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This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broa

by tyre 5y ago

This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broadly accepted, it has to lose the rest. Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's coins aren't what the public are looking for. I have never met a human being who is anti–FDIC (what insures bank deposits in the US up to $250k). For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. People don't know how to manage private and public keys. Anyone who has built SaaS knows that reset password requests are one of the most common issues users have. Now they're being pitched something that losing a file or losing the password to that file loses all of their money (???) Of course you want a third party! Immutability? Well that's fine until there are exploits. And then you either have to live with a DAO losing millions of dollars or you have to hard fork. The former is terrible publicity and bad for the people who hold most of the money, while the latter violates the spirit of the whole thing. Guess which wins? It's all so silly. People are re-inventing the wheel and building something worse. Have people made a ton of money? Might it still get adoption? Sure. But there's a hell of a lot of problems in the world and a hell of a lot of bright people building bullshit.

askmike 5y ago
> Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. This doesn't scale any further than a website ran by a company providing services. Most eyes are on DeFi which is a world of smart contracts and dapps - which at some point (hopefully, because else there is little point) will run without anyone having any authority to change/stop them. > For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's coins aren't what the public are looking for. I have never met a human being who is anti–FDIC (what insures bank deposits in the US up to $250k). It's not about being anti FDIC, it's about forcing all software to be managed by an American company that is registered and managed in a very particular way. > For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. I think we are at the stage where very few people actually believe everyone is going to stop using any type of fiat and store all their wealth in crypto currency, even for everyday spending. So in that perspective this is like telling people not to buy an iPhone because Apple stock might go down (they are very separate). > People don't know how to manage private and public keys. Anyone who has built SaaS knows that reset password requests are one of the most common issues users have. Now they're being pitched something that losing a file or losing the password to that file loses all of their money (???) Of course you want a third party! Yes, not everyone cares about this but some do, that's like saying there is no point in WhatsApp to be e2e encrypted or Signal to exist at all because most people don't care if authorities read their messages. > Immutability? Well that's fine until there are exploits. And then you either have to live with a DAO losing millions of dollars or you have to hard fork. The former is terrible publicity and bad for the people who hold most of the money, while the latter violates the spirit of the whole thing. Guess which wins? We are early days for sure, the "ETH hardfork" one in that instance but there are many instances where it didn't.
- jasonhansel 5y ago
  Most people aren't anarchists (or even libertarians). A world where anyone (including, say, terrorists or rogue states) can conduct transactions "without anyone having any authority to change/stop them" sounds, to most people, like a very bad thing.
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    Most people think your comment is unsubstantiated.
rhn_mk1 5y ago
> People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC I think you may be generalizing here. > For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges You seem to mean "cryptocurrencies" when you say "it", yet you address only the case of exchanges. What about money that's not parked at an exchange? I'd agree with the "something worse" claim if you explained the trust aspect completely, and addressed the division of power, but as it is, I can only agree to some points.
paulpauper 5y ago
For the first 4 or so years crpyto did what it was advertised. And then the drug dealing situation got out of control and then in 2017 hackers used it to launder money (wannacry). And then this led to the era of KYC and chain analytics, and pretty much defeating the original use case.
tuatoru 5y ago
Most unanswerable commentary I've read for a while. Thanks!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
na85 5y ago
>For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. Not only that but Bitcoin or whatever shitcoin becomes the next big thing need to scale up the network's ability to handle transactions. Payment processors like Visa handle something like 400x more transactions per unit time than Bitcoin.
- emtel 5y ago
  This is apples to oranges. A Bitcoin transaction is a settlement, much more akin to fed wire than visa. Visa transactions are not settlements.
  - na85 5y ago
    This is moving the goalposts. Bitcoin fanboys love to talk about the future where you can buy groceries and order pizza with btc. Do you typically use a bank wire for those transactions? I don't.
    - tdeck 5y ago
