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> PS: my preferred solution to the problems created by cryptocurrencies is to treat them all like child pornography: totally illegal, possession a strict liabil

> PS: my preferred solution to the problems created by cryptocurrencies is to treat them all like child pornography: totally illegal, possession a strict liability offense, choke off interoperability with real currencies at the credit agency/bank interchange level, and make them useless for non-criminals, at which point only criminals will bother with them. And India is going down this route. If that's a joke, I fail to see how it's funny ... It's wild to see such rabid hyperbole, lumping all decentralised currency into a single basket with child pornography (!!) go completely unremarked on. BTW the linked article from 2018 re India's "ban" talks about an order which was struck down by the Indian Supreme Court in March 2020.

myhf 5y ago
It's not a joke or hyperbole. Acts of hostility toward the entire earthbound population should be taken seriously.
- randallsquared 5y ago
  It will be a while before the entire earthbound population is using cryptocurrencies, but I think it was hyperbole and that we should not take it seriously. /s
light_hue_1 5y ago
I don't know if you've read the latest IPCC report that just came out. But the state of the planet is approaching apocalyptic. Even with the most extreme measures, like cutting our net carbon output to 0 in just a handful of years we will have natural disasters that used to happen every 50 years, every 3-4 years now. And that's the optimistic scenario. It should be illegal to waste resources this way. All in the name of destabilizing the financial system.
- fleddr 5y ago
  The problem is deciding what is waste. I think your gaming system is waste, therefore you should not be able to buy one. It has no important utility, given the catastrophe ahead. You can't just pick one thing you happen to dislike or find unimportant whilst at the same time listing your own waste as in fact being very much needed. The idea of mining being wasteful is of course a popular talking point for those not in crypto, yet the 100+ million owners of bitcoin would disagree and see it as the essential feature to secure the network. Further, the word "waste" needs far more nuance. Clearly, mining is highly energy intensive, yet that doesn't mean it has to be wasteful. Increasingly, mining is done using clean energy whilst also in particular seeking out stranded energy, which is not in competition with other uses.
  - bordercases 5y ago
    If the implication is that waste conditions are too diverse then we take it on a case by case basis. 100+ million owners can still be wrong. BTC is still no better than the US dollar for almost all transactions that don't require obfuscation, which is most of them. And furthermore since its economic value in use is primarily pegged to its ability to convert to USDT, it's then just a form of USD derivative which banks have had to regulate in other settings. Spending all that energy to mine addresses that act as USD derivatives, when USD is still there, when derivatives can be created without these numbers, is waste.
  - klipt 5y ago
    Let's just tax CO2 production and let the market sort it out.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      Yes, just accounting better for negative externalities (that is, making externalities internal) would solve a lot problems. But, given how hard it is to get people on board to pay for something that was seen as free or close to it before is (see CA trying to fix messed up water rights), I don't have high hopes for that.
      - fleddr 5y ago
        I think one way or another, we have to accept less material wealth, which is going to be a hard sell in any case. My idea is to trade less stuff for more economic security.
      - aidenn0 5y ago
        The irrational desire to never pay for something that was one free is powerful. I live in SoCal and see BMW 7 series diving around looking for street parking to save the $1.50/hr parking charge. I can't imagine what would happen to sla politician who would suggest putting in parking meters!
        5y ago
- kbenson 5y ago
  Not all cryptocurrencies have the same problems. Not all require massive amounts of computational power to "mine". There are many cryptocurrencies (and many of them popular) that don't work on proof of work, and don't require massive amounts of energy to function. This is sort of table stakes knowledge to be able to competently speak about cryptocurrencies at this point.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  > It should be illegal to waste resources this way. Don't try to pick winners and losers. Add externalities back into the cost of energy. No crypto PoW miner will keep mining when it's just completely unprofitable. By making choice high energy expenditures illegal, all we're going to do is subsidize someone running their AC all day to keep their residence at 68F or driving a mile and back, while we play whack-a-mole on society's social mores.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    The obvious problem here is that we don't value things rationally or properly, and bubbles happen. If we're in a Tulip Crypto Bubble, then the 'market winner' isn't really a 'winner' in the grand scheme. Especially if we 'die of climate change', it'll look like the plebes were acting on bad information, in hindsight. (I'm being hyperbolic here but you get my point). It actually is not that hard to stand outside of a market and make interventions which are super rational. We ban and regulate all sorts of things. There is actually no reason for a lot of energy to be used in the distribution of new crypto, there are a number of other ways, it's a completely arbitrary mechanism that happens to have real-world side effects. I don't think they should ban crypto, but they should definitely ban crypto that arbitrarily uses quite a lot of energy.