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Vitalik is the creator of Ethereum. Ethereum is a platform for permission-less, programmable money and code that moves money and digital assets. Over $100 billi

Vitalik is the creator of Ethereum. Ethereum is a platform for permission-less, programmable money and code that moves money and digital assets. Over $100 billion in assets are now operating on Ethereum. Here is a link to an explorer for USDC, a digital asset that is backed by dollars that has about $2 billion custodied by Coinbase and Circle https://etherscan.io/token/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48 https://etherscan.io/token/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0c... I guarantee you that nearly every digital asset breaks numerous laws in every developed country. Bitcoin and Ethereum help violate money laundering laws every hour as many $10k+ transactions execute without proper forms filed with government agencies. Whereas it takes a shitload of money to obtain money transmitter licenses in the USA to operate in every state, it’s trivial to accept huge amounts of money across state and international borders once you create a cryptocurrency wallet. I’m saying this because the technology has surpassed the laws. As Uber and Airbnb became so successful that governments bent, so too is cryptocurrency powered by blockchain technology forcing the government’s hands. A paradigm shift is occurring under everyone’s noses! If you choose to ignore blockchain, don’t be surprised when it becomes a very crucial technology. It is upending centuries of financial customs, rules, laws, and institutions.

kovek 6y ago
I wonder if/when the government will make it cryptocurrencies more accessible and easier to use alongside “real” currencies.
- seibelj 6y ago
  China has been testing a central bank digital currency (CBDC, google the term!) which has spooked many central banks in western countries. I work in this space and the attitude from government has been a 180 since China’s announcements. It’s hilarious to me that a year ago the SEC was obsessed with cracking down and now they are playing footsie with a three-year safe harbor! https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-commissioner-cryptomom-explains-planned-safe-harbor-to-cointelegraph https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-commissioner-cryptomom-ex...
- grey-area 6y ago
  When they do, it will be government controlled and come with those pesky things like taxes, inflation, tracking etc that people celebrate cryptocurrencies for avoiding.
XMPPwocky 6y ago
"A very crucial technology" to whom? For what purpose?
- seibelj 6y ago
  To build a financial system completely separate from the state. To avoid fiat currency, if you desire. To conduct commerce without government interference whatsoever. This is not a pipe dream. This happens every day in increasing numbers. I’m sorry if you don’t like this.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    > This happens every day in increasing numbers. Nope. Bitcoin trading volume (for example) has plummeted to a miniscule fraction of its late-2016 hype height.
    - seibelj 6y ago
      It doesn’t seem you are familiar with this space, given that Ethereum transaction gas fees have hit sustained all time highs. Bitcoin and Monero transaction counts are extremely high despite the price of the assets being well beneath their height, signaling organic adoption and utility beyond speculation. It’s difficult for people outside of this space to see, as you only notice when news hits the front page. I work at a major crypto exchange (Poloniex) and all of our metrics are very bullish. I don’t think your 2017 opinion is relevant anymore.
      - roland-s 6y ago
        Does high tx count and low price really mean utility? Seems it could also mean market is unsure of the asset's intrinsic worth and speculations are constantly in flux. Or could mean lots of speculative alts being built on top of main chain, things like Omni?
    - jonnydubowsky 6y ago
      Bitcoin sees highest trading volume in 118 days’ Yesterday’s volume of $54,406,443,211 was the highest in one hundred and eighteen days, 138 percent above last year’s average, and 26 percent below last year’s high. That means that yesterday, the Bitcoin network shifted the equivalent of 871 tons of gold. https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2020/09/11/satoshi-nakaboto-bitcoin-sees-highest-trading-volume-in-118-days/ https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2020/09/11/satoshi-nakaboto-...
cblconfederate 6y ago
Crypto directly undermines the concept of national currencies (the real US product is the dollar, right?). Crypto would enable people to literally 'vote with their wallet' by exiting from a currency they don't like into another. National currencies are defended with weapons, so until someone uses crypto to buy nuclear weapons, governments will forever undermine and neutralize crypto.
- seibelj 6y ago
  You are immediately going from 0 to 100. A new currency begins with marginal uses and then expands. Give it some time before bitcoin buys nuclear weapons!
  - freddie_mercury 6y ago
    That's actually the opposite of how real world currencies work. They do not start with marginal cases and expand. In almost all cases they start with the most important cases -- the government says "you must pay taxes in currency X or suffer consequences". This is pretty well established in the history of currencies.
    - seibelj 6y ago
      Crypto is an emergent currency voluntarily used by a global group of people. It is nothing like government-backed fiat currency.
grey-area 6y ago
