11 ms·
I'm about done with articles that complain about cryptocurrency as a source of this "brand new problem" Also why don't we talk about tax havens while we're at
by lucasyvas 5y ago
I'm about done with articles that complain about cryptocurrency as a source of this "brand new problem"
Also why don't we talk about tax havens while we're at it?
- henvic 5y agoBecause tax havens really doesn't exist. What exists are tax hells! The fact that some countries have lower taxes means that society can produce more without having parasites in the state robbing everyone as easily! If anything, we need more tax havens.
- throwaway3699 5y agoTax havens keep other countries accountable from overspending, because they know people will move away from an overzealous jurisdiction. Just look at CA. I would move my money to one if I could reap the benefits and I suspect people hate them only because they're not able to also do the same thing.
- linspace 5y agoBut why not move yourself?
- henvic 5y agoAsking him to move because of this is pure fascism ideology. You should reconsider that. There are many reasons why someone might want to live in a place, despite the state there. The state and the country/state/city/whatever are different things.
- linspace 5y agoI don't know what happened to me, lately I'm becoming more and more fascist. I thought you should pay where you live but I apologize. Clearly not paying taxes was with the best intentions, for a better world.
- henvic 5y agoIt is. Taxes are slavery. Not paying them is better for everyone.
- arcticbull 5y agoI didn't realize public schools, fire departments, police stations, roads, highways, bridges, army, water, a regulated EM spectrum, a managed airspace, a managed border and NASA, was slavery. It's gonna be tough to explain to my kids how the Mars Helicopter was slavery. Boy was I mistaken!
- dang 5y agoPlease don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post flamebait to HN, and please don't use HN for ideological battle. Those things are tedious and lead to predictable, nasty discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20ideolog%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- throwaway3699 5y agoMy government spent the better part of two decades bombing children in the Middle East. Why should I support that if I can choose not to? Also, can you say I'm not being swindled if I'm spending nearly half my income on taxes?
- varsketiz 5y agoI'm sure your government was also doing other stuff, like providing schooling, roads and other infrastructure to you. You are freeriding at the expense of other fellow citizens, who pay taxes.
- 55555 5y agoThey generally tax their own populace at a relatively standard rate (20-40%+) while taxing the offshore corps based there at 0% (or more). Hong Kong, for example. In a sense it's economic subterfuge/sabotage. This is a response to one possible reading of your comment.
- hhs 5y agoDidn’t feel like a complaint about cryptocurrency, but more of an update on empirical points. And agree, both tax havens and cryptocurrency seem important to consider.
- lucasyvas 5y agoYou're perspective is not wrong - these write-ups are just getting tiring because they almost sound like propaganda pandering to an audience that doesn't know any better and needs to be protected. The world's problems are well-documented and fighting technological progress is a waste of time. We need capable law makers and regulatory bodies. None seem fit to the task.
- ethanbond 5y agoWhich is why need broader dialogue on these problems. So people who are not already deeply invested in those problems (or underlying technologies) can start thinking about how to manage them effectively.
- shillforhumanty 5y agoI couldn't reach the article from some error, I assumed from the title they were talking about IoT. I am surprised you mentioned it's about cryptocurrency. Yikes
- fcantournet 5y agoThey're not unrelated subjects. A lot of crypto operates much in the same way dark pool finance operates. It's unregulated & opaque. This is prime territory for both scams and other criminal activities.
- lucasyvas 5y agoYou're not wrong - but considering we failed to stop p2p file sharing how does anyone expect us to stop this? The music industry railed against stuff like Napster and got literally nowhere in the grand scheme of things. We are watching a repeat of history and apparently nobody learned a thing the first time.
- ethanbond 5y agoI don’t think I know anyone who frequently pirates music anymore… Mostly due to superior products coming out (Rdio, Spotify) but given that a founder of Spotify was involved in the torrent community, don’t think it’s a crazy theory to say the legal pressure created product pressure.
- lucasyvas 5y agoYou hit the nail on the head for this particular example. It took YEARS for the industry to suck it up and make it as convenient as it needed to be, though. The difference here is that TSLA is already accepting Bitcoin, and the financial sector is already building on Ethereum. So is it really going to be illegal or are there just going to be smoother experiences layered on top that the average user will flock to? Because I'm guessing, based on where we are, that it has to be the latter at this point. Illegal use will be minimized by a new breed of middleman. It's not ideal, but it's right for the majority of people I think.
- pyrale 5y agoWhat happens the day Tesla or the platform that processes payments for them gets subpoenaed for accepting coins from a ransomware attack? I suspect they will quietly drop their coins and stop accepting new ones, especially since that's unlikely to be a common payment method.
- crumbshot 5y agoThe article isn't wrong though. The main uses of cryptocurrencies, other than as speculative assets, are online drug dealing and ransomware payments. For almost every other application, real money is more useable, convenient and reliable.
- meowface 5y agoFor Monero, yes, that's by far the predominant use. For a time, that was the predominant use for Bitcoin, but I'm pretty sure it isn't anymore as of like ~7 years ago, probably. (The article mentions Bitcoin - probably because ransomware operators know ransomware victims can more easily acquire Bitcoin than Monero - but for other kinds of serious black market activity it's almost always Monero.) For others, I think it's totally untrue even from the start. It's actually usually a lot easier to launder USD than it is to launder something like Bitcoin or Ethereum, given every transaction is completely public and traceable.
