19 ms·

CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

55 points by BreathHiker 5y ago

premium-komodo 5y ago
The reason we have to go to the trouble of making cryptocurrencies is that busybodies like this guy are endlessly trying to reduce our freedom. They're not trying to look out for people; they're trying to protect their ability to print money and steal. In crypto parlance, they want to remain the VIPs that have centralized special privileged access to create tokens, and force usage thereof. But now we have the technology to enforce currency issuance by immutable programs. That's a better way, because programs are very strong exactly where humans are very weak.
- hnbad 5y ago
  Just to be clear, by "ability to print money and steal" you mean having a central bank and levying taxes? You're making a moral argument against the idea of government controlled currency in general, yes? Can you clarify why you think controlled currencies are morally bad and how cryptocurrencies are better? I'd love to hear a less abstract argument than "more freedom". EDIT: I assume downvotes mean there are people who like cryptocurrencies and agree with the parent. Maybe some of those could answer my question? "Freedom" is a loaded term with conflicting definitions and ideas like "taxation is theft" don't stand in isolation because they imply logical conclusions that most people prefer not to make explicit.
  - yenwel 5y ago
    money printing is done by handing it to banks at zero interest and flooded on the stock exchanges. The rich get richer and the poor can buy less with the same money since wages are the last thing to raise (while the rich buy up houses and commodities with their free money). Inflation is a tax on the poor and elderly. Literally since VAT is percentage-wise levied on relatively more expensive consumer goods and if wages rise they come in higher income pay scales for taxation. Crony capitalism at it's peak where the players get bail outs and handouts and the poor get poorer and the middle class disappears.
    - hnbad 5y ago
      Okay, and how do cryptocurrencies fix this? Mining is supposed to be increasingly cost prohibitive so in an ideal world it would eventually cease to have a meaningful impact on currency supply within practical timeframes. Assuming economic growth holds, this would mean constant deflation (i.e. value of the currency continually increases as its supply remains quasi constant while the overall economy increases). Since transfer of cryptocurrencies incurs transaction fees and the value of those currencies only ever increases, transactions would eventually become cost prohibitive for smaller values. So realistically it would seem that we'd eventually have to transition to representative money instead (i.e. you don't transfer crypto between wallets, you shift numbers in a trusted third party's database which itself holds crypto for you). This would lose most of the benefit of the blockchain for these smaller transactions and effectively create banks because these third parties would have operating expenses they would have to charge you for (either directly or by using your crypto for investments). So in other words, this sounds a lot like returning to the gold standard with extra steps.
      - bigger_inside 5y ago
        that "would" in your shift argument is already reality, that's the lightning network, which transmits bitcoin off-chain for pennies, but in a decentralized way, because it utilizes existing bitcoin balances on lightning nodes for it. There is still no bank, BUT there is a more centralized "arbiter", yes. So your argument does hold about the trustlessness, though not entirely the centralization. The one thing that's central in this debate is to understand that current currencies are built to be inflationary, which causes the need for constant economic growth. Bitcoin is not. The "bitcoin fixes it" meme is hopeful utopianism, I grant you that, but bitcoin would not carry this growth mandate in its bowels that state currencies do.
        Kbelicius 5y ago
        > that "would" in your shift argument is already reality, that's the lightning network, The reality today isn't lightning network but centralized exchanges. That may change in the future but it might not.
  - delaaxe 5y ago
    "Inflation is legalized counterfeiting and counterfeiting is criminalized inflation. "-Robert Breedlove
  - atom_arranger 5y ago
    By printing money the government steals value from existing holders of currency. It’s effectively an undemocratic (amount is not generally voted on) tax on people’s earnings and cash savings.
    - masswerk 5y ago
      Inflation/deflation is an effect of the amount of money (or in general: any kind of material compensation for trade, work and services) available and which potential customers are able to spend and the amount of goods (and the capabilities to produce them), which are actually available. Meaning, it's a function and not necessarily a conspiracy. Edit: In other words, if you are working really hard and are making earnings which allow you to spend more on Teslas than Musk can produce, you are creating inflation. Money or other tokens.
  - bigger_inside 5y ago
    not OP. But the less-buzzwordy argument is this: the existence of money itself isn't the problem. The problem is that the modern monetary system is built on inflation and supermassive debt, and this combination has a bunch of highly negative outcomes: -it systematically expropriates poor people. Inflation will make sure your money is worth gradually less, so the only option to save it is though real estate and stocks, which poor people have little access to. -this goes along with the need for companies, and the economy at large, to keep growing year over year. Our modern infinite-growth mandate, the thing that is actually destroying the planet, is based on the system of money we now have, as saving loses you money: you have to make more, consume more, make more, consume more, or everyone loses the money they have. That is to stay, money is no longer a store of value, which is one of its major functions. - speaking of destroying the planet, after the end of the gold standard, the current dollar/euro system is backed, in complictaed ways, by their uses in international trade, especially oil. After the fall of their productive capacites (all outsourced), the US now basically exports dollars to finance their internal consumption and worldwide hegemony. Because all nations need USD to trade, esp oil, the US can print and print and sink that into other countries that buy it while keeping inflation mus lower (still there) than it otherwise would be. This is a circle, as it both finances global hegemony, but also needs it: it is that hegemony that enforces the use of USD as a world transactional currency, and US "regime change" operations generally hit countries that try to escape this system. -a house of cards: central banks don't print most of the money; private banks do. "fractional reserve banking" means that banks only