12 ms·
Wow, imagine living in a country where the legal financial assets you own can be turned criminal where accessing them is punished with hard labor. Sounds like
by nightski 5y ago
Wow, imagine living in a country where the legal financial assets you own can be turned criminal where accessing them is punished with hard labor. Sounds like a dystopian nightmare.
- DethNinja 5y agoComing soon to a country nearby you… Plebs cannot be allowed to have access to sound money, otherwise financial parasites can’t exists.
- lottin 5y agoAre you sure you got this right? Keep in mind that the only way to make money with bitcoin is literally by taking it away from other "investors".
- reedjosh 5y agoOr transacting for goods and services. You know, like in an economy. I just bought coffee with it.
- quantumBerry 5y agoNow apply your idea to dollars, and think about who prints the dollars.
- imtringued 5y agoDollars are created by granting credit and promising debt. Basically to people who need dollars to do productive work. Oversimplification: The promise of work creates dollars and therefore dollars are created through work.
- quantumBerry 5y ago> dollars are created through work. [citation needed] You seem to have a fairy tale level of knowledge about how dollars are created. One of the Fed's favored way of created more money is simply buying treasury bonds with newly created money. Care to explain what work is done there (other than the work done by individuals at the Federal Reserve)?
- lottin 5y agoWhy do I have to apply the idea to dollars? Nobody is telling me that I will become incredibly rich, without having to put any effort, work or invent anything, if I just buy dollars. Yet the same claim is made about bitcoins, and this is why we must examine whether this claim about bitcoin is true.
- quantumBerry 5y agoRead the white paper about bitcoin. Does it say anything about it being an investment, guaranteeing stability of exchanging rates to fiat, providing interest, or any appreciation? I'll be waiting for you to cite that. There's a lot of disingenuous people out there, that for some reason believe bitcoin or other cryptos are "investments." I guess they missed that they are called crypto-CURRENCIES and not crypto-investments. And then they get upset that they are not, and go on to berate a currency for not being an investment. It's fine to be upset at any swindlers calling a zero-sum or negative-sum game like most crypto an investment, but if you actually read the white papers many cryptos make no such claims. And there are certainty people telling you that you can get rich off dollars, just look at the FOREX trading peddlers telling you to get rich by trading fiat and leveraging fiat exchanges. I don't attack dollars for that! And yeah, you can apply your idea to dollars, because one of the biggest way for the government to profit off of dollars is to print more out of thin air, therefore debasing the "investment" of the rest of the dollar holders. You can choose to not apply the idea to dollars, and rather bury your head in the sand if you like, that's your prerogative.
- imtringued 5y agoWhy do plebs care about sound money? The more sound money you have the more you benefit from it. Plebs don't have most of the sound money, they'll lose out.
- thirdvect0r 5y agoImagine living in a country that allows you to destroy the environment for a fake currency. Your worldview is ridiculous.
- slg 5y agoThis is an overly aggressive tone that will cause knee-jerk pushback, but there is an argument that it is exactly the thing we should expect of our government, to correct for externalities. This is effectively not that different than a company dumping chemical in the local river rather than disposing of them properly. They are encroaching on my rights to a livable planet for their own personal financial gain.
- fouric 5y agoThe GP comment falsely implies that PoW is the only kind of cryptocurrency (and, well, the obnoxious and anti-intellectual tone). There are many reasons to dislike crypto in general, but "it destroys the environment" only applies to PoW-based systems and not crypto in general. Also, you should read the guidelines: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- slg 5y agoWhat percentage of cryptocurrencies usage is not PoW? What are the negative environmental impacts of the other approaches? Being better than PoW doesn’t necessarily mean they stopped being wasteful. I rephrased that first sentence to remove the reference to HN voting. I was simply remarking how the tone will cause people to object to it quicker regardless of the merit of the underlying thought.