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      > The obvious problem here is that we don't value things rationally or properly, and bubbles happen. If we're in a Tulip Crypto Bubble, then the 'market winner' isn't really a 'winner' in the grand scheme. Especially if we 'die of climate change', it'll look like the plebes were acting on bad information, in hindsight. (I'm being hyperbolic here but you get my point). The reason it's called a bubble is because it pops. Even if BTC were inflated to the point where even with externalities priced in that it made sense to mine on dirty energy, the moment the bubble pops this will stop. There's nothing wrong with punishing people who act on bad information. Not allowing firms to fail is how we get banks and firms like Uber who exploit labor while losing money faster than they can raise more rounds. > It actually is not that hard to stand outside of a market and make interventions which are super rational. I'm pretty sure if this were true, you'd solve multiple hard, open problems in game theory, statistics, and economics. Problems like the Multi-Armed Bandit or Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. The US Tax Code is as byzantine as it is because of its piecemeal attempts to make market interventions. The US healthcare system is likewise what happens when the government creates an incentive structure with unforeseen negative externalities. > We ban and regulate all sorts of things. Of course and we should continue to. But emissions of energy usage is a very complicated problem. Did I save on emissions by using a thermal cooker, or did the use of my gas stove just to have the cooker come to temperature end up using more emissions than an induction stove would result in cooking the meal regularly in a pot or pan? Even this depends on the energy mixture of your grid. Oh and what about the input emissions to making your induction stove, would that make things even out in the end? Banning things to solve such a complicated problem is silly and you'll run out of political will fast. It's all fine-and-dandy when the internet mobs want to ban crypto, but what happens when the government tells you that you can't drive your F150 to the store a mile away to pickup milk? Turning energy efficiency into a political fight over banning goods and services will be a quick way to stall any progress. > but they should definitely ban crypto that arbitrarily uses quite a lot of energy Until crypto creators come up with new incentive schemes that come up with different, less understood negative externalities. Attacking the problem at its source is much simpler than playing whack-a-mole.
- Geee 5y ago
  The modern financial system IS what causes global warming among other problems. Too few people understand this, and it's not possible to change it politically. Bitcoin is the only real solution for this problem.
  - Geee 5y ago
    Watch this if you want to understand the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9_-WDhpoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9_-WDhpoQ
- jvanderbot 5y ago
  > It should be illegal to waste resources this way. All in the name of destabilizing the financial system. I agree. But the genie is out, and profit will be had. If one tries to enforce, say, emissions standards on computers, then maybe AWS fees go up to justify taking time from bitcoin mining.
- csomar 5y ago
  You can mine crypto with carbon-neutral energy. Crypto is not the issue but generating energy with gas is.
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  Just a curiosity, did you read it? Not comments on it, but the original document.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tomjen3 5y ago
It is either a joke, or a troll. Either way why is it on HN?
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > It is either a joke, or a troll. Prove that.
  - randallsquared 5y ago
    That would be difficult, but I suggest it's very, very rare for someone to use the words "a modest proposal" in an essay and mean it to be taken totally seriously.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      I don't believe that. For one thing, a huge proportion of people have simply never heard of Swift's essay; for another, it's quite possible to use the phrase in earnest even if you have. It's not as if ever since Swift it has had only his meaning. But, sure, maybe he didn't mean for it to be taken totally seriously. Maybe he just meant that to 60%. Or 90. (TL;DR: Prove that.)
- jcynix 5y ago
  Troll? No: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross
  - hhlbf 5y ago
    Thanks for the picture, that explains some things.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      WTF is that supposed to mean?
- gojomo 5y ago
fennecfoxen 5y ago
It's not a joke. He also tells us: > PPS: I despise libertarianism. Just in case you were wondering ... So yes, we have an aspiring central planner who wants to take Bad Excuse #1 for intrusive government surveillance, rampant violation of peoples' privacy, and the like — to collect all its abuses, and expand it to a new area. And he ostentatiously despises anyone who tries to build politics around liberty. These facts are entirely in harmony with each other. I've seen far worse political agendas, but he's an authoritarian thug, and it's as simple as that. Perhaps he should now compare the libertarians to terrorists, so he has access to the abuses collected from Bad Excuse #2, Terrorism.
- EliRivers 5y ago
  For an authoritarian thug, he hides it very well behind a surprising long-term trail of posts and opinions that contradict that. Where this is going, of course, is that I think you're wrong and I think the evidence supports you being wrong.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Yeah, because everything not libertarian must be Stalinism; there is nothing, has never been anything, and cannot ever be anything in between.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    It is unnecessary for you to draw this false dichotomy and its substance is rhetorical nonsense. There's plenty of non-Libertarianism in the world, just as there are plenty of ways to trample on liberties that aren't Stalinism. And it really shouldn't take someone editorializing the spectre of an overbearing government pressuring service providers for unlimited power to spy on your communications for illicit material, because — as you might have noticed — that's already happening; these pages have of late been covered with news of Apple's fingerprinting schemes, and of the potential consequences to freedom. Our author wants the same sort of laws brought to bear, to stamp out what he sees as moral evil, and perhaps he's right it's evil, just as it is certainly true that child porn is evil. In either case, though, he wants the authority to stop it, and shrugs off the idea that this would bring unfortunate consequences. This isn't Stalinism, this is just cranky authoritarianism, and if you go for this sort of thing then hating on the libertarians is fun, thus none of what he says is likely to be a joke. It is sufficient for him to be a cranky authoritarian, and nothing further is claimed. Next time you rag on someone for not drawing any distinctions, maybe try actually drawing the distinctions yourself??
tclancy 5y ago
Can’t imagine it is a joke based on his work and posts. It’s how I feel as well. The only people it benefits are the people who don’t need another leg up. It’s like someone purified everything ugly about Capitalism.
- danuker 5y ago
  The way I see it, government works hand-in-hand with big banks to devalue national currencies in their favor. What better solution do you propose to this? Are you aware of proof-of-stake, which is not wasteful, avoiding the "security-by-outspending" model proof-of-work has?

