16 ms·

Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

129 points by ushakov 5y ago

neals 5y ago
This is the 'Centraal Plan Bureau'. If you open up the front door, you're met with a cloud of dust. The parkinglot is filled with oldtimers and the interior is very 'that 70's show'.
- amelius 5y ago
  They even use cash money.
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    The Netherlands is a modern country we don't use cash unless we buy drugs. I don't even own a single coin at the moment lol.
- wardb 5y ago
  This description is too funny :) It does have a high amount of old man screaming at the cloud. You can have a lot of valid critical views of cryptocurrency (environmental impact / gambling aspect ), but this his view is very unhelpful Does CPB actually has anything to say here? I was expecting "De Nederlandse Bank" to be the organisation to set the rules here.
  - sushibowl 5y ago
    This is purely the personal opinion of a pubic official. Neither organization has any regulatory power on this topic. CPB is an independent agency providing economic prognoses and analysis. DNB is in charge of monetary policy but doesn't have the power to completely ban cryptocurrency. Anyway, when the ministry of finance investigated a crypto ban back in 2018 they concluded that it would be completely impractical to enforce such a ban. I don't think that has changed in any way.
  - ragebol 5y ago
    No, it's not a regulator and thus has no actual say over this matter. It supports policymakers by evaluating the economic effects of their plans. https://www.cpb.nl/en/what-does-cpb-do https://www.cpb.nl/en/what-does-cpb-do
  - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
    > but this his view is very unhelpful Did you read it? If so, why do you take this opinion? > Does CPB actually has anything to say here? The CPB does analysis to inform public policy making, they're not a legislative body. Neither is the DNB for that matter, the Ministry of Finance would make these laws.
  - apexalpha 5y ago
    Does CPB actually has anything to say here? No. They deliver forecasts and analysis for government policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_for_Economic_Policy_Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_for_Economic_Policy_Ana...
- rualca 5y ago
  > The parkinglot is filled with oldtimers and the interior is very 'that 70's show'. Could you please explain how that ad-hominem based on blatant ageism does anything to refute the points regarding the nature of cryptocurrencies?
  - ur-whale 5y ago
    >Could you please explain how that ad-hominem So, you're saying Baye's rule doesn't work anymore?
  - neals 5y ago
    Stop trolling. You make this about age. You are the agist one. Why would young people not be allowed to drive oldtimers and enjoy 70's style interior? Who are you to decide that such a thing is only allowed for those of a certain age. We live in a world where age should not matter and anybody of any age should be allowed to partake in society. You should real change your views.
    - ludamad 5y ago
      Please imagine, as me and the GP may, that one assumes oldtimers means the people pulling up in the parking lot. I wouldn't be so quick to think someone defending an age group underrepresented here is a troll
- shoto_io 5y ago
  Ban Crypto, ban the Cloud, ban Hashtags, ban Cyber, ban AI, ban Lambda, ban Rust, ban, ban, ban! EDIT: ban old cars, too!
  - psychoslave 5y ago
    We should call a ban for banning ban calls. Whether this ban call should apply to itself is left as an exercise.
- heywherelogingo 5y ago
  I don't think young people are using bitcoin for any reason other than to get rich quick. The young these days are highly conformant and compliant - got jabs? It's gen x and older who are thoughtfully rebellious.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    You think boomers are thoughtfully rebellious? The generation that presided over the entire planet getting polluted with plastic?
    - Lutger 5y ago
      Boomers aren't rebellious at all.
    - heywherelogingo 5y ago
      Hindsight is not thoughtful.
  - keymone 5y ago
    How about a reason not to get poor slowly through inflation and constant dilution of money?
detaro 5y ago
duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470109
Encybe 5y ago
> has no intrinsic value and is only valuable because others may accept it. So does USD
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chaganated 5y ago
  to be fair, we print it on some pretty nice paper
  - huseyinkeles 5y ago
    ~90% of the USD is also virtual. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblack/2020/03/01/who-needs-cryptocurrency-fedcoin-when-we-already-have-a-national-digital-currency/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblack/2020/03/01/who-needs...
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Sorry to burst your bubble (unless that was a joke in which case carry on), but as a foreigner, American currency is one of the most boring I’ve seen. More seriously: the USA really needs to retire the $1 notes from circulation a decade or more ago.
- Darmody 5y ago
  Or any other fiat currency. I want to see blockchain gone but most legislators don't understand it, they think it should be gone but they are not sure why so they end up with nonsense like this.
  - ludamad 5y ago
    It's also a bit ill-timed as Bitcoin is "now a fiat currency", if you go by El Salvador's wiki page
    - wsc981 5y ago
      > It's also a bit ill-timed as Bitcoin is "now a fiat currency", if you go by El Salvador's wiki page It's probably timed right now by the Dutch CPB because El Salvador accepted BTC as a fiat currency.
dadoge 5y ago
Lol after a country adopts it as legal tender, they say it’s not money Can’t make this up
- dd36 5y ago
  Who bribed or put the pressure on El Salvador? Outwardly, it doesn’t make any sense except as a publicity stunt.
  - dadoge 5y ago
    22% of their GDP is remittance based. The US treats them like shit since they have the USD as currency. God forbid a country wants more independence 70% of the country has no bank, for Bitcoin all you need is the internet and a simple wallet app.
    - mc32 5y ago
      All countries are free to have their own currency. People (rather than gov) default to dollars when the CB decides to turn on the printer indiscriminately or impose exchange restrictions. Back when I didn’t have money, opening a bank account was way cheaper than leasing a phone or buying one, so I don’t see how that makes sense other than you can do other things with the phone to amortize the cost.
    - bart_spoon 5y ago