need a fraction of the money that they lend out on reserve, which means that when it has a million, it can make many millions in loans to customers, effectively creating the rest of the money every time it makes the loan. This is margin/leveraged trading on a global and massive scale, and it is what makes banks crash every time a hiccup occurs in that system. It's a time bomb. These are all massive systemic problems, and the -way- central banking is now organized is the problem. Could states organize this without these problems? sure; "gah states are unfreedom" is not the problem here, the capture of states by global corporate capitalism is. Will states change? no, of course not, not without a massive systemic crash or revolution. Do we need bitcoin to save this? strictly no, but bitcoiners see bitcoin as a sneaky trojan horse to destabilize this system, and -one- hope to overcome this massively cancerous state of affairs, for a host of reasons beyond mere dreaming that would double this already long comment in size. All I'm saying s: like everything, this is much, much more complicated than "bitcoin volatile" or "bitcoin energy bad".
- f6v 5y ago
  I don’t think that the Netherlands is the country where wealth is routinely stolen from common folk.
  - becquerel 5y ago
    The economy of every capitalist country is based on the exploitation of the working class.
  - mopsi 5y ago
    Netherlands is one of the largest channels between the EU and offshore tax havens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich
  - b3lvedere 5y ago
    Depends how you obtained that wealth. The people love personal success stories, but dislike people who show off too much or exploited certain situations. There is this guy that made quite some money on covid masks. A lot of people were not too happy he made a profit on that.
    - adflux 5y ago
      People aren't happy about that because he told everyone he was doing it for free. That he wasn't making a profit on the deal. Also, he used inside info to sell his trash quality face masks. Fuck Sywert van Lienden, disgusting crisis profiteer.
  - adflux 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in... Take a look at this list and see which country has the highest wealth inequality in the world. Hint: it's the Netherlands.
    - posix_me_less 5y ago
      Wow.
- masswerk 5y ago
  Fun fact: most of the money is issued by ordinary banks, not by the bodies presumably in control of the token/currency. (Any such control is rather remote and indirect.)
oblio 5y ago
I'm curious what's going to be left when the dust settles, probably in about 5 years. After all, since we're talking about the Netherlands, tulip bulbs are still around but most people don't care about them anymore.
- patates 5y ago
  They are in the top 20 countries in terms of GDP...
  - rjknight 5y ago
    I think that when the op said “most people don’t care about them” they meant the tulip bulbs, not the Netherlands.
- hnbad 5y ago
  I'm not sure if you're being facetious but flowers are a massive business and account for something like 10% of their agricultural exports. Saying "most people don't care about them anymore" makes it sound like it's a niche industry, which I think undersells it quite a bit.
  - oblio 5y ago
    Ummm... how many people care about tulip <<bulbs>>? Tulip bulbs are a niche topic, for sure. A lot of people care about tulips, but for all they care tulips could be birthed live by other tulip plants, that's how much they care about tulip bulbs :-)
- ulzeraj 5y ago
  Tulip mania was wildly exaggerated by Calvinists who wanted to create a precautionary tale against consumerism. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-...
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
dataflow 5y ago
Everyone needs to ban Bitcoin... and likely other cryptocurrencies. Not only are they by far the biggest enablers of ransomware (which we're supposedly taking seriously now), but Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. [1] Bitcoin already consumes 0.55% of energy produced globally. [2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 [2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...
- oblio 5y ago
  We need to ban all proof-of-work and generally all resource intensive cryptocurrencies.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe we should in general ban things that are a certain amount less energy efficient (say, 5x more wasteful) than the best technology we've achieved for a similar purpose so far. And progressively tax anything that's moderately more wasteful (say, 2x-5x). It's bad enough that we have cars on roads that are twice as wasteful as they could be, let alone a transaction processing mechanism that is literally a million times more wasteful than our existing technology.
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      Clears throat... [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report-the-u-s-military-emits-more-co2-than-many-industrialized-nations-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report...
      - bigger_inside 5y ago
        ...and the US military effectively backs the dollar, which makes this the energy footprint of the dollar. meanwhile, gold stripmines the soil in poor countries, where children die in mines, while the loot is carried off to the west, AND it uses much more energy than bitcoin. and bitcoin is technology to replace, at least partially, those two things. And like a car versus a bike, it does so with more utility: better to store, better to transport, better to divide into units. and it can use energy anywhere, whereas banks and gold mining have to use it where there is gold and people to use banks, which means that energy for these uses is actually newly made for this purpose. Bitcoin often and increasingly uses energy that was made, but not used: 1/3 of all global energy production is produced and then just seeps into the metaphorical ground, which is necessary as a network safety measure. Bitcoin miners put their ASICs there and take it, meaning no additional energy was produced and the opposite of waste occured: it prevented waste. Not to speak of the fact that bitcoin incentivizes green energy, because solar and wind are problematic for everyday use (bc you're so highly dependent on the whims of nature). Bitcoin is not your dryer; it can run whenenever it happens to be there, thereby increasing the efficiency of renewables massively. This whole argument suffers from a lot of ignorance about what's actually going on here.
22c 5y ago
The HN headline is a bit alarmist. The headline I see is "CPB director: The Netherlands must ban bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies". This is the opinion of the CPB director in a letter, so it's not binding in any way. > A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable, he says. That is why the Netherlands must intervene. Should the government be banning any speculative investment that appears to be in a bubble?
- skrebbel 5y ago