myhf 5y ago

It's not a joke or hyperbole. Acts of hostility toward the entire earthbound population should be taken seriously.

randallsquared 5y ago
It will be a while before the entire earthbound population is using cryptocurrencies, but I think it was hyperbole and that we should not take it seriously. /s

light_hue_1 5y ago

I don't know if you've read the latest IPCC report that just came out. But the state of the planet is approaching apocalyptic. Even with the most extreme measures, like cutting our net carbon output to 0 in just a handful of years we will have natural disasters that used to happen every 50 years, every 3-4 years now. And that's the optimistic scenario. It should be illegal to waste resources this way. All in the name of destabilizing the financial system.

fleddr 5y ago
The problem is deciding what is waste. I think your gaming system is waste, therefore you should not be able to buy one. It has no important utility, given the catastrophe ahead. You can't just pick one thing you happen to dislike or find unimportant whilst at the same time listing your own waste as in fact being very much needed. The idea of mining being wasteful is of course a popular talking point for those not in crypto, yet the 100+ million owners of bitcoin would disagree and see it as the essential feature to secure the network. Further, the word "waste" needs far more nuance. Clearly, mining is highly energy intensive, yet that doesn't mean it has to be wasteful. Increasingly, mining is done using clean energy whilst also in particular seeking out stranded energy, which is not in competition with other uses.
- bordercases 5y ago
  If the implication is that waste conditions are too diverse then we take it on a case by case basis. 100+ million owners can still be wrong. BTC is still no better than the US dollar for almost all transactions that don't require obfuscation, which is most of them. And furthermore since its economic value in use is primarily pegged to its ability to convert to USDT, it's then just a form of USD derivative which banks have had to regulate in other settings. Spending all that energy to mine addresses that act as USD derivatives, when USD is still there, when derivatives can be created without these numbers, is waste.
- klipt 5y ago
  Let's just tax CO2 production and let the market sort it out.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    Yes, just accounting better for negative externalities (that is, making externalities internal) would solve a lot problems. But, given how hard it is to get people on board to pay for something that was seen as free or close to it before is (see CA trying to fix messed up water rights), I don't have high hopes for that.
    - fleddr 5y ago
      I think one way or another, we have to accept less material wealth, which is going to be a hard sell in any case. My idea is to trade less stuff for more economic security.
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      The irrational desire to never pay for something that was one free is powerful. I live in SoCal and see BMW 7 series diving around looking for street parking to save the $1.50/hr parking charge. I can't imagine what would happen to sla politician who would suggest putting in parking meters!
      - 5y ago
kbenson 5y ago
Not all cryptocurrencies have the same problems. Not all require massive amounts of computational power to "mine". There are many cryptocurrencies (and many of them popular) that don't work on proof of work, and don't require massive amounts of energy to function. This is sort of table stakes knowledge to be able to competently speak about cryptocurrencies at this point.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
> It should be illegal to waste resources this way. Don't try to pick winners and losers. Add externalities back into the cost of energy. No crypto PoW miner will keep mining when it's just completely unprofitable. By making choice high energy expenditures illegal, all we're going to do is subsidize someone running their AC all day to keep their residence at 68F or driving a mile and back, while we play whack-a-mole on society's social mores.
- jollybean 5y ago