it’s trivial to accept huge amounts of money across state and international borders once you create a cryptocurrency wallet. Still illegal in all jurisdictions though, and at any point in the future people with guns may come to seize your assets based on the very complete and pseudo-anonymous list of transactions, because creating money and taxing transactions is a right that governments jealously guard and will not easily give up. I find currencies-as-code fascinating partly because of this strange mix of utopian thought and sincere attempts to overthrow global systems of governance (many of which are corrupt and self-serving) with code. People have been proclaiming they would upend the financial system and governments since 2008, but overthrowing systems of government requires physical acts of defiance and real loss, not just switching currency. I disagree that cryptocurrencies are currently disrupting centuries of customs, simply because most transactions on them are fake and volume/value is far lower than claimed[0], but also because if they do become popular enough to matter for real transactions (not speculation on price), states can easily impose regulation, audits and taxes on them by taking them over and changing the rules. Developers or exchanges would easily be suborned for example, since the code makes the rules and the majority wins, the rules can be changed. There are also good reasons that state currencies require auditing, rollback, identity verification and trusted third parties overseeing transactions - because without those you end up with a wild-west where bad actors can steal your money with impunity. For these reasons cryptocurrencies in their current form will never be very attractive to most people or corporations. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2019/07/02/the-anatomy-of-a-fake-cryptocurrency-trade-how-exchanges-create-phony-transactions/#31cabac63132 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2019/07/02/the-anat...
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  Monero is anonymous, though, and any real transaction would probably be done in such an anonymous currency. Obviously, ospec can still blow your cover. But Monero and other assets are certainly a game changer in this space. The recent $4.5M ransom was evidence that this isn't really theoretical: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN24W25W https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN24W25W (Bitcoin can be converted to Monero, and the bitcoin can be mixed, so it's still quite hard to do what you're suggesting: to track down the perpetrators of large-scale crimes such as this. The flipside is that criminals' opsec tends to be very poor; good police work is usually enough to capture them.)
didibus 6y ago
> I guarantee you that nearly every digital asset breaks numerous laws in every developed country Do you mean that Ethereum in fact has allowed collusion to happen within the greater context of the world more easily and at larger scales ? Such as by enabling groups of criminals around the world to collude together against the rest of us? Not sure if that's what you were saying, but in any case, I find this an interesting thought when contrasted with the message of the article.
- seibelj 6y ago
  If you transfer over $10k USD from one bank to another, or in any financial transaction, you are obligated to trigger an array of forms and the institutions must take actions to tell the government of your activity. In crypto, not taking similar actions won’t cause any issue because the government can’t revoke your “crypto license” that doesn’t exist. Good luck!
  - didibus 6y ago
    Hum, I guess you make me realize a lot of gaps in my understanding of existing financial markets. For example, what prevents a bank from transferring money to each other without declaring it? Or for accepting a deposit that they don't report on? And similar withdrawals? Similarly, why isn't a crypto exchange obligated to do the same?
    - seibelj 6y ago
      The government will revoke their license and file charges against the executives / fiduciaries for violating their laws. Exchanges operate under the laws of the countries they are based in, many of which are offshore (Cayman, Seychelles, etc.) which have less strict rules than US / EU / UK exchanges. Of course you lose legal protections as a customer, but the free market has not been valuing those protections as much as statists would want you to believe their value is.
      - didibus 6y ago
friendlybus 6y ago
An MIT lecture on Blockchain describes some government and financial institutions teating out blockchain for themselves. It's not clear if private coins will be left to operate after the institutions have their own.
wslh 6y ago
> If you choose to ignore blockchain, don’t be surprised when it becomes a very crucial technology. It is upending centuries of financial customs, rules, laws, and institutions. I think you are forgetting to talk about the other part of the glass where there is a ton of illegal money flowing in the financial system by people with enough power and/or financial complexity and current rules apply mainly to average Joe, and terrorists. Don't forget that the compliance system changed dramatically since 9/11 and not in the last centuries.
mindslight 6y ago
> It is upending centuries of financial customs, rules, laws, and institutions. More like decades. On a historical timeline, electronic bank accounts and the ensuing financial surveillance and financial censorship laws are themselves recent developments.
- seibelj 6y ago
  Fair point, but the peer to peer nature of crypto and the complexity that can be developed without any institutional support is brand new. The power given to the individual is immense.
anyonecancode 6y ago
> Whereas it takes a shitload of money to obtain money transmitter licenses in the USA to operate in every state, it’s trivial to accept huge amounts of money across state and international borders once you create a cryptocurrency wallet. There's an implication here I think gets missed when discussing the political implications of cryptocurrency (as opposed to just the technology part). People spend a lot of time arguing over whether cryptocurrencies can truly keep free of states, but that has the implicit argument that this would make for more a more just or free system, and I don't think this is a well-grounded assumption. Who benefits from crypto? To the portion I quoted, people who want to move large amounts of money. But if you already have large amounts of money, you're already in a position of a fair amount of privilege and power. If you're someone who does NOT have a large amount of money, crypto isn't going to usher in a world where wealth is more evenly distributed. It's just as likely to do the opposite. Now those who already have a lot can save on the hassle and expense of having to actually lobby and corrupt state institutions, keeping more of their wealth with no gain for the rest of us. There's plenty of legitimate criticism to be made of the failures of the state to truly defend and advocat for the interests of all its citizens, but I'm very skeptical that a a technology that empowers people with lots of wealth to move it around with less friction is really a net gain for humanity.