  Well, pyramid games are routinely banned. There are good arguments to be made that Bitcoin is a pyramid game much more than a "asset class in a bubble".
  - 22c 5y ago
    I'm only talking about Pieter Hasekamp's arguments, which don't seem to be good ones. If he wants to argue that Bitcoin is a pyramid game, that's a different argument, but I can't see many people taking him seriously. Pieter's arguments are along the lines of a "Think of the Children"[1] style argument, or an appeal to consequences[2]. "We must ban cryptocurrency because if we don't, people might lose their money!" [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences
    - teekert 5y ago
      Well if they ban it we know for sure people will loose money.
    - skrebbel 5y ago
      Isn't he just trying to call it a pyramid game without actually calling it a pyramid game? (or ponzi scheme, etc etc same same). I don't know the nuances of his position but maybe him calling it what it is (ie a scam) can get them into all kinds of legal trouble if they don't have hard proof. And because the fraudsters are as distributed as the ledger, it's hard to come by hard proof. I mean, I think that Jack Dorsey is banking hard on bitcoin because he knows he's near the top of the pyramid and he wants as many fools as possible beneath him, but there's absolutely no way to prove that he's not just a soft idiot. Just guessing though, all I mean is "if we don't, people might lose their money!" would have applied to Bernie Madoff too.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SCHiM 5y ago
Why should others decide if I can run useless hashing functions on my computer? Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible. Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. The real enablers of ransomware are the countries that shelter the R10 groups, raking in millions. There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian language keyboard, and it's not because they know Russians never pay ransom...
- f6v 5y ago
  > There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian language keyboard, and it's not because they know Russians never pay ransom... Why then?
  - vultour 5y ago
    Because some countries turn a blind eye to ransomware operators in their territory, and are not targeted in return.
  - gtyras2mrs 5y ago
    The theory (conspiracy or otherwise) that I've heard is that the Russian state looks the other way as long as ransomware makers don't affect Russian systems. So they exclude systems with Russian language keyboard to avoid impacting Russian systems (which might cause the Russian govt to take action against them)
  - SCHiM 5y ago
    Because they run their operations from there, and don't mess around where they live. Part of their profits pays for protection. Extracting value, and crippling western companies aligns with the strategic goals of these countries. And ransomware is literally a 10B USD business.
- bo0tzz 5y ago
  >Price the electricity accordingly So I should pay significantly more on my bills, just because you want to play with some virtual coins?
xvector 5y ago
Maybe not. Monero is essential to financial freedom.
nicholasbraker 5y ago
The problem I have with this story is that Bitcoin with all its specific issues regarding CO2 emmisions etc. is thrown on the same heap as other cryptocurrencies or blockchain developments which serve other goals, have less of an environmental impact and do actually solve a problem. (e.g. Quant solving the interoperability problem between blockchains which are also in use by banks etc. as well as practical uses of ETH/FLOW/ADA etc.)
adflux 5y ago
"A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable", he says, as if its a certainty. I hate energy wasting crypto's and delusional moonboys, shitcoins and NFT's just about as much as anyone else, but saying things like this is just dumb...
- Tepix 5y ago
  We've head many cryptocurrency crashes already so chances are pretty good that he is right ;-)
  - adflux 5y ago
    A stock market crash is inevitable, let's ban the stock market! A commodity crash is inevitable, let's ban trading commodities! A housing market crash is inevitable, let's ban real estate purchasing!
    - tutuca 5y ago
      I really see no problem with all the above.
Tepix 5y ago
I hope if a ban comes it will focus on PoW cryptocurrencies that are harmful for the environment.
gnrlst 5y ago
Bitcoin should perish, and quickly, for the reasons outlined. But "other cryptocurrencies" is a generalization that is too broad. Some alternatives are faster, feeless and 1000x more energy efficient. Sure, you may argue that countries may not want some uncontrollable asset to run rampant, but guess what: it's the whole point of cryptocurrencies -- a form of means of exchange that nobody can control. May not sound relevant in countries like US / EU, but look at how other monetary policies around the world are doing, run by incompetent and/or corrupt governments (venezuela, argentina, several african countries). Maybe "crypto" is not the answer, but a form of global money that no individual country can touch, and is more easily transferrable than physical assets like gold, will emerge.
camillomiller 5y ago
Also, they’re threatening the Netherlands position as Europe’s own fiscal paradise in disguise. You can’t make a Dutch sandwich with a double Irish with Bitcoin.
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  No it doesn't and yes you can. Counting your beans in a different currency doesn't prevent you from needing to do tax accounting and from having to comply with tax laws if you sell beans in a country.
mantenpanther 5y ago
"Central Planning Bureau (CPB)" - this is fine...
- Vinnl 5y ago
  While it might sound like they're in charge of centrally drafting up communist-style policies, what it actually is is an institution that researches the effects of governments policies so the government has more data to plan their policies around. This also means that this is in no way a sign that the Netherlands is anywhere near actually executing on this.
flefto 5y ago
Errrrr.... did they get the news that crypto already crashed?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
timwaagh 5y ago
I agree with him, but more on philosophical grounds. The idea of crypto is to make taxation impossible and government irrelevant. If democracy is to be preserved, this obviously cannot happen. Therefore government has to fight back.
swinglock 5y ago
The Central Planning Bureau takes issue with decentralization? I am shocked!
nomercy400 5y ago
Nah, not based on this piece. This is the opinion of a director of one of many government agencies. CPB is the economic planning agency, so he is supposed to say things like this. But he is only one of many stakeholders in this subject. Once national bank, politics and public sentiment start making statements like this, it would get more weight. There's no way The Netherlands is going to lead the pack so publically on banning cryptocurrencies. That would be too politically unwise. I am not saying he is wrong. Just unlikely that The Netherlands is going to be the first to ban.
