benefits of the existing system" are a straw-man argument. They are actually there to compensate for the the weaknesses of the existing system: terrorism - inability to cope with fear and unjust oppression of foreign countries, tax collection - complicated (otherwise) unenforceable tax code, etc.
- mcguire 8y ago
  None of those things are going away as long as humanity is human. The "benefits of the blockchain" exist exactly to exploit those weaknesses.
- drngdds 8y ago
  Hot take: people avoid taxes because they don't want to pay money, not because the tax code is complicated
upofadown 8y ago
It is odd that governments have not shown more interest in electronic cash systems specifically designed to address their issues like Taler[1]. [1] https://taler.net/ https://taler.net/
segmondy 8y ago
The govt won't make it illegal, it will never get to that. Most people can't secure their passwords, let alone their digital currencies. Most folks are going to get wiped out. If your money is stolen from a bank, you have FDIC insurance up to $250,000. This is enough for most people. For those that have more cash, banks put their reputation on the line to secure your money. These digital exchanges don't care, they have hundreds of millions stolen and keep operating without remorse and blame it on everyone else but themselves.
_bxg1 8y ago
To generalize, the fallacy of libertarianism as a whole is thinking that (in a democratic society) the government is "other", that taxation is them "taking away", etc., and that the answer is to disconnect from the government as much as possible. But the government will always be the most powerful institution, and in democracies that's a good thing! Despite all its flaws, it is the only institution that's required even in theory to represent the interests of the many instead of the few. If you're worried about personal liberty, you should be more involved in that, not less.
- ruskerdax 8y ago
  Democracy and libertarianism are incompatible. This is because democracy is a form of statism. Consistent libertarians understand this and are working to weaken government monopolies as institutions, subvert them, or make them irrelevant outright.
  - _bxg1 8y ago
    Well then I'm nearly as afraid of libertarians as I am of fascists.
    - CryptoPunk 8y ago
      Not that I'm an anarcho-libertarian, but the ideas he's advancing don't seem very scary when you remember that you can reformulate institutions very similar to governments in a world without states. They wouldn't technically be government institutions, because everyone subject to their rules would be a contracting party that consented to the arrangement, but these institutions could have many of the same powers that governments have now, including the power to tax, regulate trade, and provision goods. Anyway, a state-free world is neither plausible nor seen as desireable by the majority kf libertarians, so no point in worrying too much about it.
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        It seems to me that the government provides a "Schelling point"[1] that we can't do away with for many purposes, particularly trust. We can't just have many private regulators or certifiers, because then everyone has an equally difficult problem of determining which one to trust, and no benefit to doing so, since they are stuck with what the market decides. Trust requires information, (not data) and information is a public good. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)
dalbasal 8y ago
This seemed to me a key point of this article: "...those public goods^ which, through hundreds of years of government, business, and democratic processes, we’ve agreed are priorities and values our finance and currency systems should reflect." I think your opinion on this statement colours how you think about the rest of the topic. How do you see this process, and what it produced. Are we, via Hegelian pendulum swings, Smithian invisible hands or democratically aggregated will... are we producing a better money system all the time. Incorporating good ideas. Reacting to changing needs and wants. Keeping everything relatively bug free. Or... if you fall on the other side of this... do you see this process as a mature game, hijacked democracy, corrupted capitalism or bougie conspiracy. I think most everything else traces back to this disagreement. If you're in the mature game camp, you do not accept that the way money works is at core determined by rational trade-offs between anonymity and governance or more mischievous dynamic. Interestingly, this explicitly does not divide along any possible left-right spectrum. It's more of a conservative-radical divide. Your radicalism can equally be of a marxist, schumpeterian or modern variety. ^The Public Goods he lists are tax compliance, anti-money laundering^^, stability and market integrity, and consumer & investor protection. ^^Anti Money Laundering deserves it's own little rant. AML has little to do with money laundering in 2018. It is (legally) a euphemism for a broad set of controls that (if successful) will make it enforceably illegal to accept a robber's money with a positive responsibility.
brownbat 8y ago
> When I talk to cryptocurrency advocates, they typically argue about private benefits but I want to hear more about the public benefits I find it easier to imagine cryptocurrency providing public goods in areas of hyperinflation or other massive macroeconomic malfeasance. The article is right that governments have lots of tools to suppress it--raiding exchanges, sting operations--but it is unlike bullion in the sense that you can't hide your entire bullion stash with encryption. The outcome of that cat and mouse game is highly contingent on local conditions.
bitcoinisqueen 8y ago
>My counter is that people might like the concept of anonymity, and they may even hate their bank, but they like a functioning society and (relatively) stable financial markets a lot more. In fact, we’re usually willing to sacrifice some anonymity, or create governance systems (warrants) that impinge on them in exchange for public goods like law and order. Stable like depreciating USD by 95% in less than 100 years? Stable like the boom and bust cycle every 6 - 12 years due to inflation and currency manipulation? Stable like using inflated money to have waged massive wars? Stopped reading when the author put that lie in there. There is absolutely nothing stable about USD that is worth the risks. It is a moral imperative to make bitcoin (cash) and deflationary money work for society.
themisterx 8y ago
Crypto currency represents the fantasies i had about the financial system as a young person. I then actually worked inside the financial industry. This article is hitting on something very important. The thing is, I don't know if its possible to understand how important regulation is to the financial system until you work inside the financial system. Its kind of hard to explain, especially because the system has had so many big failures and abuses. But basically, it seems like one of those systems where if you dont notice it, then it means its working. Like sewer or water or electricity. It takes a lot of behind the scenes work for that to be a smooth experience for the user.
- chasing 8y ago
  100%. Many of the "features" of cryptocurrencies are actually bugs to people who know how financial systems actually work.
Latteland 8y ago
My response was the VC was shocking disconnected from the actual world if they thought an actual problem was that cryptocurrencies might make normal currencies obsolete any time soon. Maybe in 30 years? Let's get one in actual use to buy things like groceries. A couple of stores or pizza places that instantly convert your bitcoin to fiat currency hardly matters, as you could have used gold. Also I'm not cool enough to know what those "magical 3 letters" mean, HKS? Hong Kong S? Harvard Kennedy School? HKS Japan, HKS architects? Probably the school.

