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I usually side with the EFF, but here going at total war against cryptocurrencies seems right to me. I don't see any scientific or technological application th

I usually side with the EFF, but here going at total war against cryptocurrencies seems right to me. I don't see any scientific or technological application that could benefit humanity and would be developed from blockchain technology. I tried very hard to figure out uses for the hash machines once the cryptocurrencies will disappear, but sadly I could think of none. All of this silicon, these PCBs, will just be junk.

api 5y ago
It's precisely when people feel this way about things that large chunks of our civil liberties are forfeit. Precedents: the war on drugs, crusades against porn, alcohol prohibition, the war on terror, mandatory minimum sentencing, etc. It's a lynch mob mentality writ large and allows reckless legislators and police to gallop right over all kinds of civil boundaries that very much exist for a reason. A much narrower set of solutions could address your concerns: a tax on proof of work mining, a ban on the sale of hardware whose sole purpose is cryptocurrency mining, or a ban on domestic exchanges converting money to/from cryptocurrencies that use high-resource proof of work mechanisms. I see no reason to ban proof of stake or other consensus mechanism cryptocurrencies, and stepping up enforcement of existing KYC/AML regulations would help fight money laundering. I also must point out that real estate, sham art auctions, sham investments and businesses, and numerous other mechanisms collectively account for the vast bulk of all money laundering. Cryptocurrency is a niche player. It's also a niche player in the street drug market where the vast majority of transactions use physical cash. As far as bubbles and speculative manias go... it's legal for an adult to buy a lotto ticket (that is run by the state!) or go to a casino (permitted and regulated by the state). This is no worse. I might support raising taxes on short term speculative sorts of financial games, but those would also need to be applied to high frequency trading and speculative games run by hedge funds in conventional markets. Those are much larger than anything in crypto. I say all this as a mostly cryptocurrency skeptic.
- arrosenberg 5y ago
  You can’t compare bitcoin to porn, gambling, drugs and alcohol. Bitcoin is the only one that doesn’t affect dopamine levels in the brain, and that virtually no one would seek out if it was suddenly illegal.
  - henearkr 5y ago
    Well, a huge lot of people make usage of bitcoin like it is gambling (i.e. as a speculative asset). Cannot make generalities of course, but still.
snarf21 5y ago
Agreed, there is zero use cases outside of currency and unfortunately, most of the currencies are little more than gambling, pump/dump and pyramid schemes. The cryptos always crow about it being so censorship resistant. I guess we'll see how resistant it really is.
tromp 5y ago
> the hash machines Not all PoW is hash based. Some, like Cuckatoo Cycle [1], are based on writing and reading random bits within hundreds of MB of memory, and ASICs for such PoW are dominated by SRAM, which can in principle be repurposed. [1] https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo
- henearkr 5y ago
  Also PoS. Those are the grey area where I don't have as much strong opinions anymore. As they are less compute-intensive, the benefit is more likely.
LatteLazy 5y ago
I am sympathetic, I don't see much use for them. But... Just because you or I don't see the use case doesn't mean something should be illegal or that we should go to war with it. We've made this mistake before (prohibition, the war on drugs). If people want to waste their time/money on X, that's on them.
robot_no_419 5y ago
"I don't see any scientific or technological application that could benefit humanity and would be developed from blockchain technology." Cool, but there are plenty of financial, economic, and political applications of blockchain that will benefit humanity. Just because you don't understand the use case doesn't mean it doesn't have one.
- henearkr 5y ago
  It's not that I don't understand the use case. It's that the current use cases can be either replaced by preexisting less compute-intensive tech, or that the usage is just meaningless (gambling-like speculation, failed attempt at anonymity, tax avoidance, etc). However my comment is as well a call to everybody to think about it! I know I'm not very brilliant, so if anybody can do a favor to the world and find out something interesting, I'd be extremely happy :)
  - robot_no_419 5y ago
    "It's that the current use cases can be either replaced by preexisting less compute-intensive tech, or that the usage is just meaningless (gambling-like speculation, failed attempt at anonymity, tax avoidance, etc)." The fact that you've binned all the usage into the "meaningless" category means you don't understand the use case at all. It's an alternative to the current hegemonic global financial system centrally controlled by the USA. You might think it's useless but plenty of people disagree and are using it in a meaningful way. You put on a facade of humility and objectivity but your bias against cryptocurrency is pretty blatant.
