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> I would expect a lot of the "but the gov will ban it" arguments to be significantly weaker... Cryptocurrency supporters should be lobbying for government ban

> I would expect a lot of the "but the gov will ban it" arguments to be significantly weaker... Cryptocurrency supporters should be lobbying for government bans, not against them. The most direct way to demonstrate that cryptocurrencies are truly decentralized and resilient to censorship is to subject them to unrelenting attack, most naturally in the form of legal crackdowns.

londons_explore 5y ago
The protocols and tech might be resistant to government crackdowns, but the user's being sent to prison for "illegal use of cryptocurrency" would certainly hamper use...
spottybanana 5y ago
Not agreeing, but it is interesting viewpoint. Personally I have been involved a lot in the crypto space, and seen lots of bank account freezes and similar problems happening to crypto traders. Maybe sometimes there is something nefarious going on, maybe it was false positive, who knows. However, personally seeing this has affected me in a way where I don't really trust banks much. That has put me in a position where I have increasingly large position in cryptocurrencies.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
beaner 5y ago
That's dumb. The purpose of decentralization isn't to simply demonstrate the strength of the decentralization. It's an element that helps something achieve a purpose. In this case, the ability of a person to be their own bank. Not being banned also helps that purpose. Why would cryptocurrency supporters lobby for government bans?
paxys 5y ago
There are cryptocurrency supporters who want to revolutionize the world's monetary systems, get governments out of currency manipulation, make international transfers easy and free, remove burden of entry for businesses, remove oppressive payment processors etc. Then there are cryptocurrency supporters who are holding large amounts of it and just want the value to keep going up. The latter category definitely does not want a government ban on trading/usage.
agumonkey 5y ago
Isn't that typical of new 'things' ? Defining themselves against the norm only to reach for acceptance as proof of stability ?
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
> Cryptocurrency supporters should be lobbying for government bans, not against them. Just like a banned dr. Suess book, this would further inflate prices
- paholg 5y ago
  No Dr. Seuss books are banned. The publisher decided to stop publishing a few of them.
  - simiones 5y ago
    There's more to it than that - eBay for example has banned trade in those books as well (Amazon too, and probably others), on the second hand market. Not sure if they reversed this absolutely crazy decision in the meantime, would be happy to hear that they did.
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      They did not reverse it. And I can’t buy those books at Barnes & Noble, either. Even at their physical stores.
      - knowaveragejoe 5y ago
        Oh no! Anyways.
bouncycastle 5y ago
Obviously sarcasm, but there's a little bit of truth behind this. The real value of cryptocurrency is if the governments ban it. (They are more of a nightmare for totalitarian regimes, rather than free open societies.)
rtpg 5y ago
Except there's a gov't ban and now you can't actually get dollars into your brokerage account to buy crypto (and neither can anyone else), and then the price starts dropping. There's only so much effort someone will go through until they'll just put the money in Robinhood or something and buy some random meme stock.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> cryptocurrencies are truly decentralized and resilient to censorship If a major government wanted to break crypto, it would simply credibly threaten to launch a 51% attack. This is within the budget of most developed economies, and much simpler than enforcing a ban. Nobody does it because it would be stupid. Crypto is part of the economy. Destroying it would be akin to bombing a domestic factory because one doesn’t like its products.
- throw4738 5y ago
  51% attack would be very expensive on electricity and new infrastructure. There is already working and profitable infrastructure to prevent money laundering.
- mateuszf 5y ago
  > If a major government wanted to break crypto, it would simply credibly threaten to launch a 51% attack. Do you know how hard it's now to buy/produce graphic cards and asic-s good for mining crypto? The demand is very big yet producers can't scale up. I don't see governments to have possibility obtaining so much hardware in a short/medium time horizon.
  - simiones 5y ago
    Why do you think the government would have to produce new ASICs, when they could just buy or seize the existing ones?
    - WanderPanda 5y ago
      That would take out the "most developed countries" part...
    - mateuszf 5y ago
      > Why do you think the government would have to produce new ASICs, when they could just buy or seize the existing ones? There is not enough of them to buy on the market to make 51% attack. Of course seizing is possible but hard because I imagine it would be quite hard to locate them, apart form large mining operations they are quite distributed. In case of bitcoin network it would have to be a large multicountry operation. Because the miners are really distributed around the world.
throw4738 5y ago
But most cryptos are not truly decentralised and robust enough. There is centralised dev team. And no crypto can truly handle brainsplit network issues.