      So to be clear, a country where 70% of individuals are unable to get access to a bank account do have consistent access to the internet, a smart phone or specialized hardware for carrying a wallet app, and are fine with storing their wealth in a vehicle that consistently swings in value in the double digits within 24 hours? The delusion regarding crypto has reached parody levels. This reads like something out of an Onion article.
      - dadoge 5y ago
        Read about the Bitcoin beach experiments there before jumping to conclusions like that https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lifestyle-technology-d30c52b39e16ef49e4b6342fdc885c92 https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lif...
dadoge 5y ago
“ Cryptocurrencies are not used in regular payment transactions” How can they say that with a straight face knowing what’s going on in El Salvador
- rualca 5y ago
  The only thing that happened in El Salvador was a public politician making a populist statement. It would make sense to point to Venezuela or Iran, but those examples don't get much attention for some reason.
  - dadoge 5y ago
    I agree Venezuela is a better use case, doesn’t mean they don’t have a use case too though…
- danielmg 5y ago
  It will never be used as a general currency by the man on the street. For example in the UK we have Direct Debits which are backed by the DD Guarantee. If a DD is wrong or fraudulent the bank must refund you without question and they initiate a DDIC (indemnity claim) against the creditor bank. This could not happen with Bitcoin. Same for problems such as push-payment fraud - they are rolling out confirmation of payee to try to tackle this. How could Bitcoin be a viable payment method in it's current form when addresses are anonymous (in the context of PPF)?
  - dadoge 5y ago
    UK is way better off than El Salvador. 70% if people in ES don’t have a bank acct. 50% have internet. Take a look at the Bitcoin beach experiment https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lifestyle-technology-d30c52b39e16ef49e4b6342fdc885c92 https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lif...
betwixthewires 5y ago
Of course he does. He won't be the last. That bit at the end about Gresham's law made me cringe. This guy doesn't have any business talking about money publicly unless it's asking questions and taking notes.
aww_dang 5y ago
Interesting how this narrative is forming. Politicians and bureaucrats around the globe are saying the same things in unison. BTC is framed as destructive or dangerous and CBDC is their solution. The same conclusion was arrived at in a recent Senate hearing chaired by Elizabeth Warren. Three out of four of her panelists had connections to the World Economic Forum. The fourth had connections to the US central bank. https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/building-a-stronger-financial-system-opportunities-of-a-central-bank-digital-currency https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/building-a-stronger-... https://www.weforum.org/people/neha-narula https://www.weforum.org/people/neha-narula https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/darrell-duffie https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/darrell-duffie https://digitaldollarproject.org/ https://digitaldollarproject.org/
- rualca 5y ago
  > BTC is framed as destructive or dangerous and CBDC is their solution. It's hard to refute their point when we've just saw bitcoin tanking and seeing its value drop to half in a few days.
  - snypher 5y ago
    Sounds like we should ban options trading also.
    - ur-whale 5y ago
      >Sounds like we should ban options trading also. Or oil and real estate. They keep going up and down in a completely unpredictable manner !
    - aww_dang 5y ago
      According to this logic, perhaps we should give the plunge protection team a mandate to guarantee BTC price stability and protect consumers from "danger"?
    - cmh89 5y ago
      Options trading has far more structure to try and keep you from hurting yourself than crypto does.
kokx 5y ago
Part of his (reported) reasoning is really strange: because Bitcoin is doomed to crash, we have to take action, so the Netherlands should ban it. Causing it to crash earlier rather than later. He also says that he isn't afraid that banning Bitcoin will fail, because a ban would lead to a crash.
- vanviegen 5y ago
  No, what it actually recommends is banning Bitcoin in the Netherlands before it crashes, forcing Dutch 'investors' to exit before the Ponzi scheme collapses.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Two hypotheticals: 1) BTC replaces all world currencies, then crashes to $0.005/BTC (PPP) 2) BTC crashes today to $0.005/BTC In which hypothetical does the crash cause least damage?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
kyranjamie 5y ago
Source article (in Dutch) https://www.cpb.nl/nederland-moet-de-bitcoin-in-de-ban-doen https://www.cpb.nl/nederland-moet-de-bitcoin-in-de-ban-doen
BreathHiker 5y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470109
throwaaskjdfh 5y ago
Supporters of Bitcoin should be in favor of making it illegal in as many jurisdictions as possible. It's the only way to be sure it's as resistant to government power as it claims to be.
- nathias 5y ago
  Yea its really great to be prosecuted for no reason except the whims of the powerful, we should really all be in favor of making everything illegal by default.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    While I agree with the sarcastically made point that the whims of the powerful are not by themselves good enough reason to outlaw things, one of the more frustrating arguments made in favour of Bitcoin is that it can free us from government control. I say that claim is not true, and recon bitcoin is all hat and no cattle in this regard. I also reckon that when the government is sufficiently democratic (i.e. not just the whims of the powerful), undermining it is a bad thing, which is the only reason I don’t want to say “time for Bitcoin to prove us wrong”.
  - throwaaskjdfh 5y ago
    No, being prosecuted at the whim of the powerful is horrible, but Bitcoin claims to be a kind of technological "escape hatch" from this kind of abuse. The sooner we find out that it isn't an escape hatch, the better. We can then return to social and political hard work of curbing the powerful, instead of pretending we can just take our cryptocurrencies and escape.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - gordian-mind 5y ago
      How about you keep pretending to "curb the powerful" and stop arguing in bad faith against cryptocurrencies?
jbverschoor 5y ago
I’m surprised someone is allowed to post is super biased personal opinion as if it’s the cpb’s
- jerf 5y ago