  The obvious problem here is that we don't value things rationally or properly, and bubbles happen. If we're in a Tulip Crypto Bubble, then the 'market winner' isn't really a 'winner' in the grand scheme. Especially if we 'die of climate change', it'll look like the plebes were acting on bad information, in hindsight. (I'm being hyperbolic here but you get my point). It actually is not that hard to stand outside of a market and make interventions which are super rational. We ban and regulate all sorts of things. There is actually no reason for a lot of energy to be used in the distribution of new crypto, there are a number of other ways, it's a completely arbitrary mechanism that happens to have real-world side effects. I don't think they should ban crypto, but they should definitely ban crypto that arbitrarily uses quite a lot of energy.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    > The obvious problem here is that we don't value things rationally or properly, and bubbles happen. If we're in a Tulip Crypto Bubble, then the 'market winner' isn't really a 'winner' in the grand scheme. Especially if we 'die of climate change', it'll look like the plebes were acting on bad information, in hindsight. (I'm being hyperbolic here but you get my point). The reason it's called a bubble is because it pops. Even if BTC were inflated to the point where even with externalities priced in that it made sense to mine on dirty energy, the moment the bubble pops this will stop. There's nothing wrong with punishing people who act on bad information. Not allowing firms to fail is how we get banks and firms like Uber who exploit labor while losing money faster than they can raise more rounds. > It actually is not that hard to stand outside of a market and make interventions which are super rational. I'm pretty sure if this were true, you'd solve multiple hard, open problems in game theory, statistics, and economics. Problems like the Multi-Armed Bandit or Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. The US Tax Code is as byzantine as it is because of its piecemeal attempts to make market interventions. The US healthcare system is likewise what happens when the government creates an incentive structure with unforeseen negative externalities. > We ban and regulate all sorts of things. Of course and we should continue to. But emissions of energy usage is a very complicated problem. Did I save on emissions by using a thermal cooker, or did the use of my gas stove just to have the cooker come to temperature end up using more emissions than an induction stove would result in cooking the meal regularly in a pot or pan? Even this depends on the energy mixture of your grid. Oh and what about the input emissions to making your induction stove, would that make things even out in the end? Banning things to solve such a complicated problem is silly and you'll run out of political will fast. It's all fine-and-dandy when the internet mobs want to ban crypto, but what happens when the government tells you that you can't drive your F150 to the store a mile away to pickup milk? Turning energy efficiency into a political fight over banning goods and services will be a quick way to stall any progress. > but they should definitely ban crypto that arbitrarily uses quite a lot of energy Until crypto creators come up with new incentive schemes that come up with different, less understood negative externalities. Attacking the problem at its source is much simpler than playing whack-a-mole.
Geee 5y ago
The modern financial system IS what causes global warming among other problems. Too few people understand this, and it's not possible to change it politically. Bitcoin is the only real solution for this problem.
- Geee 5y ago
  Watch this if you want to understand the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9_-WDhpoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9_-WDhpoQ
jvanderbot 5y ago
> It should be illegal to waste resources this way. All in the name of destabilizing the financial system. I agree. But the genie is out, and profit will be had. If one tries to enforce, say, emissions standards on computers, then maybe AWS fees go up to justify taking time from bitcoin mining.
csomar 5y ago
You can mine crypto with carbon-neutral energy. Crypto is not the issue but generating energy with gas is.
radu_floricica 5y ago
Just a curiosity, did you read it? Not comments on it, but the original document.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tomjen3 5y ago