londons_explore 5y ago

The protocols and tech might be resistant to government crackdowns, but the user's being sent to prison for "illegal use of cryptocurrency" would certainly hamper use...

spottybanana 5y ago

Not agreeing, but it is interesting viewpoint. Personally I have been involved a lot in the crypto space, and seen lots of bank account freezes and similar problems happening to crypto traders. Maybe sometimes there is something nefarious going on, maybe it was false positive, who knows. However, personally seeing this has affected me in a way where I don't really trust banks much. That has put me in a position where I have increasingly large position in cryptocurrencies.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

beaner 5y ago

That's dumb. The purpose of decentralization isn't to simply demonstrate the strength of the decentralization. It's an element that helps something achieve a purpose. In this case, the ability of a person to be their own bank. Not being banned also helps that purpose. Why would cryptocurrency supporters lobby for government bans?

paxys 5y ago

There are cryptocurrency supporters who want to revolutionize the world's monetary systems, get governments out of currency manipulation, make international transfers easy and free, remove burden of entry for businesses, remove oppressive payment processors etc. Then there are cryptocurrency supporters who are holding large amounts of it and just want the value to keep going up. The latter category definitely does not want a government ban on trading/usage.

agumonkey 5y ago

Isn't that typical of new 'things' ? Defining themselves against the norm only to reach for acceptance as proof of stability ?

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

> Cryptocurrency supporters should be lobbying for government bans, not against them. Just like a banned dr. Suess book, this would further inflate prices

paholg 5y ago
No Dr. Seuss books are banned. The publisher decided to stop publishing a few of them.
- simiones 5y ago
  There's more to it than that - eBay for example has banned trade in those books as well (Amazon too, and probably others), on the second hand market. Not sure if they reversed this absolutely crazy decision in the meantime, would be happy to hear that they did.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    They did not reverse it. And I can’t buy those books at Barnes & Noble, either. Even at their physical stores.
    - knowaveragejoe 5y ago
      Oh no! Anyways.

bouncycastle 5y ago

Obviously sarcasm, but there's a little bit of truth behind this. The real value of cryptocurrency is if the governments ban it. (They are more of a nightmare for totalitarian regimes, rather than free open societies.)

rtpg 5y ago

Except there's a gov't ban and now you can't actually get dollars into your brokerage account to buy crypto (and neither can anyone else), and then the price starts dropping. There's only so much effort someone will go through until they'll just put the money in Robinhood or something and buy some random meme stock.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> cryptocurrencies are truly decentralized and resilient to censorship If a major government wanted to break crypto, it would simply credibly threaten to launch a 51% attack. This is within the budget of most developed economies, and much simpler than enforcing a ban. Nobody does it because it would be stupid. Crypto is part of the economy. Destroying it would be akin to bombing a domestic factory because one doesn’t like its products.

throw4738 5y ago
51% attack would be very expensive on electricity and new infrastructure. There is already working and profitable infrastructure to prevent money laundering.
mateuszf 5y ago
> If a major government wanted to break crypto, it would simply credibly threaten to launch a 51% attack. Do you know how hard it's now to buy/produce graphic cards and asic-s good for mining crypto? The demand is very big yet producers can't scale up. I don't see governments to have possibility obtaining so much hardware in a short/medium time horizon.
- simiones 5y ago
  Why do you think the government would have to produce new ASICs, when they could just buy or seize the existing ones?
  - WanderPanda 5y ago
    That would take out the "most developed countries" part...
  - mateuszf 5y ago
    > Why do you think the government would have to produce new ASICs, when they could just buy or seize the existing ones? There is not enough of them to buy on the market to make 51% attack. Of course seizing is possible but hard because I imagine it would be quite hard to locate them, apart form large mining operations they are quite distributed. In case of bitcoin network it would have to be a large multicountry operation. Because the miners are really distributed around the world.

throw4738 5y ago

But most cryptos are not truly decentralised and robust enough. There is centralised dev team. And no crypto can truly handle brainsplit network issues.