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The irony of crypto being lauded as an unregulated market outside of government control, and then crypto millionaires using government-backed courts to sue when
by salt-thrower 5y ago
The irony of crypto being lauded as an unregulated market outside of government control, and then crypto millionaires using government-backed courts to sue when they lose their assets due to bad opsec, is palpable.
Everyone loves the wild west until they're the ones being victimized, then it turns out 3rd party authorities are useful after all.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoIt's a large space, not everyone holds the same beliefs.
- salt-thrower 5y agoSure, but it is a very popular belief, and one that has been a prevailing "selling point" of crypto since its inception.
- trompetenaccoun 5y agoThe selling point is the immutable ledger. No sane person believes it will replace all institutions.
- salt-thrower 5y agoI've been hearing crypto enthusiasts say that crypto will make institutions obsolete since crypto first started. I agree that such people are not sane, yet they are a very vocal portion of the crypto fanbase.
- meowface 5y agoThere are a lot of very vocal minorities on the internet, across a wide range of groups.
- ews 5y agoI came looking for this boilerplate comment, which always appears on the top at HN. I am not disappointed. Can we move on and accept that not everyone who is using crypto is a dark hat crypto-libertarian hacker already?
- wil421 5y agoOP is just countering the cytoto fanboys that come out on HN. I made a similar comment about Tesla self driving vaporware and the fanboys did not disappoint. Crypto is touted as the anti dollar/euro/pound/government backed non-fiat currency yet it is laughable that users are using governments for recourse. It’s also laughable coinbase is guaranteeing a 150k pound reimbursement if their customers funds are illegaly stolen. They are a basically a bank with FDIC backed accounts, except they’re self backed.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- evol262 5y agoPlease name a use for crypto which is not "buying questionable substances from the internet" or "like stocks, except that I can make more of them with my GPU". They are, in every way, of less value to the economy than traditional fiat currency. * They have no guarantees or equivalent to the FDIC * Their value similarly unpinned to anything (for the sake of argument, let's ignore basketed currency, since crypto is not comparble to that and less table than those) other than investor confidence like FOREX * They are not tax havens * Their "production" consumes as much energy as some medium-sized nation-states * Chasing the hype has exacerbated the chip shortage as "peak capitalism" has encouraged fabs to produce GPUs for maximize profits at the expense of, say, chips for cars with their limited supplies Not everyone who uses crypto is a dark hat crypto-libertarian hacker. Few people who clamor for crypto have good reasons to use it other than "why not have it as an option for people who want it?" or "I wanna do this stuff without being tracked".
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
- ddlutz 5y agoThat seems like a crude way of thinking about this. It's more like "This is my property, it was stolen, give me my property back."
- echelon 5y agoMath isn't property. Laws enshrine property. Bitcoin is a legal gray area. I'm sure it'll shape up some way or another, but maybe not the way we expect.
- intricatedetail 5y agoEvery computer program is just a big number and yet you can get in trouble for copying it and selling.
- sokoloff 5y agoEvery DVD/BluRay/MP3 as well.
- ptoo 5y agoThey should perhaps have said digital assets instead but their point is valid. Not all property has to be physical. We live in an era where digital and intellectual property exist and are rightfully protected by law.
- dangrossman 5y agoWhat's the difference between your bitcoin balance at Coinbase and your cash balance at Wells Fargo? Neither is physical property. There's not enough physical currency in circulation in the entire US to buy out Apple, let alone back everyone's bank accounts.
- salt-thrower 5y agoThat's a fair take, and yet to acknowledge bitcoin as property means it would fall under the same laws and regulations that currently govern property ownership. Originally, crypto enthusiasts - especially the ones with an anarchist streak - were into the idea that crypto would exist completely outside of government control, i.e. the government wouldn't even recognize it as property. So if thieves trick you into sending coins to the wrong address, tough luck, you should've been more careful. To sue in court over property theft means the government must recognize crypto as property, and as such, crypto is brought into the fold of government oversight.
- chrischen 5y agoNot everyone who holds bitcoin is a crypto anarchist.
- secondaryacct 5y agoDude
- abakker 5y agoNo, not anymore. Now it’s banks and ETFs. Just another asset class, all the ideology is just a sideshow once everyone got rich. Now it’s just classic tax efficiency.
