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As a person living in an authoritarian state, the inability of the government or other authority to reverse a payment looks like a very attractive feature to me

As a person living in an authoritarian state, the inability of the government or other authority to reverse a payment looks like a very attractive feature to me. Yes, it does have downsides. They just don't look as troublesome as being completely cut off all financial services with a simple stroke of a pen - which was experienced by many members of political opposition in my country. "... but but Drugs! Criminals!" is what common people say at this point, to which I answer that drugs and crime flourished long before Bitcoin came to exist.

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
jayd16 5y ago
Is the public nature of transaction worrisome to you? Seems like that might also be a political issue.
prox 5y ago
This is really the heart of the matter. On hand , yay, great we can subvert nasty states using cryptocoin, but also could undermine legitimate democracies. Swords cuts both ways. No one can deny the wave of ransomware and cryptocoin are not related. How do we balance it so it can provide a net positive for humanity?
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Yeah, nobody ever asked for ransom before cryptocoins. /s Legitimate democracy can't be undermined by an international currency not controlled be the government. In fact, it can be reinforced by it. This issue is very similar to free speech: the good it does by making the government unable to silence political opponents far outweights the harm done by extremists and lunatics of all sorts.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    People tried ransomware before cryptocurrencies. Payouts were minuscule compared to what cryptocurrencies are now enabling. And no, it is not at all similar to free speech. Cryptocurrencies do massive harm - to the environment, to innocent people losing their money to scammers and frauds, and to the entire economy through enabling ransomware - and tiny, tiny amounts of good, which dwindle in comparison to the harm.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Do you have some numbers to back these claims about massive harm? Without estimates this sounds like a typical fear-mongering. If you provide numbers, we can compare this massive harm with some other types of massive harms. As for tiny amount of good - reclaiming control over storage of value from The Man is such a tremendous achievement that will help us fight tyranny everywhere. Bitcoin donations was the only type of funding russian government failed to stop when it started to clamp down the opposition. For me, this capability trumps your concerns about environment and crime any day.
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        0.1% of all the power generated on the entire planet is being destroyed by bitcoin mining. If that is not massive harm I do not know what is.
        Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        Pffff, several orders of magnitude more energy is "destroyed" by dumb heating, because there is a lot of places where humans can't survive without warmth. It is only a matter of time when byproduct heat generated by mining will be used to heat water and homes.
        user-the-name 5y ago
        There is a whole world of difference between heating homes across the planet, and running a network that can do 7 transactions a second. A single home PC from 2004 could run the bitcoin network, but instead, it uses 0.1% of all the energy in the world. It is by a wide margin the most ridiculously inefficient thing ever created. And it won't improve, because it is built that way by design.
rstuart4133 5y ago
Some things are near incomprehensible to us in the West. One was what happened in Lebanon after the port explosion. An Australian who had married a Lebanese wife and moved to Lebanon reported the couple had decided the move was a bad idea, and were saving for a relocation back to Australia. Then the explosion happened, and the government literally ran out of money. The solution was apparently to raid the citizens savings accounts. From https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/lebanese-cannot-access-money-in-banks-since-late-2019/2158782 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/lebanese-cannot-access-mone... : > As a result of monetary policies implemented by central bank Governor Riad Salameh, people are currently unable to withdraw money even from local currency accounts, she added. I don't know if their savings were permanently taken or merely "borrowed" for a while, but in any case the move to Australia was taken off the table when it looked most desirable. In that scenario, the non-reversibility of Bitcoin transactions looks real attractive. I think it is fair to say crypto currencies look most attractive when the traditional trust networks we humans have crafted out of out of bankers, institutions and laws break down. While the crypto currencies have their weaknesses - the 51% attack is very real and the power consumption of Argentina can seem over the top, they provide a very concrete, measurable level of trustworthiness. You know what it will take to break it. The soft human trust networks can and do break in a myriad of ways, so often we given them a name - "black swan events".
- anonu 5y ago
  A haircut on savings accounts is comprehensible. It happened in Cyprus during the GFC. Inflation and/or negative interest rates (like in Europe) can also be viewed as a slow bleed on savings that are not invested in hard assets.