- ethanbond 5y agoThe important feature of traditional accounts is that they’re all individually tied to some real-world entity. It’s hard to understand what money ultimately went where in a chain of 10,000 purposely convoluted transactions even if you can see the entire transaction record. Good luck creating 10k bank accounts to shuffle money around.
- 5y ago
- meowface 5y agoIf you read the whole article, I don't actually see any complaints about cryptocurrency or that it's the source of the problem. I think they're just stating the situation as it is and aren't casting any value judgment. I like cryptocurrencies, and I also work in information security and malware analysis. I acknowledge ransomware is a massive problem and that ransomware would be stupid to not use cryptocurrency. Technology isn't inherently good or bad; it just is what it is. I think one of the main sources of the problem here is international law enforcement. The Russian government and security/law enforcement services have a pretty open agreement with cybercriminals: don't target Russian citizens and we won't impact your business. A lot of these organizations are now complementing the ransoms with harassment and blackmail, too, like threatening to release sensitive documents, directly harassing CEOs, etc. And some directly target health care facilities, knowing there'll be more urgency to pay up. So if you're a Russian citizen, you have carte blanche to steal millions from people around the world, in an organizational structure that mostly resembles a kind of standard office job, with almost no anxiety that it'll ever come back to bite you (as long as you never travel outside of the country). It reminds me a little of old-school naval piracy and privateering in many ways. If you're in the US or UK or France or many other places and want to start a lucrative ransomware operation, there's a high chance you'll eventually get caught, so the risk of long-term imprisonment is enough to deter you even if easy millions may tempt you. If you have no moral qualms, great incentives, and nothing to deter you, the possibilities are limitless. I'm not saying that all countries should extradite - just that they should at least make a good faith effort to cooperate with other countries' law enforcement and stop serious cybercrime like ransomware. Though I can understand why an "underdog" nation-state may want to have good relations with some talented criminals within their borders who they may be able to recruit or order around as needed.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago> If you read the whole article That would be lovely, but I don't subscribe to The Economist.
- meowface 5y agoYeah, don't blame you or anyone else for clicking the link, seeing the paywall, and immediately closing the tab. It's what I did, as well. Some commenters posted non-paywalled links below. Not sure of the legality, but I wish HN would/could automatically replace paywalled article links.
- api 5y ago"New technology enables the unwashed masses to engage in financial crime at an industrial scale. That's supposed to be reserved only for oligarchs and politicians." This new technology also enables a degree of financial privacy that's a fundamental threat to civilization. It's... uhh... significantly less private than cash and (depending on the cryptocurrency used) often less private than bank wire. Never mind. FTFY Financial crime is one of those things that becomes less criminal as the scale gets larger or as one approaches influential political circles. Launder a hundred grand for a street drug dealer? Go directly to prison. Launder billions for drug cartels through major banks? You might get a fine and have to apologize. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/anthonycormier/hsbc-money-laundering-drug-cartels https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/anthonycormier/hsbc-mon... Yes this last part is part whataboutism, but not without reason. 2008 proved that meaningful financial reform is virtually impossible. A riot is the last resort of the powerless.
- seaourfreed 5y ago$32 Trillion is stored in Tax Havens, for tax evasion by the wealthy. SOURCE: Routers. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-offshore-wealth/super-rich-hold-32-trillion-in-offshore-havens-idUSBRE86L03U20120722 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-offshore-wealth/super-ric... BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40442595 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40442595 Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/09/15/tax-haven-cash-rising-now-equal-to-at-least-10-of-world-gdp/?sh=e2ff1a870d6a https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/09/15/tax-haven-...
- arcticbull 5y ago> Also why don't we talk about tax havens while we're at it? Tax havens aren't a party to ransomware. This is just whataboutism. We can talk about tax havens too, but that's a different conversation for a different time.
- NotEvil 5y agoWithout crypto they were the things to go to. And also many criminals make use of them
- arcticbull 5y agoI sincerely doubt most people who are today carrying out ransomware scams were wealthy enough 10 years ago to benefit materially from tax havens haha. If they were, they wouldn't be committing crime today.
- loa_in_ 5y agoYou shouldn't claim to know who does and who doesn't commit crime based on how wealthy are or were they.
- arcticbull 5y agoIt's more about rational self-interest. Do the wealthy regularly steal bread from the grocery store? Probably not. The risk-reward profile is all wrong - they have many much easier ways to make money. I suppose you're right that I don't know this for a fact, I'm saying the incentives are wrong.
- loa_in_ 5y agoThe way I see it, wealthy people have: more ability to evade being caught and they can operate on a scale that exceeds capacity of ordinary police. Their risks are also somewhat diminished because they have some way to persevere and something to fall on, even with a hefty fine. I imagine that there are people parking in illegal places every time because the fine is marginal to them. All I'm saying is that the way I see it, there's no correlation between wealth and affinity to crime.
- Spooky23 5y agoCryptocurrency enables it. Tell me how you, the CFO of a small US city, would send $1M to Russia in 2006?