    - henearkr 5y ago
      People are burning coal to mine virtual coins, so yes I am biased against that until I see any real benefit. Can you call this biased? And what you call financial hegemony is only the corollary of the commercial interconnection between world's countries, and the fact that the USA manage the biggest lender bank ever (the IMF). That would still be the same using a BTC-based IMF.
dogman144 5y ago
> I don't see any scientific or technological application that could benefit humanity and would be developed from blockchain technology. Assuming you work in tech, you must be aware how similar attitudes existed (within tech, as well) about what the internet itself would provide. How are you so certain that: A) you understand all the possible directions a new, network-effect driven tech could take in its applications B) none of them add value to humanity C) there are no parallels in your statement to "well horses work fine, why do I need cars."
- henearkr 5y ago
  As I said, I hoped I could think of some use for these hash machines. Same for the blockchain tech itself, i.e. some usage that would not be completely replaceable by some less compute-intensive tech. I honestly hope those usages exist. I really do. But now I don't think they do. But, frankly, even for Internet itself everybody could see the benefit quite early. Anyway, if you do find interesting uses that are not replaceable by simpler things, you would save a lot of garbage!! And thus would do a favor to the environment. So yeah I hope I'm wrong.
  - dogman144 5y ago
    A Classic quote from Paul Krugam indicates that quite a few smart folks, so not everybody, did not see the internet’s benefit quite early or even much later.
    - henearkr 5y ago
      Internet was already useful very early to transfer physics experiment data between labs (at the CERN).
jl2718 5y ago
What you are observing is the ugly opportunism of this war, and it is a war, between systems that are controlled by powerful people, and systems that are controlled by algorithms. This is not a new conflict. Democracy was an algorithmic victory until powerful people learned to subvert it. So too was religion, money, laws etc. This is how civilization advances. Cryptocurrency is a pure thing, an algorithmic method of storage, control and distribution of value, that came about because the old ways were failing. Now the old powers are fighting back. It’s important to realize that this is the only reason that cryptocurrency has any speculative value at all. If the treasury / federal reserve had seen bitcoin and adopted a protocol for algorithmic control of the money supply, and a safer wallet for dollar holders, then Bitcoin would have zero value, and the Silk Road would never have happened. If they had seen ethereum, and adopted smart contracts to replace the opaque banking and investment industry, then Ethereum would have zero value, and the iron finance rug pull would never have happened. This is not about revenue; the treasury balance is overflowing. It’s not about keeping us safe; violent crime is nowhere on the agenda. It’s not consumer protection; the SEC refuses to ever go after the many VC-backed mega rug pulls pushed on retail investors as utility tokens. This is simply about power. They’re not afraid of scammers and criminals. They’re afraid of people like you shifting anger from the obvious canards to the bigger picture. They’re not out to destroy cryptocurrency either. They want to control it so that they can keep siphoning money out out of people trying to mitigate the problems that their own monetary policy caused, just like 401k of the 90s. I say this to point out that you will not get what you want out of this. It will just become a bigger scam on everybody, established and protected by the full force of the law. I wonder who it is exactly that you think is looking out for you in all of this.
dcolkitt 5y ago
> I don't see any scientific or technological application That's a defensible position. But how does that justify the government going to "total war". There are plenty of things that have no scientific or technological application. Reality TV, social media, fashion, nightclubs, sports, bakeries, those stupid outfits people dress pets up in. At what point did people stop saying "it's a free country"? So you don't like some thing and don't see much merit in it. At what point did people's knee-jerk response to that change from "not my cup of tea, but you do you, man" to "that thing is completely worthless, everyone who likes it must be an idiot, and therefore the government should abolish it"
- henearkr 5y ago
  Well, you're right, my comment actually lacks of the spelling out of the negative part of this technology!! As the usefulness is very doubtful but the energy consumption is utterly real, that is a net negative for the environment. The electronic garbage, too, a huge problem.