- nightski 5y agoBitcoin is obviously the top. But Ethereum and Cardano are 2nd/3rd and ETH is moving to PoS while ATA already is. Tether is 3rd and is a stablecoin, so it is PoS or PoW depending on the backing contract. So quite a bit actually. We are talking hundreds of billions in market cap at least.
- andrewclunn 5y agoBut it's "for the environment." Idiots always buy into the propaganda that tell them that authoritarian crack downs are noble and good.
- arcticbull 5y agoImagine living in a civilized country that can't bring itself to ban a massive distributed Ponzi scheme with huge environmental consequences. Bitcoin alone uses about 1/10th as much energy as the entire world's concrete production. Even if it were to transition entirely to renewable energy it also generates as much e-waste as an entire first-world country. These things actually have huge meaningful state security risks. Not too long ago the entire country of Albania got swept up in Ponzi schemes. It go so bad, they imprisoned their finance minister for trying to stop it. Then they had a civil war about it. The IMF had to airdrop in bags of money to bail them out. [1] 1997 Albania is what the maxis are working towards. In this case the PRC not only has the moral high ground, but also is acting out of a real, rational fear of economic collapse. If America had any sense, it would put the ban hammer down on this before it gets any worse. [1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.ht...
- gfodor 5y agoIt's going to look a lot less like a Ponzi scheme if/when the dollar collapses.
- arcticbull 5y agoNo, it won't. It's a negative-sum system that redistributes wealth from new entrants to old entrants and miners. It's a pyramid. And what exact path do you see a 'dollar collapse'?
- gfodor 5y agoSorry, I'm not going to be dragged into a debate about if/when the collapse will happen. But if it does, your claim bitcoin is a pyramid will look silly, since it will be one of several assets that will be rushed into as a safe haven from inflationary forces. If you want to take the position such a collapse would cause a flight from crypto assets, be my guest.
- arcticbull 5y ago
- lottin 5y agoBut they said bitcoin was out of reach of governments, how is it possible a government is now banning it?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thinkingkong 5y agoThe bitcoin might be out of reach of governments, but the people definitely aren't.
- rmdashrfstar 5y agoWho’s they and how can anything be “out of reach”?
- yawaworht1978 5y agoI am a bit surprised the Chinese government didn't secretly force the miners to collaborate for a 51 percent attack or more to kill it off, it would likely also destroy altcoins and the whole ecosystem. But maybe someone from China can chime in and explain how serious the enforcement of these bans will be. I have seen countries with all kinds of laws, none ever enforced.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoEh.. I don't want to diminish the impact of Chinese action, but US not so long ago banned owning gold ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act ) by individuals. It is only recently that this got relaxed. Government can and do whatever the populace will bear.
- reedjosh 5y agoLets not bear this then. Central Bank Digital Currency is just around the corner if crypto is banned. CBDC is an authoritarian's wet dream. Speak against the government--you're no longer allowed to transact in society. Retroactive tax...boom, negative balance.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoWhat do you propose as a solution for central banks and monetary policy attempting to operate in structural stagnation [1]? Do you believe digital tulips will maintain their value as real productivity declines due to demographics? Physical cash can be inflated with relatively the same ease as a CBDC through QE. You're seeking a level of control and authority of monetary policy only accessible to nation states. We agree on the problem, but not the solution. Technology does not solve challenges at the people/politics OSI layer. [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/700-year-decline-of-interest-rates/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/700-year-decline-of-interes...
- dnautics 5y agoTechnology may not solve problems at the people layer but it can certainly be a forcing factor for reform. You don't think, for example, airplane tech has had an impact on immigration law?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tastyfreeze 5y ago
- nemothekid 5y agoWe already have this in America, Civil Asset Forfeiture is already out of control.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- FpUser 5y ago>"Sounds like a dystopian nightmare" You mean something like old Reserve Act of 1934 in the US?
- bananamerica 5y agoIf you're talking about China, you are correct. If you are talking about the United States, you are correct as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...