124 points by erlend_sh 8y ago

I’ve always been surprised that governments don’t do anything against it. After all, currency is a Regalian power, and it’s forbidden to pay using other currencies than the country’s one in pretty much all countries.

Pyxl101 8y ago
At least in the United States, as far as I'm aware, you can use any currency that you want. However, the government and IRS only accept tax payments in US dollars. Under these laws, you could transact in cryptocurrency all you want, but you'll need to pay sales tax, income tax, and other relevant taxes in dollars.
Toine 8y ago
You buy your Bitcoins in US dollars, that's all that matters. As long as people, companies and organizations do their business in dollars, cryptocurrencies will be ignored. If someday a large chunk of the economy is done using them, the government will do something.
nhaehnle 8y ago
This is a common misunderstanding. Using foreign currencies is very much legal almost everywhere. The distinction of "legal tender" is that (1) the state expects payment in the domestic currency and (2) when there is a dispute in court, any fines or financial penalties will have to be paid in the domestic currency. This does mean that if you enter a contract which states that some payment has to be made in a foreign currency, a court can overrule this and force the payment to be made in the domestic currency instead. That basically never happens in practice, but it is possible. As to why governments don't forbid Bitcoin & friends: in the larger economy, they just don't matter, so why bother? Now the ICO craze has caught attention because of securities fraud, and governments have stepped in.
- CryptoPunk 8y ago
  >>Now the ICO craze has caught attention because of securities fraud, and governments have stepped in. Going a bit off tangent, but I just want to clarify that the concern is primarily over token sales not meeting securities law requirements relating to registering a security before offering it to the public, and not securities fraud. As it is, several token sales that have engaged in fraudulent practices have been pursued by the SEC and no one takes issue with this. Fraud laws are clearly applicable to all financial interactions, including those involving cryptocurrency, and their enforcement is a public good. The controversy is in applying securities laws to token sales and thus placing the SEC as the centralized gatekeeper with which any party wanting to conduct a smart-contract based token sale needs to register with. Further requirements include meeting disclosure requirements designed for traditional securities which have questionable applicability to a project with no central coordinator that aims to create a protocol utility token that confers no legal claims to an underlying asset.

danieltillett 8y ago

It is not crypto currencies that are dangerous, it is the idea of crypto currencies that is dangerous. No government is worried about any of the crypto currencies that currently exist (they are all too crude), but the idea that money could be independent of government (and hence those that own the government) is very dangerous. If this idea were to catch on in the public mind who knows where things could end up. The solution is to let the current crude crypto currencies run wild burning all who touch them creating a hatred in the population towards the whole concept. So much more subtle than just making them illegal.

alcio 8y ago
> the idea that money could be independent of government (and hence those that own the government) is very dangerous that's how things were quite recently (before the ~19th century)
- danieltillett 8y ago
  Yes and once some genius worked out that you could make money out of thin air (John Law) governments became very powerful. Nobody who has control of this system will give it up easily, certainly not to a bunch of nerds with a cool idea.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Government has been very powerful as long as it has existed. The most powerful political organisation in a given territory is a reasonable definition of government.
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      Governments were far weaker in the hard currency days. Not only were they limited to a fairly small tax take (10% max), they had huge problems raising the money to run the state. Governments of the past did little beyond protecting you from other governments. Sure any one individual could end up on the sharp end of the pointy stick of state, but overall most people lived their lives almost completely free of government because the state lacked the funds needed to do much beyond fight wars.