  This is a common political technique which is a variant of "floating a trial balloon": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon You put an idea out there in a way that can later be very cheaply walked back (because it wasn't an "official" idea), and gauge the reaction by the various interesting people to see how you want to proceed going forward. Bear in mind the various "interesting people" may not include "the general public", despite this being in a general public newsfeed. Or, as I expect is probably this case, they may be interested in "the general public's" reaction but it may be a secondary goal vs. simply using the news media to gauge the response from the rest of the financial industry insiders. This directory is likely to get various calls from various important people making various points pro or con now. Sometime in the next couple of weeks there will probably be some other release from this organization couched in diplo-speak. That is, if they say something like "decided not to pursue this at this time" it's quite possibly because their inbox was a sea of flame from the important people, whereas "are continuing to consider the matter" means they may have gotten conflicting, neutral, or tepid responses, and "developing a plan to pursue this matter going forward" means they may have gotten uniformly positive responses behind the scenes and a strong order from the Powers that Be to go ahead and be the ones who pursue this and take the heat for doing it. But in diplo-speak you almost never make strong commitments, you just barely deviate from "neutral" and expect people in the know to pick up what you're laying down.
Shadonototro 5y ago
bitcoins show the nasty nature of the people all about profits, nobody care about solving problems, they just want the price to grow to make profit from their investment
- throwaway803453 5y ago
  I recall attending Bay Area cryptocurrency meetups before the 2017 price surge. After mid 2017 the average IQ at the meetups was inversely proportional to the price chart and it has been that way ever since. I can't fault someone for making a profit by researching a technology, investing, holding for the long term, and selling. We want capital to flow to the best ideas. But this is more MLM-style dog-eat-dog money making. It's unclear how it could have been prevented. Ultimately greed and excess ruins everything.
- WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
  housing, policing.
- tomcooks 5y ago
  Bitcoins show the same aspects in those who've been charging you 1-4% for the pleasure of doing what bitcoin achieves
  - axlee 5y ago
    Remind me the carbon footprint and transaction costs of Bitcoin again, and compare that to the costs from institutional payment gateways?
    - dexen 5y ago
      >the carbon footprint of Bitcoin Still less than the carbon footprint of the people running our current fiat-based financial infrastructure. It's the bankers who have jets, mansions and yachts, not the bitcoiners. Edit to clarify: Not that riches is somehow "wrong" - it's just that with major value comes major costs, which in practice mean major energy usage.
Tade0 5y ago
Putting aside for a moment whether this will actually happen, I would like to ask: how? How do you effectively ban circulation of certain types of information? The entertainment industry didn't manage to achieve this over the last 20 years.
- wyldfire 5y ago
  They can bar merchants from accepting the currency. This means that it's only useful in the black market.
  - zadler 5y ago
    Not a lot of stuff is bought directly with gold either. Itd’d be more like banning gold, except harder to enforce.
    - tachyonbeam 5y ago
      The original promise of bitcoin was that it would actually be useful as a currency, for buying stuff. Now that this hasn't panned out, and the problems preventing BTC from being used as a currency fail to be addressed, advocates have shifted the narrative to "bitcoin is digital gold". IMO, if the Netherlands bans bitcoin, they will also ban other similar cryptos that could actually be used as currencies. That negatively impacts the crypto markets for sure. It's not just about bitcoin. Would such a ban be hard to enforce? Sure, but not everyone feels comfortable doing things that could land them huge fines or even jail time. I certainly don't. Gold is used as a store of value because it's been universally recognized as valuable for thousands of years, in almost every culture. Would you really trust your life savings to bitcoin if we're in a climate where more and more countries are banning it? That would make redeeming your digital gold increasingly more illegal and difficult. Crypto bans definitely erode the "digital gold" proposition as well IMO.
- moksly 5y ago
  You don’t necessarily ban it as such, but with how accurate the European tax-agencies have been with collecting on the crypto-currency people trade, it doesn’t seem hard for them to track the trade. Then it’s simply a question of confiscating whatever you turn your Bitcoin into. It’s usually how they deal with criminal gangs as well. “Can’t prove how you managed to buy a million dollar mansion while being unemployed?”, it is now the governments property… The primary reason it doesn’t really work on crime in general is because most of the money doesn’t stay where the drugs are sold, but most Bitcoin speculators/investors aren’t setup to live outside “the law”. In Holland it could be as easy as simply having the banks confiscate any money that arrive from exchanges and blocking any transfers in the other direction. It wouldn’t exactly end Bitcoin as you point out, but it would make them rather worthless to most people.
deleted 5y ago
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Growling_owl 5y ago
Nobody, not even Biden has the political goodwill to make Bitcoin illegal and enrage so many constituents (aka lost votes) The only ones who maybe can do it are Xi and Putin, and the latter seems more pro than against because everything which goes against the dollar is Putin's friend. Xi is also on and off again with Bitcoin but every day which goes by in which he is not decisive is a day in favor of Bitcoin. You are left with the Warren, Sanders, Corbyn types as well as this Dutch guy who have only one style of messaging: modern day Robinhoods (or Pocahontas) trying to take money away from people who work and make sacrifices to get ahead in life and redistribute it to themselves
- emn13 5y ago
  Even if the people you label modern day robinhoods (but that take money away from people who work and make sacrifices to get ahead in life and redistribute it to themselves, which is not quite the typical robinhood version) really are as self-serving as you suggest - do you really think that making bitcoint would enrage so many constituents? How many people do you think actually hold bitcoin? https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/ estimates there are around 15.3 million people in north america, and of those how many actually care deeply about this issue? Additionally, realize that how much this hurts dramatically depends on how such a ban were to come into force. I mean - I don't think there's a chance in hell Biden will ban bitcoins, but rather because it's just not a priority, not because this is electoral suicide.