      That was the original generation of Bitcoin enthusiasts, but nowadays it feels like you're more likely to find fanboys who see it as a get-rich-quick scheme where the line can only go up.
  - anamax 5y ago
    Visa does do something equivalent to settlements. Even if that is just at monthly granularity (statements to card holders), the volume is immense.
ekianjo 5y ago
> For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. such an uneducated take. there is no fiat currency that lasted a hundred years without massive loss in value, or completely disappearing altogether.
- simonsarris 5y ago
  This is a sensible riposte only if it takes you a hundred years to get to the grocery store.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    You typically live longer with your savings than 10 minutes to the grocery store. In other words, I could not care less if I lose 10% on a typical day in terms of value, but I care a lot more losing 50% (or more!) of the value of my savings over the span of my working life.
Dwolb 5y ago
I dunno I’m an over-halfway believer in crypto. The other day I wanted to invest in a token. So I transferred ETH out of Coinbase to MetaMask wallet, then traded my ETH for the token. Each transaction took about 30sec and cost ~$25. That sounds like a lot! Until you realize ETH has been around only 8 years and the transaction is entirely irreversible by an enterprising (invasive? dictatorial?) third party. To me it’s entirely insane that I can almost instantly transfer dollars across the world (galaxy?) for so little AND the protocol delivers incredible flexibility through smart contracts. IMO the future is bright.
- goatsi 5y ago
  >the transaction is entirely irreversible by an enterprising (invasive? dictatorial?) third party. Are you aware of the history of Ethereum?
  - Dwolb 5y ago
    Good point on ETH Classic. I guess I didn’t think of that bc I don’t consider myself important enough to be overruled by so many people. Possibly the good thing about the ecosystem is anyone can make a protocol or form the existing open source ones and then users and miners can vote with their feet.
- 300bps 5y ago
  Until you realize ETH has been around only 8 years and the transaction is entirely irreversible It’s funny you make this comment specifically about ETH since it literally exists today as a result of a hard fork that reversed transactions in 2016. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ethereum-classic.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ethereum-classic.asp
  - bouncycastle 5y ago
    The fork did not reverse the transactions. Instead, it made new transactions. Meanwhile, bitcoin reversed 53 blocks in the 2010 "inflation bug" incident.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fedreserved 5y ago
The argument I've heard against FDIC insurance encourages a race to the bottom. Banks take more risk to make more profit (combined with the back drop of the feds willingness to bail then out? The more conservative banks either have to loosen up, or lose out to the looser banks. There was not much money lost relatively speaking to banks not having FDIC insurance in the past. And there can be tremendous upside in researching to make sure your bank is only loaning to reputable investments, homes, etc
worrycue 5y ago
Another thing I feel would be a flaw is the inability to increase and decrease the money supply - something central banks often do with fiat money to stimulate the economy. Most crypto currency seem proud even that they can only deflate … which is the worst thing for a currency since it will just result in hoarding and ever decreasing economic activity (AKA deflationary spiral) - at the end of the day, economic activity is what we want, it’s what put food on supermarket shelves, we can’t eat money.
- acjohnson55 5y ago
  The goal is not really to stimulate the economy, but to make sure there is the appropriate amount of money for the amount of economic activity, so that prices are driven by supply and demand of goods and services, but not so much by the constraints of the monetary system, itself. If you get this wrong, you have price instability. Money should be the most boring part of the economy. It's just the medium. This is what crypto gets wrong. In crypto, the money is the entire economy.
- Valakas_ 5y ago
  For the economy to be stimulated through increase of supply, everyone has to lose some purchasing power. Is that a good trade-off? I don't know.
- boogies 5y ago
  > Another thing I feel would be a flaw is the inability to increase and decrease the money supply - something central banks often do with fiat money to stimulate the economy. Preventing that type of manipulation might actually be the motivation for Bitcoin's creation. Satoshi embedded the text "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" into the first coinbase in the blockchain¹. Inflation is a tax on savings that similarly benefits the money manipulators at the expense of common people with less control of the currency. ¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Creation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Creation
toolz 5y ago
well over 90% of illicit purchases are done in fiat and you've really not been paying attention if you think those are the only benefits of crypto. There's an entire country that uses crypto as legal tender. I could stop there, but there's more. Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. The list goes on. I'm not sure how you've arrived at your position, but it is not an educated position.