- zerubeus 5y ago
  Crypto is already banned in many countries, in my country Tunisia [1] you risk a big sentence if you get caught selling or buying crypto in the black market (Facebook/telegram groups) [1]https://www.businessnews.com.tn/Arrestation-d%EF%BF%BDun-jeune-homme-pour-avoir-utilis%EF%BF%BD-des-Bitcoins--Affaire-class%EF%BF%BDe-!,520,108668,3 https://www.businessnews.com.tn/Arrestation-d%EF%BF%BDun-jeu...
BreathHiker 5y ago
A bit unrelated, but this submission was top 3 on HN and suddenly seems removed from the /news page?
- bifftastic 5y ago
  This isn't the first time I've seen negative articles about cryptocurrencies suddenly drop down the rankings on this site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27215572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27215572
  - BreathHiker 5y ago
    To bad, would love to see more discussions on this.
- dandanua 5y ago
  Because HN is a centralized platform and its owner has a big stack in crypto. So such "regulation" is logical. Ironically, isn't it?
  - IngvarLynn 5y ago
    The real irony is that each "crypto bad" thread on HN is clearly someone's paid shill. Because every time it reiterates the same extremely primitive misconceptions about crypto. Surely there are some real useful woke idiots on HN but I refuse believe that they constitute a voting majority.
xiphias2 5y ago
Guggenheim and Elon Musk were heavily pushing the environmental disaster articles to move Bitcoin price down to buy (they just filed an SEC report about holding Bitcoin futures 2 days ago). As Bitcoin's not a security, they can legally push any news that they want to manipulate the price.
me_me_me 5y ago
> 'A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable' Here I will write a second article for you for free Housing market crash is inevitable - The Netherlands must ban housing market and other housing initiatives.
- RONROC 5y ago
  Housing market crash is not inevitable. The market crashed in 08 because banks gave loans to unqualified people who could not afford their mortgage(s) otherwise. The current housing “bubble” is driven by-and-large by private equity groups who see the real estate market (more so the single family home) as the safest place to park their money. Thing is, these people can afford them.
  - bruce343434 5y ago
    More of an "entire society" crash then as actual working people fail to acquire homes.
    - RONROC 5y ago
      I agree. Once Wall St becomes your landlord, something is irreparably broken.
hubadu 5y ago
I don't think it is technically possible to ban bitcoin, only centralized exchanges. If a country decides to ban exchanges, it could end up creating an untraceable black market since people might start exchanging crypto <-> cash in the streets. Intelligence agencies would probably not be happy to lose such traceability capability. Drug dealers would be taking over this black market as it creates new incomes while simultaneously helping some of their money laundering needs. Blockchain startup ecosystem and crypto friendly entrepreneurs would leave your country. You would lose all related tax revenues and high-paying jobs.
- lottin 5y ago
  No one is going to buy and sell crypto on the streets, this is just nonsense.
  - hubadu 5y ago
    I can understand your fierce will to ban crypto for environmental impact reason. However you cannot ban bitcoin, you just can't, that the whole purpose of its existence. And black markets have always existed and always will.
    - lottin 5y ago
      > you just can't Sorry, that's not an argument.
      - hubadu 5y ago
        You could make it illegal by law tomorrow, it doesn't change the fact that bitcoin would still exist and be used due to its decentralized nature.
        lottin 5y ago
        The government can severely impair its appeal as a speculation vehicle and people would stop speculating with it. This is Bitcoin's primary use case. Some people who use it as a medium of exchange because they can't use real money for a variety of reasons might continue to use it, true, as well as a minority of hard-core fanatics who are attracted to bitcoin for ideological reasons regardless of practicality.
moepstar 5y ago
> “After all, the product itself has no intrinsic value and derives its appeal only from acceptance by others.” Ok, what's the intrinsic value of a $ or € bill then?
- TrackerFF 5y ago
  Ask yourself this: Assume that you have little or no knowledge in foreign countries, but you want to purchase some of their currencies - how would you go on and classify these currencies as "good" or "bad", when viewing them as potential investments. Besides simply looking up their historical exchange rates. It's obviously a complex problem, as we're dealing with parities here - but war/conflicts, poor economies, extreme inflation, and similar factors will drive the currency down. On the other hand, peace, strong economy / industries, etc. will drive them up. One might associate the intrinsic value of a currency with the overall economic health of its country, along with things like geopolitical stability, internal policies, and what not. It's a good mix of micro, macro, and politics. With cryptocurrencies, it's a bit harder to measure things that like. It's a stateless currency, with no industries or workers behind it. There are no wars or conflicts either. No policies made by politicians that can affect its value (in the abstract notion). Essentially, you only have supply and demand to go after - when trying to predict its future value.
  - moepstar 5y ago
    Not arguing that what you said isn't true, however, if we just take the statement of the article like it's been written - it just doesn't make a difference if we're talking about the intrinsic value of either - BTC/$/€ Bitcoin is a stream of 1s and 0s, $ and € bills are pieces of paper (not talking about the raw material value of coins rn..). The value of $ and € (and ultimately any currency / fiat) is that has its appeal only from acceptance by others - which is part of the sentence i've copied from the article. Neither do have any intrinsic value.
    - TrackerFF 5y ago
      As far as I know, the USD doesn't have any intrinsic value after they went away from the gold standard - but again, people use all sort of measures as proxies for intrinsic value.
ramijames 5y ago
You can't ban peer to peer networks.
- ragebol 5y ago
  You can ban anything you want, but enforcing bans is where the trouble is.
- 542458 5y ago
  I don’t think this would be a ban from a technology standpoint. It’s from a legal/financial standpoint - so yes, you would still be physically able to download and run the BTC software, but nobody would be allowed to officially deal in it. It’s like how banning murder doesn’t eliminate murder - but that doesn’t mean that the ban doesn’t still dramatically reduce the incidence of it.
belter 5y ago
Discussion also happening here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470955