  - Growling_owl 5y ago
    1) Elections in America are always close, every race, every candidate is not safe. That's the nature of the 2 party system, hence every vote counts 2) You are getting your data from the wrong source, Coinbase alone has 56 million verified users. And unlike FB those are real , not bot, as every user have to be KYC'eed for AML purposes. That's just one exchange. 3) Also with regards to those millions of users, the situation is peculiar because it's for sure one person per family (the millennial or the college kid). So you enrage one person, but that person then would badmouth you with all the people in their close family who were otherwise neutral to the BTC ban, but now that you hurt their son finances, they just aren't anymore.
torcete 5y ago
The official narrative in the UK is "don't invest your money in cryptos, you are going to lose it all". However, if you happen to have cryptos you must declare them! I wonder if the dutch government bans Bitcoin, that means that there is no need to declare anything. After all, it doesn't fulfill any function as money, means of payment or store of value.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  I think technically the government probably does still want you to openly confess your crimes, financial or otherwise. That doesn't mean anyone expects it to actually happen, of course.
- tw04 5y ago
  That logic makes absolutely no sense. Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it has no value. Selling drugs is illegal in most countries. Drugs are still a store of value in those countries and most of them require you to pay taxes on gains from selling or trading them.
  - torcete 5y ago
    I must admit that I found that difficult to believe, but you are right. One of many links I found with a google search: https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/28/news/economy/illegal-income-tax/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/28/news/economy/illegal-income...
throwaway9870 5y ago
Imagine you live in an economically unstable country and have $1000 that you want to preserve. You don't want to put it in your counties currency because of the inclination for the govt to do what venezuela did. US dollars have historically been the best option, but with the trajectory the US dollar is on, that might scare you due to inflation. Perhaps gold is an option, but how do you safely buy it and what are you going to do with gold coins? They can be stolen so easily. So this is the long-term allure of bitcoin. Put your money on the blockchain and all you have to do is remember a pass phrase to retrieve it. It doesn't suffer from inflation or govt debasing because it isn't controlled by a govt. It could be the best place to store money in terms and maintain constant buying power. At least that is the idea, but in reality, it is a long way from that view. The issue is that people don't really buy into a consistent vision on what Bitcoin is and are still trying to figure out how much they value it and do price discovery. Let alone how it should be legislated. That being said, I believe the storage of value is a real problem and Bitcoin, or something like it, could be a valuable financial tool in a decade or so, once the dust has settled. It reminds be a bit of the Internet back in the early 90s. All kinds of discussions and speculation, most of which ended up being very wrong, but the core technology ended up being dominant.
adwi 5y ago
Re the carbon footprint argument with Bitcoin: I’m curious how the energy use of just a top 5 retail bank compares to Bitcoin. Chase [0], for instance, has over 5,000 retail locations and 16,000 ATMs. And the servers, and call centers/corporate offices to support 200,000 employees. And the cars they drive back and forth to those offices, and the construction of new ones, and flights (some private), etc etc. How much energy does that use—let alone the physical resources and their attendant carbon and energy use? Then you have another 4,500 branches from Bank of America, 7200 for Wells, etc. And that’s just the US. Not equivocating, nor arguing that Bitcoin could replace all their functions, but I think there might be more nuance to the energy argument, especially when at least other crypto currencies have an off ramp with their energy use via proof of stake. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Bank https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Bank
- dijit 5y ago
  This equivocation has been investigated quite succinctly: http://climatestate.com/2018/01/15/energy-consumption-bitcoin-vs-banking-system/#:~:text=For%20small%20bank%20ATM%20machines,100%20terawatt%20hours%20a%20year http://climatestate.com/2018/01/15/energy-consumption-bitcoi....
  - afiori 5y ago
    > [all the banks in the world have] a total [consumption] of close to a 100 terawatt hours a year. > The highest estimates for Bitcoins annual terawatt hours consumption is 28.67. This means, more than 3 times more efficient than a very conservative calculation of the cost of the global banking system. I think that a "transaction count" and/or "services provided" are missing from the calculation. ultimately it does nothing to answer the only relevant question: if the entire banking/financial system switched to bitcoins/crypto would consumption increase or decrease? I personally think it would be very hard to argue the case of a decrease
- tehsauce 5y ago
  It’s not even close. Banks provide so many services. your bank could be using a cryptocurrency as their backend, and you wouldn’t even know. the technology has almost zero impact to the user experience or efficiency. sorry
dcolkitt 5y ago
If Bitcoin was banned, then Dutch citizens could just as easily trade wrapped Bitcoin on the Ethereum, BSC or Solana networks. I don't really see how this works unless you literally ban all distributed consensus protocols. And even so, how are you suppose to ban people from "holding" crypto. Transacting I can understand. But holding simply involves storing or remembering a private key. Are you going to ban people if you find a decade old USB stick with a cold wallet? Will you interrogate people, Clockwork Orange style, to make sure they forget their brain wallet phrase? If somebody was using the same public/private key for their other data will you force them to delete their entire crypto identity?