- shakna 5y ago
  > Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. Not in any of the countries that have implemented PayID. (Most of Europe, Aus/NZ, and South America, with the US finally beginning to get on board this year). It's a case of sending to a mobile phone, with instant-3days timeline, with a cost in 20-50c range for anything less than $10k.
  - toolz 5y ago
    I can send many orders of magnitudes more in crypto (XLM in case you're wanting a reference, but there are more) faster and cheaper than that. and payID holds first time transactions for 24 hours...this isn't even marginally reasonable for many use-cases
    - shakna 5y ago
      It's not more accessible - and instant (10-30ms) is sort of hard to beat in terms of speed. (Instant is guaranteed for PayID if you have one transaction to that address ever).
      - toolz 5y ago
        so payID, something not all countries have today can match the speed of crypto, can't match the fees and have a huge block on 1st time transactions. crypto wins there - payID sounds like it's been something that should've existed decades ago, but crypto has solved this problem and done a better job and yes it absolutely is more accessible - everywhere except maybe countries that make buying crypto illegal
lsiq 5y ago
The likes of Paypal locks your funds without explanation or appeal. And the likes of HSBC launder money with impunity. (BUT BUT KYC/AML!) But hey, let's continue trusting self interested people who don't care about you to "do the right thing" and protect your funds.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Thanks to KYC, HSBC is in the news, and the real evidence provided by KYC about their transactions makes light of evidence to actually enforce a fine for allowing the money laundering operations. If it were crypto it just wouldn't ever be found out.
  - lsiq 5y ago
    Amazing you actually believe that. Have you considered what doesn't make it to the news, and also what gets explicitly omitted from the news? Do you even know that FATF is the main organization that goes around imposing KYC/AML? And they are a non-governmental body, no oversight - don't answer to anybody. They are literally Luca Brasi and you don't even know who the Don Corleones behind the curtain are.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  An exchange can do exactly that, just like PayPal. Or simply disappear, for that matter. So you either buy that drawback and have the same system in a different skin, or you go for the self-hosting way and eat all the problems it brings (especially for non-technical people). And the hard forks did happen. And they definitely undermined the whole model of what the coins actually should do. The positive point, though, is that with crypto, the self-hosted side and the managed side can work together seamlessly, so everyone can choose their approach.
syshum 5y ago
>>I have never met a human being who is anti–FDIC (what insures bank deposits in the US up to $250k). you have met one now. I am anti-FDIC, and really anti-banking in general, as well as anti-KYC laws, and anti-anti money laundering laws... I am very surprised that people are "very in favor" of KYC laws, which if true highlights the ignorance the people have about how these laws are used by government to abuse normal people. Take a gander over to the Institute for Justice who has any number of cases linked to these and other similar laws. The big bad "terrorism" has replaced the 70's and 80's big bad of "Drug King Pins" to justify all manner of abuse by government to go over small businesses, and ordinary people all in the name of stopping some <<insert your bogey man here>> >>For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. Maybe not on the walk over, and bitcoin is not really that unstable either. This idea that fiat money, and the USD in particular is stable is really laughable. This year especially where I have seen my average weekly grocery bill increase by about 20%, and I am buying the same things in the same QTY... But I forgot the Fed says this is not the inflation I am looking for and just hand-waves it away... so it is all good. No issues at all with Fiat money....
anamax 5y ago
> Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. That's true until KYC starts being use for "social credit" purposes. Yes, money-laundering and terrorism are important but human nature being what it is, govts can't resist the temptation. In fact, one might reasonably argue that temptation is the point for folks who get into govt. See also child-porn and drugs.
dudus 5y ago
Just wow. This is the first time I'm actually going to favorite a comment on HN. Best-written crypto critic I've ever read
narrator 5y ago
Getting money out of China has been a major use for crypto. Rich people in China are very nervous and will jump through all sorts of crazy hoops to set up a nest egg overseas.
MikeDelta 5y ago
Plenty of paper millionaires out there who lost the password to their wallet, see [0] for an example, and will likely never cash out. [0] www.fool.com/amp/investing/2021/06/18/the-man-who-lost-265-million/
trixie_ 5y ago
The benefit of crypto is being able to move large amounts of money around quickly and easily. As well as protection of what you’re holding being diluted by central bank. Does it replace fiat currency? No, and it shouldn’t. Diversify.