polotics 8y ago

One thing to consider: as per a recent Bloomberg article, with the tax code as it is now in the US, for the really rich with tax exempt structure over family offices, if you are paying any income tax on income that you haven't yet spent, you're not doing it right. Why shouldn't everybody demand to be under the same tax regime as the wealthy? Why is this not a debate? Who owns the debate?

adwhit 8y ago
Obviously, the wealthy own the debate. And that is no accident but the result of a highly successful political project that has been instituted over the past 40 years. Hey, there was even a study about it[1]: Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence It wasn't always like this. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  It’s a new nation, really, with a new standard of citizenship. It probably was bound to happen after extending the vote to all persons.
Arnt 8y ago
Define "rich". IMO the correct threshold is "earns more than needed over some longish period of time", which is another way of saying "has income that isn't spent". If you use that definition, everyone who spends all of their income gets that treatment, because their unspent income is zero and the tax on that is zero.
- candiodari 8y ago
  Not really. The very lowest level I would consider someone rich is that he/she has enough passive income (income independent of any day to day activity) to support himself anywhere they want to for an indefinite period of time. Very rich is to be able to do that for both themselves and a staff. Also: you should broaden your economic knowledge ... it's cute that you think unspent income isn't taxed. Directly taxed ... perhaps not. Now what happens if you want to do anything with that money (different from spending it). Tens of different taxes suddenly apply.

KarlRutnick 8y ago

Collect taxes? I'm a leftie but you don't actually need to have taxes for a government to operate. Prevent money laundring and terrorism?? Lol as if that don't happen in the current system. It's more of a question of what group is allowed to do those things. Basically the state today are just eliminating competition. Andreas Antonopolous is pretty much dead on here. There are consumer protection and security aspects which we also should have with decentralised crypto solutions but for the most part the state we have today creates more problems than it solves. On top of that they just throw the rules out of the window if that benefits the little club at the top, not to mention millions of poor brown people who suffer when a state yields the total power of the population and economy to act like evil psychopaths against out-groups for financial gain.. but yes we must make systems that make their power impotent and obsolete

amriksohata 8y ago

Just like the dot-com bubble and burst, economics always wins, someone will find another way to make it work. The resistance of banks is short term and futile

Taek 8y ago

The blockchain allows two strangers to interact without needing to trust eachother, and without needing to bring in a trusted third party. That is an incredibly valuable service, and one that adds a lot of consumer protection to services that are able to leverage it well. For example, using blockchain based contracts, we are able to empower consumers and enterprises to store data on foreign machines, without needing to know much about those machines besides their IP address. Using the blockchain's native currency, we can ensure that all payments are guaranteed, that no unfair chargebacks can happen, and further that the storage providers on our network cannot make money unless they actually keep the files for the duration of the contract. No fraud, no chargebacks, no payment for unfulfilled services, with lawyers or courts or claims processes required. We can protect our users much more easily and cheaply than traditional services or marketplaces, and this is made possible through a blockchain.

empath75 8y ago
Is there a huge amount of fraud in the online storage industry now? You can put as much as you want on s3 or whatever for almost nothing right now.
Pyxl101 8y ago
> That is an incredibly valuable service, and one that adds a lot of consumer protection to services that are able to leverage it well. From my perspective, the blockchain significantly reduces consumer protection. If I buy a product online, to be shipped to my house, how does the blockchain provide consumer protection? It doesn't. If the seller absconds with my money, and fails to ship the product or ships a counterfeit product, then there's absolutely nothing that I can do about it. With a credit card, I can report that fraud to the credit card bureau, who will reverse the transaction by default, then investigate and require the merchant to provide proof that the transaction was authorized and legitimate. I can take a photo of an obviously counterfeit product and send that to the credit card company as evidence of the fraud. Or if the product never arrived, it's on the merchant to prove that they shipped something to my address, and they'll need to provide a tracking number. As a consumer, this is a significant protection for me, and it's a significant fraud deterrent. Merchants who are bad actors and engage in fraud will be cut off from the network. Furthermore, buyers who are bad actors and issue an unreasonable number of chargebacks will also be cut off. There is no similar oversight of blockchains. If my credit card is stolen and used by a thief, then that's no problem for me. All of the fraudulent transactions are reversed, and the only real inconvenience is waiting for the replacement card to arrive. That's another important consumer protection: my money can't be stolen. With blockchain technology, thieves can steal anyone's money in an irreversible way if they get access to it. Chargebacks are one of the most valuable and most important consumer protection capabilities of the traditional banking system. Removing chargebacks significantly reduces consumer protection. Blockchain-based payment systems that do not involve a trusted central party will have worse consumer protection, not better. The only circumstance in which they'll be better is if the entire transaction, and delivery of goods and services, can be validated by a smart contract. That will only be possible for a small number of real-world transactions. It will not apply to the majority of day-to-day commerce. I am not claiming that the blockchain has no redeeming qualities. It has a bunch of valuable characteristics and benefits that I'm not mentioning here. However, consumer protection is not one of them.