55 points by BreathHiker 5y ago

The reason we have to go to the trouble of making cryptocurrencies is that busybodies like this guy are endlessly trying to reduce our freedom. They're not trying to look out for people; they're trying to protect their ability to print money and steal. In crypto parlance, they want to remain the VIPs that have centralized special privileged access to create tokens, and force usage thereof. But now we have the technology to enforce currency issuance by immutable programs. That's a better way, because programs are very strong exactly where humans are very weak.

hnbad 5y ago
Just to be clear, by "ability to print money and steal" you mean having a central bank and levying taxes? You're making a moral argument against the idea of government controlled currency in general, yes? Can you clarify why you think controlled currencies are morally bad and how cryptocurrencies are better? I'd love to hear a less abstract argument than "more freedom". EDIT: I assume downvotes mean there are people who like cryptocurrencies and agree with the parent. Maybe some of those could answer my question? "Freedom" is a loaded term with conflicting definitions and ideas like "taxation is theft" don't stand in isolation because they imply logical conclusions that most people prefer not to make explicit.
- yenwel 5y ago
  money printing is done by handing it to banks at zero interest and flooded on the stock exchanges. The rich get richer and the poor can buy less with the same money since wages are the last thing to raise (while the rich buy up houses and commodities with their free money). Inflation is a tax on the poor and elderly. Literally since VAT is percentage-wise levied on relatively more expensive consumer goods and if wages rise they come in higher income pay scales for taxation. Crony capitalism at it's peak where the players get bail outs and handouts and the poor get poorer and the middle class disappears.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    Okay, and how do cryptocurrencies fix this? Mining is supposed to be increasingly cost prohibitive so in an ideal world it would eventually cease to have a meaningful impact on currency supply within practical timeframes. Assuming economic growth holds, this would mean constant deflation (i.e. value of the currency continually increases as its supply remains quasi constant while the overall economy increases). Since transfer of cryptocurrencies incurs transaction fees and the value of those currencies only ever increases, transactions would eventually become cost prohibitive for smaller values. So realistically it would seem that we'd eventually have to transition to representative money instead (i.e. you don't transfer crypto between wallets, you shift numbers in a trusted third party's database which itself holds crypto for you). This would lose most of the benefit of the blockchain for these smaller transactions and effectively create banks because these third parties would have operating expenses they would have to charge you for (either directly or by using your crypto for investments). So in other words, this sounds a lot like returning to the gold standard with extra steps.
    - bigger_inside 5y ago
      that "would" in your shift argument is already reality, that's the lightning network, which transmits bitcoin off-chain for pennies, but in a decentralized way, because it utilizes existing bitcoin balances on lightning nodes for it. There is still no bank, BUT there is a more centralized "arbiter", yes. So your argument does hold about the trustlessness, though not entirely the centralization. The one thing that's central in this debate is to understand that current currencies are built to be inflationary, which causes the need for constant economic growth. Bitcoin is not. The "bitcoin fixes it" meme is hopeful utopianism, I grant you that, but bitcoin would not carry this growth mandate in its bowels that state currencies do.
      - Kbelicius 5y ago
        > that "would" in your shift argument is already reality, that's the lightning network, The reality today isn't lightning network but centralized exchanges. That may change in the future but it might not.
- delaaxe 5y ago
  "Inflation is legalized counterfeiting and counterfeiting is criminalized inflation. "-Robert Breedlove
- atom_arranger 5y ago
  By printing money the government steals value from existing holders of currency. It’s effectively an undemocratic (amount is not generally voted on) tax on people’s earnings and cash savings.
  - masswerk 5y ago
    Inflation/deflation is an effect of the amount of money (or in general: any kind of material compensation for trade, work and services) available and which potential customers are able to spend and the amount of goods (and the capabilities to produce them), which are actually available. Meaning, it's a function and not necessarily a conspiracy. Edit: In other words, if you are working really hard and are making earnings which allow you to spend more on Teslas than Musk can produce, you are creating inflation. Money or other tokens.
- bigger_inside 5y ago
  not OP. But the less-buzzwordy argument is this: the existence of money itself isn't the problem. The problem is that the modern monetary system is built on inflation and supermassive debt, and this combination has a bunch of highly negative outcomes: -it systematically expropriates poor people. Inflation will make sure your money is worth gradually less, so the only option to save it is though real estate and stocks, which poor people have little access to. -this goes along with the need for companies, and the economy at large, to keep growing year over year. Our modern infinite-growth mandate, the thing that is actually destroying the planet, is based on the system of money we now have, as saving loses you money: you have to make more, consume more, make more, consume more, or everyone loses the money they have. That is to stay, money is no longer a store of value, which is one of its major functions. - speaking of destroying the planet, after the end of the gold standard, the current dollar/euro system is backed, in complictaed ways, by their uses in international trade, especially oil. After the fall of their productive capacites (all outsourced), the US now basically exports dollars to finance their internal consumption and worldwide hegemony. Because all nations need USD to trade, esp oil, the US can print and print and sink that into other countries that buy it while keeping inflation mus lower (still there) than it otherwise would be. This is a circle, as it both finances global hegemony, but also needs it: it is that hegemony that enforces the use of USD as a world transactional currency, and US "regime change" operations generally hit countries that try to escape this system. -a house of cards: central banks don't print most of the money; private banks do. "fractional reserve banking" means that banks only need a fraction of the money that they lend out on reserve, which means that when it has a million, it can make many millions in loans to customers, effectively creating the rest of the money every time it makes the loan. This is margin/leveraged trading on a global and massive scale, and it is what makes banks crash every time a hiccup occurs in that system. It's a time bomb. These are all massive systemic problems, and the -way- central banking is now organized is the problem. Could states organize this without these problems? sure; "gah states are unfreedom" is not the problem here, the capture of states by global corporate capitalism is. Will states change? no, of course not, not without a massive systemic crash or revolution. Do we need bitcoin to save this? strictly no, but bitcoiners see bitcoin as a sneaky trojan horse to destabilize this system, and -one- hope to overcome this massively cancerous state of affairs, for a host of reasons beyond mere dreaming that would double this already long comment in size. All I'm saying s: like everything, this is much, much more complicated than "bitcoin volatile" or "bitcoin energy bad".
f6v 5y ago
I don’t think that the Netherlands is the country where wealth is routinely stolen from common folk.
- becquerel 5y ago
  The economy of every capitalist country is based on the exploitation of the working class.
- mopsi 5y ago
  Netherlands is one of the largest channels between the EU and offshore tax havens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich
- b3lvedere 5y ago
  Depends how you obtained that wealth. The people love personal success stories, but dislike people who show off too much or exploited certain situations. There is this guy that made quite some money on covid masks. A lot of people were not too happy he made a profit on that.
  - adflux 5y ago
    People aren't happy about that because he told everyone he was doing it for free. That he wasn't making a profit on the deal. Also, he used inside info to sell his trash quality face masks. Fuck Sywert van Lienden, disgusting crisis profiteer.
- adflux 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in... Take a look at this list and see which country has the highest wealth inequality in the world. Hint: it's the Netherlands.
  - posix_me_less 5y ago
    Wow.
masswerk 5y ago
Fun fact: most of the money is issued by ordinary banks, not by the bodies presumably in control of the token/currency. (Any such control is rather remote and indirect.)

