12 ms·

Some predictions: - The government's not going to have an official true cryptocurrency where anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can just generat

by csense 5y ago

Some predictions: - The government's not going to have an official true cryptocurrency where anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can just generate a private key and anonymously send / receive coins. - The system won't allow an address to send / receive coins without approval from a government key, and that approval will only be given if the government's gotten a name / SSN / real-life identity to associate with that address. - The system will provide a function where a government-controlled key can freeze any address's ability to send or receive funds. - The government's going to say "But we need to take a stand against terrorists / Russian oligarchs / drug kingpins" and then it ends up being used against successively lower and lower degrees of criminals, such as money launderers / tax dodgers / deadbeat dads / unpaid parking tickets, and eventually ends up targeting ordinary citizens.

delusional 5y ago
I'm going to say something crazy. How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. That seems much more constructive than erecting barriers for ourselves because we can't control the beast we've constructed.
- octoberfranklin 5y ago
  > How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? You have too much faith in humanity. > If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. Because that's impossible too? It's like buttered butter. The system is made of humans.
- 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
  you really drank that democratic kool aid. unless you have more money or bigger guns you don't get to decide anything. furthermore the internet has show really why democracy doesn't work at scale. it's so easy to manipulate the unwashed masses. you think if fox made up a smear campaign on you, there wouldn't be hoards of people at your door with pitchforks the next day.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? Well sure, but for that you've got quite a road. Elections were precisely designed to extract power from the citizens into the hands of the few. If you truly want freedom and equality then you need to build power from the bottom up and never let anyone "represent" an entire population... because noone ever can represent millions of people faithfully. I mean, you could take the 500 brightest and nicest people on Earth and put them in a parliament and you would still get widespread injustice and misery. We need to abolish the Nation States and empower people and communities to organize (anarchism).
  - hi_im_miles 5y ago
    The state suggests that people cannot play nicely en masse without violent control, but doesn’t actually back this assertion up with anything. Maybe I’m a conspiratorial nutcase, but my relationship with the state consistently feels like interacting with the world’s biggest protection racket.
    - natmaka 5y ago
      Some authors clearly analyzed/described many facets of this: Leopold Kohr (the breakdown of nations), Mancur Olson, James C. Scott (Zomia), Jacques Ellul...
  - Pmop 5y ago
    I too believe that the path in which we progress towards peace and prosperity involves dissolving the Nation State and creating mechanisms that empowers the peaceful, good faith people, and prevents the Nation State from coming back.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. How would that go? Who would ask you or me how to run the system? And who we should alternatively elect, given that the elections system is a rigged game with a couple of mostly-agreeing between them horses alternating in power in most countries?
- pjc50 5y ago
  As the others have said, the electorate wants power used against fellow members of the electorate.
- jjav 5y ago
  > If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. Who is "we"? The people who can change the system are those in elected offices of power. Your suggestion means convincing them to change it so that most of them will not get reelected and will lose all power. That can never happen, human nature.
  - thisiscorrect 5y ago
    > Your suggestion means convincing them to change it so that most of them will not get reelected and will lose all power. That can never happen, human nature. That can happen, and has happened throughout history. It tends to be a bloody ordeal though.
  - l3kk0 5y ago
    There are other ways of changing a system than working within it or resorting to violence. A parallel society is such a way. https://youtu.be/wJr7awWGWAo https://youtu.be/wJr7awWGWAo
    - dennis_jeeves1 5y ago
      A long time back I had see the video. Not the best points in the video, a little like how to make a million bucks. The concept is sound but the execution is hard. Most independent thinkers cannot even conceive of a parallel society. For the few that do, the numbers are really tiny, to the point that bumping into each other is near impossible. Either that, or they are so off radar that it's impossible to find them.