by tyre 5y ago

askmike 5y ago

> Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. This doesn't scale any further than a website ran by a company providing services. Most eyes are on DeFi which is a world of smart contracts and dapps - which at some point (hopefully, because else there is little point) will run without anyone having any authority to change/stop them. > For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's coins aren't what the public are looking for. I have never met a human being who is anti–FDIC (what insures bank deposits in the US up to $250k). It's not about being anti FDIC, it's about forcing all software to be managed by an American company that is registered and managed in a very particular way. > For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. I think we are at the stage where very few people actually believe everyone is going to stop using any type of fiat and store all their wealth in crypto currency, even for everyday spending. So in that perspective this is like telling people not to buy an iPhone because Apple stock might go down (they are very separate). > People don't know how to manage private and public keys. Anyone who has built SaaS knows that reset password requests are one of the most common issues users have. Now they're being pitched something that losing a file or losing the password to that file loses all of their money (???) Of course you want a third party! Yes, not everyone cares about this but some do, that's like saying there is no point in WhatsApp to be e2e encrypted or Signal to exist at all because most people don't care if authorities read their messages. > Immutability? Well that's fine until there are exploits. And then you either have to live with a DAO losing millions of dollars or you have to hard fork. The former is terrible publicity and bad for the people who hold most of the money, while the latter violates the spirit of the whole thing. Guess which wins? We are early days for sure, the "ETH hardfork" one in that instance but there are many instances where it didn't.

jasonhansel 5y ago
Most people aren't anarchists (or even libertarians). A world where anyone (including, say, terrorists or rogue states) can conduct transactions "without anyone having any authority to change/stop them" sounds, to most people, like a very bad thing.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  Most people think your comment is unsubstantiated.

rhn_mk1 5y ago

> People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC I think you may be generalizing here. > For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges You seem to mean "cryptocurrencies" when you say "it", yet you address only the case of exchanges. What about money that's not parked at an exchange? I'd agree with the "something worse" claim if you explained the trust aspect completely, and addressed the division of power, but as it is, I can only agree to some points.

paulpauper 5y ago

For the first 4 or so years crpyto did what it was advertised. And then the drug dealing situation got out of control and then in 2017 hackers used it to launder money (wannacry). And then this led to the era of KYC and chain analytics, and pretty much defeating the original use case.

tuatoru 5y ago

Most unanswerable commentary I've read for a while. Thanks!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

na85 5y ago

>For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. Not only that but Bitcoin or whatever shitcoin becomes the next big thing need to scale up the network's ability to handle transactions. Payment processors like Visa handle something like 400x more transactions per unit time than Bitcoin.

emtel 5y ago
This is apples to oranges. A Bitcoin transaction is a settlement, much more akin to fed wire than visa. Visa transactions are not settlements.
- na85 5y ago
  This is moving the goalposts. Bitcoin fanboys love to talk about the future where you can buy groceries and order pizza with btc. Do you typically use a bank wire for those transactions? I don't.
  - tdeck 5y ago
    That was the original generation of Bitcoin enthusiasts, but nowadays it feels like you're more likely to find fanboys who see it as a get-rich-quick scheme where the line can only go up.
- anamax 5y ago
  Visa does do something equivalent to settlements. Even if that is just at monthly granularity (statements to card holders), the volume is immense.

ekianjo 5y ago

> For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. such an uneducated take. there is no fiat currency that lasted a hundred years without massive loss in value, or completely disappearing altogether.

simonsarris 5y ago
This is a sensible riposte only if it takes you a hundred years to get to the grocery store.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  You typically live longer with your savings than 10 minutes to the grocery store. In other words, I could not care less if I lose 10% on a typical day in terms of value, but I care a lot more losing 50% (or more!) of the value of my savings over the span of my working life.

