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I believe the most common reason some people don't see the utility of cryptocurrency is that they have a real or perceived vested interest in the status quo aro

I believe the most common reason some people don't see the utility of cryptocurrency is that they have a real or perceived vested interest in the status quo around money not being disturbed. It is often the case that: Securities lawyers and traditional venture capitalists don't want a world where regulatory agencies and traditional venture capital can be routed around. Those in financial law enforcement don't want the trend toward total financial surveillence, euphemistically called instituting anti-money-laundering controls, reversed. More generally, those with a major economic or ideological investment in government-funded programs don't want people to have financial privacy that makes enforcement of the income tax more difficult, or to see an alternative to central bank issued currency, which gives governments the power of seignoriage, gain traction. The utility of cryptocurrency is clear: sending value from point A to point B electronically without depending on an intermediary that can extract rent or surveil/censor the transaction.

wpietri 8y ago
The problem with this line of thinking is that the people most strongly interested in keeping financial transactions away from the prying eyes of government are criminals. Criminality is strongly correlated with negative-sum interactions with society, and that tends to provoke a response. So if the best cryptocurrency early-adopter audience is people who are harming society, then you've pretty much guaranteed that cryptocurrencies will remain societally marginal.
- darawk 8y ago
  You could say the same thing about any form of privacy.
- CryptoPunk 8y ago
  That's a different debate. My point is that there is real utility in cryptocurrency. The denial of that utility of motivated not by a sincere belief that the utility is not there, but by an aversion to what that utility enables.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    No, I'm denying that facilitating crime is generally "real utility". In the case where criminals profit from harm, the criminals may personally experience utility from Bitcoin, but the total net utility is negative. E.g., if I steal your new $30k car and sell it to a fence for $10k paid in Bitcoin, I have experienced a $10k gain. But since you experienced a $30k loss, net utility is negative. Ransomware, often seen using Bitcoin, is another example of net negative utility. In the case where the exchange in question is low harm, we generally see society evolving toward legality. E.g., marijuana has been declining in illegality, so the need for evading state detection declines too. There are now multiple marijuana storefronts within walking distance of my house. Bitcoin doesn't help them. I suppose you could say I have an investment in government, which I call "being part of a modern, civilized community". So I do object to Bitcoin's money-laundering potential on those grounds, and also deny that aiding freeloaders in tax evasion is much in the way of "real utility", any more than any other tax evasion scheme. Even if we're willing to call Bitcoin's financial crime usage "real utility", I don't think it's "real" for the purposes of this discussion, which is about comparison with the early days of the Internet. The comparison is only meaningful if the early "real utility" is indicative of future utility for a broader audience. That was obviously the case for something like email (which 90% of Americans now use) or online shopping (80%). But there's no particular reason to think 80-90% of people will be excited about risking IRS penalties and jail time for tax evasion or money laundering.
    - CryptoPunk 8y ago
      >>In the case where criminals profit from harm, the criminals may personally experience utility from Bitcoin, but the total net utility is negative. In the context that you made the argument in, which is consumer demand for cryptocurrency, the type of utility we're talking about is utility for the user. >>In the case where the exchange in question is low harm, we generally see society evolving toward legality. E.g., marijuana has been declining in illegality, so the need for evading state detection declines too. There are now multiple marijuana storefronts within walking distance of my house. Bitcoin doesn't help them. Marijauna stores would benefit tremendously from a widely used cryptocurrency. Legal marijuana shops have enormous difficulty getting bank accounts. The government pressured payment intermediaries into stopping donations to Wikileaks a few years ago. Cryptocurrency was a vital lifeline for the organization during the blockade. Craigslists recently shut down its personals section, due to FOSTA. Adult entertainers are having their PayPal and Patreon accounts closed. Venezuela's economy has been totally destroyed by its government's interventions. Areas of China are being turned into an Orwellian dystopia: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/26/china-big-data-fuels-crackdown-minority-region https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/26/china-big-data-fuels-cra... Your claim that ways of circumventing centralized control of financial transactions is growing unnecessary is totally unfounded. >>I suppose you could say I have an investment in government, which I call "being part of a modern, civilized community". So to clarify, you're not part of any of the groups I mentioned earlier? >>But there's no particular reason to think 80-90% of people will be excited about risking IRS penalties and jail time for tax evasion or money laundering. Filesharing is used by millions of people, and it is illegal. There are many countries in which taxes are widely avoided, so we also know that happens. In some countries circumventing govermment control is a matter of survival. Cash, by its very nature of being fungible and untrackable, makes anti money laundering laws almost useless, and cash is used the world over. Your idea of a global surveillance state to enforce taxes on private transactions and to track criminals as the only way to coordinate the use of resources and prevent crime is not the only future open to mankind, and you yourself obviously don't believe it is or else you wouldn't put so much effort in trying to discourage the use of cryptocurrency. We could go to a future where law enforcement needs a warrant to know the content of a transaction, and where taxes are levied on immovable property, instead of being tied to private economic activity, and a strong civil liberties and economic argument could be made that this would have total net utility. And it's not just circumventing centralized control by governments. Private financial intermediaries track their users' financial activity extensively. On top of all of this, simply having a mechanism to transfer value electronically through an immutable protocol provides utility in avoiding rent-seeking by large trusted third party intermediaries who've attained large network effects. The idea that there is no conceivable utility in avoiding payment intermediaries that can censor/surveil you, except to commit crime, let alone crime that is socially harmful, is preposterous.

