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> These guys are not regulated. There is no transparency. There are no external auditors. There is no control. But that's a feature, not a bug, at least accord

> These guys are not regulated. There is no transparency. There are no external auditors. There is no control. But that's a feature, not a bug, at least according to the crypto people. But, so far, all they have managed to do is rediscover lessons about the need for regulation, oversight and accountability that the financial industry has learnt decades or even centuries ago.

icebraining 8y ago
Considering 2008, what's the point of those lessons? Might as well save a few tax dollars on "regulators".
- blibble 8y ago
  how many depositors lost money in the financial crisis?
  - easymodex 8y ago
    Probably an order of magnitude more than whole crypto-sphere combined. People just think if they didn't lose anything it wasn't that bad.
  - poooogles 8y ago
    In the UK and Netherlands plenty due to icesave AFAIK [1]. I'm not sure if deposits over the protected amount were ever paid back. //edit - looks like they were by the UK and NL governments. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute
- Carpetsmoker 8y ago
  The banking crisis happened in large part due to lack of regulation, not because of them.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    I'm not sure. I'd say the banking crisis was catalyzed by the lack of regulation, but it was going to happen anyways. The whole thing was largely a result of political pressure to create incentives for a home ownership society, and, if you go deeper, a result of political pressure fostering a growth-at-all-costs economic system that will periodically hit societal resource and efficiency limits, regulations be damned.
    - worik 8y ago
      Not really. The GFC was a financial/banking crisis There is nothing in "growth at any cost" style "capitalism" that means banks must all collapse together in a coordinated swan dive, like in 2008. That sort of system will collapse, but not necessarily the banks. There is no law of nature that says we have to use free to fuck anybody capitalism run rampant over all. It is a choice. I think it is time we made a different choice!
      - dnautics 8y ago
        The current brand of capitalism is not "free to fuck anybody", it's actually worse, it's "target the poor". Neoliberal economists specifically call for stealing from workers: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... > even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis. Shorter: we create an economic policy to cheat workers out of the take home value of their earnings to make management easier and post favorable employment metrics for political leaders. That "growth at all costs" policy, which, by the way is not inherently a free market policy, exists to short shrift the labor class by means of a compounding treadmill that most will fall off.
        Firadeoclus 8y ago
        The point is that relative wages need to be adjusted as the value of jobs changes over time. Some work that was very valuable in the past might have low demand now. If wages are sticky then jobs where value drops faster than inflation will simply go away. That's not necessarily the best outcome if the employee could have coped with a pay cut. High inflation does not imply that real wages shrink on average.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
It's comical.
vageli 8y ago
> > These guys are not regulated. There is no transparency. There are no external auditors. There is no control. > But that's a feature, not a bug, at least according to the crypto people. But, so far, all they have managed to do is rediscover lessons about the need for regulation, oversight and accountability that the financial industry has learnt decades or even centuries ago. I feel this is only true for people who have not truly embraced the decentralized aspect of cryptocurrency. For example, many people leave all of their money in one wallet. Centralization. Many people use only one exchange for converting fiat to crypto. Centralization. The harder you look, the more you will find that the only people upset about the state of cryptocurrencies are those that did not diversify and instead reverted to a concept squarely against the cryptocurrency ethos. Thus is human nature. Who wants to manage 30,000 wallets each containing only a few dollars? The supporting tooling is not there (or is not easy enough to use) and thus we see this recurrent user pattern.
- billsnow 8y ago
  Yeah, if only there was a tool for managing 30,000 wallets in a centralized way, then it would be more obvious why decentralization makes the need for regulation moot.
- AYBABTME 8y ago
  30,000 wallets using 30,000 independent methods of encryption, else you crack one, you cracked many. It's clearly not practical or achievable for any human being.
- jm__87 8y ago
  Exchanges are more useful when many users use them. By necessity, this needs to be centralized. Can't buy when there are no sellers.
  - wallacoloo 8y ago
    By “needs to be centralized”, you really mean something like “needs to be strongly connected”.
- fixermark 8y ago
manigandham 8y ago
Because blockchain is a slow append/overwrite-only consensus database. It does nothing to provide trust. It's also too mechanical for how humans actual deal with each other.
ryanlol 8y ago
Who are the cryptocurrency people advocating against regulation, but rediscovering lessons about the need for regulation? Have you met any of those people? Do they actually exist or are you imagining them?