129 points by ushakov 5y ago

This is the 'Centraal Plan Bureau'. If you open up the front door, you're met with a cloud of dust. The parkinglot is filled with oldtimers and the interior is very 'that 70's show'.

amelius 5y ago
They even use cash money.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  The Netherlands is a modern country we don't use cash unless we buy drugs. I don't even own a single coin at the moment lol.
wardb 5y ago
This description is too funny :) It does have a high amount of old man screaming at the cloud. You can have a lot of valid critical views of cryptocurrency (environmental impact / gambling aspect ), but this his view is very unhelpful Does CPB actually has anything to say here? I was expecting "De Nederlandse Bank" to be the organisation to set the rules here.
- sushibowl 5y ago
  This is purely the personal opinion of a pubic official. Neither organization has any regulatory power on this topic. CPB is an independent agency providing economic prognoses and analysis. DNB is in charge of monetary policy but doesn't have the power to completely ban cryptocurrency. Anyway, when the ministry of finance investigated a crypto ban back in 2018 they concluded that it would be completely impractical to enforce such a ban. I don't think that has changed in any way.
- ragebol 5y ago
  No, it's not a regulator and thus has no actual say over this matter. It supports policymakers by evaluating the economic effects of their plans. https://www.cpb.nl/en/what-does-cpb-do https://www.cpb.nl/en/what-does-cpb-do
- IkmoIkmo 5y ago
  > but this his view is very unhelpful Did you read it? If so, why do you take this opinion? > Does CPB actually has anything to say here? The CPB does analysis to inform public policy making, they're not a legislative body. Neither is the DNB for that matter, the Ministry of Finance would make these laws.
- apexalpha 5y ago
  Does CPB actually has anything to say here? No. They deliver forecasts and analysis for government policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_for_Economic_Policy_Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_for_Economic_Policy_Ana...
rualca 5y ago
> The parkinglot is filled with oldtimers and the interior is very 'that 70's show'. Could you please explain how that ad-hominem based on blatant ageism does anything to refute the points regarding the nature of cryptocurrencies?
- ur-whale 5y ago
  >Could you please explain how that ad-hominem So, you're saying Baye's rule doesn't work anymore?
- neals 5y ago
  Stop trolling. You make this about age. You are the agist one. Why would young people not be allowed to drive oldtimers and enjoy 70's style interior? Who are you to decide that such a thing is only allowed for those of a certain age. We live in a world where age should not matter and anybody of any age should be allowed to partake in society. You should real change your views.
  - ludamad 5y ago
    Please imagine, as me and the GP may, that one assumes oldtimers means the people pulling up in the parking lot. I wouldn't be so quick to think someone defending an age group underrepresented here is a troll
shoto_io 5y ago
Ban Crypto, ban the Cloud, ban Hashtags, ban Cyber, ban AI, ban Lambda, ban Rust, ban, ban, ban! EDIT: ban old cars, too!
- psychoslave 5y ago
  We should call a ban for banning ban calls. Whether this ban call should apply to itself is left as an exercise.
heywherelogingo 5y ago
I don't think young people are using bitcoin for any reason other than to get rich quick. The young these days are highly conformant and compliant - got jabs? It's gen x and older who are thoughtfully rebellious.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  You think boomers are thoughtfully rebellious? The generation that presided over the entire planet getting polluted with plastic?
  - Lutger 5y ago
    Boomers aren't rebellious at all.
  - heywherelogingo 5y ago
    Hindsight is not thoughtful.
- keymone 5y ago
  How about a reason not to get poor slowly through inflation and constant dilution of money?

detaro 5y ago

duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470109

Encybe 5y ago

> has no intrinsic value and is only valuable because others may accept it. So does USD

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chaganated 5y ago
to be fair, we print it on some pretty nice paper
- huseyinkeles 5y ago
  ~90% of the USD is also virtual. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblack/2020/03/01/who-needs-cryptocurrency-fedcoin-when-we-already-have-a-national-digital-currency/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblack/2020/03/01/who-needs...
- ben_w 5y ago
  Sorry to burst your bubble (unless that was a joke in which case carry on), but as a foreigner, American currency is one of the most boring I’ve seen. More seriously: the USA really needs to retire the $1 notes from circulation a decade or more ago.
Darmody 5y ago
Or any other fiat currency. I want to see blockchain gone but most legislators don't understand it, they think it should be gone but they are not sure why so they end up with nonsense like this.
- ludamad 5y ago
  It's also a bit ill-timed as Bitcoin is "now a fiat currency", if you go by El Salvador's wiki page
  - wsc981 5y ago
    > It's also a bit ill-timed as Bitcoin is "now a fiat currency", if you go by El Salvador's wiki page It's probably timed right now by the Dutch CPB because El Salvador accepted BTC as a fiat currency.

