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Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. Apart from the obvious issues (eg energy expenditure) the one myth that needs to

by jmyeet 5y ago

Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. Apart from the obvious issues (eg energy expenditure) the one myth that needs to die about crypto is that it is extragovernmental and indictments such as this and the Bitfinex laundering case recently should underline that. The simple fact is that the developed world could shut down what little utility cryptocurrencies (and NFTs) have tomorrow if they chose to. China banned mining and mining was gone immediately (largely moving to Kyrgystan it seems). Defenders will say you can't shut down the network and that might be true but it's irrelevant. The threat of legal action will be enough to keep th evast majority of people away. And the weakness of any crypto is that at some point it has to interface with the real world or it's completely useless. Obvious example: the traditional financial system. Access to the US financial system is what allows the US government to exercise influence over European financial institutions to stop them, for example, dealing with sanctioned countries like Iran.

MrPatan 5y ago
"Thugs with guns could shut it off at any time" is the weirdest criticism of anything I have ever seen. Don't you see it can be said of everything? Just buy some and stop being a hater. It's not early anymore.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  >Don't you see it can be said of everything? So why this and not anything else? What's so special about Bitcoin anyways, other than the fact that some HN commenters seem to have some heavy bags that need offloading
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mstipetic 5y ago
For me it’s funny to see twitter comments now asking can we impose crypto sanctions on Russia. It’s like all these institutions and mechanisms we have are there are for a reason
leashless 5y ago
The problem is climate change. https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/can-the-world-computer-save-the-world-part-3-building-an-economy-with-a-future-5d4156f06a04 https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/can-the-world-... Smart contracts are the best shot we have of doing carbon, methane etc. tracking, managing offsetting payments and everything else required to start getting a grip on the CO2 emissions of the consumer economy.
- namdnay 5y ago
  I’ve got to admire the Chutzpah of claiming that crypto is the solution to climate change… and seriously, why on earth would this sort of tracking need smart contracts rather than say a database managed by a certification organization? Or even the UN?
  - er4hn 5y ago
    In case Justin Trudeau's war on truckers prevents you from helping them buy electric cybertrucks. Or you need to do some cap and trade with Russia. You've got to take the internationalist view here.
- jmyeet 5y ago
  This may well be a troll. I really want to believe that it is because the alternative is too depressing. I have a sinking feeling it isn't a troll however. I see so many Crypto Andys who argue for crypto out of unadulterated gross naivete about how anything outside of a very narrow slice of crypto works. The obvious problem is that crypto is hugely energy inefficient. Bitcoin in particular consumes a ton of energy with PoW (proof-of-work aka proof-of-waste). Defenders will then point to PoS (proof-of-stake) but that creates a different set of problems (eg the computing power for PoW is part of what keeps the network robust whereas PoS is more like a democracy where you get one vote for every $1 you have). Carbon trading is never going to happen. It's an idea that's been around for at least 30 years. The only people who are interested in it are those who are invested in it. The only thing that will reduce carbon emissions is the alternatives being cheaper. That's it. Absolutely no one is going to even mildly inconvenience themselves otherwise. And again, any such ideas suffer from the same problem all crypto does: interfacing with the real world. Like how do you agree on the value of something releasing (or potentially sequestering) carbon (or methane or whatever)? It's up for debate. How do you make sure what someone emits is what they claimed to have? It's a bit like the ivory traders of Hong Kong who magically have never run out of ivory even though the trade was banned and they're only meant to sell existing stocks.
samarama 5y ago
- somenewaccount1 5y ago
  Yes, we have reviewed the white purple yellow paper that's 9 inches thick. It was mostly just cat memes.
  - samarama 5y ago
    So you’re just a troll without any carefully researched knowledge.
    - i67vw3 5y ago
      Most of them know what exactly cryptocurrencies/blockchain are in detail. But usually the negativity comes 'muh climate change' while having 100x carbon footprint than an average individual let's say in El Salvador. Other point is that a lot of these folks dislike what cryptocurrencies are used for like decentralization, censorship-resistance, financial privacy etc Then there are those who are still butthurt that they did not buy Bitcoin when it was $100.
      - na85 5y ago
        Then there are those of us who think crypto has lots of theoretical but no actual advantages over cash, while also carrying lots of additional risk.
  - anm89 5y ago
    This really is a very low level of discourse.
senthil_rajasek 5y ago
>China banned mining and mining was gone immediately (largely moving to Kyrgystan it seems). Kearney, NE seems like a popular destination too, for crypto mining. https://www.npr.org/2022/02/24/1081252187/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-china-us https://www.npr.org/2022/02/24/1081252187/bitcoin-cryptocurr...
- mynegation 5y ago
  You surely meant Kearney, NE. NB in the North-American context stands for New Brunswick, Canada.
  - senthil_rajasek 5y ago
    Yes, Thank you.
TheFreim 5y ago
> Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. I think this hinges on what problem you identify. If someone identifies centralized financial systems as bad, even if they're efficient, the problem is real and the solution fits the problem. If you contest this, as many do for good reason, it becomes a solution in search of a problem.