kovek 6y ago

I wonder if/when the government will make it cryptocurrencies more accessible and easier to use alongside “real” currencies.

seibelj 6y ago
China has been testing a central bank digital currency (CBDC, google the term!) which has spooked many central banks in western countries. I work in this space and the attitude from government has been a 180 since China’s announcements. It’s hilarious to me that a year ago the SEC was obsessed with cracking down and now they are playing footsie with a three-year safe harbor! https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-commissioner-cryptomom-explains-planned-safe-harbor-to-cointelegraph https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-commissioner-cryptomom-ex...
grey-area 6y ago
When they do, it will be government controlled and come with those pesky things like taxes, inflation, tracking etc that people celebrate cryptocurrencies for avoiding.

XMPPwocky 6y ago

"A very crucial technology" to whom? For what purpose?

seibelj 6y ago
To build a financial system completely separate from the state. To avoid fiat currency, if you desire. To conduct commerce without government interference whatsoever. This is not a pipe dream. This happens every day in increasing numbers. I’m sorry if you don’t like this.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  > This happens every day in increasing numbers. Nope. Bitcoin trading volume (for example) has plummeted to a miniscule fraction of its late-2016 hype height.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    It doesn’t seem you are familiar with this space, given that Ethereum transaction gas fees have hit sustained all time highs. Bitcoin and Monero transaction counts are extremely high despite the price of the assets being well beneath their height, signaling organic adoption and utility beyond speculation. It’s difficult for people outside of this space to see, as you only notice when news hits the front page. I work at a major crypto exchange (Poloniex) and all of our metrics are very bullish. I don’t think your 2017 opinion is relevant anymore.
    - roland-s 6y ago
      Does high tx count and low price really mean utility? Seems it could also mean market is unsure of the asset's intrinsic worth and speculations are constantly in flux. Or could mean lots of speculative alts being built on top of main chain, things like Omni?
  - jonnydubowsky 6y ago
    Bitcoin sees highest trading volume in 118 days’ Yesterday’s volume of $54,406,443,211 was the highest in one hundred and eighteen days, 138 percent above last year’s average, and 26 percent below last year’s high. That means that yesterday, the Bitcoin network shifted the equivalent of 871 tons of gold. https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2020/09/11/satoshi-nakaboto-bitcoin-sees-highest-trading-volume-in-118-days/ https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2020/09/11/satoshi-nakaboto-...

cblconfederate 6y ago

Crypto directly undermines the concept of national currencies (the real US product is the dollar, right?). Crypto would enable people to literally 'vote with their wallet' by exiting from a currency they don't like into another. National currencies are defended with weapons, so until someone uses crypto to buy nuclear weapons, governments will forever undermine and neutralize crypto.

seibelj 6y ago
You are immediately going from 0 to 100. A new currency begins with marginal uses and then expands. Give it some time before bitcoin buys nuclear weapons!
- freddie_mercury 6y ago
  That's actually the opposite of how real world currencies work. They do not start with marginal cases and expand. In almost all cases they start with the most important cases -- the government says "you must pay taxes in currency X or suffer consequences". This is pretty well established in the history of currencies.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    Crypto is an emergent currency voluntarily used by a global group of people. It is nothing like government-backed fiat currency.

grey-area 6y ago

it’s trivial to accept huge amounts of money across state and international borders once you create a cryptocurrency wallet. Still illegal in all jurisdictions though, and at any point in the future people with guns may come to seize your assets based on the very complete and pseudo-anonymous list of transactions, because creating money and taxing transactions is a right that governments jealously guard and will not easily give up. I find currencies-as-code fascinating partly because of this strange mix of utopian thought and sincere attempts to overthrow global systems of governance (many of which are corrupt and self-serving) with code. People have been proclaiming they would upend the financial system and governments since 2008, but overthrowing systems of government requires physical acts of defiance and real loss, not just switching currency. I disagree that cryptocurrencies are currently disrupting centuries of customs, simply because most transactions on them are fake and volume/value is far lower than claimed[0], but also because if they do become popular enough to matter for real transactions (not speculation on price), states can easily impose regulation, audits and taxes on them by taking them over and changing the rules. Developers or exchanges would easily be suborned for example, since the code makes the rules and the majority wins, the rules can be changed. There are also good reasons that state currencies require auditing, rollback, identity verification and trusted third parties overseeing transactions - because without those you end up with a wild-west where bad actors can steal your money with impunity. For these reasons cryptocurrencies in their current form will never be very attractive to most people or corporations. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2019/07/02/the-anatomy-of-a-fake-cryptocurrency-trade-how-exchanges-create-phony-transactions/#31cabac63132 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2019/07/02/the-anat...