wpietri 8y ago

The problem with this line of thinking is that the people most strongly interested in keeping financial transactions away from the prying eyes of government are criminals. Criminality is strongly correlated with negative-sum interactions with society, and that tends to provoke a response. So if the best cryptocurrency early-adopter audience is people who are harming society, then you've pretty much guaranteed that cryptocurrencies will remain societally marginal.

darawk 8y ago
You could say the same thing about any form of privacy.
CryptoPunk 8y ago
That's a different debate. My point is that there is real utility in cryptocurrency. The denial of that utility of motivated not by a sincere belief that the utility is not there, but by an aversion to what that utility enables.
- wpietri 8y ago
  No, I'm denying that facilitating crime is generally "real utility". In the case where criminals profit from harm, the criminals may personally experience utility from Bitcoin, but the total net utility is negative. E.g., if I steal your new $30k car and sell it to a fence for $10k paid in Bitcoin, I have experienced a $10k gain. But since you experienced a $30k loss, net utility is negative. Ransomware, often seen using Bitcoin, is another example of net negative utility. In the case where the exchange in question is low harm, we generally see society evolving toward legality. E.g., marijuana has been declining in illegality, so the need for evading state detection declines too. There are now multiple marijuana storefronts within walking distance of my house. Bitcoin doesn't help them. I suppose you could say I have an investment in government, which I call "being part of a modern, civilized community". So I do object to Bitcoin's money-laundering potential on those grounds, and also deny that aiding freeloaders in tax evasion is much in the way of "real utility", any more than any other tax evasion scheme. Even if we're willing to call Bitcoin's financial crime usage "real utility", I don't think it's "real" for the purposes of this discussion, which is about comparison with the early days of the Internet. The comparison is only meaningful if the early "real utility" is indicative of future utility for a broader audience. That was obviously the case for something like email (which 90% of Americans now use) or online shopping (80%). But there's no particular reason to think 80-90% of people will be excited about risking IRS penalties and jail time for tax evasion or money laundering.
  - CryptoPunk 8y ago
    >>In the case where criminals profit from harm, the criminals may personally experience utility from Bitcoin, but the total net utility is negative. In the context that you made the argument in, which is consumer demand for cryptocurrency, the type of utility we're talking about is utility for the user. >>In the case where the exchange in question is low harm, we generally see society evolving toward legality. E.g., marijuana has been declining in illegality, so the need for evading state detection declines too. There are now multiple marijuana storefronts within walking distance of my house. Bitcoin doesn't help them. Marijauna stores would benefit tremendously from a widely used cryptocurrency. Legal marijuana shops have enormous difficulty getting bank accounts. The government pressured payment intermediaries into stopping donations to Wikileaks a few years ago. Cryptocurrency was a vital lifeline for the organization during the blockade. Craigslists recently shut down its personals section, due to FOSTA. Adult entertainers are having their PayPal and Patreon accounts closed. Venezuela's economy has been totally destroyed by its government's interventions. Areas of China are being turned into an Orwellian dystopia: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/26/china-big-data-fuels-crackdown-minority-region https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/26/china-big-data-fuels-cra... Your claim that ways of circumventing centralized control of financial transactions is growing unnecessary is totally unfounded. >>I suppose you could say I have an investment in government, which I call "being part of a modern, civilized community". So to clarify, you're not part of any of the groups I mentioned earlier? >>But there's no particular reason to think 80-90% of people will be excited about risking IRS penalties and jail time for tax evasion or money laundering. Filesharing is used by millions of people, and it is illegal. There are many countries in which taxes are widely avoided, so we also know that happens. In some countries circumventing govermment control is a matter of survival. Cash, by its very nature of being fungible and untrackable, makes anti money laundering laws almost useless, and cash is used the world over. Your idea of a global surveillance state to enforce taxes on private transactions and to track criminals as the only way to coordinate the use of resources and prevent crime is not the only future open to mankind, and you yourself obviously don't believe it is or else you wouldn't put so much effort in trying to discourage the use of cryptocurrency. We could go to a future where law enforcement needs a warrant to know the content of a transaction, and where taxes are levied on immovable property, instead of being tied to private economic activity, and a strong civil liberties and economic argument could be made that this would have total net utility. And it's not just circumventing centralized control by governments. Private financial intermediaries track their users' financial activity extensively. On top of all of this, simply having a mechanism to transfer value electronically through an immutable protocol provides utility in avoiding rent-seeking by large trusted third party intermediaries who've attained large network effects. The idea that there is no conceivable utility in avoiding payment intermediaries that can censor/surveil you, except to commit crime, let alone crime that is socially harmful, is preposterous.