Dwolb 5y ago

I dunno I’m an over-halfway believer in crypto. The other day I wanted to invest in a token. So I transferred ETH out of Coinbase to MetaMask wallet, then traded my ETH for the token. Each transaction took about 30sec and cost ~$25. That sounds like a lot! Until you realize ETH has been around only 8 years and the transaction is entirely irreversible by an enterprising (invasive? dictatorial?) third party. To me it’s entirely insane that I can almost instantly transfer dollars across the world (galaxy?) for so little AND the protocol delivers incredible flexibility through smart contracts. IMO the future is bright.

goatsi 5y ago
>the transaction is entirely irreversible by an enterprising (invasive? dictatorial?) third party. Are you aware of the history of Ethereum?
- Dwolb 5y ago
  Good point on ETH Classic. I guess I didn’t think of that bc I don’t consider myself important enough to be overruled by so many people. Possibly the good thing about the ecosystem is anyone can make a protocol or form the existing open source ones and then users and miners can vote with their feet.
300bps 5y ago
Until you realize ETH has been around only 8 years and the transaction is entirely irreversible It’s funny you make this comment specifically about ETH since it literally exists today as a result of a hard fork that reversed transactions in 2016. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ethereum-classic.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ethereum-classic.asp
- bouncycastle 5y ago
  The fork did not reverse the transactions. Instead, it made new transactions. Meanwhile, bitcoin reversed 53 blocks in the 2010 "inflation bug" incident.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fedreserved 5y ago

The argument I've heard against FDIC insurance encourages a race to the bottom. Banks take more risk to make more profit (combined with the back drop of the feds willingness to bail then out? The more conservative banks either have to loosen up, or lose out to the looser banks. There was not much money lost relatively speaking to banks not having FDIC insurance in the past. And there can be tremendous upside in researching to make sure your bank is only loaning to reputable investments, homes, etc

worrycue 5y ago

Another thing I feel would be a flaw is the inability to increase and decrease the money supply - something central banks often do with fiat money to stimulate the economy. Most crypto currency seem proud even that they can only deflate … which is the worst thing for a currency since it will just result in hoarding and ever decreasing economic activity (AKA deflationary spiral) - at the end of the day, economic activity is what we want, it’s what put food on supermarket shelves, we can’t eat money.

acjohnson55 5y ago
The goal is not really to stimulate the economy, but to make sure there is the appropriate amount of money for the amount of economic activity, so that prices are driven by supply and demand of goods and services, but not so much by the constraints of the monetary system, itself. If you get this wrong, you have price instability. Money should be the most boring part of the economy. It's just the medium. This is what crypto gets wrong. In crypto, the money is the entire economy.
Valakas_ 5y ago
For the economy to be stimulated through increase of supply, everyone has to lose some purchasing power. Is that a good trade-off? I don't know.
boogies 5y ago
> Another thing I feel would be a flaw is the inability to increase and decrease the money supply - something central banks often do with fiat money to stimulate the economy. Preventing that type of manipulation might actually be the motivation for Bitcoin's creation. Satoshi embedded the text "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" into the first coinbase in the blockchain¹. Inflation is a tax on savings that similarly benefits the money manipulators at the expense of common people with less control of the currency. ¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Creation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Creation

toolz 5y ago

well over 90% of illicit purchases are done in fiat and you've really not been paying attention if you think those are the only benefits of crypto. There's an entire country that uses crypto as legal tender. I could stop there, but there's more. Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. The list goes on. I'm not sure how you've arrived at your position, but it is not an educated position.