- ScarletEmerald 5y ago
  The solution doesn't fit the problem though. Sure, in theory bitcoin-style cryptocurrencies can replace centralized financial systems. But, as keeps being demonstrated, including by this very example, in practice what you end up with is different, less-efficient, centralized financial systems dominated by fraud.
  - TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
    how is it less efficient? Obviously btc can't replace the financial system but crypto can. Investors in the next 10 years are going to realise that an omnipool was all that was needed in the first place and the NYSE is a dinosaur in comparison.
    - Yetioko 5y ago
      Etherium is looking for a PoS system. Guess what our current fiat system actually is? A highly finetuned evolutionary PoS system. It has features like: - transparency - fraud detection - political sanctions (russia vs. ukraine, north korea, iran...) - fairness due to transparency (you pay your taxes, i do: we both pay our fair share of infrastrucutre cost etc.) - easy to use (my grandparenst were able to use it) - save - easy authentication and authorization system (i can get money with my passport) - globally accepted - low transaction fees - self optimizing system due to capital market (one bank can do transactions faster and cheaper than you can)
      - TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
        - transparency Crypto, besides privacy coins is the most transparent you can possibily get. It's a public, immutable ledger. The US can literally go in an change the total supply anytime with zero transparency. And since USD is the global denomination of debt, when i increase my supply it actually makes my currency more valuable since everyone is shorting their own currency (Since their debt is in USD) and inflation leads to asset inflation which is a good thing for the wealthy, but a negative thing for those holding and dealing in USD. = us plebs. - fraud detection See point above, fraud is built into the system. - political sanctions (russia vs. ukraine, north korea, iran...) Political sanctions have been this economic philosophy that hasn't entirely played out in the countries doing the sanctions favor. These economies, due to force have been required to be much more verticly integrated and invest into the economies most hit by sanctions. Sanctions don't do much and the problem is, the more you sanction the less leverage you have. - fairness due to transparency (you pay your taxes, i do: we both pay our fair share of infrastrucutre cost etc.) What is fair about the current tax system? See my transparency point above, all those people trying to evade crypto taxs are in for a rude awakening when the governmeent develops machine learning to track and trade public ledgers... Everyone knows it's a public ledger... exactly the oposite of being descrete. - easy to use (my grandparenst were able to use it) Becausee it started being built when your grandparents grandparents were alive. Most shops didn't accept CC's when they first came out and it took a generation for the technology to preliforate. I'd say crypto has done what the old system did in 1/4 of the time. - save I get 4% APR on my stablecoins. 20+% on my DeFi Pools paid in stable coins. - easy authentication and authorization system (i can get money with my passport) I can provide authorization with a 10 word pneumonic. - globally accepted What is globally accepted exactly? USD? no it's not... it's only acceepted in the US. If i want to do business globally i have to swap to that asset. I not only have to worry about remittance, currency exchanges, trade fees and loan denomination. Terra has the ability to swap between many different currencies using stablecoins with almost no transaction fees. - low transaction fees BTC and Eth have extremely high transaction fees, but any V3 crypto has lower transaction fees than the current financial system. - self optimizing system due to capital market (one bank can do transactions faster and cheaper than you can) self optimizing system due to capital market (one bank can do transactions faster and cheaper than you can) Play around with some decentralized exchanges, solona or DOT. they can do transactions faster and cheaper than any incumbent, including VISA or the NYSE.
NelsonMinar 5y ago
Cryptocurrency is the solution for a very valuable problem. How do you commit financial crimes and frauds in a way just new enough to confuse people that what you're doing may be valuable?
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  What about drugs? Cheaper, less middlemen, higher quality, safer delivery. What’s not to like?
  - joosters 5y ago
    Fewer middlemen? Now to buy from your dealer, you have to go via a marketplace, after converting your real money on an exchange. That's at least two other intermediaries...
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      Your dealer… may just be buying online (and stepping on it). Depends on what they’re supplying. Something locally grown, ok, but overseas labs synthetics can involve a lot of middlemen.
- rvz 5y ago
  Easy. Criminals, extremists and fraudsters use Signal for E2EE communications and MobileCoin (an untraceable, privacy cryptocurrency) to fund it all. [0] It is what criminals and terrorists are using to make their activities impossible to trace. Got to thank MobileCoin for enabling that. [0] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In...
  - nileshtrivedi 5y ago
    MobileCoin whitepaper didn't make any claims about untraceability, AFAIK.
    - 5y ago
pricees 5y ago
I want to donate to a cause that Justin Trudeau finds "unacceptable." I want to send money to Ukraine. I think this week we saw problems with tradfi in the developed and developing world. And of course in the good ole US of A, I hear stories of civil forfeiture every other month.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  “Civil forfeiture” does not and has never meant “fiat forfeiture.” If the government tells you to forfeit your assets (justly or unjustly!), you can be certain that they will not be amused or deterred by attempts to hide those assets via cryptocurrency.
  - vageli 5y ago