oblio 5y ago

I'm curious what's going to be left when the dust settles, probably in about 5 years. After all, since we're talking about the Netherlands, tulip bulbs are still around but most people don't care about them anymore.

patates 5y ago
They are in the top 20 countries in terms of GDP...
- rjknight 5y ago
  I think that when the op said “most people don’t care about them” they meant the tulip bulbs, not the Netherlands.
hnbad 5y ago
I'm not sure if you're being facetious but flowers are a massive business and account for something like 10% of their agricultural exports. Saying "most people don't care about them anymore" makes it sound like it's a niche industry, which I think undersells it quite a bit.
- oblio 5y ago
  Ummm... how many people care about tulip <<bulbs>>? Tulip bulbs are a niche topic, for sure. A lot of people care about tulips, but for all they care tulips could be birthed live by other tulip plants, that's how much they care about tulip bulbs :-)
ulzeraj 5y ago
Tulip mania was wildly exaggerated by Calvinists who wanted to create a precautionary tale against consumerism. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-...
- GekkePrutser 5y ago

dataflow 5y ago

Everyone needs to ban Bitcoin... and likely other cryptocurrencies. Not only are they by far the biggest enablers of ransomware (which we're supposedly taking seriously now), but Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. [1] Bitcoin already consumes 0.55% of energy produced globally. [2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 [2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...

oblio 5y ago
We need to ban all proof-of-work and generally all resource intensive cryptocurrencies.
- dataflow 5y ago
  I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe we should in general ban things that are a certain amount less energy efficient (say, 5x more wasteful) than the best technology we've achieved for a similar purpose so far. And progressively tax anything that's moderately more wasteful (say, 2x-5x). It's bad enough that we have cars on roads that are twice as wasteful as they could be, let alone a transaction processing mechanism that is literally a million times more wasteful than our existing technology.
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    Clears throat... [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report-the-u-s-military-emits-more-co2-than-many-industrialized-nations-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report...
    - bigger_inside 5y ago
      ...and the US military effectively backs the dollar, which makes this the energy footprint of the dollar. meanwhile, gold stripmines the soil in poor countries, where children die in mines, while the loot is carried off to the west, AND it uses much more energy than bitcoin. and bitcoin is technology to replace, at least partially, those two things. And like a car versus a bike, it does so with more utility: better to store, better to transport, better to divide into units. and it can use energy anywhere, whereas banks and gold mining have to use it where there is gold and people to use banks, which means that energy for these uses is actually newly made for this purpose. Bitcoin often and increasingly uses energy that was made, but not used: 1/3 of all global energy production is produced and then just seeps into the metaphorical ground, which is necessary as a network safety measure. Bitcoin miners put their ASICs there and take it, meaning no additional energy was produced and the opposite of waste occured: it prevented waste. Not to speak of the fact that bitcoin incentivizes green energy, because solar and wind are problematic for everyday use (bc you're so highly dependent on the whims of nature). Bitcoin is not your dryer; it can run whenenever it happens to be there, thereby increasing the efficiency of renewables massively. This whole argument suffers from a lot of ignorance about what's actually going on here.