cornholio 8y ago

Cryptocurrencies are not "just like cash". I cannot teleport 1 billion dollars in cash across state borders. I cannot store it my head while imprissoned. I cannot manage it without accomplices and theft risk. The whole premise "exchanges as identity gatekeepers" is in contradiction with the promise of stable world wide cryptocurrencies that ar just as good as fiat. When that happens, nobody needs exchanges and money laundering becomes a fundamental feature of the financial system.

fineng123 8y ago
Why would the powers that be allow this to happen? I don't understand this fairy tale view
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  I don’t see how a government could stop it without basically banning writing code. Also, if blockchains prove to be a valuable technology then jurisdictions that ban them will be at a competitive disadvantage. I make the same argument about self driving cars: yes they could be banned, but SOME government will allow them and then global media will make that difference stark.
  - fineng123 8y ago
    The ecosystem is quite dependent on fiat crosses... the U.S. government alone has the power and the tools to destroy crypto. You can't hurt the rentiers, e.g. large American banks, and expect them to not get compensation or destroy you in turn. They are the law. To think that it matters that the technology is better (and it's debatable that it really is) is ludicrous.

alcio 8y ago

Resistance to state control is one of the axioms Bitcoin is built upon. If you think it is not possible, then Bitcoin cannot make sense to you. https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin/wiki/Axiom-of-Resistance https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin/wiki/Axiom-of-Resis...

barry-cotter 8y ago
Bitcoin is not an ideology, it’s a technology. Dread Pirate Roberts was an ideologue and an idiot and now he’s behind bars. Plenty of others have run darknet markets and made their pile without ending up in jail. The European Parliament and the Chinese government can be hostile to the ideology of the internet without renouncing the technology. Ideology is downstream of economic realities.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  I don’t want to get into a pedantic debate about where “Bitcoin” specifically starts and ends, but can you agree that Bitcoin presented a solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem which is more of an idea than a technology? And can you also see that if a person starts trying to apply that solution broadly to systems of control throughout their life that this becomes a kind of ideology?
andai 8y ago
> If one assumes it is not possible for a system to resist state controls, conclusions do not make sense in the context of Bitcoin;[...] For example, without the axiom, how can Bitcoin be trustless and a sound money? Does not sound money in this case require trust that the state will not subvert its foundations?
21 8y ago
Let's assume that the axiom is true, and despite bitcoin being declared illegal by all jurisdictions, people still use it. What do you think it's market cap will be? What number of people will willingly use an illegal good with harsh punishments? So yes, bitcoin will still exist. But it will be kind of meaningless if it gets declared illegal, at the fringes of society.

andrepd 8y ago

>The status quo comes at great cost — high rents paid to financial intermediary institutions along with other various and protected oligarchies. So far so good. >However, it also provides benefits in the form of public goods. Hmm. >It generates and sustains core functions of the broader state and economy such as tools to capture tax revenues, prevent money laundering and terrorism financing, capacity to control the money supply, protect consumers and investors, and ensure market integrity and even (a degree of) financial stability. Tools to capture tax revenue, prevent money laundering, and prevent terrorist financing? I thought tax evasion and money laundering were some of the services they offered! Protect consumers and investors? Secure financial stability? What?? Did everybody forget about 2008 already? A small elite set of people KNOWINGLY wrecked the world economy, calculatedly corrupted our political, regulatory, and academic bodies to ensure no responsibility ever come to them, let alone demands of repayment, flipped the incentives around to become fabulously rich and rewarded for driving their companies into the ground and ruining their clients, got paid to lie and deceive, to give lectures and papers and audits saying everything was a-OK, to lie to clients about the junk they were peddling, to take regulatory roles and stand aside... If you want to see it this way, doubtless millions of excess deaths are attributable to their actions. Make no mistake, if they could get away with it they would murder your entire family in cold blood for a hundred bucks. The current financial/banking scheme can very well go fuck itself. It's difficult to do worse than this; it's a broken in almost every way, except in securing power and vast wealth to a select group of people. Note, I'm not saying blockchain will surely bring about anything better.

