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> But we also have to keep the lid on fraid No we don't. The dangers from allowing use of cryptocurrencies by criminals are far less than dangers to freedoms f

> But we also have to keep the lid on fraid No we don't. The dangers from allowing use of cryptocurrencies by criminals are far less than dangers to freedoms from corrupt totalitarian governments. When government can easily shut down your finances, you need some kind of way to defy it. And if you think that your government will never do such thing, think again, harder. Citizens must have a leverage against abuse. With shrinking use of cash, cryptocurrencies allow people to evade a chokehold that can instantly smother them.

D13Fd 5y ago
Wow. I know this comment is old at this point, but this is an incredibly dangerous point of view. Corruption is crime. Our ability to have a non-corrupt government depends in large part on the ability of our legal system to track the movement of money and detect corrruption. If you want to create an unstoppable superhighway to absolute government corruption, untraceable currency with perfect privacy is a wonderful way to do it. People think privacy means "they'll never know I had that porn subscription or bought those legal recreational drugs." But the reality is more likely "they'll never know I took that bribe to deny that permit to that company's competitor."
toomuchtodo 5y ago
I’m fine with weak financial privacy and strong KYC/AML regulations. A lot of garbage humans out there that these tools are necessary to police with.
- howinteresting 5y ago
  What that means in practice is that rich people have financial privacy and poor people don't. Personally I think it should be the opposite: poor people should have privacy and rich people shouldn't. If you're in favor of e2ee messaging but not e2ee financial privacy, you're saying that you don't want people to do anything material with the e2ee messaging.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Highly dependent on your government and the electorate. Elect shitty people, get shitty government and policy. Technology will save you from neither.
    - howinteresting 5y ago
      In what jurisdiction do rich people not have access to webs of shell companies to hide their transactions through?
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        I don’t disagree. How does crypto solve that? It doesn’t. It’s just as harmful. Perfection doesn’t exist, only the continual efforts towards an ideal. Edit: (HN throttling), reply to below comment. I agree that there are niche use cases where crypto is bridging a gap for the disenfranchised (sex workers in this example) until policy catches up, but that it’s unsustainable to extrapolate that out as a call for wide adoption of crypto by the masses.
        howinteresting 5y ago
        Crypto (not Bitcoin or Ethereum, Zcash) gives everyone the same privacy rich people enjoy, leveling the playing field. I think crypto has a bunch of other problems, but I consider (for example) sex workers being able to transact online an unalloyed good.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Any elected leader can suddenly become not replaceable via elections. Hitler, Putin, Chavez, Lukashenko were all elected once.
- tylersmith 5y ago
  This is why cryptocurrencies had to be decentralized and censorship resistant, so they can grow whether or not people are fine with it.
- lawn 5y ago
  That's just because your government isn't currently categorizing you as a "garbage human".
juliette1 5y ago
sobkas 5y ago
> And if you think that your government will never do such thing, think again, harder. Citizens must have a leverage against abuse. With shrinking use of cash, cryptocurrencies allow people to evade a chokehold that can instantly smother them. Blockchain won't save you from visit from a man with 5$ wrench, if you know what I mean. Blockchain might keep your transactions pseudonymous, but when government already knows you, there is little you can do to keep yourself out of its reach.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > Blockchain won't save you from visit from a man with 5$ wrench, if you know what I mean. There is a large middle-ground between a government respecting your ownership and a one stealing your funds using a wrench.
- woah 5y ago
  This is a logical fallacy. This is like arguing that because the government could hypothetically put you under 24/7 physical observation and listen to your every conversation by being in the same room and looking over your shoulder, ever using encryption technology is useless.
  - giaour 5y ago
    If your threat model includes Stas-like pervasive surveillance and a real possibility of interrogation under torture, then GP is right, traditional encryption technology will be of limited benefit.
- CuriousCosmic 5y ago
  > Blockchain won't save you from visit from a man with 5$ wrench, if you know what I mean. This is accurate however the following isn't necessarily accurate: > Blockchain might keep your transactions pseudonymous, but when government already knows you, there is little you can do to keep yourself out of its reach. There are plenty of solid privacy chains based on well understood cryptography. On top of that it is becoming increasingly easy/viable for existing networks to integrate privacy preserving Tx into their networks. Ex: Litecoin (a long standing Bitcoin software fork) integrating privacy preserving Tx via the MimbleWimble protocol and Extension Blocks (together referred to as the MWEB hard fork). Developments like the introduction of MWEB show that even if the government knows you or your Tx today, all you have to do is make an MWEB (or equivalent) transaction and all of a sudden that chain of visibility goes dark. Additionally while it may be possible for the government or any organisation to forcibly extract access or knowledge from you with force, we as a society should not be content with making that easy. Prior to the introduction of the internet and digital society, organisations had to spend far more effort to collect far less (and far less reliable) information. We should be making every push to set that pre-digital information era as a baseline or absolute minimum for privacy standards.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"The dangers from allowing use of cryptocurrencies by criminals are far less" I think you have never come across real organised crime, we had a family friend murdered by one. Think mexican drug cartels and the amount of damage they cause. Ofcourse they operated just fine before crypto existed.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  From what I know about organised crime, they operated before the invention of cryptocurrencies, and will operate even if cryptocurrencies will cease to exist. Speaking of your family friend. Among my and my wife's extended families there are many victims of political purges. Deported, confiscated property, murdered, tortured, jailed for decades. State is a far more dangerous adversary then even the most violent criminal organisation .