It is either a joke, or a troll. Either way why is it on HN?

CRConrad 5y ago
> It is either a joke, or a troll. Prove that.
- randallsquared 5y ago
  That would be difficult, but I suggest it's very, very rare for someone to use the words "a modest proposal" in an essay and mean it to be taken totally seriously.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    I don't believe that. For one thing, a huge proportion of people have simply never heard of Swift's essay; for another, it's quite possible to use the phrase in earnest even if you have. It's not as if ever since Swift it has had only his meaning. But, sure, maybe he didn't mean for it to be taken totally seriously. Maybe he just meant that to 60%. Or 90. (TL;DR: Prove that.)
jcynix 5y ago
Troll? No: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross
- hhlbf 5y ago
  Thanks for the picture, that explains some things.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    WTF is that supposed to mean?
gojomo 5y ago

fennecfoxen 5y ago

It's not a joke. He also tells us: > PPS: I despise libertarianism. Just in case you were wondering ... So yes, we have an aspiring central planner who wants to take Bad Excuse #1 for intrusive government surveillance, rampant violation of peoples' privacy, and the like — to collect all its abuses, and expand it to a new area. And he ostentatiously despises anyone who tries to build politics around liberty. These facts are entirely in harmony with each other. I've seen far worse political agendas, but he's an authoritarian thug, and it's as simple as that. Perhaps he should now compare the libertarians to terrorists, so he has access to the abuses collected from Bad Excuse #2, Terrorism.

EliRivers 5y ago
For an authoritarian thug, he hides it very well behind a surprising long-term trail of posts and opinions that contradict that. Where this is going, of course, is that I think you're wrong and I think the evidence supports you being wrong.
CRConrad 5y ago
Yeah, because everything not libertarian must be Stalinism; there is nothing, has never been anything, and cannot ever be anything in between.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  It is unnecessary for you to draw this false dichotomy and its substance is rhetorical nonsense. There's plenty of non-Libertarianism in the world, just as there are plenty of ways to trample on liberties that aren't Stalinism. And it really shouldn't take someone editorializing the spectre of an overbearing government pressuring service providers for unlimited power to spy on your communications for illicit material, because — as you might have noticed — that's already happening; these pages have of late been covered with news of Apple's fingerprinting schemes, and of the potential consequences to freedom. Our author wants the same sort of laws brought to bear, to stamp out what he sees as moral evil, and perhaps he's right it's evil, just as it is certainly true that child porn is evil. In either case, though, he wants the authority to stop it, and shrugs off the idea that this would bring unfortunate consequences. This isn't Stalinism, this is just cranky authoritarianism, and if you go for this sort of thing then hating on the libertarians is fun, thus none of what he says is likely to be a joke. It is sufficient for him to be a cranky authoritarian, and nothing further is claimed. Next time you rag on someone for not drawing any distinctions, maybe try actually drawing the distinctions yourself??

tclancy 5y ago

Can’t imagine it is a joke based on his work and posts. It’s how I feel as well. The only people it benefits are the people who don’t need another leg up. It’s like someone purified everything ugly about Capitalism.

danuker 5y ago
The way I see it, government works hand-in-hand with big banks to devalue national currencies in their favor. What better solution do you propose to this? Are you aware of proof-of-stake, which is not wasteful, avoiding the "security-by-outspending" model proof-of-work has?