giantsloth 8y ago
The crisis was largely due in part to deregulation and private companies getting kick backs for their ratings. Crypto currency is mostly unregulated and rated on a private market. Also, there is a small elite group of people who own most of the crypto currency, which very quickly and easily could result in market manipulation at the expense of small holders. While your anger is understandable and banks are indeed criminal, cryptocoins are just as susceptible to criminal behavior as any other market place and even more so do to the lack of regulation. And I’d just like to note that major banks like Goldman are saying that btc is bullshit while quietly buying a massive stake in it. So, the fact is, the banks will get involved if it’s worth money and they will manipulate the market, so we will be right back where we started.

minpur 8y ago

There is a valid case where crypto will occupy the place of black-money in countries like India. There is a minimum rate fixed by the government, especially for land. But the market rate is (many times) a multiple of that rate. So when you buy land, you pay the minimum government rate (plus tax) so you can enter into ‘legally binding’ sale agreements. The rest you pay in crypto. In other worlds fiat currency issued by governments will continue to the extent of the legal sanctity they provide to any transaction. The rest is crypto.

Zigurd 8y ago

Sometimes the right answer is to change the regulation or taxation rather than tighten it. If tax evasion is the problem, for example, shift the taxation toward meatspace. Secondly, the answer is to take the great plank out of our conventional economy's eye before examining the mote in the eye of cryptocurrency. Real estate is a large vehicle for money laundering, and it goes on largely unexamined until it becomes a state actor problem in the news. Elizabeth Holmes probably thinks, correctly, she is a piker when it comes to white collar crime. Cleaning up the world of conventional money would leave less room and incentive for crimes using cryptocurrency.

CryptoPunk 8y ago
Money laundering means concealing the origins of illegally obtained money. The effort to eradicate it results in terrible laws that necessitates the institution of a surveillance state that requires you to report how much money you have and everything you do with it. Those convicted under anti-money-laundering laws are often only found guilty of flouting one of these privacy-violating reporting requirements, rather than actually illegally obtaining money. This is an important distinction. The state does not need to prove you obtained money from an illegal enterprise to convict you under anti-money-laundering laws. So technically, no money laundering needs to be proven to have been committed, for someone to be imprisoned for violating these laws. The scope of such laws is therefore enormous, and goes far beyond the traditional limits of due process. If the concern is people obtaining money from illegal enterprises, then the solution is to shut down those enterprises and convict people for running them. But it's hard to fight real crime, so we sacrifice the basic liberties of the entire population, by making it a crime for anyone to conduct a transaction above a certain size without reporting it to a financial surveillance agency. Naturally, with such an expansive idea of what constitutes crime, and what liberties the government is entitled to restrict to stop it, any technology that enhances privacy will be viewed as dangerous, whether that be encrypted communication, cash, or cryptocurrency. But the problem is not these technologies. The problem is with laws like those created under the umbrella of stopping money laundering, which accept as a priori that people have no right to conceal from others the origins of their money.
- 8y ago

emilsedgh 8y ago

What an amazingly well thought and balanced article. Exceptionally level-headed. I wish we had such attitude towards different challenges that our societies are facing.

fatanpur 8y ago

I guess soon we will have the concept of separation of state and money much like the separation of state and religion.

CryptoPunk 8y ago

A lot of these issues come down to trade-offs. For instance, there is the potential for criminals to use e-cash to do crime, just as they use physical cash. But the flip-side of that is the cash empowers individuals and serves as a guard against encroachments of their liberty. Cryptocurrency allowed people to donate to Wikileaks when the financial blockade was imposed on it. It's not hard to imagine a future where blockchains are far more scalable, and large numbers of people who are discriminated against by the banking system rely on it for economic integration. Individuals and organisations on the fringes like Wikileaks are important guarantors against centralized tyranny. Without a payment system outside the control of centralized authorities they can be more easily snuffed out. In other words, cash is an important institution, and arguably the price of criminals having an easier time getting away with crime as a result of its existence is worth paying, to avoid a future where the only financial system is the one subject to anti-money-laundering-laws, and thus subject to warrantless mass-surveillance system over all private financial transactions. Perhaps someone on the inside of the political system their whole adult life, like the article's author, can't really empathize with this view point that we should distrust the political elite and its governing structures, but perhaps he can see the danger of not having a healthy apolitical form of finance in a future dominated by a government like China's. As for the argument that the centralized financial system provides stability and market integrity, it's not clear that this is true. The US had a free-ish banking system in the 19th century, but it was made more fragile than it would have been under a free market by 1. Civil War era banking regulations that required banks to hold US bonds as reserves and 2. laws against interstate branching. The former resulted in an unstable centralized money supply that fluctuated with the volume of outstanding US bonds and the latter prevented more diversified banks from emerging that could better weather localised shocks. Canada had neither of these mandates and consequently had a far more stable banking system. There were proposals before the Fed was created to make the US financial sector more like Canada's, but the banking cartelists won the argument, and the Federal Reserve mandates were passed to cartelize the banking sector under a centralized hierarchy. A couple of good talks by George Selgin on pre-Fed era and the 100 year performance record of the Fed: https://youtu.be/Z0J_Ai2sSmY https://youtu.be/Z0J_Ai2sSmY https://youtu.be/P0E7I4URW5o https://youtu.be/P0E7I4URW5o

