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Seems like a great way to start a flame war. Anyway: If you’ve worked with the crypto space much, you know there’s a strong undercurrent of some libertarian-es

Seems like a great way to start a flame war. Anyway: If you’ve worked with the crypto space much, you know there’s a strong undercurrent of some libertarian-esq thinking. Crypto currencies represent decentralized trust, of some kind. I mean, Bitcoin was created in large part because Satoshi didn’t trust the central authorities in charge of the money supply. In some areas you’ll hear the phrase “governance without government” (I.e. fiat). What gives this place any spirit is the drive to overcome problems of distributed trust. Take that away by forcing KYC and now you’ve lost any ideological motivation to push the space forward. It just becomes a digitization of existing societal structures. Let it grow naturally and yeah, you’ll see plenty of scams, but you leave the door open for real innovations (like zero knowledge proofs) that could be worth massively more than any mistakes along the way.

Traster 6y ago
How is that disginguishable from "What gives this place any spirit is sheisters.. Take that away by forcing <standard practices>"...
- wallacoloo 6y ago
  > How is that distinguishable from "What gives this place any spirit is sheisters.. Take that away by forcing <standard practices>"... If there was any standard practice that could force sheisters to move elsewhere without negatively affecting the rest of us, I would stand by that policy 100%. Even within our standard systems, we tolerate a certain baseline level of fraud. Banks quite regularly work with fraudsters or worse and knowingly violate regulations (see: HSBC, Wells Fargo for high-profile cases). The regulated and the regulators appear to be somewhat cozy at times. But we accept this, perhaps because the value provided by these systems seems to outweigh their flaws. As for cryptocurrencies: do they provide value to anyone besides the sheisters? Yes. Not everyone is convinced, but at least I can claim to have performed legal transactions with Bitcoin and Ethereum that I don't regret years later and that I wouldn't have done without those currencies, and that's enough to convince myself. Would these things exist if KYC was strictly enforced on 03/Jan/2009? No. No, there would be no Bitcoin; it would be impossible to reach the audience which embraced it in 2009-2011. The ideas would likely not have spread beyond the cypherpunks, ideas which I personally think have enriched my life. Should we put up a fight against scammers? Absolutely. Is KYC one way to do that? Yes, but please don't underestimate the cost (previous paragraph) nor overestimate its effectiveness (take a look at the list of coins on Coinbase and Robinhood -- both of which adhere to KYC -- and tell me that these are all things that a responsible company should be promoting to its average user).
FridgeSeal 6y ago
So we just let some people do a whole bunch of shady, exploitative stuff, just in case someone manages to come up with an innovative idea despite a notable lack of actual research or though past ‘no gubernment’ whilst they’re in the process of scamming someone?
- wallacoloo 6y ago
  > despite a notable lack of actual research or though[t] past ‘no gubernment’ Can you not dismiss an entire space just from your surface-level view? Please? People are doing "actual research" in this space. If you were to comment in a respectful tone indicating that you're actually interested in hashing things out and learning, I'd happily point you to interesting research and experiments around distributed governance and funding of public goods (something which America has a real problem with!), etc. But when you comment in a dismissive, derisive manner like this, all you accomplish is shutting down the conversation. That's not what we're here for.

Traster 6y ago

How is that disginguishable from "What gives this place any spirit is sheisters.. Take that away by forcing <standard practices>"...

wallacoloo 6y ago
> How is that distinguishable from "What gives this place any spirit is sheisters.. Take that away by forcing <standard practices>"... If there was any standard practice that could force sheisters to move elsewhere without negatively affecting the rest of us, I would stand by that policy 100%. Even within our standard systems, we tolerate a certain baseline level of fraud. Banks quite regularly work with fraudsters or worse and knowingly violate regulations (see: HSBC, Wells Fargo for high-profile cases). The regulated and the regulators appear to be somewhat cozy at times. But we accept this, perhaps because the value provided by these systems seems to outweigh their flaws. As for cryptocurrencies: do they provide value to anyone besides the sheisters? Yes. Not everyone is convinced, but at least I can claim to have performed legal transactions with Bitcoin and Ethereum that I don't regret years later and that I wouldn't have done without those currencies, and that's enough to convince myself. Would these things exist if KYC was strictly enforced on 03/Jan/2009? No. No, there would be no Bitcoin; it would be impossible to reach the audience which embraced it in 2009-2011. The ideas would likely not have spread beyond the cypherpunks, ideas which I personally think have enriched my life. Should we put up a fight against scammers? Absolutely. Is KYC one way to do that? Yes, but please don't underestimate the cost (previous paragraph) nor overestimate its effectiveness (take a look at the list of coins on Coinbase and Robinhood -- both of which adhere to KYC -- and tell me that these are all things that a responsible company should be promoting to its average user).

FridgeSeal 6y ago

So we just let some people do a whole bunch of shady, exploitative stuff, just in case someone manages to come up with an innovative idea despite a notable lack of actual research or though past ‘no gubernment’ whilst they’re in the process of scamming someone?

wallacoloo 6y ago
> despite a notable lack of actual research or though[t] past ‘no gubernment’ Can you not dismiss an entire space just from your surface-level view? Please? People are doing "actual research" in this space. If you were to comment in a respectful tone indicating that you're actually interested in hashing things out and learning, I'd happily point you to interesting research and experiments around distributed governance and funding of public goods (something which America has a real problem with!), etc. But when you comment in a dismissive, derisive manner like this, all you accomplish is shutting down the conversation. That's not what we're here for.