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An interesting angle that seems overlooked in articles about India and China "banning" cryptocurrencies is that these efforts are often linked to a desire to cr

An interesting angle that seems overlooked in articles about India and China "banning" cryptocurrencies is that these efforts are often linked to a desire to create centralized digital currencies. e.g. from this article: "India is also looking to make a framework for the official digital currency that will be issued by the Reserve Bank of India."

trasz 5y ago
Ie creating something that could be useful as an actual currency?
- RealityVoid 5y ago
  I find it amusing the baked in assumption of your post that currencies can only be real if they are backed by a state. I think that is... No necessarily true. Just because something held up for a long time does not mean there is some essential reason why things can't be another way. That holds true of a lot of human innovations. People could not imagine automobiles or flying or computers, but that did not make them impossible.
  - spiralx 5y ago
    > People could not imagine automobiles or flying or computers, but that did not make them impossible. People imagined versions of those things for a long time before they were practical. People have imagined other types of currency as well, and non-state backed currencies aren't even novel given plenty of examples have and do exist.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    They don't have to be backed by a state, however, it's quite obvious that "permissionless", "uncensorable" and "truly anonymous" are features that won't be accepted by states for a legitimate currency (just as they aren't really tolerated for cash, driving all kinds of restrictions and controls of non-tiny amounts of cash), so it's quite plausible that in the long run the legal businesses and law-abiding citizens will be allowed to interact only with payment mechanisms that have disabled those features in some way; so if any given cryptocurrency unavoidably has those features, then people will be prohibited to touch it, limiting their usage only to criminal purposes.
- iskander 5y ago
  It would definitely have a lot more buy-in from banks if it were centrally sanctioned but I'm not sure if the functionality would be much different from a stablecoin on an efficient L2. I would personally rather have banks integrate with e.g. USDC on zkSync but I suspect that the lack of control is what makes that scenario undesirable for governments.
rufusroflpunch 5y ago
It's 100% about CBDC's. CBDC's are the endgame for tyranny, really. We should be doing absolutely everything we can to fight this.
- spiralx 5y ago
  How are CBDCs the "endgame for tyranny" in a way that (presumably) fiat currencies or cryptocurrencies aren't? Seems a bit hyperbolic, but maybe you have good reasons to be so alarmed.
  - csomar 5y ago
    You can't ban someone from owning or using cash. But you can do so with a CBDC.
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      You can also dictate how the funds in a CBDC wallet are spent. There was a proposal that CBDC wallets could be issued stimulus funds that expire unless they are spent within a certain time frame. This is to prevent people from just putting the check into a savings account.
      - csomar 5y ago
        CBDC are just a huge/national bank. It's a dream come true for the Marxists.
    - spiralx 5y ago
      As far as I'm aware CBDCs are a largely theoretical concept right now, do you have any links to an implementation such as you're describing?
      - MonkeyClub 5y ago
        https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
spiralx 5y ago
Do you have evidence that "a desire to create centralized digital currencies" has anything to do with "banning cryptocurrencies"? Because lots of countries have expressed interest in CBDCs and most of them aren't talking about banning anything. Indeed, it's often central banks talking about CDBCs, which aren't even in the position of banning anything. Seems to me that CDBCs are just the new topic for conspiracies about how cryptocurrencies are being held back by the Powers That Be.
- iskander 5y ago
  The two are often juxtaposed in the coverage of crypto bans, I don't know if they're also juxtaposed in the political intentions.

trasz 5y ago

Ie creating something that could be useful as an actual currency?

RealityVoid 5y ago
I find it amusing the baked in assumption of your post that currencies can only be real if they are backed by a state. I think that is... No necessarily true. Just because something held up for a long time does not mean there is some essential reason why things can't be another way. That holds true of a lot of human innovations. People could not imagine automobiles or flying or computers, but that did not make them impossible.
- spiralx 5y ago
  > People could not imagine automobiles or flying or computers, but that did not make them impossible. People imagined versions of those things for a long time before they were practical. People have imagined other types of currency as well, and non-state backed currencies aren't even novel given plenty of examples have and do exist.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  They don't have to be backed by a state, however, it's quite obvious that "permissionless", "uncensorable" and "truly anonymous" are features that won't be accepted by states for a legitimate currency (just as they aren't really tolerated for cash, driving all kinds of restrictions and controls of non-tiny amounts of cash), so it's quite plausible that in the long run the legal businesses and law-abiding citizens will be allowed to interact only with payment mechanisms that have disabled those features in some way; so if any given cryptocurrency unavoidably has those features, then people will be prohibited to touch it, limiting their usage only to criminal purposes.
iskander 5y ago
It would definitely have a lot more buy-in from banks if it were centrally sanctioned but I'm not sure if the functionality would be much different from a stablecoin on an efficient L2. I would personally rather have banks integrate with e.g. USDC on zkSync but I suspect that the lack of control is what makes that scenario undesirable for governments.

rufusroflpunch 5y ago

It's 100% about CBDC's. CBDC's are the endgame for tyranny, really. We should be doing absolutely everything we can to fight this.

spiralx 5y ago
How are CBDCs the "endgame for tyranny" in a way that (presumably) fiat currencies or cryptocurrencies aren't? Seems a bit hyperbolic, but maybe you have good reasons to be so alarmed.
- csomar 5y ago
  You can't ban someone from owning or using cash. But you can do so with a CBDC.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    You can also dictate how the funds in a CBDC wallet are spent. There was a proposal that CBDC wallets could be issued stimulus funds that expire unless they are spent within a certain time frame. This is to prevent people from just putting the check into a savings account.
    - csomar 5y ago
      CBDC are just a huge/national bank. It's a dream come true for the Marxists.
  - spiralx 5y ago
    As far as I'm aware CBDCs are a largely theoretical concept right now, do you have any links to an implementation such as you're describing?
    - MonkeyClub 5y ago
      https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...

spiralx 5y ago

Do you have evidence that "a desire to create centralized digital currencies" has anything to do with "banning cryptocurrencies"? Because lots of countries have expressed interest in CBDCs and most of them aren't talking about banning anything. Indeed, it's often central banks talking about CDBCs, which aren't even in the position of banning anything. Seems to me that CDBCs are just the new topic for conspiracies about how cryptocurrencies are being held back by the Powers That Be.

iskander 5y ago
The two are often juxtaposed in the coverage of crypto bans, I don't know if they're also juxtaposed in the political intentions.