    > “Civil forfeiture” does not and has never meant “fiat forfeiture.” If the government tells you to forfeit your assets (justly or unjustly!), you can be certain that they will not be amused or deterred by attempts to hide those assets via cryptocurrency. If they don't know it exists, they can't take it. Just like I can cross the border with a hundred thousand in crypto in a wallet. And even if they find the hardware wallet, that is not enough to seize the funds, especially if it's a brain wallet or something similar. The same simply doesn't exist for fiat.
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      > If they don't know it exists, they can't take it. I've said this before: any financial system that turns a presumed crime (the efficient cause of the asset seizure) into direct evidence of another crime (trying to hide assets) is not a good financial system. What you're describing doesn't exist in practice for any medium of exchange.
    - gamblor956 5y ago
      Just like I can cross the border with a hundred thousand in crypto in a wallet. No, you can't. You can cross the border with the private key for a wallet containing the addresses of a hundred thousand units of crypto, but the crypto isn't in your wallet (either kind), it's in the blockchain ledger of whatever cryptocurrency you're using. And this is an important distinction from money, because the money is actually in your wallet and you can use it without an internet connection, but the crypto is actually in the cloud and requires an internet connection to access and use.
5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
there is that expression, morality is how people think the world _should_ be, economics is the reality of how it _really_ is the problem = lack of investment options, stagnant wages, inflating cost of living, being priced out solution = gambling on crypto and making some money speaking as a millenial. honestly crypto is the only way could ever dream of buying a house. ive been working 15 years and saved 150k. average family home in my town is over 1 million. and stocks are inflated, the s&p is almost at a 90 degree angle. i bought btc in 2014 and my only regret was not buying more.
- BbzzbB 5y ago
  Everything is inflated and has been bid up. Cryptos are certainly no exception, it's only gotten worse in the last two years with all the FOMO they fostered and salesman that gathered to profit off my disillusioned generation. To each their own, but I think the idea that TINA to crypto is plain silly, yet I know more people (am millennial) owning crypto than stocks, always with this notion that TINA. At least with stocks you're still entitled to legal ownership of cashflows, with cryptocurrencies today you merely get a late entrance ticket to a digital commodity that might have monetary value, but trades like just another risk-on asset. The S&P500 will always look like a 90 degree angle on a long enough timeline, that's just how exponentials work. And it is by definition exponential as earnings compound, a quality cryptos do not possess. But it is ironic to hold that against it when 5-year charts in the crypto world look as they do. Time will tell which way it resolves I guess.
  - 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
    yes, crypto is inflated, and a pump and dump, but there is opportunity there, and hope. and that is what most retail are buying. i mean something changed in the stock market after 2008. i'm not really educated enough in finance, but it seems the value of stocks just went vertical. and since the covid pandemic everything has doubled in value. i know its related to decrease in value of usd but since my salary doesnt even increase to match inflation so its the same both ways. if i invest in stocks, at best i will get 2x after 5 years, at worst i will be buying at the peak of the everything bubble.
FollowingTheDao 5y ago
> Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. Truth. And I have not idea why people think Crypto is a hedge against anything. It pretty much follows the stock market and gold, albeit in much higher gamma.
mmaunder 5y ago
Agreed. I think the Russia situation may be an interesting test to see whether cryptocurrency can be a viable replacement for SWIFT. I don’t think it will be because, as you said, it is not extragovernmental, and at some points those funds need to be repatriated. And of course cryptocurrency provides a useful public ledger all the way to repatriation.
LMYahooTFY 5y ago
> The simple fact is that the developed world could shut down what little utility cryptocurrencies (and NFTs) have tomorrow if they chose to. China banned mining and mining was gone immediately (largely moving to Kyrgystan it seems). Defenders will say you can't shut down the network and that might be true but it's irrelevant. How is it irrelevant? The ban in China did not affect the operation of the network. With regard to the "move", this is plagued by the same flaw the energy consumption statistics are: you don't know where the miners are. Not acknowledging this limitation is somewhere between disingenuous and stating a falsehood. This does not demonstrate that developed nations "could shut it down tomorrow".
- ninth_ant 5y ago
  If Western nations enacted policies on bitcoin similar to China, this wouldn’t shut down the network entirely but would drive it underground. This would limit the usefulness and presumably value of the network, at the very least.
  - Hjfrf 5y ago
    Banning miners would send them to the next-most corrupt country with cheap energy. A more meaningful move would be to ban exchanges, so that miners can no longer take exit liquidity at the expense on retail "investors".
- skybrian 5y ago
  It’s a good point that so far, major changes for miners haven’t affected operations. I’m not sure it’s true that nobody knows where they are. There are rankings by country. They need Internet access and power. Many operate openly. Large data centers aren’t invisible. Also, miners were kicked out of Kyrgyzstan. Many machines were confiscated. It seems a lot of miners moved to the US because, even if they are eventually shut down, at least they will still have their machines, hopefully. Governments could greatly reduce the hash rate by cracking down on miners who operate openly, and then Bitcoin would be considerably less secure against a takeover. Suppose, after getting kicked out of many places, many miners move somewhere without strong property rights, and then the government takes control of the machines and runs them? Or maybe the miners keep running, but the government tells them which transactions to block?
TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
>Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. People don't understand crypto yet... play around with it a bit. Things not possible in the current financial system: - Participate in a crowdlown on polkadot. - Play around in some DeFi. Earn yield on two assets. - Store some files hyperlocally and encrypted on peoples laptop with filecoin. And learn how persistant indexing will help the internet be more resiliant. - Sell some data using ZKsnarks. - Query the blockchains persistance with the graph. And if you don't do any of the above and you still hate crypto, just do this for your future self. - Write a smart contract that sends some coins back to your wallet in 10 years. If you're correct in your opinion, you get to make fun of all your friends who spent a percentage of their portfolio in the crypto space. And joke about how they should have cashed out in 2020. But if you're wrong, you have missed the technological innovation of your generation and the potential to shake up the class system.
- malermeister 5y ago
  > the potential to shake up the class system. 0.01% of bitcoin holders controls 27% of the currency in circulation. [0] If this is changing the class system in any way, it's for the worse. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-one-percent-controls-lions-share-of-the-cryptocurrencys-wealth-11639996204 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-one-percent-controls-l...
  - TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
    Because i doubt the roth childs are among those whales.
    - malermeister 5y ago
      Think again. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/07/20/rothschild-investment-corp-more-than-tripled-bitcoin-exposure-in-q2/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/07/20/rothschild-inves...
      - TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
atlantas 5y ago
With crypto you can transfer your wealth across borders away from oppressive regimes or an incoming army by memorizing 12 words. It's hard to overstate how valuable that is for anyone who finds themselves in that position, and it's becoming more relevant by the day.
- Yetioko 5y ago
  You can only do this as long as you are able to convert fiat to crypto and back. You can also only do this as long as crypto is so small that its not getting banned. And for everyone who doesn't has this issue, crypto is actually bad: the overall benefit of anonymous money transfer benefits who want to do illegal things which are illegal for purposes. Would you like to know that others are doing tax fraud and you are the fair citizen? Knowing that they do not contribute to schools and infrastructure while using your schools and infrastructure? We do not benefit from tax fraud. The mafia does.
  - evandale 5y ago
    >You can only do this as long as you are able to convert fiat to crypto and back. >You can also only do this as long as crypto is so small that its not getting banned. Killing cryptocurrency is impossible if people value it and can exchange it for fiat in-person. >And for everyone who doesn't has this issue, crypto is actually bad: the overall benefit of anonymous money transfer benefits who want to do illegal things which are illegal for purposes. Governments can make anything illegal for any reason they want. I've lost a ton of trust in the Canadian government after they deemed it illegal to donate to a cause they disagree with. >Would you like to know that others are doing tax fraud and you are the fair citizen? Knowing that they do not contribute to schools and infrastructure while using your schools and infrastructure? >We do not benefit from tax fraud. The mafia does. The mafia has far better ways of committing tax fraud than using cryptocurrency. Only the rich will benefit from banning cryptocurrency.
    - Yetioko 5y ago
      "if people value it" People stop valueing it when they can't do anything with it. Currently no one cares about crypto for anything besides gambling. There is a very long way ahead for any crypto to become anything else. ". I've lost a ton of trust in the Canadian government after they deemed it illegal to donate to a cause they disagree with." You are still in a democracy. Feel free to move to russia if you prefer a dictatorship. but otherwise its your responsibility to accept democratic decisions you don't like or you don't understand. I'm not saying its always fair or that democracy/canada is the best thing in the world but for you as an individual, with the current options that actually is the best case for you. "Only the rich will benefit from banning cryptocurrency." the rich don't care. They benefit from everything which makes money.
everfree 5y ago
I'm not aware of any threats by developed countries to ban citizens from interacting with cryptocurrency networks. It seems like the trend is quite the opposite, actually: Most countries are clarifying and tightening up their regulations to ensure legal cut-outs for exchanges and other crypto related money service businesses. If anything, countries might want to ban mining due to its environmental impacts, but as you illustrated, there are plenty of countries for mining operations to move over to, resulting in a game of cat-and-mouse that at its very most impactful might help catalyze the move from Proof of Work cryptos to Proof of Stake cryptos. I just don't see any future where all crypto is largely banned. Where is this threat of legal action I'm not seeing?
phil21 5y ago
> Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. It seems like it precisely solved the problem it originally claimed to solve to me. Permissionless p2p transactions. Full stop, no political baggage to argue about. I think it's others look for "bigger" problems for it to fill that are the problem, not the tech itself. Blockchain's killer app is Bitcoin. Someday folks will finally realize this. Many will think it's useless until they unfortunately find a need for it.