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    I actually agree with you! PoW (proof-of-work) coins produce a big negative externality. That being said Ethereum is migrating to a PoS (proof-of-stake) system by year end that virtually eliminates all the problems you enumerate. Even if you believe in a policy response, wouldn't you agree that it'd be better specifically target proof-of-work blockchains rather than crypto in general? Ironically this bill may actually do the opposite. It places a much higher burden of DeFi and stablecoins, which are mostly Ethereum native. It will probably shift usage to large centralized exchanges, which generally favors PoW based Bitcoin.
    - henearkr 5y ago
      Well, a finer policy would probably be better, I agree. But, in this case, even if the loss of a beautiful peace of engineering is always a pity (but it is not even lost, because the source code itself has no reason to be forbidden!), I don't see really what is the loss for the world. As I said in another comment, if you use a VPN, you can access preexisting online banking like PayPal, and to it while escaping surveillance and censure from any dictatorship you live in. So e.g. if you reimplement whatever usage you found for some Ethereum contracts, in a non-blockchain technology, then you can just access it through VPNs whenever that becomes necessary.
nprz 5y ago
> I don't see any scientific or technological application that could benefit humanity and would be developed from blockchain technology. Bitcoin is helping humanity right now as I type. There are millions who live under authoritative regimes that do not have access to banking services. Bitcoin gives anybody with an internet connection the ability to hold, save, and transfer value. You are condemning something you do not understand. Bitcoin is a technology that improves human rights. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/31/out-of-control-and-rising-why-bitcoin-has-nigerias-government-in-a-panic https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/31/out-of-co...
- henearkr 5y ago
  (Bitcoin is no currency...) I put it bluntly sorry, but to be more explicit: because of its volatility, BTC is very difficult to adopt for real transactions. Also, with a simple VPN, you access PayPal and you're good to go. I'd argue that the real tech saving the world right now is the VPN. Even to use BTC somehow you will need VPN, because those dictatorships will block the IPs.
  - nprz 5y ago
    > The dollar volume of crypto received by users in Nigeria in May was $2.4bn, up from $684m last December, according to blockchain research firm Chainalysis. And the true scale of crypto flows through Africa’s largest economy is likely to be much larger, with many trades untraceable by analysts. Over $2.4bn in value transferred, but you're telling me no one is using it? Transfer in BTC and convert to a stable coin if you're worried about volatility. Also Nigeria's currency, the naira has a 12% inflation rate. I'm not sure holding BTC is more of a risk than a currency that's guaranteed to lose 12% of its value each year. A VPN will not protect you if PayPal decides to freeze your account. It will also not hide any of your transactions from PayPal.
    - henearkr 5y ago
      Nothing hints at a usage "as a currency" from Nigerian users. Most likely, those are scammers of other illegal activities and they hoard as much as possible of BTC without really caring how much exactly it amounts to. Also Nigeria is not an oppressive regime. Edited: ok it's oppressive. However it's still somehow a democracy (with all the constraints of an islamic democracy). PayPal has competitors, so they will be more than happy to take you as a customer if PayPal banned you.
goatmeal 5y ago
when I visit a church, they ask everyone for a little money so they can keep the lights on and do interesting things once in a while. nobody expects the church to KYC everyone who puts a dollar in the collection plate. why should that be any different if the meeting takes place on a website about something other than religion? I donate cryptocurrency to forums and microblogging services to help them keep the lights on. we should be treated the same even if we don't believe in god. the owner does not need to ask for permission from anybody or depend on an intermediary to accept the money and they do not need my information. if you don't see why this is of benefit to someone then I suggest you try to operate a forum and go through the trouble to make ends meet.
- henearkr 5y ago
  (Almost) everybody do it with PayPal, Patreon, etc. I understand that you feel uneasy to theoretically depend on these companies, even if in practice you encounter no real difficulty. Your fear is unnecessary... unless you do things really frown upon. Even porn and sex services are successfully using some of the online services I quoted above. For hitmen and substances I don't really know, but those are really frown upon.
asdff 5y ago
Maybe they could sell the GPUs to gamers who are desperate for even 3 year old cards.