drawkbox 8y ago

Governments make money on the movement of money. For this reason they encourage all types of money movement from spending to investment, much of the latter is encouraged by adjusting interest rates so that wealth needs to invest to gain or lose out to inflation. It doesn't matter if it is a state run fiat currency like the USD or a cryptocurrency or a foreign currency or any type of gain that isn't a loan, gains and money movement are taxed and will always be. Taxes are collected on spending (sales tax), on earning (income tax), on gains from investment (dividend/capital gains) on gifting and more. Governments are there to collect on those areas no matter the currency. If anything cryptocurrencies are a hedge on state issued fiat currencies in case they crash or ones that stop transactions, that doesn't mean money isn't moving and that doesn't mean governments aren't there to collect. The IRS sees no difference in USD or BTC gains or any other currency. Money laundering is also part of even very well controlled fiat currencies, sure they might get the small fish but large fish are money laundering in real estate, art, political campaigns (with Citizens United), offshoring hoarding, offshoring investment, banking fraud and all sorts of fronts even in fiat. Cryptocurrencies also have that aspect but every currency known to humans will have some amount of money laundering. You might argue that many benefit from this type of behavior as well including banks, real estate and more regardless of currency. If anything money laundering increases market values, up to 30% of high end real-estate even with fiat currencies or the USD is suspect to money laundering. [1] There are also major holes in hoarding with our current fiat currencies in findings such as the Panama Papers. [2] In a way, money laundering is bad but in another way money laundering legitimizes money and that money goes on to be spent, thus some collection of taxes eventually happens down the line, hoarding or discouraging investment is the real problem. The only real issue of a cryptocurrency would be hoarding and a non fiat currency that is constantly increasing in value that would discourage spending and investment. Right now fiats have interest rates controlled so that they lose value to encourage wealth to invest to retain and advance their wealth, money sitting in fiat currencies is slowly losing value due to inflation. Investment must take place to gain through creating revenue streams and collecting interest/gains on investments. Poor people pay interest and rich people collect it, that is the compounding difference in wealth almost solely regardless of starting wealth. Fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies all are gains and money movement that governments will collect. In a least case scenario, taxes may have to shift to more sales tax and VAT tax type of systems but governments will get their cut of the money movement no matter the currency, nothing really to worry about. The argument of too much money laundering is also moot when things like the Panama Papers and offshoring exist and are allowed, or the bulk of money laundering in real estate, art, political campaigns and more via shell companies and foreign infusions whether incoming or outgoing. Hoarding and inequality is the major problem as it leads to stagnation and lack of investment, money laundered eventually becomes legitimate and is the money re-entering the system which isn't always bad. Right now we have a hoarding problem or in inequality problem that is worse than money laundering, the latter which legitimizes money again to be taxed somewhere down the line. Right now the M2V is at all time lows, money movement is stagnant and that is a major problem [3]. If governments and economies make money on the movement of money we need to do better, crypto helps that problem rather than exacerbates it. Even if there are more 'hidden' transactions in cryptocurrency there is still movement into income for income tax, spending via sales tax and transaction fees. You'll never have to worry about the government getting their cut, they will get their cut. What you should be worried about is money movement in the lower/middle class which leads to stagnation if hoarding and inequality are prevalent, which in the end harms all including the wealthy. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/a-third-of-luxe-real-estate-deals-involve-suspicious-activity.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/a-third-of-luxe-real-estate-... [2] http://www.newsweek.com/panama-papers-finance-business-mossack-fonesca-443648 http://www.newsweek.com/panama-papers-finance-business-mossa... [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V

A1kmm 8y ago

All of the same concerns also apply to cash. Businesses can conceal payments they receive in cash. Money laundering doesn't really depend on the currency or form - explaining where wealth cames from is probably easier to fake with cash than with Bitcoin. In terms of providing stability and market integrity, both cash and cryptocurrencies have mechanisms to prevent counterfeiting - for cash, it is by incorporating features that are hard to duplicate, and for cryptocurrencies, it is through the use of digital signatures and proof of work schemes. Many cash transactions are inherently high risk for consumers (and anyone who invested in cash would also be taking a high risk). The solution is the same as for cash, and is already happening - people will create financial derivatives, and people will have accounts with financial institutions rather than directly holding Bitcoin themselves. So just like how the existence of cash doesn't stop banks from having a value proposition, similarly the existence of cryptocurrencies won't either.