- quantumBerry 5y agoCrypto holder here (but not a millionare). Who says government isn't the reason they haven't done something else? If there were no government, you could just "deal" with the problem person that stole your money yourself.
- salt-thrower 5y agoGo ahead and say the quiet part out loud - how would someone "deal" with the problem person in the world you're describing?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- quantumBerry 5y agoApparently in your idea, if someone were forced to live in a society with no law, order, or organization they should just peacefully let themselves be parted with all they have by anyone who cares to take it.
- salt-thrower 5y agoIf all you're really saying is "without government there would be vigilante justice instead" then you're correct, but it's quite a non-sequitur in relation to the rest of the discussion in this thread.
- quantumBerry 5y agoAll I'm saying is without government or any organization you are left with taking care of things yourself, rather than policeman with guns maybe taking care of the problem for you. Let's say the government doesn't care at all about their loss (pretty common for fraud crimes in the US, I myself have been a victim of credit card fraud and no one cared even my bank who charged me anyway after I proved it was fraudulent) they actually do manage to get their property back from the person who stole it without government intervention, but they did it through direct rather than governmental action. Who cares, and what are you going to do about it? Sit back in your chair and type about the injustice of a man taking his property back without begging a policeman on his knees to consider giving the slightest care? It's nice that your moral outrage will be present but the pragmatism remains.
- jjn2009 5y agoThere is a lot more nuance to law/regulation than “if you don't like my draconian privacy and/or freedom reducing laws then you deserve no property rights!”
- paulryanrogers 5y agoIt seems as financial tools mature they inevitably gain a certain critical mass of rules. My guess is some are essential to a functioning society.
- aaomidi 5y agoProperty rights are not possible without a monopoly on force. Property rights are inherently broken because it means someone is giving you rights over some __property__ that you're defending with some arbitrary rules.
- cmurf 5y agoNot really. You surely know what the mob thinks about property and privacy rights. 100% of intellectual property rights requires a government. It's not really a right. It's manufactured. Patents user to he called monopolies. It takes a government to enforce such a regime. Without a government there's no agreed upon, or forced upon, authority to prevent violence.
- 127 5y agoIf there wasn't already KYC/AML and the requirement for me to pay taxes on capital gains, you might have a point.
- chrischen 5y agoGiven that he got this malware from downloading a private wallet application there’s a good chance he did not use an exchange.
- optimalsolver 5y agoI'd like to imagine he used the phrase "Not your keys, not your Bitcoin" at least once.
- viraptor 5y agoUsing an exchange has nothing to do with paying CGT or equivalent. You can calculate your taxes on transactions / swaps in private wallets too.
- chrischen 5y agoWe can also calculate our use tax but nobody really does.
- viraptor 5y agoIt's not nobody, otherwise services like https://koinly.io/ https://koinly.io/ and similar wouldn't exist with support for private wallets, uniswap handling, etc. Unless you can provide some proof for that claim, please don't generalise.
- paxys 5y agoYou can be against the government and the Federal Reserve unilaterally controlling all monetary policy (including currency supply, interest rates, inflation, bank regulation) while fully supporting the justice system at the same time.
- tw04 5y agoCan you name a country that has a strong, fair, and just judicial system without having complete control of their monetary policy? I can’t even begin to imagine how that country would continue to exist. A government that doesn’t control its own monetary policy isn’t a government at all.
- paxys 5y agoYes, the USA for most of its existence.
- cortesoft 5y agoWait, when was the US not in charge of its monetary policy?
- brian_cloutier 5y agoBretton Woods is one notable example, it was in effect for the US from 1945 until 1971.