- dennis_jeeves1 5y ago
  >How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. Neither of it is possible the average Joe/Jill buys into all the bs sprouted by the powers.
t_mann 5y ago
CBDCs do not even aim to be cryptocurrencies. In fact there's very little connection between the two, unless you only care about similarities in UX and not what's 'under the hood'.
azangru 5y ago
> The government's going to say "But we need to take a stand against terrorists / Russian oligarchs / drug kingpins" and then it ends up being used against successively lower and lower degrees of criminals, such as money launderers / tax dodgers / deadbeat dads / unpaid parking tickets, and eventually ends up targeting ordinary citizens. Yes, absolutely. Unless bitcoin wins, I have no doubt whatsoever that this is what's going to happen.
- civilized 5y ago
  Even if Bitcoin "wins", the government can go "you have two months to convert your BTC to FedCoin, after which BTC is illegal". If we let the government do whatever, no technological moat is going to stop them.
black_puppydog 5y ago
> such as money launderers / tax dodgers / deadbeat dads / unpaid parking tickets, and eventually ends up targeting ordinary citizens. I mean... I'd say that at least two of these are ordinary citizens, probably actually three of them...
- jcslzr 5y ago
  Actually, once they have that power, they can freeze your money because you are a nerd, what are you going to do? https://www.bitchute.com/video/QXU4fgltvHyN/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/QXU4fgltvHyN/
cloudsec9 5y ago
> The government [is] not going to have [it] where anyone [...] can just anonymously send / receive coins You mean, like you can with cash? I understand being skeptical of the government, but we already have "electronic" money in the form of Credit cards, where everything you speculate about is already possible by BOTH the government AND private banks. Government enforcement against people committing all kinds of crimes is uneven and unfair, but I doubt the Federal Government is interested in mobilizing against parking ticket offenders, unless their crimes somehow relate them with Al Capone. If the Federal Government believes you have ill-gotten money in your possession, you can have that money seized right now; no need for fancy digital or crypto stuff. The Feds have taken on ransomware gangs and others in the crypto realm already -- doing "bad things" that are illegal with crypto is still illegal, without the need to have fancy escrow/approval/gov't stuff in there.
pa7ch 5y ago
If it also does my taxes automatically, sign me up.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Agreed. The only reason why government want CBDCs is convenience. They can already seize whatever bank account they like, it doesn't give them any more powers. It's just easier than having 50 different systems to have one unified system.
- babyshake 5y ago
  Nah they will want you to be scared of the panopticon surveillance and the threat of punishment for getting your taxes wrong.
- nly 5y ago
  Are taxes in the US that painful? In the UK I do my tax return every year and it takes me all of about 30 minutes and I only need a few browser tabs open in front of me (typically just my broker and HMRC)
  - parkingrift 5y ago
    > Are taxes in the US that painful? For most people, no. However, as you make your way up the income bracket or acquire investments or property it gets more and more complicated. …and if you mess it up the IRS will be sure to tell you what you’ve done wrong and what you actually owed.
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      Yeah it sucks pretty bad. Like my wife’s company does RSU transactions every like month and we need to adjust the cost basis for each one for some reason. This is a Fortune 50 company.
  - AitchEmArsey 5y ago
    Thank you citizen! (check username)
TameAntelope 5y ago
Crypto != digital. A digital currency can be a database at The Fed. I feel like too many people confuse the two, but it's fundamentally different, in every meaningful way.
- madballster 5y ago
  Exactly this. We already have digital currencies. They are called US Dollar and Euro. They exist as numbers in bank accounts, transfers are safe and very efficient.
- astrange 5y ago
  The explanation of a digital currency, when you get past the paranoia about an increase in tracking you[1], sounds exactly like a "narrow bank". But the Fed has always been against those, because they think customer banks will be too poorly capitalized if everyone uses a government bank directly. That seems like the best reason we wouldn't get one. A good reason to have them would be that it'd be really easy for the government to pay you, for instance if we had a UBI or one of those things everyone on here loves. Right now they're surprisingly bad at it. A lot of government agencies have to pay people with prepaid debit cards, and there's people who never got their stimulus checks still. [1] mainly unjustified because they're already tracking you in regular bank accounts so it can't even be any worse…