icebraining 8y ago

Considering 2008, what's the point of those lessons? Might as well save a few tax dollars on "regulators".

blibble 8y ago
how many depositors lost money in the financial crisis?
- easymodex 8y ago
  Probably an order of magnitude more than whole crypto-sphere combined. People just think if they didn't lose anything it wasn't that bad.
- poooogles 8y ago
  In the UK and Netherlands plenty due to icesave AFAIK [1]. I'm not sure if deposits over the protected amount were ever paid back. //edit - looks like they were by the UK and NL governments. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute
Carpetsmoker 8y ago
The banking crisis happened in large part due to lack of regulation, not because of them.
- dnautics 8y ago
  I'm not sure. I'd say the banking crisis was catalyzed by the lack of regulation, but it was going to happen anyways. The whole thing was largely a result of political pressure to create incentives for a home ownership society, and, if you go deeper, a result of political pressure fostering a growth-at-all-costs economic system that will periodically hit societal resource and efficiency limits, regulations be damned.
  - worik 8y ago
    Not really. The GFC was a financial/banking crisis There is nothing in "growth at any cost" style "capitalism" that means banks must all collapse together in a coordinated swan dive, like in 2008. That sort of system will collapse, but not necessarily the banks. There is no law of nature that says we have to use free to fuck anybody capitalism run rampant over all. It is a choice. I think it is time we made a different choice!
    - dnautics 8y ago
      The current brand of capitalism is not "free to fuck anybody", it's actually worse, it's "target the poor". Neoliberal economists specifically call for stealing from workers: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... > even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis. Shorter: we create an economic policy to cheat workers out of the take home value of their earnings to make management easier and post favorable employment metrics for political leaders. That "growth at all costs" policy, which, by the way is not inherently a free market policy, exists to short shrift the labor class by means of a compounding treadmill that most will fall off.
      - Firadeoclus 8y ago
        The point is that relative wages need to be adjusted as the value of jobs changes over time. Some work that was very valuable in the past might have low demand now. If wages are sticky then jobs where value drops faster than inflation will simply go away. That's not necessarily the best outcome if the employee could have coped with a pay cut. High inflation does not imply that real wages shrink on average.

james_s_tayler 8y ago

It's comical.

vageli 8y ago

> > These guys are not regulated. There is no transparency. There are no external auditors. There is no control. > But that's a feature, not a bug, at least according to the crypto people. But, so far, all they have managed to do is rediscover lessons about the need for regulation, oversight and accountability that the financial industry has learnt decades or even centuries ago. I feel this is only true for people who have not truly embraced the decentralized aspect of cryptocurrency. For example, many people leave all of their money in one wallet. Centralization. Many people use only one exchange for converting fiat to crypto. Centralization. The harder you look, the more you will find that the only people upset about the state of cryptocurrencies are those that did not diversify and instead reverted to a concept squarely against the cryptocurrency ethos. Thus is human nature. Who wants to manage 30,000 wallets each containing only a few dollars? The supporting tooling is not there (or is not easy enough to use) and thus we see this recurrent user pattern.

billsnow 8y ago
Yeah, if only there was a tool for managing 30,000 wallets in a centralized way, then it would be more obvious why decentralization makes the need for regulation moot.
AYBABTME 8y ago
30,000 wallets using 30,000 independent methods of encryption, else you crack one, you cracked many. It's clearly not practical or achievable for any human being.
jm__87 8y ago
Exchanges are more useful when many users use them. By necessity, this needs to be centralized. Can't buy when there are no sellers.
- wallacoloo 8y ago
  By “needs to be centralized”, you really mean something like “needs to be strongly connected”.
fixermark 8y ago

manigandham 8y ago

Because blockchain is a slow append/overwrite-only consensus database. It does nothing to provide trust. It's also too mechanical for how humans actual deal with each other.

ryanlol 8y ago

Who are the cryptocurrency people advocating against regulation, but rediscovering lessons about the need for regulation? Have you met any of those people? Do they actually exist or are you imagining them?