22c 5y ago

The HN headline is a bit alarmist. The headline I see is "CPB director: The Netherlands must ban bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies". This is the opinion of the CPB director in a letter, so it's not binding in any way. > A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable, he says. That is why the Netherlands must intervene. Should the government be banning any speculative investment that appears to be in a bubble?

skrebbel 5y ago
Well, pyramid games are routinely banned. There are good arguments to be made that Bitcoin is a pyramid game much more than a "asset class in a bubble".
- 22c 5y ago
  I'm only talking about Pieter Hasekamp's arguments, which don't seem to be good ones. If he wants to argue that Bitcoin is a pyramid game, that's a different argument, but I can't see many people taking him seriously. Pieter's arguments are along the lines of a "Think of the Children"[1] style argument, or an appeal to consequences[2]. "We must ban cryptocurrency because if we don't, people might lose their money!" [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences
  - teekert 5y ago
    Well if they ban it we know for sure people will loose money.
  - skrebbel 5y ago
    Isn't he just trying to call it a pyramid game without actually calling it a pyramid game? (or ponzi scheme, etc etc same same). I don't know the nuances of his position but maybe him calling it what it is (ie a scam) can get them into all kinds of legal trouble if they don't have hard proof. And because the fraudsters are as distributed as the ledger, it's hard to come by hard proof. I mean, I think that Jack Dorsey is banking hard on bitcoin because he knows he's near the top of the pyramid and he wants as many fools as possible beneath him, but there's absolutely no way to prove that he's not just a soft idiot. Just guessing though, all I mean is "if we don't, people might lose their money!" would have applied to Bernie Madoff too.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

SCHiM 5y ago

Why should others decide if I can run useless hashing functions on my computer? Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible. Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. The real enablers of ransomware are the countries that shelter the R10 groups, raking in millions. There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian language keyboard, and it's not because they know Russians never pay ransom...

f6v 5y ago
> There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian language keyboard, and it's not because they know Russians never pay ransom... Why then?
- vultour 5y ago
  Because some countries turn a blind eye to ransomware operators in their territory, and are not targeted in return.
- gtyras2mrs 5y ago
  The theory (conspiracy or otherwise) that I've heard is that the Russian state looks the other way as long as ransomware makers don't affect Russian systems. So they exclude systems with Russian language keyboard to avoid impacting Russian systems (which might cause the Russian govt to take action against them)
- SCHiM 5y ago
  Because they run their operations from there, and don't mess around where they live. Part of their profits pays for protection. Extracting value, and crippling western companies aligns with the strategic goals of these countries. And ransomware is literally a 10B USD business.
bo0tzz 5y ago
>Price the electricity accordingly So I should pay significantly more on my bills, just because you want to play with some virtual coins?

xvector 5y ago

Maybe not. Monero is essential to financial freedom.

nicholasbraker 5y ago

The problem I have with this story is that Bitcoin with all its specific issues regarding CO2 emmisions etc. is thrown on the same heap as other cryptocurrencies or blockchain developments which serve other goals, have less of an environmental impact and do actually solve a problem. (e.g. Quant solving the interoperability problem between blockchains which are also in use by banks etc. as well as practical uses of ETH/FLOW/ADA etc.)

adflux 5y ago

"A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable", he says, as if its a certainty. I hate energy wasting crypto's and delusional moonboys, shitcoins and NFT's just about as much as anyone else, but saying things like this is just dumb...

Tepix 5y ago
We've head many cryptocurrency crashes already so chances are pretty good that he is right ;-)
- adflux 5y ago
  A stock market crash is inevitable, let's ban the stock market! A commodity crash is inevitable, let's ban trading commodities! A housing market crash is inevitable, let's ban real estate purchasing!
  - tutuca 5y ago
    I really see no problem with all the above.

Tepix 5y ago

I hope if a ban comes it will focus on PoW cryptocurrencies that are harmful for the environment.

gnrlst 5y ago

Bitcoin should perish, and quickly, for the reasons outlined. But "other cryptocurrencies" is a generalization that is too broad. Some alternatives are faster, feeless and 1000x more energy efficient. Sure, you may argue that countries may not want some uncontrollable asset to run rampant, but guess what: it's the whole point of cryptocurrencies -- a form of means of exchange that nobody can control. May not sound relevant in countries like US / EU, but look at how other monetary policies around the world are doing, run by incompetent and/or corrupt governments (venezuela, argentina, several african countries). Maybe "crypto" is not the answer, but a form of global money that no individual country can touch, and is more easily transferrable than physical assets like gold, will emerge.

camillomiller 5y ago

Also, they’re threatening the Netherlands position as Europe’s own fiscal paradise in disguise. You can’t make a Dutch sandwich with a double Irish with Bitcoin.

MagnumOpus 5y ago
No it doesn't and yes you can. Counting your beans in a different currency doesn't prevent you from needing to do tax accounting and from having to comply with tax laws if you sell beans in a country.

mantenpanther 5y ago

"Central Planning Bureau (CPB)" - this is fine...

Vinnl 5y ago
While it might sound like they're in charge of centrally drafting up communist-style policies, what it actually is is an institution that researches the effects of governments policies so the government has more data to plan their policies around. This also means that this is in no way a sign that the Netherlands is anywhere near actually executing on this.

flefto 5y ago

Errrrr.... did they get the news that crypto already crashed?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

timwaagh 5y ago

I agree with him, but more on philosophical grounds. The idea of crypto is to make taxation impossible and government irrelevant. If democracy is to be preserved, this obviously cannot happen. Therefore government has to fight back.

swinglock 5y ago

The Central Planning Bureau takes issue with decentralization? I am shocked!

nomercy400 5y ago

Nah, not based on this piece. This is the opinion of a director of one of many government agencies. CPB is the economic planning agency, so he is supposed to say things like this. But he is only one of many stakeholders in this subject. Once national bank, politics and public sentiment start making statements like this, it would get more weight. There's no way The Netherlands is going to lead the pack so publically on banning cryptocurrencies. That would be too politically unwise. I am not saying he is wrong. Just unlikely that The Netherlands is going to be the first to ban.

zerubeus 5y ago
Crypto is already banned in many countries, in my country Tunisia [1] you risk a big sentence if you get caught selling or buying crypto in the black market (Facebook/telegram groups) [1]https://www.businessnews.com.tn/Arrestation-d%EF%BF%BDun-jeune-homme-pour-avoir-utilis%EF%BF%BD-des-Bitcoins--Affaire-class%EF%BF%BDe-!,520,108668,3 https://www.businessnews.com.tn/Arrestation-d%EF%BF%BDun-jeu...

