6 ms·

On one hand it feels completely appropriate and even deserved. On the other, yes, this is unfortunately a path to a very serious totalitarian issue. Situations

by crx07 6y ago

On one hand it feels completely appropriate and even deserved. On the other, yes, this is unfortunately a path to a very serious totalitarian issue. Situations like this one underscore the future importance of cryptocurrencies. Without an uncensorable currency, any political adversary -- especially an incumbent -- can just coerce payment processors into blocking payments to their opponents through threats of imprisonment or violence against a handful of executives.

ketamine__ 6y ago
Likely the cryptocurrency would still go through an intermediary like Coinbase. And of course Coinbase could terminate their account.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
  It's easy to donate cryptocurrency to other people. From there getting it into cash can be a problem, but I can think of a million ways of doing it. Privacy technology helps a lot.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    A million ways that look like money laundering. Are they going to tell Coinbase that the 10 million they are withdrawing is from the local laundromat?
    - Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
      Nah, you got to be clever. Tell Coinbase your CryptoKitty "sold" to an anonymous buyer for $10M. https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/09/05/most-expensive-cryptokitty/ https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/09/05/most-expensive-cr...
      - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
        These things don't work anymore. They recently passed a law that says all exchanges must report everything that flows through them, and that's just the beginning. If you think those cute stories like selling virtual cats to an anon will work in the future, you're being naive. The government has made it clear what their intent is. They will be regulating crypto circulation through on/off ramps, and every user of those exchanges must do KYC and report where they spent their money. If they do things like what you said, it will now legally be classified as money laundering.
        Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
        if there's a will there's a way. Just look at projects like bisq and fiatdex. Not to mention the pretty obvious solution of just using crypto as money. Also, things like I mentioned definitely still work.
        cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
        You said these things were easy. My point is that it will be increasingly difficult to do so. Your comment about "If there's a will there may be a way" is not the answer because having a "way" doesn't mean it's easy, and that was exactly my point. Tor exists, but that doesn't mean it's easy to do Tor, nor do regular people use Tor.
insert_coin 6y ago
> Without an uncensorable currency, any political adversary -- especially an incumbent -- can just coerce payment processors into blocking payments to their opponents through threats of imprisonment or violence against a handful of executives. That has always happened, Visa/Mastercard have been used that way since forever. The Swift system is designed to exercise financial control. Paypal bans anyone for merely looking suspicious to them.
hilbertseries 6y ago
> Without an uncensorable currency, any political adversary -- especially an incumbent -- can just coerce payment processors into blocking payments to their opponents through threats of imprisonment or violence against a handful of executives. How is this a good faith argument. You’ve jumped a situation where somewhere is being deplatformed and banned from various services for encouraging violence. To someone will use violence to kick someone off platforms. Coercing payment processors in that manor would be illegal. So, how exactly are we on the path to fascism? This is absolutely wild to me, that a textbook fascist being banned from things is being spun as... fascism.
- spijdar 6y ago
  I'd define fascism as a method of government which enforces some specific morality/actions/market through force. By this definition it's entirely possible for two different brands of fascism to have two opposing goals, and for one to use fascist methods on another fascist. If your definition of fascism is specifically centered around nationalism or racism then this doesn't really work, but I don't think the word fascism implies this, only that fascism is usually associated with regimes using fascist authoritarianism to enforce racist and nationalist ideologies.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    That's not the definition of fascism [0] Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism
    - spijdar 6y ago
      From the page you linked, There has been considerable disagreement among historians and political scientists about the nature of fascism. [...] For these and other reasons, there is no universally accepted definition of fascism. I recognize the definition I gave is different from how most people define "fascism", hence the disclaimer. I will however reject the idea there is actually a single precise meaning to "fascist". It has become heavily overloaded and is primarily used as a derogatory expression, something that dates well back into the 20th century. [0] By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come. Coming from a very leftist man who fought against Franco's very classically fascist government in Spain for the anarchists and communists, I don't think he said this to protest the far-right from being called mean nasty words. [0] https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e...
snarf21 6y ago
I don't think it is a totalitarian issue. One problem is that the SEC and FTC have sat on their hands in the 21st century. There is no competition anymore. At worst this leads to party supporting companies in each market who will still allow it.
ineedasername 6y ago
Going from bans due to ToS violations all of the way to government coercion of executives through imprisonment is an enormous leap in logic. There's quite a few steps along that path in between. And if course given that bitcoin has to be sent and received, if we ever arrived at your dystopia, bitcoin would not help: the political rival would simply jail the executive for receiving bitcoin payments instead of USD currency. Bitcoin isn't preventing your dystopia.
- dnissley 6y ago
  government coercion of executives through imprisonment I think you read this slightly wrong -- drop the government (political adversary != government adversary) and relax imprisonment for threats of violence: "coercion of executives through threats of violence" ...and we've got something a lot closer to what we already see today.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
The very idea that cryptocurrency is an "uncensorable currency" is just fundamentally false, yet is a common refrain of crypto supporters who somehow think crypto can exist outside the realm of government control. Governments can choose to make anything they want illegal, and they have the guns to back up that decision. Sure, it may be easy to make crypto transactions more surreptitiously, but at the end of the day someone is going to want to spend that crypto on something that has real value, and governments can, and do, control what method of payments are acceptable.

by crx07 6y ago

ketamine__ 6y ago

Likely the cryptocurrency would still go through an intermediary like Coinbase. And of course Coinbase could terminate their account.

Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
It's easy to donate cryptocurrency to other people. From there getting it into cash can be a problem, but I can think of a million ways of doing it. Privacy technology helps a lot.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  A million ways that look like money laundering. Are they going to tell Coinbase that the 10 million they are withdrawing is from the local laundromat?
  - Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
    Nah, you got to be clever. Tell Coinbase your CryptoKitty "sold" to an anonymous buyer for $10M. https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/09/05/most-expensive-cryptokitty/ https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/09/05/most-expensive-cr...
    - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
      These things don't work anymore. They recently passed a law that says all exchanges must report everything that flows through them, and that's just the beginning. If you think those cute stories like selling virtual cats to an anon will work in the future, you're being naive. The government has made it clear what their intent is. They will be regulating crypto circulation through on/off ramps, and every user of those exchanges must do KYC and report where they spent their money. If they do things like what you said, it will now legally be classified as money laundering.
      - Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
        if there's a will there's a way. Just look at projects like bisq and fiatdex. Not to mention the pretty obvious solution of just using crypto as money. Also, things like I mentioned definitely still work.
        cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
        You said these things were easy. My point is that it will be increasingly difficult to do so. Your comment about "If there's a will there may be a way" is not the answer because having a "way" doesn't mean it's easy, and that was exactly my point. Tor exists, but that doesn't mean it's easy to do Tor, nor do regular people use Tor.

insert_coin 6y ago

> Without an uncensorable currency, any political adversary -- especially an incumbent -- can just coerce payment processors into blocking payments to their opponents through threats of imprisonment or violence against a handful of executives. That has always happened, Visa/Mastercard have been used that way since forever. The Swift system is designed to exercise financial control. Paypal bans anyone for merely looking suspicious to them.

hilbertseries 6y ago

> Without an uncensorable currency, any political adversary -- especially an incumbent -- can just coerce payment processors into blocking payments to their opponents through threats of imprisonment or violence against a handful of executives. How is this a good faith argument. You’ve jumped a situation where somewhere is being deplatformed and banned from various services for encouraging violence. To someone will use violence to kick someone off platforms. Coercing payment processors in that manor would be illegal. So, how exactly are we on the path to fascism? This is absolutely wild to me, that a textbook fascist being banned from things is being spun as... fascism.

spijdar 6y ago
I'd define fascism as a method of government which enforces some specific morality/actions/market through force. By this definition it's entirely possible for two different brands of fascism to have two opposing goals, and for one to use fascist methods on another fascist. If your definition of fascism is specifically centered around nationalism or racism then this doesn't really work, but I don't think the word fascism implies this, only that fascism is usually associated with regimes using fascist authoritarianism to enforce racist and nationalist ideologies.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  That's not the definition of fascism [0] Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism
  - spijdar 6y ago
    From the page you linked, There has been considerable disagreement among historians and political scientists about the nature of fascism. [...] For these and other reasons, there is no universally accepted definition of fascism. I recognize the definition I gave is different from how most people define "fascism", hence the disclaimer. I will however reject the idea there is actually a single precise meaning to "fascist". It has become heavily overloaded and is primarily used as a derogatory expression, something that dates well back into the 20th century. [0] By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come. Coming from a very leftist man who fought against Franco's very classically fascist government in Spain for the anarchists and communists, I don't think he said this to protest the far-right from being called mean nasty words. [0] https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e...

snarf21 6y ago

I don't think it is a totalitarian issue. One problem is that the SEC and FTC have sat on their hands in the 21st century. There is no competition anymore. At worst this leads to party supporting companies in each market who will still allow it.

ineedasername 6y ago

Going from bans due to ToS violations all of the way to government coercion of executives through imprisonment is an enormous leap in logic. There's quite a few steps along that path in between. And if course given that bitcoin has to be sent and received, if we ever arrived at your dystopia, bitcoin would not help: the political rival would simply jail the executive for receiving bitcoin payments instead of USD currency. Bitcoin isn't preventing your dystopia.

dnissley 6y ago
government coercion of executives through imprisonment I think you read this slightly wrong -- drop the government (political adversary != government adversary) and relax imprisonment for threats of violence: "coercion of executives through threats of violence" ...and we've got something a lot closer to what we already see today.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

The very idea that cryptocurrency is an "uncensorable currency" is just fundamentally false, yet is a common refrain of crypto supporters who somehow think crypto can exist outside the realm of government control. Governments can choose to make anything they want illegal, and they have the guns to back up that decision. Sure, it may be easy to make crypto transactions more surreptitiously, but at the end of the day someone is going to want to spend that crypto on something that has real value, and governments can, and do, control what method of payments are acceptable.