api 5y ago

It's precisely when people feel this way about things that large chunks of our civil liberties are forfeit. Precedents: the war on drugs, crusades against porn, alcohol prohibition, the war on terror, mandatory minimum sentencing, etc. It's a lynch mob mentality writ large and allows reckless legislators and police to gallop right over all kinds of civil boundaries that very much exist for a reason. A much narrower set of solutions could address your concerns: a tax on proof of work mining, a ban on the sale of hardware whose sole purpose is cryptocurrency mining, or a ban on domestic exchanges converting money to/from cryptocurrencies that use high-resource proof of work mechanisms. I see no reason to ban proof of stake or other consensus mechanism cryptocurrencies, and stepping up enforcement of existing KYC/AML regulations would help fight money laundering. I also must point out that real estate, sham art auctions, sham investments and businesses, and numerous other mechanisms collectively account for the vast bulk of all money laundering. Cryptocurrency is a niche player. It's also a niche player in the street drug market where the vast majority of transactions use physical cash. As far as bubbles and speculative manias go... it's legal for an adult to buy a lotto ticket (that is run by the state!) or go to a casino (permitted and regulated by the state). This is no worse. I might support raising taxes on short term speculative sorts of financial games, but those would also need to be applied to high frequency trading and speculative games run by hedge funds in conventional markets. Those are much larger than anything in crypto. I say all this as a mostly cryptocurrency skeptic.

arrosenberg 5y ago
You can’t compare bitcoin to porn, gambling, drugs and alcohol. Bitcoin is the only one that doesn’t affect dopamine levels in the brain, and that virtually no one would seek out if it was suddenly illegal.
- henearkr 5y ago
  Well, a huge lot of people make usage of bitcoin like it is gambling (i.e. as a speculative asset). Cannot make generalities of course, but still.

snarf21 5y ago

Agreed, there is zero use cases outside of currency and unfortunately, most of the currencies are little more than gambling, pump/dump and pyramid schemes. The cryptos always crow about it being so censorship resistant. I guess we'll see how resistant it really is.

tromp 5y ago

> the hash machines Not all PoW is hash based. Some, like Cuckatoo Cycle [1], are based on writing and reading random bits within hundreds of MB of memory, and ASICs for such PoW are dominated by SRAM, which can in principle be repurposed. [1] https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo

henearkr 5y ago
Also PoS. Those are the grey area where I don't have as much strong opinions anymore. As they are less compute-intensive, the benefit is more likely.

LatteLazy 5y ago

I am sympathetic, I don't see much use for them. But... Just because you or I don't see the use case doesn't mean something should be illegal or that we should go to war with it. We've made this mistake before (prohibition, the war on drugs). If people want to waste their time/money on X, that's on them.

robot_no_419 5y ago

"I don't see any scientific or technological application that could benefit humanity and would be developed from blockchain technology." Cool, but there are plenty of financial, economic, and political applications of blockchain that will benefit humanity. Just because you don't understand the use case doesn't mean it doesn't have one.

henearkr 5y ago
It's not that I don't understand the use case. It's that the current use cases can be either replaced by preexisting less compute-intensive tech, or that the usage is just meaningless (gambling-like speculation, failed attempt at anonymity, tax avoidance, etc). However my comment is as well a call to everybody to think about it! I know I'm not very brilliant, so if anybody can do a favor to the world and find out something interesting, I'd be extremely happy :)
- robot_no_419 5y ago
  "It's that the current use cases can be either replaced by preexisting less compute-intensive tech, or that the usage is just meaningless (gambling-like speculation, failed attempt at anonymity, tax avoidance, etc)." The fact that you've binned all the usage into the "meaningless" category means you don't understand the use case at all. It's an alternative to the current hegemonic global financial system centrally controlled by the USA. You might think it's useless but plenty of people disagree and are using it in a meaningful way. You put on a facade of humility and objectivity but your bias against cryptocurrency is pretty blatant.
  - henearkr 5y ago
    People are burning coal to mine virtual coins, so yes I am biased against that until I see any real benefit. Can you call this biased? And what you call financial hegemony is only the corollary of the commercial interconnection between world's countries, and the fact that the USA manage the biggest lender bank ever (the IMF). That would still be the same using a BTC-based IMF.