  - civilized 5y ago
    > The explanation of a digital currency, when you get past the paranoia about an increase in tracking you[1], sounds exactly like a "narrow bank". But the Fed has always been against those, because they think customer banks will be too poorly capitalized if everyone uses a government bank directly. This sounds uncomfortably similar to the "reason" the IRS can't do our own taxes for us and send us the bill.
    - astrange 5y ago
      Sort of, but TurboTax actually lobbies for that. A lot of large banks don't even want you as a customer in the first place, but the government makes them do it. Also, everyone here is arguing "the government shouldn't know about my finances", and I feel like "the government should do my taxes for me" conflicts with that?
forum_ghost 5y ago
Eventually? That's is the actual plan, the only plan. Control of ordinary citizens. The rest are just pro-forma excuses. If they were serious about money laundering, why are the banks only fined 10-15% of profits they make from laundering cartel money, and literally no key decision makers go to jail? And you still think they care about money laundering? lmao. It's not about money laundering, never was. It's just to CONTROL you, and absolutely nothing else. Here is right from the horse's mouth: General Manager of the Bank of International Settlements: “We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000 peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that… and that makes a huge difference.” absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use absolute control on the rules absolute control
anm89 5y ago
CBDCs have zero intrinsic link to crypto. They are digital in the same way your credit card is digital which is to say they use servers that run on a computer which access a database. You could implement a block chain somewhere in there but it's not really clear what a central bank would gain from that. They have central in the name. They aren't interested in decentralizing
daniel-cussen 5y ago
With all these things there's degrees of freedom. Yeah, if you don't support your government for shit, and always value the taxes you pay them at exactly 0, don't volunteer for anything for it, lie to get out of jury duty, film the police when they're in the right, well in time you get the government you deserve. Although I see your point about targeting ordinary citizens, so the thing about that is the real criminals are scary, nowadays because they are getting into America at such alarming rates they have tons of ways of getting to the people that get to them, while the ordinary citizens will never retaliate for cracking down on them, so the natural thing to do, the cowardly thing but at any rate, is to crack down on ordinary citizens. Similar to recording police or criminals with your phone. People do it to police all the time, because it's safer at least in California, whereas violent criminals will retaliate criminally, so recording them to their face takes courage.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dablweb 5y ago
> only be given if the government's gotten a name / SSN / real-life identity to associate with that address A.K.A. biometric vaccine passport
skocznymroczny 5y ago
> such as money launderers / tax dodgers / deadbeat dads / unpaid parking tickets, and eventually ends up targeting ordinary citizens. we already got a tease in Canada of what is to come.
- werdnapk 5y ago
  He said "ordinary citizens". The "occupiers" gave up their rights by holding an illegal protest. Canada has done nothing wrong to ordinary citizens.
  - adh636 5y ago
    Gave up their rights by "illegally" protesting, huh? So basically if you protest the government, and that government says your protest is illegal, you lose your rights. I don't see that being such a healthy path for a free society.
    - martythemaniak 5y ago
      A free society is not one where a few hundred idiots get to take a road trip to the capital and demand they form government. It is not the one where you are free to break any law you choose as long as you label it "protest"
      - hackernewds 5y ago
        This principle and precedent only seems digestible since the majority is on the side of it. In practice, one can imagine the SAME principle and practice being applied against us and in nefarious ways. It is indeed a slippery slope.
  - pibechorro 5y ago
    A protest isnt a protest unless its illegal and disruptive, that is the point. You are protesting as last resort against laws that need disruption.
  - 5y ago