mrunkel 8y ago
Except that it's much harder to transfer large sums of cash across borders. This is the drug business hardest problem, getting the drugs into the country is easier than getting earnings out.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wslack 8y ago
  Cash is also harder to collect and manage. It has a scaling problem that cryptocurrencies do not.
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    Also cash is issued by the government at will. And nobody else can create cash. It's diametrically opposite to bitcoin's decentralized approach.
    - lagadu 8y ago

novalis78 8y ago

I would highly recommend to anyone interested the newly released book ‘The Bitcoin Standard’ which goes into great detail regarding the current financial system and its origins and discusses the Bitcoin impact from an economics perspective.

int_19h 8y ago

This piece seems to be arguing from the same position as people who want to ban strong crypto in general. The gist of the argument is, "you can't do X, Y and Z if this thing becomes pervasive, and we really want to be able to do X, Y and Z, so we need to ban it". Look, cryptocurrency - like cryptography itself - is just math. You don't argue with math. If it makes it impossible to reliably catch money laundering, or to tax transactions, then we'll have to figure out some way to structure our society such that these things simply aren't relevant. And we know this can be done, because that's how the world functioned for most of its history.

ineptech 8y ago
You seem to have skipped the first paragraph of the article. Governments can't keep BTC from existing with the stroke of a pen, but they can certainly keep it from becoming the primary currency and replacing the dollar.
drngdds 8y ago
>If it makes it impossible to reliably catch money laundering, or to tax transactions, then we'll have to figure out some way to structure our society such that these things simply aren't relevant. Why? Banning cryptocurrency is definitely possible. It wouldn't be 100% effective because making things illegal is never 100% effective, but it would probably be made even more marginal than it was before it got popular.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Banning anything is possible. Effectively enforcing that ban is another matter.

notahacker 8y ago

The biggest public good provided by financial services providers that's missing is credit creation and allocation. Crypto does have a mechanism to grant people who need to borrow access to spendable funds in the form of the ICO, but the problem is ICO investors are going to make subprime mortgage investors look like Warren Buffet (and also the comparative lack of development of solutions for short term borrowing with predictable returns). And the problem isn't that some ventures will fail (which no financial system can or should even attempt to prevent), and more that the entire ethos of crypto - everything from code is the contract principles to the next big coin/ICO hype - is that if the digital assets and growth in their spot price can be verified, real world assets and risk estimation are comparatively unimportant.

motohagiography 8y ago

> But the blockchain community’s trumpeting of features they love without attention to the public goods that citizens actually value is dangerous for the future of this technology. Steinbeck's famous quip about Americans, "socialism never took hold in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires," can be adapted for Canadians as something along the lines of, "libertarianism isn't plausible in Canada because the middle class see themselves not as minor property millionaires, but as a nation of deputy ministers and professors on sabbatical." As a non-cryptocurrency holder, and non-libertarian, some critics take a a tone that I think prevents meaningful debate and discussion. The strength of cryptocurrencies is that they facilitate capital flight, so regardless of their localized legality, so long as this use case is viable, they will have both liquidity and value. Arguments that they cannot exist if they do not provide an intrinsic mode of enforcement with appeals to "crime," are relative to jurisdiction. Nobody would care if Putin, Mugabe, Maduro, or many other leaders complained something was being used for crime against their states. We'd probably even advocate it. The argument of, "build something that facilitates the existing distribution of privileges among current coalitions or we will round you up for prison," is what many might call "on the wrong side of history."

flatfilefan 8y ago

The "benefits of the existing system" are a straw-man argument. They are actually there to compensate for the the weaknesses of the existing system: terrorism - inability to cope with fear and unjust oppression of foreign countries, tax collection - complicated (otherwise) unenforceable tax code, etc.

mcguire 8y ago
None of those things are going away as long as humanity is human. The "benefits of the blockchain" exist exactly to exploit those weaknesses.
drngdds 8y ago
Hot take: people avoid taxes because they don't want to pay money, not because the tax code is complicated

upofadown 8y ago

It is odd that governments have not shown more interest in electronic cash systems specifically designed to address their issues like Taler[1]. [1] https://taler.net/ https://taler.net/

segmondy 8y ago

The govt won't make it illegal, it will never get to that. Most people can't secure their passwords, let alone their digital currencies. Most folks are going to get wiped out. If your money is stolen from a bank, you have FDIC insurance up to $250,000. This is enough for most people. For those that have more cash, banks put their reputation on the line to secure your money. These digital exchanges don't care, they have hundreds of millions stolen and keep operating without remorse and blame it on everyone else but themselves.