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

jayd16 5y ago

Is the public nature of transaction worrisome to you? Seems like that might also be a political issue.

prox 5y ago

This is really the heart of the matter. On hand , yay, great we can subvert nasty states using cryptocoin, but also could undermine legitimate democracies. Swords cuts both ways. No one can deny the wave of ransomware and cryptocoin are not related. How do we balance it so it can provide a net positive for humanity?

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Yeah, nobody ever asked for ransom before cryptocoins. /s Legitimate democracy can't be undermined by an international currency not controlled be the government. In fact, it can be reinforced by it. This issue is very similar to free speech: the good it does by making the government unable to silence political opponents far outweights the harm done by extremists and lunatics of all sorts.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  People tried ransomware before cryptocurrencies. Payouts were minuscule compared to what cryptocurrencies are now enabling. And no, it is not at all similar to free speech. Cryptocurrencies do massive harm - to the environment, to innocent people losing their money to scammers and frauds, and to the entire economy through enabling ransomware - and tiny, tiny amounts of good, which dwindle in comparison to the harm.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Do you have some numbers to back these claims about massive harm? Without estimates this sounds like a typical fear-mongering. If you provide numbers, we can compare this massive harm with some other types of massive harms. As for tiny amount of good - reclaiming control over storage of value from The Man is such a tremendous achievement that will help us fight tyranny everywhere. Bitcoin donations was the only type of funding russian government failed to stop when it started to clamp down the opposition. For me, this capability trumps your concerns about environment and crime any day.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      0.1% of all the power generated on the entire planet is being destroyed by bitcoin mining. If that is not massive harm I do not know what is.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        Pffff, several orders of magnitude more energy is "destroyed" by dumb heating, because there is a lot of places where humans can't survive without warmth. It is only a matter of time when byproduct heat generated by mining will be used to heat water and homes.
        user-the-name 5y ago
        There is a whole world of difference between heating homes across the planet, and running a network that can do 7 transactions a second. A single home PC from 2004 could run the bitcoin network, but instead, it uses 0.1% of all the energy in the world. It is by a wide margin the most ridiculously inefficient thing ever created. And it won't improve, because it is built that way by design.

rstuart4133 5y ago

Some things are near incomprehensible to us in the West. One was what happened in Lebanon after the port explosion. An Australian who had married a Lebanese wife and moved to Lebanon reported the couple had decided the move was a bad idea, and were saving for a relocation back to Australia. Then the explosion happened, and the government literally ran out of money. The solution was apparently to raid the citizens savings accounts. From https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/lebanese-cannot-access-money-in-banks-since-late-2019/2158782 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/lebanese-cannot-access-mone... : > As a result of monetary policies implemented by central bank Governor Riad Salameh, people are currently unable to withdraw money even from local currency accounts, she added. I don't know if their savings were permanently taken or merely "borrowed" for a while, but in any case the move to Australia was taken off the table when it looked most desirable. In that scenario, the non-reversibility of Bitcoin transactions looks real attractive. I think it is fair to say crypto currencies look most attractive when the traditional trust networks we humans have crafted out of out of bankers, institutions and laws break down. While the crypto currencies have their weaknesses - the 51% attack is very real and the power consumption of Argentina can seem over the top, they provide a very concrete, measurable level of trustworthiness. You know what it will take to break it. The soft human trust networks can and do break in a myriad of ways, so often we given them a name - "black swan events".

anonu 5y ago
A haircut on savings accounts is comprehensible. It happened in Cyprus during the GFC. Inflation and/or negative interest rates (like in Europe) can also be viewed as a slow bleed on savings that are not invested in hard assets.