dogman144 5y ago

> I don't see any scientific or technological application that could benefit humanity and would be developed from blockchain technology. Assuming you work in tech, you must be aware how similar attitudes existed (within tech, as well) about what the internet itself would provide. How are you so certain that: A) you understand all the possible directions a new, network-effect driven tech could take in its applications B) none of them add value to humanity C) there are no parallels in your statement to "well horses work fine, why do I need cars."

henearkr 5y ago
As I said, I hoped I could think of some use for these hash machines. Same for the blockchain tech itself, i.e. some usage that would not be completely replaceable by some less compute-intensive tech. I honestly hope those usages exist. I really do. But now I don't think they do. But, frankly, even for Internet itself everybody could see the benefit quite early. Anyway, if you do find interesting uses that are not replaceable by simpler things, you would save a lot of garbage!! And thus would do a favor to the environment. So yeah I hope I'm wrong.
- dogman144 5y ago
  A Classic quote from Paul Krugam indicates that quite a few smart folks, so not everybody, did not see the internet’s benefit quite early or even much later.
  - henearkr 5y ago
    Internet was already useful very early to transfer physics experiment data between labs (at the CERN).

jl2718 5y ago

What you are observing is the ugly opportunism of this war, and it is a war, between systems that are controlled by powerful people, and systems that are controlled by algorithms. This is not a new conflict. Democracy was an algorithmic victory until powerful people learned to subvert it. So too was religion, money, laws etc. This is how civilization advances. Cryptocurrency is a pure thing, an algorithmic method of storage, control and distribution of value, that came about because the old ways were failing. Now the old powers are fighting back. It’s important to realize that this is the only reason that cryptocurrency has any speculative value at all. If the treasury / federal reserve had seen bitcoin and adopted a protocol for algorithmic control of the money supply, and a safer wallet for dollar holders, then Bitcoin would have zero value, and the Silk Road would never have happened. If they had seen ethereum, and adopted smart contracts to replace the opaque banking and investment industry, then Ethereum would have zero value, and the iron finance rug pull would never have happened. This is not about revenue; the treasury balance is overflowing. It’s not about keeping us safe; violent crime is nowhere on the agenda. It’s not consumer protection; the SEC refuses to ever go after the many VC-backed mega rug pulls pushed on retail investors as utility tokens. This is simply about power. They’re not afraid of scammers and criminals. They’re afraid of people like you shifting anger from the obvious canards to the bigger picture. They’re not out to destroy cryptocurrency either. They want to control it so that they can keep siphoning money out out of people trying to mitigate the problems that their own monetary policy caused, just like 401k of the 90s. I say this to point out that you will not get what you want out of this. It will just become a bigger scam on everybody, established and protected by the full force of the law. I wonder who it is exactly that you think is looking out for you in all of this.

dcolkitt 5y ago

> I don't see any scientific or technological application That's a defensible position. But how does that justify the government going to "total war". There are plenty of things that have no scientific or technological application. Reality TV, social media, fashion, nightclubs, sports, bakeries, those stupid outfits people dress pets up in. At what point did people stop saying "it's a free country"? So you don't like some thing and don't see much merit in it. At what point did people's knee-jerk response to that change from "not my cup of tea, but you do you, man" to "that thing is completely worthless, everyone who likes it must be an idiot, and therefore the government should abolish it"