dadoge 5y ago

Lol after a country adopts it as legal tender, they say it’s not money Can’t make this up

dd36 5y ago
Who bribed or put the pressure on El Salvador? Outwardly, it doesn’t make any sense except as a publicity stunt.
- dadoge 5y ago
  22% of their GDP is remittance based. The US treats them like shit since they have the USD as currency. God forbid a country wants more independence 70% of the country has no bank, for Bitcoin all you need is the internet and a simple wallet app.
  - mc32 5y ago
    All countries are free to have their own currency. People (rather than gov) default to dollars when the CB decides to turn on the printer indiscriminately or impose exchange restrictions. Back when I didn’t have money, opening a bank account was way cheaper than leasing a phone or buying one, so I don’t see how that makes sense other than you can do other things with the phone to amortize the cost.
  - bart_spoon 5y ago
    So to be clear, a country where 70% of individuals are unable to get access to a bank account do have consistent access to the internet, a smart phone or specialized hardware for carrying a wallet app, and are fine with storing their wealth in a vehicle that consistently swings in value in the double digits within 24 hours? The delusion regarding crypto has reached parody levels. This reads like something out of an Onion article.
    - dadoge 5y ago
      Read about the Bitcoin beach experiments there before jumping to conclusions like that https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lifestyle-technology-d30c52b39e16ef49e4b6342fdc885c92 https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lif...

dadoge 5y ago

“ Cryptocurrencies are not used in regular payment transactions” How can they say that with a straight face knowing what’s going on in El Salvador

rualca 5y ago
The only thing that happened in El Salvador was a public politician making a populist statement. It would make sense to point to Venezuela or Iran, but those examples don't get much attention for some reason.
- dadoge 5y ago
  I agree Venezuela is a better use case, doesn’t mean they don’t have a use case too though…
danielmg 5y ago
It will never be used as a general currency by the man on the street. For example in the UK we have Direct Debits which are backed by the DD Guarantee. If a DD is wrong or fraudulent the bank must refund you without question and they initiate a DDIC (indemnity claim) against the creditor bank. This could not happen with Bitcoin. Same for problems such as push-payment fraud - they are rolling out confirmation of payee to try to tackle this. How could Bitcoin be a viable payment method in it's current form when addresses are anonymous (in the context of PPF)?
- dadoge 5y ago
  UK is way better off than El Salvador. 70% if people in ES don’t have a bank acct. 50% have internet. Take a look at the Bitcoin beach experiment https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lifestyle-technology-d30c52b39e16ef49e4b6342fdc885c92 https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lif...

betwixthewires 5y ago

Of course he does. He won't be the last. That bit at the end about Gresham's law made me cringe. This guy doesn't have any business talking about money publicly unless it's asking questions and taking notes.

aww_dang 5y ago

Interesting how this narrative is forming. Politicians and bureaucrats around the globe are saying the same things in unison. BTC is framed as destructive or dangerous and CBDC is their solution. The same conclusion was arrived at in a recent Senate hearing chaired by Elizabeth Warren. Three out of four of her panelists had connections to the World Economic Forum. The fourth had connections to the US central bank. https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/building-a-stronger-financial-system-opportunities-of-a-central-bank-digital-currency https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/building-a-stronger-... https://www.weforum.org/people/neha-narula https://www.weforum.org/people/neha-narula https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/darrell-duffie https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/darrell-duffie https://digitaldollarproject.org/ https://digitaldollarproject.org/

rualca 5y ago
> BTC is framed as destructive or dangerous and CBDC is their solution. It's hard to refute their point when we've just saw bitcoin tanking and seeing its value drop to half in a few days.
- snypher 5y ago
  Sounds like we should ban options trading also.
  - ur-whale 5y ago
    >Sounds like we should ban options trading also. Or oil and real estate. They keep going up and down in a completely unpredictable manner !
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    According to this logic, perhaps we should give the plunge protection team a mandate to guarantee BTC price stability and protect consumers from "danger"?
  - cmh89 5y ago
    Options trading has far more structure to try and keep you from hurting yourself than crypto does.

kokx 5y ago

Part of his (reported) reasoning is really strange: because Bitcoin is doomed to crash, we have to take action, so the Netherlands should ban it. Causing it to crash earlier rather than later. He also says that he isn't afraid that banning Bitcoin will fail, because a ban would lead to a crash.

vanviegen 5y ago
No, what it actually recommends is banning Bitcoin in the Netherlands before it crashes, forcing Dutch 'investors' to exit before the Ponzi scheme collapses.
ben_w 5y ago
Two hypotheticals: 1) BTC replaces all world currencies, then crashes to $0.005/BTC (PPP) 2) BTC crashes today to $0.005/BTC In which hypothetical does the crash cause least damage?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

kyranjamie 5y ago

Source article (in Dutch) https://www.cpb.nl/nederland-moet-de-bitcoin-in-de-ban-doen https://www.cpb.nl/nederland-moet-de-bitcoin-in-de-ban-doen

BreathHiker 5y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470109

throwaaskjdfh 5y ago

Supporters of Bitcoin should be in favor of making it illegal in as many jurisdictions as possible. It's the only way to be sure it's as resistant to government power as it claims to be.

nathias 5y ago
Yea its really great to be prosecuted for no reason except the whims of the powerful, we should really all be in favor of making everything illegal by default.
- ben_w 5y ago
  While I agree with the sarcastically made point that the whims of the powerful are not by themselves good enough reason to outlaw things, one of the more frustrating arguments made in favour of Bitcoin is that it can free us from government control. I say that claim is not true, and recon bitcoin is all hat and no cattle in this regard. I also reckon that when the government is sufficiently democratic (i.e. not just the whims of the powerful), undermining it is a bad thing, which is the only reason I don’t want to say “time for Bitcoin to prove us wrong”.
- throwaaskjdfh 5y ago
  No, being prosecuted at the whim of the powerful is horrible, but Bitcoin claims to be a kind of technological "escape hatch" from this kind of abuse. The sooner we find out that it isn't an escape hatch, the better. We can then return to social and political hard work of curbing the powerful, instead of pretending we can just take our cryptocurrencies and escape.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - gordian-mind 5y ago
    How about you keep pretending to "curb the powerful" and stop arguing in bad faith against cryptocurrencies?