BreathHiker 5y ago

A bit unrelated, but this submission was top 3 on HN and suddenly seems removed from the /news page?

bifftastic 5y ago
This isn't the first time I've seen negative articles about cryptocurrencies suddenly drop down the rankings on this site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27215572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27215572
- BreathHiker 5y ago
  To bad, would love to see more discussions on this.
dandanua 5y ago
Because HN is a centralized platform and its owner has a big stack in crypto. So such "regulation" is logical. Ironically, isn't it?
- IngvarLynn 5y ago
  The real irony is that each "crypto bad" thread on HN is clearly someone's paid shill. Because every time it reiterates the same extremely primitive misconceptions about crypto. Surely there are some real useful woke idiots on HN but I refuse believe that they constitute a voting majority.

xiphias2 5y ago

Guggenheim and Elon Musk were heavily pushing the environmental disaster articles to move Bitcoin price down to buy (they just filed an SEC report about holding Bitcoin futures 2 days ago). As Bitcoin's not a security, they can legally push any news that they want to manipulate the price.

me_me_me 5y ago

> 'A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable' Here I will write a second article for you for free Housing market crash is inevitable - The Netherlands must ban housing market and other housing initiatives.

RONROC 5y ago
Housing market crash is not inevitable. The market crashed in 08 because banks gave loans to unqualified people who could not afford their mortgage(s) otherwise. The current housing “bubble” is driven by-and-large by private equity groups who see the real estate market (more so the single family home) as the safest place to park their money. Thing is, these people can afford them.
- bruce343434 5y ago
  More of an "entire society" crash then as actual working people fail to acquire homes.
  - RONROC 5y ago
    I agree. Once Wall St becomes your landlord, something is irreparably broken.

hubadu 5y ago

I don't think it is technically possible to ban bitcoin, only centralized exchanges. If a country decides to ban exchanges, it could end up creating an untraceable black market since people might start exchanging crypto <-> cash in the streets. Intelligence agencies would probably not be happy to lose such traceability capability. Drug dealers would be taking over this black market as it creates new incomes while simultaneously helping some of their money laundering needs. Blockchain startup ecosystem and crypto friendly entrepreneurs would leave your country. You would lose all related tax revenues and high-paying jobs.

lottin 5y ago
No one is going to buy and sell crypto on the streets, this is just nonsense.
- hubadu 5y ago
  I can understand your fierce will to ban crypto for environmental impact reason. However you cannot ban bitcoin, you just can't, that the whole purpose of its existence. And black markets have always existed and always will.
  - lottin 5y ago
    > you just can't Sorry, that's not an argument.
    - hubadu 5y ago
      You could make it illegal by law tomorrow, it doesn't change the fact that bitcoin would still exist and be used due to its decentralized nature.
      - lottin 5y ago
        The government can severely impair its appeal as a speculation vehicle and people would stop speculating with it. This is Bitcoin's primary use case. Some people who use it as a medium of exchange because they can't use real money for a variety of reasons might continue to use it, true, as well as a minority of hard-core fanatics who are attracted to bitcoin for ideological reasons regardless of practicality.

moepstar 5y ago

> “After all, the product itself has no intrinsic value and derives its appeal only from acceptance by others.” Ok, what's the intrinsic value of a $ or € bill then?

TrackerFF 5y ago
Ask yourself this: Assume that you have little or no knowledge in foreign countries, but you want to purchase some of their currencies - how would you go on and classify these currencies as "good" or "bad", when viewing them as potential investments. Besides simply looking up their historical exchange rates. It's obviously a complex problem, as we're dealing with parities here - but war/conflicts, poor economies, extreme inflation, and similar factors will drive the currency down. On the other hand, peace, strong economy / industries, etc. will drive them up. One might associate the intrinsic value of a currency with the overall economic health of its country, along with things like geopolitical stability, internal policies, and what not. It's a good mix of micro, macro, and politics. With cryptocurrencies, it's a bit harder to measure things that like. It's a stateless currency, with no industries or workers behind it. There are no wars or conflicts either. No policies made by politicians that can affect its value (in the abstract notion). Essentially, you only have supply and demand to go after - when trying to predict its future value.
- moepstar 5y ago
  Not arguing that what you said isn't true, however, if we just take the statement of the article like it's been written - it just doesn't make a difference if we're talking about the intrinsic value of either - BTC/$/€ Bitcoin is a stream of 1s and 0s, $ and € bills are pieces of paper (not talking about the raw material value of coins rn..). The value of $ and € (and ultimately any currency / fiat) is that has its appeal only from acceptance by others - which is part of the sentence i've copied from the article. Neither do have any intrinsic value.
  - TrackerFF 5y ago
    As far as I know, the USD doesn't have any intrinsic value after they went away from the gold standard - but again, people use all sort of measures as proxies for intrinsic value.

ramijames 5y ago

You can't ban peer to peer networks.

ragebol 5y ago
You can ban anything you want, but enforcing bans is where the trouble is.
542458 5y ago
I don’t think this would be a ban from a technology standpoint. It’s from a legal/financial standpoint - so yes, you would still be physically able to download and run the BTC software, but nobody would be allowed to officially deal in it. It’s like how banning murder doesn’t eliminate murder - but that doesn’t mean that the ban doesn’t still dramatically reduce the incidence of it.

belter 5y ago

Discussion also happening here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470955