sillysaurusx 6y ago
Monero is anonymous, though, and any real transaction would probably be done in such an anonymous currency. Obviously, ospec can still blow your cover. But Monero and other assets are certainly a game changer in this space. The recent $4.5M ransom was evidence that this isn't really theoretical: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN24W25W https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN24W25W (Bitcoin can be converted to Monero, and the bitcoin can be mixed, so it's still quite hard to do what you're suggesting: to track down the perpetrators of large-scale crimes such as this. The flipside is that criminals' opsec tends to be very poor; good police work is usually enough to capture them.)

didibus 6y ago

> I guarantee you that nearly every digital asset breaks numerous laws in every developed country Do you mean that Ethereum in fact has allowed collusion to happen within the greater context of the world more easily and at larger scales ? Such as by enabling groups of criminals around the world to collude together against the rest of us? Not sure if that's what you were saying, but in any case, I find this an interesting thought when contrasted with the message of the article.

seibelj 6y ago
If you transfer over $10k USD from one bank to another, or in any financial transaction, you are obligated to trigger an array of forms and the institutions must take actions to tell the government of your activity. In crypto, not taking similar actions won’t cause any issue because the government can’t revoke your “crypto license” that doesn’t exist. Good luck!
- didibus 6y ago
  Hum, I guess you make me realize a lot of gaps in my understanding of existing financial markets. For example, what prevents a bank from transferring money to each other without declaring it? Or for accepting a deposit that they don't report on? And similar withdrawals? Similarly, why isn't a crypto exchange obligated to do the same?
  - seibelj 6y ago
    The government will revoke their license and file charges against the executives / fiduciaries for violating their laws. Exchanges operate under the laws of the countries they are based in, many of which are offshore (Cayman, Seychelles, etc.) which have less strict rules than US / EU / UK exchanges. Of course you lose legal protections as a customer, but the free market has not been valuing those protections as much as statists would want you to believe their value is.
    - didibus 6y ago

friendlybus 6y ago

An MIT lecture on Blockchain describes some government and financial institutions teating out blockchain for themselves. It's not clear if private coins will be left to operate after the institutions have their own.

wslh 6y ago

> If you choose to ignore blockchain, don’t be surprised when it becomes a very crucial technology. It is upending centuries of financial customs, rules, laws, and institutions. I think you are forgetting to talk about the other part of the glass where there is a ton of illegal money flowing in the financial system by people with enough power and/or financial complexity and current rules apply mainly to average Joe, and terrorists. Don't forget that the compliance system changed dramatically since 9/11 and not in the last centuries.

mindslight 6y ago

> It is upending centuries of financial customs, rules, laws, and institutions. More like decades. On a historical timeline, electronic bank accounts and the ensuing financial surveillance and financial censorship laws are themselves recent developments.

seibelj 6y ago
Fair point, but the peer to peer nature of crypto and the complexity that can be developed without any institutional support is brand new. The power given to the individual is immense.

anyonecancode 6y ago

> Whereas it takes a shitload of money to obtain money transmitter licenses in the USA to operate in every state, it’s trivial to accept huge amounts of money across state and international borders once you create a cryptocurrency wallet. There's an implication here I think gets missed when discussing the political implications of cryptocurrency (as opposed to just the technology part). People spend a lot of time arguing over whether cryptocurrencies can truly keep free of states, but that has the implicit argument that this would make for more a more just or free system, and I don't think this is a well-grounded assumption. Who benefits from crypto? To the portion I quoted, people who want to move large amounts of money. But if you already have large amounts of money, you're already in a position of a fair amount of privilege and power. If you're someone who does NOT have a large amount of money, crypto isn't going to usher in a world where wealth is more evenly distributed. It's just as likely to do the opposite. Now those who already have a lot can save on the hassle and expense of having to actually lobby and corrupt state institutions, keeping more of their wealth with no gain for the rest of us. There's plenty of legitimate criticism to be made of the failures of the state to truly defend and advocat for the interests of all its citizens, but I'm very skeptical that a a technology that empowers people with lots of wealth to move it around with less friction is really a net gain for humanity.