henearkr 5y ago
Well, you're right, my comment actually lacks of the spelling out of the negative part of this technology!! As the usefulness is very doubtful but the energy consumption is utterly real, that is a net negative for the environment. The electronic garbage, too, a huge problem.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  I actually agree with you! PoW (proof-of-work) coins produce a big negative externality. That being said Ethereum is migrating to a PoS (proof-of-stake) system by year end that virtually eliminates all the problems you enumerate. Even if you believe in a policy response, wouldn't you agree that it'd be better specifically target proof-of-work blockchains rather than crypto in general? Ironically this bill may actually do the opposite. It places a much higher burden of DeFi and stablecoins, which are mostly Ethereum native. It will probably shift usage to large centralized exchanges, which generally favors PoW based Bitcoin.
  - henearkr 5y ago
    Well, a finer policy would probably be better, I agree. But, in this case, even if the loss of a beautiful peace of engineering is always a pity (but it is not even lost, because the source code itself has no reason to be forbidden!), I don't see really what is the loss for the world. As I said in another comment, if you use a VPN, you can access preexisting online banking like PayPal, and to it while escaping surveillance and censure from any dictatorship you live in. So e.g. if you reimplement whatever usage you found for some Ethereum contracts, in a non-blockchain technology, then you can just access it through VPNs whenever that becomes necessary.

nprz 5y ago

> I don't see any scientific or technological application that could benefit humanity and would be developed from blockchain technology. Bitcoin is helping humanity right now as I type. There are millions who live under authoritative regimes that do not have access to banking services. Bitcoin gives anybody with an internet connection the ability to hold, save, and transfer value. You are condemning something you do not understand. Bitcoin is a technology that improves human rights. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/31/out-of-control-and-rising-why-bitcoin-has-nigerias-government-in-a-panic https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/31/out-of-co...

henearkr 5y ago
(Bitcoin is no currency...) I put it bluntly sorry, but to be more explicit: because of its volatility, BTC is very difficult to adopt for real transactions. Also, with a simple VPN, you access PayPal and you're good to go. I'd argue that the real tech saving the world right now is the VPN. Even to use BTC somehow you will need VPN, because those dictatorships will block the IPs.
- nprz 5y ago
  > The dollar volume of crypto received by users in Nigeria in May was $2.4bn, up from $684m last December, according to blockchain research firm Chainalysis. And the true scale of crypto flows through Africa’s largest economy is likely to be much larger, with many trades untraceable by analysts. Over $2.4bn in value transferred, but you're telling me no one is using it? Transfer in BTC and convert to a stable coin if you're worried about volatility. Also Nigeria's currency, the naira has a 12% inflation rate. I'm not sure holding BTC is more of a risk than a currency that's guaranteed to lose 12% of its value each year. A VPN will not protect you if PayPal decides to freeze your account. It will also not hide any of your transactions from PayPal.
  - henearkr 5y ago
    Nothing hints at a usage "as a currency" from Nigerian users. Most likely, those are scammers of other illegal activities and they hoard as much as possible of BTC without really caring how much exactly it amounts to. Also Nigeria is not an oppressive regime. Edited: ok it's oppressive. However it's still somehow a democracy (with all the constraints of an islamic democracy). PayPal has competitors, so they will be more than happy to take you as a customer if PayPal banned you.

goatmeal 5y ago

when I visit a church, they ask everyone for a little money so they can keep the lights on and do interesting things once in a while. nobody expects the church to KYC everyone who puts a dollar in the collection plate. why should that be any different if the meeting takes place on a website about something other than religion? I donate cryptocurrency to forums and microblogging services to help them keep the lights on. we should be treated the same even if we don't believe in god. the owner does not need to ask for permission from anybody or depend on an intermediary to accept the money and they do not need my information. if you don't see why this is of benefit to someone then I suggest you try to operate a forum and go through the trouble to make ends meet.

henearkr 5y ago
(Almost) everybody do it with PayPal, Patreon, etc. I understand that you feel uneasy to theoretically depend on these companies, even if in practice you encounter no real difficulty. Your fear is unnecessary... unless you do things really frown upon. Even porn and sex services are successfully using some of the online services I quoted above. For hitmen and substances I don't really know, but those are really frown upon.

asdff 5y ago

Maybe they could sell the GPUs to gamers who are desperate for even 3 year old cards.