shakna 5y ago
> Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. Not in any of the countries that have implemented PayID. (Most of Europe, Aus/NZ, and South America, with the US finally beginning to get on board this year). It's a case of sending to a mobile phone, with instant-3days timeline, with a cost in 20-50c range for anything less than $10k.
- toolz 5y ago
  I can send many orders of magnitudes more in crypto (XLM in case you're wanting a reference, but there are more) faster and cheaper than that. and payID holds first time transactions for 24 hours...this isn't even marginally reasonable for many use-cases
  - shakna 5y ago
    It's not more accessible - and instant (10-30ms) is sort of hard to beat in terms of speed. (Instant is guaranteed for PayID if you have one transaction to that address ever).
    - toolz 5y ago
      so payID, something not all countries have today can match the speed of crypto, can't match the fees and have a huge block on 1st time transactions. crypto wins there - payID sounds like it's been something that should've existed decades ago, but crypto has solved this problem and done a better job and yes it absolutely is more accessible - everywhere except maybe countries that make buying crypto illegal

lsiq 5y ago

The likes of Paypal locks your funds without explanation or appeal. And the likes of HSBC launder money with impunity. (BUT BUT KYC/AML!) But hey, let's continue trusting self interested people who don't care about you to "do the right thing" and protect your funds.

judge2020 5y ago
Thanks to KYC, HSBC is in the news, and the real evidence provided by KYC about their transactions makes light of evidence to actually enforce a fine for allowing the money laundering operations. If it were crypto it just wouldn't ever be found out.
- lsiq 5y ago
  Amazing you actually believe that. Have you considered what doesn't make it to the news, and also what gets explicitly omitted from the news? Do you even know that FATF is the main organization that goes around imposing KYC/AML? And they are a non-governmental body, no oversight - don't answer to anybody. They are literally Luca Brasi and you don't even know who the Don Corleones behind the curtain are.
Sebb767 5y ago
An exchange can do exactly that, just like PayPal. Or simply disappear, for that matter. So you either buy that drawback and have the same system in a different skin, or you go for the self-hosting way and eat all the problems it brings (especially for non-technical people). And the hard forks did happen. And they definitely undermined the whole model of what the coins actually should do. The positive point, though, is that with crypto, the self-hosted side and the managed side can work together seamlessly, so everyone can choose their approach.

syshum 5y ago

>>I have never met a human being who is anti–FDIC (what insures bank deposits in the US up to $250k). you have met one now. I am anti-FDIC, and really anti-banking in general, as well as anti-KYC laws, and anti-anti money laundering laws... I am very surprised that people are "very in favor" of KYC laws, which if true highlights the ignorance the people have about how these laws are used by government to abuse normal people. Take a gander over to the Institute for Justice who has any number of cases linked to these and other similar laws. The big bad "terrorism" has replaced the 70's and 80's big bad of "Drug King Pins" to justify all manner of abuse by government to go over small businesses, and ordinary people all in the name of stopping some <<insert your bogey man here>> >>For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. Maybe not on the walk over, and bitcoin is not really that unstable either. This idea that fiat money, and the USD in particular is stable is really laughable. This year especially where I have seen my average weekly grocery bill increase by about 20%, and I am buying the same things in the same QTY... But I forgot the Fed says this is not the inflation I am looking for and just hand-waves it away... so it is all good. No issues at all with Fiat money....

anamax 5y ago

> Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. That's true until KYC starts being use for "social credit" purposes. Yes, money-laundering and terrorism are important but human nature being what it is, govts can't resist the temptation. In fact, one might reasonably argue that temptation is the point for folks who get into govt. See also child-porn and drugs.

dudus 5y ago

Just wow. This is the first time I'm actually going to favorite a comment on HN. Best-written crypto critic I've ever read

narrator 5y ago

Getting money out of China has been a major use for crypto. Rich people in China are very nervous and will jump through all sorts of crazy hoops to set up a nest egg overseas.

MikeDelta 5y ago

Plenty of paper millionaires out there who lost the password to their wallet, see [0] for an example, and will likely never cash out. [0] www.fool.com/amp/investing/2021/06/18/the-man-who-lost-265-million/

trixie_ 5y ago

The benefit of crypto is being able to move large amounts of money around quickly and easily. As well as protection of what you’re holding being diluted by central bank. Does it replace fiat currency? No, and it shouldn’t. Diversify.