_bxg1 8y ago

To generalize, the fallacy of libertarianism as a whole is thinking that (in a democratic society) the government is "other", that taxation is them "taking away", etc., and that the answer is to disconnect from the government as much as possible. But the government will always be the most powerful institution, and in democracies that's a good thing! Despite all its flaws, it is the only institution that's required even in theory to represent the interests of the many instead of the few. If you're worried about personal liberty, you should be more involved in that, not less.

ruskerdax 8y ago
Democracy and libertarianism are incompatible. This is because democracy is a form of statism. Consistent libertarians understand this and are working to weaken government monopolies as institutions, subvert them, or make them irrelevant outright.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  Well then I'm nearly as afraid of libertarians as I am of fascists.
  - CryptoPunk 8y ago
    Not that I'm an anarcho-libertarian, but the ideas he's advancing don't seem very scary when you remember that you can reformulate institutions very similar to governments in a world without states. They wouldn't technically be government institutions, because everyone subject to their rules would be a contracting party that consented to the arrangement, but these institutions could have many of the same powers that governments have now, including the power to tax, regulate trade, and provision goods. Anyway, a state-free world is neither plausible nor seen as desireable by the majority kf libertarians, so no point in worrying too much about it.
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      It seems to me that the government provides a "Schelling point"[1] that we can't do away with for many purposes, particularly trust. We can't just have many private regulators or certifiers, because then everyone has an equally difficult problem of determining which one to trust, and no benefit to doing so, since they are stuck with what the market decides. Trust requires information, (not data) and information is a public good. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)

dalbasal 8y ago

This seemed to me a key point of this article: "...those public goods^ which, through hundreds of years of government, business, and democratic processes, we’ve agreed are priorities and values our finance and currency systems should reflect." I think your opinion on this statement colours how you think about the rest of the topic. How do you see this process, and what it produced. Are we, via Hegelian pendulum swings, Smithian invisible hands or democratically aggregated will... are we producing a better money system all the time. Incorporating good ideas. Reacting to changing needs and wants. Keeping everything relatively bug free. Or... if you fall on the other side of this... do you see this process as a mature game, hijacked democracy, corrupted capitalism or bougie conspiracy. I think most everything else traces back to this disagreement. If you're in the mature game camp, you do not accept that the way money works is at core determined by rational trade-offs between anonymity and governance or more mischievous dynamic. Interestingly, this explicitly does not divide along any possible left-right spectrum. It's more of a conservative-radical divide. Your radicalism can equally be of a marxist, schumpeterian or modern variety. ^The Public Goods he lists are tax compliance, anti-money laundering^^, stability and market integrity, and consumer & investor protection. ^^Anti Money Laundering deserves it's own little rant. AML has little to do with money laundering in 2018. It is (legally) a euphemism for a broad set of controls that (if successful) will make it enforceably illegal to accept a robber's money with a positive responsibility.

brownbat 8y ago

> When I talk to cryptocurrency advocates, they typically argue about private benefits but I want to hear more about the public benefits I find it easier to imagine cryptocurrency providing public goods in areas of hyperinflation or other massive macroeconomic malfeasance. The article is right that governments have lots of tools to suppress it--raiding exchanges, sting operations--but it is unlike bullion in the sense that you can't hide your entire bullion stash with encryption. The outcome of that cat and mouse game is highly contingent on local conditions.

bitcoinisqueen 8y ago

>My counter is that people might like the concept of anonymity, and they may even hate their bank, but they like a functioning society and (relatively) stable financial markets a lot more. In fact, we’re usually willing to sacrifice some anonymity, or create governance systems (warrants) that impinge on them in exchange for public goods like law and order. Stable like depreciating USD by 95% in less than 100 years? Stable like the boom and bust cycle every 6 - 12 years due to inflation and currency manipulation? Stable like using inflated money to have waged massive wars? Stopped reading when the author put that lie in there. There is absolutely nothing stable about USD that is worth the risks. It is a moral imperative to make bitcoin (cash) and deflationary money work for society.

themisterx 8y ago

Crypto currency represents the fantasies i had about the financial system as a young person. I then actually worked inside the financial industry. This article is hitting on something very important. The thing is, I don't know if its possible to understand how important regulation is to the financial system until you work inside the financial system. Its kind of hard to explain, especially because the system has had so many big failures and abuses. But basically, it seems like one of those systems where if you dont notice it, then it means its working. Like sewer or water or electricity. It takes a lot of behind the scenes work for that to be a smooth experience for the user.

chasing 8y ago
100%. Many of the "features" of cryptocurrencies are actually bugs to people who know how financial systems actually work.

Latteland 8y ago

My response was the VC was shocking disconnected from the actual world if they thought an actual problem was that cryptocurrencies might make normal currencies obsolete any time soon. Maybe in 30 years? Let's get one in actual use to buy things like groceries. A couple of stores or pizza places that instantly convert your bitcoin to fiat currency hardly matters, as you could have used gold. Also I'm not cool enough to know what those "magical 3 letters" mean, HKS? Hong Kong S? Harvard Kennedy School? HKS Japan, HKS architects? Probably the school.