by jmyeet 5y ago

MrPatan 5y ago

"Thugs with guns could shut it off at any time" is the weirdest criticism of anything I have ever seen. Don't you see it can be said of everything? Just buy some and stop being a hater. It's not early anymore.

cuteboy19 5y ago
>Don't you see it can be said of everything? So why this and not anything else? What's so special about Bitcoin anyways, other than the fact that some HN commenters seem to have some heavy bags that need offloading

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mstipetic 5y ago

For me it’s funny to see twitter comments now asking can we impose crypto sanctions on Russia. It’s like all these institutions and mechanisms we have are there are for a reason

leashless 5y ago

The problem is climate change. https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/can-the-world-computer-save-the-world-part-3-building-an-economy-with-a-future-5d4156f06a04 https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/can-the-world-... Smart contracts are the best shot we have of doing carbon, methane etc. tracking, managing offsetting payments and everything else required to start getting a grip on the CO2 emissions of the consumer economy.

namdnay 5y ago
I’ve got to admire the Chutzpah of claiming that crypto is the solution to climate change… and seriously, why on earth would this sort of tracking need smart contracts rather than say a database managed by a certification organization? Or even the UN?
- er4hn 5y ago
  In case Justin Trudeau's war on truckers prevents you from helping them buy electric cybertrucks. Or you need to do some cap and trade with Russia. You've got to take the internationalist view here.
jmyeet 5y ago
This may well be a troll. I really want to believe that it is because the alternative is too depressing. I have a sinking feeling it isn't a troll however. I see so many Crypto Andys who argue for crypto out of unadulterated gross naivete about how anything outside of a very narrow slice of crypto works. The obvious problem is that crypto is hugely energy inefficient. Bitcoin in particular consumes a ton of energy with PoW (proof-of-work aka proof-of-waste). Defenders will then point to PoS (proof-of-stake) but that creates a different set of problems (eg the computing power for PoW is part of what keeps the network robust whereas PoS is more like a democracy where you get one vote for every $1 you have). Carbon trading is never going to happen. It's an idea that's been around for at least 30 years. The only people who are interested in it are those who are invested in it. The only thing that will reduce carbon emissions is the alternatives being cheaper. That's it. Absolutely no one is going to even mildly inconvenience themselves otherwise. And again, any such ideas suffer from the same problem all crypto does: interfacing with the real world. Like how do you agree on the value of something releasing (or potentially sequestering) carbon (or methane or whatever)? It's up for debate. How do you make sure what someone emits is what they claimed to have? It's a bit like the ivory traders of Hong Kong who magically have never run out of ivory even though the trade was banned and they're only meant to sell existing stocks.

samarama 5y ago

somenewaccount1 5y ago
Yes, we have reviewed the white purple yellow paper that's 9 inches thick. It was mostly just cat memes.
- samarama 5y ago
  So you’re just a troll without any carefully researched knowledge.
  - i67vw3 5y ago
    Most of them know what exactly cryptocurrencies/blockchain are in detail. But usually the negativity comes 'muh climate change' while having 100x carbon footprint than an average individual let's say in El Salvador. Other point is that a lot of these folks dislike what cryptocurrencies are used for like decentralization, censorship-resistance, financial privacy etc Then there are those who are still butthurt that they did not buy Bitcoin when it was $100.
    - na85 5y ago
      Then there are those of us who think crypto has lots of theoretical but no actual advantages over cash, while also carrying lots of additional risk.
- anm89 5y ago
  This really is a very low level of discourse.

senthil_rajasek 5y ago

>China banned mining and mining was gone immediately (largely moving to Kyrgystan it seems). Kearney, NE seems like a popular destination too, for crypto mining. https://www.npr.org/2022/02/24/1081252187/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-china-us https://www.npr.org/2022/02/24/1081252187/bitcoin-cryptocurr...

mynegation 5y ago
You surely meant Kearney, NE. NB in the North-American context stands for New Brunswick, Canada.
- senthil_rajasek 5y ago
  Yes, Thank you.

TheFreim 5y ago

> Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. I think this hinges on what problem you identify. If someone identifies centralized financial systems as bad, even if they're efficient, the problem is real and the solution fits the problem. If you contest this, as many do for good reason, it becomes a solution in search of a problem.