D13Fd 5y ago

Wow. I know this comment is old at this point, but this is an incredibly dangerous point of view. Corruption is crime. Our ability to have a non-corrupt government depends in large part on the ability of our legal system to track the movement of money and detect corrruption. If you want to create an unstoppable superhighway to absolute government corruption, untraceable currency with perfect privacy is a wonderful way to do it. People think privacy means "they'll never know I had that porn subscription or bought those legal recreational drugs." But the reality is more likely "they'll never know I took that bribe to deny that permit to that company's competitor."

toomuchtodo 5y ago

I’m fine with weak financial privacy and strong KYC/AML regulations. A lot of garbage humans out there that these tools are necessary to police with.

howinteresting 5y ago
What that means in practice is that rich people have financial privacy and poor people don't. Personally I think it should be the opposite: poor people should have privacy and rich people shouldn't. If you're in favor of e2ee messaging but not e2ee financial privacy, you're saying that you don't want people to do anything material with the e2ee messaging.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Highly dependent on your government and the electorate. Elect shitty people, get shitty government and policy. Technology will save you from neither.
  - howinteresting 5y ago
    In what jurisdiction do rich people not have access to webs of shell companies to hide their transactions through?
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      I don’t disagree. How does crypto solve that? It doesn’t. It’s just as harmful. Perfection doesn’t exist, only the continual efforts towards an ideal. Edit: (HN throttling), reply to below comment. I agree that there are niche use cases where crypto is bridging a gap for the disenfranchised (sex workers in this example) until policy catches up, but that it’s unsustainable to extrapolate that out as a call for wide adoption of crypto by the masses.
      - howinteresting 5y ago
        Crypto (not Bitcoin or Ethereum, Zcash) gives everyone the same privacy rich people enjoy, leveling the playing field. I think crypto has a bunch of other problems, but I consider (for example) sex workers being able to transact online an unalloyed good.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Any elected leader can suddenly become not replaceable via elections. Hitler, Putin, Chavez, Lukashenko were all elected once.
tylersmith 5y ago
This is why cryptocurrencies had to be decentralized and censorship resistant, so they can grow whether or not people are fine with it.
lawn 5y ago
That's just because your government isn't currently categorizing you as a "garbage human".

juliette1 5y ago

sobkas 5y ago

> And if you think that your government will never do such thing, think again, harder. Citizens must have a leverage against abuse. With shrinking use of cash, cryptocurrencies allow people to evade a chokehold that can instantly smother them. Blockchain won't save you from visit from a man with 5$ wrench, if you know what I mean. Blockchain might keep your transactions pseudonymous, but when government already knows you, there is little you can do to keep yourself out of its reach.

fsflover 5y ago
> Blockchain won't save you from visit from a man with 5$ wrench, if you know what I mean. There is a large middle-ground between a government respecting your ownership and a one stealing your funds using a wrench.
woah 5y ago
This is a logical fallacy. This is like arguing that because the government could hypothetically put you under 24/7 physical observation and listen to your every conversation by being in the same room and looking over your shoulder, ever using encryption technology is useless.
- giaour 5y ago
  If your threat model includes Stas-like pervasive surveillance and a real possibility of interrogation under torture, then GP is right, traditional encryption technology will be of limited benefit.
CuriousCosmic 5y ago
> Blockchain won't save you from visit from a man with 5$ wrench, if you know what I mean. This is accurate however the following isn't necessarily accurate: > Blockchain might keep your transactions pseudonymous, but when government already knows you, there is little you can do to keep yourself out of its reach. There are plenty of solid privacy chains based on well understood cryptography. On top of that it is becoming increasingly easy/viable for existing networks to integrate privacy preserving Tx into their networks. Ex: Litecoin (a long standing Bitcoin software fork) integrating privacy preserving Tx via the MimbleWimble protocol and Extension Blocks (together referred to as the MWEB hard fork). Developments like the introduction of MWEB show that even if the government knows you or your Tx today, all you have to do is make an MWEB (or equivalent) transaction and all of a sudden that chain of visibility goes dark. Additionally while it may be possible for the government or any organisation to forcibly extract access or knowledge from you with force, we as a society should not be content with making that easy. Prior to the introduction of the internet and digital society, organisations had to spend far more effort to collect far less (and far less reliable) information. We should be making every push to set that pre-digital information era as a baseline or absolute minimum for privacy standards.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"The dangers from allowing use of cryptocurrencies by criminals are far less" I think you have never come across real organised crime, we had a family friend murdered by one. Think mexican drug cartels and the amount of damage they cause. Ofcourse they operated just fine before crypto existed.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
From what I know about organised crime, they operated before the invention of cryptocurrencies, and will operate even if cryptocurrencies will cease to exist. Speaking of your family friend. Among my and my wife's extended families there are many victims of political purges. Deported, confiscated property, murdered, tortured, jailed for decades. State is a far more dangerous adversary then even the most violent criminal organisation .