jbverschoor 5y ago

I’m surprised someone is allowed to post is super biased personal opinion as if it’s the cpb’s

jerf 5y ago
This is a common political technique which is a variant of "floating a trial balloon": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon You put an idea out there in a way that can later be very cheaply walked back (because it wasn't an "official" idea), and gauge the reaction by the various interesting people to see how you want to proceed going forward. Bear in mind the various "interesting people" may not include "the general public", despite this being in a general public newsfeed. Or, as I expect is probably this case, they may be interested in "the general public's" reaction but it may be a secondary goal vs. simply using the news media to gauge the response from the rest of the financial industry insiders. This directory is likely to get various calls from various important people making various points pro or con now. Sometime in the next couple of weeks there will probably be some other release from this organization couched in diplo-speak. That is, if they say something like "decided not to pursue this at this time" it's quite possibly because their inbox was a sea of flame from the important people, whereas "are continuing to consider the matter" means they may have gotten conflicting, neutral, or tepid responses, and "developing a plan to pursue this matter going forward" means they may have gotten uniformly positive responses behind the scenes and a strong order from the Powers that Be to go ahead and be the ones who pursue this and take the heat for doing it. But in diplo-speak you almost never make strong commitments, you just barely deviate from "neutral" and expect people in the know to pick up what you're laying down.

Shadonototro 5y ago

bitcoins show the nasty nature of the people all about profits, nobody care about solving problems, they just want the price to grow to make profit from their investment

throwaway803453 5y ago
I recall attending Bay Area cryptocurrency meetups before the 2017 price surge. After mid 2017 the average IQ at the meetups was inversely proportional to the price chart and it has been that way ever since. I can't fault someone for making a profit by researching a technology, investing, holding for the long term, and selling. We want capital to flow to the best ideas. But this is more MLM-style dog-eat-dog money making. It's unclear how it could have been prevented. Ultimately greed and excess ruins everything.
WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
housing, policing.
tomcooks 5y ago
Bitcoins show the same aspects in those who've been charging you 1-4% for the pleasure of doing what bitcoin achieves
- axlee 5y ago
  Remind me the carbon footprint and transaction costs of Bitcoin again, and compare that to the costs from institutional payment gateways?
  - dexen 5y ago
    >the carbon footprint of Bitcoin Still less than the carbon footprint of the people running our current fiat-based financial infrastructure. It's the bankers who have jets, mansions and yachts, not the bitcoiners. Edit to clarify: Not that riches is somehow "wrong" - it's just that with major value comes major costs, which in practice mean major energy usage.

Tade0 5y ago

Putting aside for a moment whether this will actually happen, I would like to ask: how? How do you effectively ban circulation of certain types of information? The entertainment industry didn't manage to achieve this over the last 20 years.

wyldfire 5y ago
They can bar merchants from accepting the currency. This means that it's only useful in the black market.
- zadler 5y ago
  Not a lot of stuff is bought directly with gold either. Itd’d be more like banning gold, except harder to enforce.
  - tachyonbeam 5y ago
    The original promise of bitcoin was that it would actually be useful as a currency, for buying stuff. Now that this hasn't panned out, and the problems preventing BTC from being used as a currency fail to be addressed, advocates have shifted the narrative to "bitcoin is digital gold". IMO, if the Netherlands bans bitcoin, they will also ban other similar cryptos that could actually be used as currencies. That negatively impacts the crypto markets for sure. It's not just about bitcoin. Would such a ban be hard to enforce? Sure, but not everyone feels comfortable doing things that could land them huge fines or even jail time. I certainly don't. Gold is used as a store of value because it's been universally recognized as valuable for thousands of years, in almost every culture. Would you really trust your life savings to bitcoin if we're in a climate where more and more countries are banning it? That would make redeeming your digital gold increasingly more illegal and difficult. Crypto bans definitely erode the "digital gold" proposition as well IMO.
moksly 5y ago
You don’t necessarily ban it as such, but with how accurate the European tax-agencies have been with collecting on the crypto-currency people trade, it doesn’t seem hard for them to track the trade. Then it’s simply a question of confiscating whatever you turn your Bitcoin into. It’s usually how they deal with criminal gangs as well. “Can’t prove how you managed to buy a million dollar mansion while being unemployed?”, it is now the governments property… The primary reason it doesn’t really work on crime in general is because most of the money doesn’t stay where the drugs are sold, but most Bitcoin speculators/investors aren’t setup to live outside “the law”. In Holland it could be as easy as simply having the banks confiscate any money that arrive from exchanges and blocking any transfers in the other direction. It wouldn’t exactly end Bitcoin as you point out, but it would make them rather worthless to most people.

