4 ms·

No. It's time to push back on Bitcoin. It is disgraceful to watch people such as Elon Musk and most of the VCs put money ahead of the environment.

ubersync 6y ago
I am sorry you did not buy it when it was cheaper. No need to hate it now because you were stupid back then.
- ShamelessC 6y ago
  This comment is in clear violation of the site's rules. Please don't be deliberately rude to others here and try to interpret comments in good faith rather than as some sort of veiled attack.
- ardy42 6y ago
  >> No. It's time to push back on Bitcoin. >> It is disgraceful to watch people such as Elon Musk and most of the VCs put money ahead of the environment. > I am sorry you did not buy it when it was cheaper. No need to hate it now because you were stupid back then. You're obviously defensively making some false assumptions. The big one is probably assuming that people are primarily motivated by greed and jealousy, and that other motivations are fake and meant to disguise that. And for the record, I agree with the GP, and I've made quite a bit of money off of this bubble by selling some bitcoins I mined a decade ago.
caycep 6y ago
Given the energy requirements and how it's kind of morphed into this beast of greed, I'm inclined to agree....but how to pull this off? Fiat bans cannot really work well against just doing math. Taxation schemes/financial regs tamping down on bitcoin speculation, what you can spend it on? By design I don't think you can just pump money into bitcoin in order to "deflate" its value without similarly consuming a lot of energy?
- lurgburg 6y ago
  Perhaps a simple ban on converting fiat -> to bitcoin would go a long way? It wouldn't be absolute, black markets are a thing, but there are costs to participate in a black market, which costs will rise over time as good old physical cash declines.
  - anonisko 6y ago
    It's definitely not this simple. How would you execute an exchange ban politically? Any politicians who did this would be responsible for instantly vaporizing tons of value owned by an increasingly non negligible fraction of the population that spans a broad spectrum of political affiliation. An exchange ban also wouldn't stop bitcoin, because the network would still continue running and anyone cutoff and stuck with bitcoin can still use it as a medium of exchange, and it could kick off its development as a direct unit of account. An exchange ban might even make using bitcoin as currency even easier, because if it's not legally exchangeable for fiat, how do you tax cap gains on it? Stopping bitcoin is a REALLY hard problem. It would require a massive coordinated crack down by every government on the planet. And then you're left with a prisoner's dilemma. What happens if China or Russia publicly go along with such a ban, but secretly keep supporting it and buy up coins for themselves, preparing for a day when it will be the global reserve currency that dethrones the dollar? It's a similar game theory problem to why we will likely never live in a world without nuclear weapons. The reason this will probably never happen is because every government will think through this game theory, and realize the risk of being on the wrong side of a potentially ineffective ban and hamstringing your nation's citizens and companies from participating and developing on the new global financial system, is greater than the cost of just capitulating and adapting to live with it.
    - benrbray 6y ago
      I don't really want to see politicians giving bitcoin holders too much weight when making decisions about how the economy should function. Anyone who owns Bitcoin is gambling. There was never a guarantee that value would go up, or that the government squash the idea entirely. If we as a society decide that Bitcoin is too dangerous, current holders should accept Bitcoin for what it was: a bad investment.

ubersync 6y ago

I am sorry you did not buy it when it was cheaper. No need to hate it now because you were stupid back then.

ShamelessC 6y ago
This comment is in clear violation of the site's rules. Please don't be deliberately rude to others here and try to interpret comments in good faith rather than as some sort of veiled attack.
ardy42 6y ago
>> No. It's time to push back on Bitcoin. >> It is disgraceful to watch people such as Elon Musk and most of the VCs put money ahead of the environment. > I am sorry you did not buy it when it was cheaper. No need to hate it now because you were stupid back then. You're obviously defensively making some false assumptions. The big one is probably assuming that people are primarily motivated by greed and jealousy, and that other motivations are fake and meant to disguise that. And for the record, I agree with the GP, and I've made quite a bit of money off of this bubble by selling some bitcoins I mined a decade ago.

caycep 6y ago

Given the energy requirements and how it's kind of morphed into this beast of greed, I'm inclined to agree....but how to pull this off? Fiat bans cannot really work well against just doing math. Taxation schemes/financial regs tamping down on bitcoin speculation, what you can spend it on? By design I don't think you can just pump money into bitcoin in order to "deflate" its value without similarly consuming a lot of energy?

lurgburg 6y ago
Perhaps a simple ban on converting fiat -> to bitcoin would go a long way? It wouldn't be absolute, black markets are a thing, but there are costs to participate in a black market, which costs will rise over time as good old physical cash declines.
- anonisko 6y ago
  It's definitely not this simple. How would you execute an exchange ban politically? Any politicians who did this would be responsible for instantly vaporizing tons of value owned by an increasingly non negligible fraction of the population that spans a broad spectrum of political affiliation. An exchange ban also wouldn't stop bitcoin, because the network would still continue running and anyone cutoff and stuck with bitcoin can still use it as a medium of exchange, and it could kick off its development as a direct unit of account. An exchange ban might even make using bitcoin as currency even easier, because if it's not legally exchangeable for fiat, how do you tax cap gains on it? Stopping bitcoin is a REALLY hard problem. It would require a massive coordinated crack down by every government on the planet. And then you're left with a prisoner's dilemma. What happens if China or Russia publicly go along with such a ban, but secretly keep supporting it and buy up coins for themselves, preparing for a day when it will be the global reserve currency that dethrones the dollar? It's a similar game theory problem to why we will likely never live in a world without nuclear weapons. The reason this will probably never happen is because every government will think through this game theory, and realize the risk of being on the wrong side of a potentially ineffective ban and hamstringing your nation's citizens and companies from participating and developing on the new global financial system, is greater than the cost of just capitulating and adapting to live with it.
  - benrbray 6y ago
    I don't really want to see politicians giving bitcoin holders too much weight when making decisions about how the economy should function. Anyone who owns Bitcoin is gambling. There was never a guarantee that value would go up, or that the government squash the idea entirely. If we as a society decide that Bitcoin is too dangerous, current holders should accept Bitcoin for what it was: a bad investment.