ScarletEmerald 5y ago
The solution doesn't fit the problem though. Sure, in theory bitcoin-style cryptocurrencies can replace centralized financial systems. But, as keeps being demonstrated, including by this very example, in practice what you end up with is different, less-efficient, centralized financial systems dominated by fraud.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
  how is it less efficient? Obviously btc can't replace the financial system but crypto can. Investors in the next 10 years are going to realise that an omnipool was all that was needed in the first place and the NYSE is a dinosaur in comparison.
  - Yetioko 5y ago
    Etherium is looking for a PoS system. Guess what our current fiat system actually is? A highly finetuned evolutionary PoS system. It has features like: - transparency - fraud detection - political sanctions (russia vs. ukraine, north korea, iran...) - fairness due to transparency (you pay your taxes, i do: we both pay our fair share of infrastrucutre cost etc.) - easy to use (my grandparenst were able to use it) - save - easy authentication and authorization system (i can get money with my passport) - globally accepted - low transaction fees - self optimizing system due to capital market (one bank can do transactions faster and cheaper than you can)
    - TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
      - transparency Crypto, besides privacy coins is the most transparent you can possibily get. It's a public, immutable ledger. The US can literally go in an change the total supply anytime with zero transparency. And since USD is the global denomination of debt, when i increase my supply it actually makes my currency more valuable since everyone is shorting their own currency (Since their debt is in USD) and inflation leads to asset inflation which is a good thing for the wealthy, but a negative thing for those holding and dealing in USD. = us plebs. - fraud detection See point above, fraud is built into the system. - political sanctions (russia vs. ukraine, north korea, iran...) Political sanctions have been this economic philosophy that hasn't entirely played out in the countries doing the sanctions favor. These economies, due to force have been required to be much more verticly integrated and invest into the economies most hit by sanctions. Sanctions don't do much and the problem is, the more you sanction the less leverage you have. - fairness due to transparency (you pay your taxes, i do: we both pay our fair share of infrastrucutre cost etc.) What is fair about the current tax system? See my transparency point above, all those people trying to evade crypto taxs are in for a rude awakening when the governmeent develops machine learning to track and trade public ledgers... Everyone knows it's a public ledger... exactly the oposite of being descrete. - easy to use (my grandparenst were able to use it) Becausee it started being built when your grandparents grandparents were alive. Most shops didn't accept CC's when they first came out and it took a generation for the technology to preliforate. I'd say crypto has done what the old system did in 1/4 of the time. - save I get 4% APR on my stablecoins. 20+% on my DeFi Pools paid in stable coins. - easy authentication and authorization system (i can get money with my passport) I can provide authorization with a 10 word pneumonic. - globally accepted What is globally accepted exactly? USD? no it's not... it's only acceepted in the US. If i want to do business globally i have to swap to that asset. I not only have to worry about remittance, currency exchanges, trade fees and loan denomination. Terra has the ability to swap between many different currencies using stablecoins with almost no transaction fees. - low transaction fees BTC and Eth have extremely high transaction fees, but any V3 crypto has lower transaction fees than the current financial system. - self optimizing system due to capital market (one bank can do transactions faster and cheaper than you can) self optimizing system due to capital market (one bank can do transactions faster and cheaper than you can) Play around with some decentralized exchanges, solona or DOT. they can do transactions faster and cheaper than any incumbent, including VISA or the NYSE.

NelsonMinar 5y ago

Cryptocurrency is the solution for a very valuable problem. How do you commit financial crimes and frauds in a way just new enough to confuse people that what you're doing may be valuable?

Scoundreller 5y ago
What about drugs? Cheaper, less middlemen, higher quality, safer delivery. What’s not to like?
- joosters 5y ago
  Fewer middlemen? Now to buy from your dealer, you have to go via a marketplace, after converting your real money on an exchange. That's at least two other intermediaries...
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Your dealer… may just be buying online (and stepping on it). Depends on what they’re supplying. Something locally grown, ok, but overseas labs synthetics can involve a lot of middlemen.
rvz 5y ago
Easy. Criminals, extremists and fraudsters use Signal for E2EE communications and MobileCoin (an untraceable, privacy cryptocurrency) to fund it all. [0] It is what criminals and terrorists are using to make their activities impossible to trace. Got to thank MobileCoin for enabling that. [0] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In...
- nileshtrivedi 5y ago
  MobileCoin whitepaper didn't make any claims about untraceability, AFAIK.
  - 5y ago

pricees 5y ago

I want to donate to a cause that Justin Trudeau finds "unacceptable." I want to send money to Ukraine. I think this week we saw problems with tradfi in the developed and developing world. And of course in the good ole US of A, I hear stories of civil forfeiture every other month.