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Growling_owl 5y ago

Nobody, not even Biden has the political goodwill to make Bitcoin illegal and enrage so many constituents (aka lost votes) The only ones who maybe can do it are Xi and Putin, and the latter seems more pro than against because everything which goes against the dollar is Putin's friend. Xi is also on and off again with Bitcoin but every day which goes by in which he is not decisive is a day in favor of Bitcoin. You are left with the Warren, Sanders, Corbyn types as well as this Dutch guy who have only one style of messaging: modern day Robinhoods (or Pocahontas) trying to take money away from people who work and make sacrifices to get ahead in life and redistribute it to themselves

emn13 5y ago
Even if the people you label modern day robinhoods (but that take money away from people who work and make sacrifices to get ahead in life and redistribute it to themselves, which is not quite the typical robinhood version) really are as self-serving as you suggest - do you really think that making bitcoint would enrage so many constituents? How many people do you think actually hold bitcoin? https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/ estimates there are around 15.3 million people in north america, and of those how many actually care deeply about this issue? Additionally, realize that how much this hurts dramatically depends on how such a ban were to come into force. I mean - I don't think there's a chance in hell Biden will ban bitcoins, but rather because it's just not a priority, not because this is electoral suicide.
- Growling_owl 5y ago
  1) Elections in America are always close, every race, every candidate is not safe. That's the nature of the 2 party system, hence every vote counts 2) You are getting your data from the wrong source, Coinbase alone has 56 million verified users. And unlike FB those are real , not bot, as every user have to be KYC'eed for AML purposes. That's just one exchange. 3) Also with regards to those millions of users, the situation is peculiar because it's for sure one person per family (the millennial or the college kid). So you enrage one person, but that person then would badmouth you with all the people in their close family who were otherwise neutral to the BTC ban, but now that you hurt their son finances, they just aren't anymore.

torcete 5y ago

The official narrative in the UK is "don't invest your money in cryptos, you are going to lose it all". However, if you happen to have cryptos you must declare them! I wonder if the dutch government bans Bitcoin, that means that there is no need to declare anything. After all, it doesn't fulfill any function as money, means of payment or store of value.

mumblemumble 5y ago
I think technically the government probably does still want you to openly confess your crimes, financial or otherwise. That doesn't mean anyone expects it to actually happen, of course.
tw04 5y ago
That logic makes absolutely no sense. Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it has no value. Selling drugs is illegal in most countries. Drugs are still a store of value in those countries and most of them require you to pay taxes on gains from selling or trading them.
- torcete 5y ago
  I must admit that I found that difficult to believe, but you are right. One of many links I found with a google search: https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/28/news/economy/illegal-income-tax/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/28/news/economy/illegal-income...

throwaway9870 5y ago

Imagine you live in an economically unstable country and have $1000 that you want to preserve. You don't want to put it in your counties currency because of the inclination for the govt to do what venezuela did. US dollars have historically been the best option, but with the trajectory the US dollar is on, that might scare you due to inflation. Perhaps gold is an option, but how do you safely buy it and what are you going to do with gold coins? They can be stolen so easily. So this is the long-term allure of bitcoin. Put your money on the blockchain and all you have to do is remember a pass phrase to retrieve it. It doesn't suffer from inflation or govt debasing because it isn't controlled by a govt. It could be the best place to store money in terms and maintain constant buying power. At least that is the idea, but in reality, it is a long way from that view. The issue is that people don't really buy into a consistent vision on what Bitcoin is and are still trying to figure out how much they value it and do price discovery. Let alone how it should be legislated. That being said, I believe the storage of value is a real problem and Bitcoin, or something like it, could be a valuable financial tool in a decade or so, once the dust has settled. It reminds be a bit of the Internet back in the early 90s. All kinds of discussions and speculation, most of which ended up being very wrong, but the core technology ended up being dominant.

adwi 5y ago

Re the carbon footprint argument with Bitcoin: I’m curious how the energy use of just a top 5 retail bank compares to Bitcoin. Chase [0], for instance, has over 5,000 retail locations and 16,000 ATMs. And the servers, and call centers/corporate offices to support 200,000 employees. And the cars they drive back and forth to those offices, and the construction of new ones, and flights (some private), etc etc. How much energy does that use—let alone the physical resources and their attendant carbon and energy use? Then you have another 4,500 branches from Bank of America, 7200 for Wells, etc. And that’s just the US. Not equivocating, nor arguing that Bitcoin could replace all their functions, but I think there might be more nuance to the energy argument, especially when at least other crypto currencies have an off ramp with their energy use via proof of stake. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Bank https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Bank

dijit 5y ago
This equivocation has been investigated quite succinctly: http://climatestate.com/2018/01/15/energy-consumption-bitcoin-vs-banking-system/#:~:text=For%20small%20bank%20ATM%20machines,100%20terawatt%20hours%20a%20year http://climatestate.com/2018/01/15/energy-consumption-bitcoi....
- afiori 5y ago
  > [all the banks in the world have] a total [consumption] of close to a 100 terawatt hours a year. > The highest estimates for Bitcoins annual terawatt hours consumption is 28.67. This means, more than 3 times more efficient than a very conservative calculation of the cost of the global banking system. I think that a "transaction count" and/or "services provided" are missing from the calculation. ultimately it does nothing to answer the only relevant question: if the entire banking/financial system switched to bitcoins/crypto would consumption increase or decrease? I personally think it would be very hard to argue the case of a decrease
tehsauce 5y ago
It’s not even close. Banks provide so many services. your bank could be using a cryptocurrency as their backend, and you wouldn’t even know. the technology has almost zero impact to the user experience or efficiency. sorry

dcolkitt 5y ago

If Bitcoin was banned, then Dutch citizens could just as easily trade wrapped Bitcoin on the Ethereum, BSC or Solana networks. I don't really see how this works unless you literally ban all distributed consensus protocols. And even so, how are you suppose to ban people from "holding" crypto. Transacting I can understand. But holding simply involves storing or remembering a private key. Are you going to ban people if you find a decade old USB stick with a cold wallet? Will you interrogate people, Clockwork Orange style, to make sure they forget their brain wallet phrase? If somebody was using the same public/private key for their other data will you force them to delete their entire crypto identity?