- meowface 5y agoDuring the Wild West, if someone stole your cattle but you didn't know who, you very well might have hired a private investigator to try to find the cattle and who stole them, followed by a request/demand to return the cattle. If they refused, maybe you could have filed a civil dispute to make it a matter of public record that your property was stolen by particular individuals, if the option was available. If it wasn't, the only other option was extralegal justice. The only other option here is also extralegal justice, like committing a crime against the alleged perpetrators or their parents, such as extortion or theft, to try to receive compensation. Most would agree we don't want that to happen. So what do you expect victims to do? Just be like "well, I know who stole my property, but I'm a libertarian and civil courts are kind of connected to governments and I don't want to use anything connected to governments so I guess there's nothing I can do about it"? I'm not really a libertarian/cryptocurrency maximalist/anti-government/anti-government-issued currency, so I might be speaking out of turn, but I don't think lawsuits of this nature are necessarily incompatible with libertarian values. Besides anarchism-absolutists, I think most people still support some kind of justice system to protect against things like theft and injury.
- oh_sigh 5y agoIt's only ironic if the person who had their bitcoins stolen actually lauded crypto as an unregulated market outside of government control.
- driverdan 5y agoI downvoted you because this is a straw man. Very few people believe in this and even if they did it doesn't mean the individual involved here believes that.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoJust because in our world governments have a monopoly on laws and criminal courts, it doesn't mean that a world without governments would have no laws or criminal courts. I'm not a fan of BTC because it's unbacked but I do care about having an irreversible money transfer tool and I do care about not having governments. I'll give you an example. In a society without governments, there would be no-one able to prevent the use of violence. Eventually, organisations which provide violence as a service (whether offensive or defensive) would come up. The expensive nature of violence (nobody in their right mind would spend the money we spend on wars if the cost of war wasn't socialised through mandatory taxes) would push these organisations to negotiate contracts to settle matters peacefully instead of losing employees for the quibbles of their clients. Deciding to acquire a protection service from one of these company would end up meaning accepting the different set of laws they would enforce between companies. The fear of a costly war between agencies and the fear of their reputation dropping with clients would keep these companies following the rules and the contracts they agreed to. A protection service covering thieves would be hard pressed to find agreements with other protection services: the thieves stole X$ and is paying Z$ to their protection service where Z<X (otherwise what's the profit of stealing if it all goes in protection service); the victim is seeking X$+fees, the thieves' protection service needs to either pay X and eventually go bankrupt or ask X to the thieves, which is equivalent to give back X$+fees. There are two scenarios: - The thieves are not protected by any third party protection service: the victim's protection agency sends a few armed employees and retrieve what was forcefully stolen - The thieves are protected by a third party protection service: the victim's protection agency and the thieves' protection agency agree to resolve the matter with a private court and agree to be bound by the judge decision. The judge has an economic interest in being fair or his reputation will go down the bin and he won't have clients anymore. After the court result, the thieves can return the money + fees or have the victim's protection agency forcefully retrieve the stolen goods or be sent to a prison-work camp until they repaid their debt.
- danans 5y ago> In a society without governments, there would be no-one able to prevent the use of violence. Eventually, organisations which provide violence as a service (whether offensive or defensive) would come up. So basically warring mini-states, mercenary groups, mafias. We've been there before, most of history in fact. In a lot of places with little to no government control, we're still there now. > The expensive nature of violence (nobody in their right mind would spend the money we spend on wars if the cost of war wasn't socialised through mandatory taxes) would push these organisations to negotiate contracts to settle matters peacefully Regaining stability after dismantling the current monopolies on violence than ensure it will take a very long time, and in the interim the situation will be extremely violent. The world didn't start settling matters relatively peacefully until two massive world wars occurred, and even then it only settled matters between some major western governments, not the world as a whole.
- analog31 5y agoYou can laud anything for anything you want. Meanwhile, the person who stole 16.xx bitcoins in a way that was traceable to them, while exposing themselves to legal process, also had bad opsec. I'm sure in the wild west there were plenty of cases where a dispute went to the person who had the authorities on their side.
- celticninja 5y agoI've never understood your position. Even if I don't like/agree with a system, I can still use it, because it would be illogical to do otherwise. Also a major assumption you have is that any crypto holder must hold the same views as the early bitcoin adopters.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoNothing contradictory here honestly. Obviously stealing should be prosecuted. We just don't want to be surveilled, have our money inflated to valuelessness, etc.
- in_mice 5y agoIn the wild west, there were guns and rifles. Often disputes were settled with gunshots rather than court battles. Bitcoin has no threat of violence when wrong doing happens.