woodruffw 5y ago
“Civil forfeiture” does not and has never meant “fiat forfeiture.” If the government tells you to forfeit your assets (justly or unjustly!), you can be certain that they will not be amused or deterred by attempts to hide those assets via cryptocurrency.
- vageli 5y ago
  > “Civil forfeiture” does not and has never meant “fiat forfeiture.” If the government tells you to forfeit your assets (justly or unjustly!), you can be certain that they will not be amused or deterred by attempts to hide those assets via cryptocurrency. If they don't know it exists, they can't take it. Just like I can cross the border with a hundred thousand in crypto in a wallet. And even if they find the hardware wallet, that is not enough to seize the funds, especially if it's a brain wallet or something similar. The same simply doesn't exist for fiat.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > If they don't know it exists, they can't take it. I've said this before: any financial system that turns a presumed crime (the efficient cause of the asset seizure) into direct evidence of another crime (trying to hide assets) is not a good financial system. What you're describing doesn't exist in practice for any medium of exchange.
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    Just like I can cross the border with a hundred thousand in crypto in a wallet. No, you can't. You can cross the border with the private key for a wallet containing the addresses of a hundred thousand units of crypto, but the crypto isn't in your wallet (either kind), it's in the blockchain ledger of whatever cryptocurrency you're using. And this is an important distinction from money, because the money is actually in your wallet and you can use it without an internet connection, but the crypto is actually in the cloud and requires an internet connection to access and use.

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago

there is that expression, morality is how people think the world _should_ be, economics is the reality of how it _really_ is the problem = lack of investment options, stagnant wages, inflating cost of living, being priced out solution = gambling on crypto and making some money speaking as a millenial. honestly crypto is the only way could ever dream of buying a house. ive been working 15 years and saved 150k. average family home in my town is over 1 million. and stocks are inflated, the s&p is almost at a 90 degree angle. i bought btc in 2014 and my only regret was not buying more.

BbzzbB 5y ago
Everything is inflated and has been bid up. Cryptos are certainly no exception, it's only gotten worse in the last two years with all the FOMO they fostered and salesman that gathered to profit off my disillusioned generation. To each their own, but I think the idea that TINA to crypto is plain silly, yet I know more people (am millennial) owning crypto than stocks, always with this notion that TINA. At least with stocks you're still entitled to legal ownership of cashflows, with cryptocurrencies today you merely get a late entrance ticket to a digital commodity that might have monetary value, but trades like just another risk-on asset. The S&P500 will always look like a 90 degree angle on a long enough timeline, that's just how exponentials work. And it is by definition exponential as earnings compound, a quality cryptos do not possess. But it is ironic to hold that against it when 5-year charts in the crypto world look as they do. Time will tell which way it resolves I guess.
- 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
  yes, crypto is inflated, and a pump and dump, but there is opportunity there, and hope. and that is what most retail are buying. i mean something changed in the stock market after 2008. i'm not really educated enough in finance, but it seems the value of stocks just went vertical. and since the covid pandemic everything has doubled in value. i know its related to decrease in value of usd but since my salary doesnt even increase to match inflation so its the same both ways. if i invest in stocks, at best i will get 2x after 5 years, at worst i will be buying at the peak of the everything bubble.

FollowingTheDao 5y ago

> Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. Truth. And I have not idea why people think Crypto is a hedge against anything. It pretty much follows the stock market and gold, albeit in much higher gamma.

mmaunder 5y ago

Agreed. I think the Russia situation may be an interesting test to see whether cryptocurrency can be a viable replacement for SWIFT. I don’t think it will be because, as you said, it is not extragovernmental, and at some points those funds need to be repatriated. And of course cryptocurrency provides a useful public ledger all the way to repatriation.

LMYahooTFY 5y ago

> The simple fact is that the developed world could shut down what little utility cryptocurrencies (and NFTs) have tomorrow if they chose to. China banned mining and mining was gone immediately (largely moving to Kyrgystan it seems). Defenders will say you can't shut down the network and that might be true but it's irrelevant. How is it irrelevant? The ban in China did not affect the operation of the network. With regard to the "move", this is plagued by the same flaw the energy consumption statistics are: you don't know where the miners are. Not acknowledging this limitation is somewhere between disingenuous and stating a falsehood. This does not demonstrate that developed nations "could shut it down tomorrow".

ninth_ant 5y ago
If Western nations enacted policies on bitcoin similar to China, this wouldn’t shut down the network entirely but would drive it underground. This would limit the usefulness and presumably value of the network, at the very least.
- Hjfrf 5y ago
  Banning miners would send them to the next-most corrupt country with cheap energy. A more meaningful move would be to ban exchanges, so that miners can no longer take exit liquidity at the expense on retail "investors".
skybrian 5y ago
It’s a good point that so far, major changes for miners haven’t affected operations. I’m not sure it’s true that nobody knows where they are. There are rankings by country. They need Internet access and power. Many operate openly. Large data centers aren’t invisible. Also, miners were kicked out of Kyrgyzstan. Many machines were confiscated. It seems a lot of miners moved to the US because, even if they are eventually shut down, at least they will still have their machines, hopefully. Governments could greatly reduce the hash rate by cracking down on miners who operate openly, and then Bitcoin would be considerably less secure against a takeover. Suppose, after getting kicked out of many places, many miners move somewhere without strong property rights, and then the government takes control of the machines and runs them? Or maybe the miners keep running, but the government tells them which transactions to block?

TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago

>Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. People don't understand crypto yet... play around with it a bit. Things not possible in the current financial system: - Participate in a crowdlown on polkadot. - Play around in some DeFi. Earn yield on two assets. - Store some files hyperlocally and encrypted on peoples laptop with filecoin. And learn how persistant indexing will help the internet be more resiliant. - Sell some data using ZKsnarks. - Query the blockchains persistance with the graph. And if you don't do any of the above and you still hate crypto, just do this for your future self. - Write a smart contract that sends some coins back to your wallet in 10 years. If you're correct in your opinion, you get to make fun of all your friends who spent a percentage of their portfolio in the crypto space. And joke about how they should have cashed out in 2020. But if you're wrong, you have missed the technological innovation of your generation and the potential to shake up the class system.

malermeister 5y ago
> the potential to shake up the class system. 0.01% of bitcoin holders controls 27% of the currency in circulation. [0] If this is changing the class system in any way, it's for the worse. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-one-percent-controls-lions-share-of-the-cryptocurrencys-wealth-11639996204 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-one-percent-controls-l...
- TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
  Because i doubt the roth childs are among those whales.
  - malermeister 5y ago
    Think again. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/07/20/rothschild-investment-corp-more-than-tripled-bitcoin-exposure-in-q2/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/07/20/rothschild-inves...
    - TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago

atlantas 5y ago

With crypto you can transfer your wealth across borders away from oppressive regimes or an incoming army by memorizing 12 words. It's hard to overstate how valuable that is for anyone who finds themselves in that position, and it's becoming more relevant by the day.

Yetioko 5y ago
You can only do this as long as you are able to convert fiat to crypto and back. You can also only do this as long as crypto is so small that its not getting banned. And for everyone who doesn't has this issue, crypto is actually bad: the overall benefit of anonymous money transfer benefits who want to do illegal things which are illegal for purposes. Would you like to know that others are doing tax fraud and you are the fair citizen? Knowing that they do not contribute to schools and infrastructure while using your schools and infrastructure? We do not benefit from tax fraud. The mafia does.
- evandale 5y ago
  >You can only do this as long as you are able to convert fiat to crypto and back. >You can also only do this as long as crypto is so small that its not getting banned. Killing cryptocurrency is impossible if people value it and can exchange it for fiat in-person. >And for everyone who doesn't has this issue, crypto is actually bad: the overall benefit of anonymous money transfer benefits who want to do illegal things which are illegal for purposes. Governments can make anything illegal for any reason they want. I've lost a ton of trust in the Canadian government after they deemed it illegal to donate to a cause they disagree with. >Would you like to know that others are doing tax fraud and you are the fair citizen? Knowing that they do not contribute to schools and infrastructure while using your schools and infrastructure? >We do not benefit from tax fraud. The mafia does. The mafia has far better ways of committing tax fraud than using cryptocurrency. Only the rich will benefit from banning cryptocurrency.
  - Yetioko 5y ago
    "if people value it" People stop valueing it when they can't do anything with it. Currently no one cares about crypto for anything besides gambling. There is a very long way ahead for any crypto to become anything else. ". I've lost a ton of trust in the Canadian government after they deemed it illegal to donate to a cause they disagree with." You are still in a democracy. Feel free to move to russia if you prefer a dictatorship. but otherwise its your responsibility to accept democratic decisions you don't like or you don't understand. I'm not saying its always fair or that democracy/canada is the best thing in the world but for you as an individual, with the current options that actually is the best case for you. "Only the rich will benefit from banning cryptocurrency." the rich don't care. They benefit from everything which makes money.

everfree 5y ago

I'm not aware of any threats by developed countries to ban citizens from interacting with cryptocurrency networks. It seems like the trend is quite the opposite, actually: Most countries are clarifying and tightening up their regulations to ensure legal cut-outs for exchanges and other crypto related money service businesses. If anything, countries might want to ban mining due to its environmental impacts, but as you illustrated, there are plenty of countries for mining operations to move over to, resulting in a game of cat-and-mouse that at its very most impactful might help catalyze the move from Proof of Work cryptos to Proof of Stake cryptos. I just don't see any future where all crypto is largely banned. Where is this threat of legal action I'm not seeing?

phil21 5y ago

> Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. It seems like it precisely solved the problem it originally claimed to solve to me. Permissionless p2p transactions. Full stop, no political baggage to argue about. I think it's others look for "bigger" problems for it to fill that are the problem, not the tech itself. Blockchain's killer app is Bitcoin. Someday folks will finally realize this. Many will think it's useless until they unfortunately find a need for it.