by csense 5y ago

delusional 5y ago

I'm going to say something crazy. How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. That seems much more constructive than erecting barriers for ourselves because we can't control the beast we've constructed.

octoberfranklin 5y ago
> How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? You have too much faith in humanity. > If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. Because that's impossible too? It's like buttered butter. The system is made of humans.
5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
you really drank that democratic kool aid. unless you have more money or bigger guns you don't get to decide anything. furthermore the internet has show really why democracy doesn't work at scale. it's so easy to manipulate the unwashed masses. you think if fox made up a smear campaign on you, there wouldn't be hoards of people at your door with pitchforks the next day.
southerntofu 5y ago
> How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? Well sure, but for that you've got quite a road. Elections were precisely designed to extract power from the citizens into the hands of the few. If you truly want freedom and equality then you need to build power from the bottom up and never let anyone "represent" an entire population... because noone ever can represent millions of people faithfully. I mean, you could take the 500 brightest and nicest people on Earth and put them in a parliament and you would still get widespread injustice and misery. We need to abolish the Nation States and empower people and communities to organize (anarchism).
- hi_im_miles 5y ago
  The state suggests that people cannot play nicely en masse without violent control, but doesn’t actually back this assertion up with anything. Maybe I’m a conspiratorial nutcase, but my relationship with the state consistently feels like interacting with the world’s biggest protection racket.
  - natmaka 5y ago
    Some authors clearly analyzed/described many facets of this: Leopold Kohr (the breakdown of nations), Mancur Olson, James C. Scott (Zomia), Jacques Ellul...
- Pmop 5y ago
  I too believe that the path in which we progress towards peace and prosperity involves dissolving the Nation State and creating mechanisms that empowers the peaceful, good faith people, and prevents the Nation State from coming back.
coldtea 5y ago
>How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. How would that go? Who would ask you or me how to run the system? And who we should alternatively elect, given that the elections system is a rigged game with a couple of mostly-agreeing between them horses alternating in power in most countries?
pjc50 5y ago
As the others have said, the electorate wants power used against fellow members of the electorate.
jjav 5y ago
> If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. Who is "we"? The people who can change the system are those in elected offices of power. Your suggestion means convincing them to change it so that most of them will not get reelected and will lose all power. That can never happen, human nature.
- thisiscorrect 5y ago
  > Your suggestion means convincing them to change it so that most of them will not get reelected and will lose all power. That can never happen, human nature. That can happen, and has happened throughout history. It tends to be a bloody ordeal though.
- l3kk0 5y ago
  There are other ways of changing a system than working within it or resorting to violence. A parallel society is such a way. https://youtu.be/wJr7awWGWAo https://youtu.be/wJr7awWGWAo
  - dennis_jeeves1 5y ago
    A long time back I had see the video. Not the best points in the video, a little like how to make a million bucks. The concept is sound but the execution is hard. Most independent thinkers cannot even conceive of a parallel society. For the few that do, the numbers are really tiny, to the point that bumping into each other is near impossible. Either that, or they are so off radar that it's impossible to find them.
dennis_jeeves1 5y ago
>How about we just stop electing people who are going to use power against their own citizens? If you think that's impossible, then how about we change the system such that it is. Neither of it is possible the average Joe/Jill buys into all the bs sprouted by the powers.

t_mann 5y ago

CBDCs do not even aim to be cryptocurrencies. In fact there's very little connection between the two, unless you only care about similarities in UX and not what's 'under the hood'.

azangru 5y ago

> The government's going to say "But we need to take a stand against terrorists / Russian oligarchs / drug kingpins" and then it ends up being used against successively lower and lower degrees of criminals, such as money launderers / tax dodgers / deadbeat dads / unpaid parking tickets, and eventually ends up targeting ordinary citizens. Yes, absolutely. Unless bitcoin wins, I have no doubt whatsoever that this is what's going to happen.

civilized 5y ago
Even if Bitcoin "wins", the government can go "you have two months to convert your BTC to FedCoin, after which BTC is illegal". If we let the government do whatever, no technological moat is going to stop them.

black_puppydog 5y ago

> such as money launderers / tax dodgers / deadbeat dads / unpaid parking tickets, and eventually ends up targeting ordinary citizens. I mean... I'd say that at least two of these are ordinary citizens, probably actually three of them...

jcslzr 5y ago
Actually, once they have that power, they can freeze your money because you are a nerd, what are you going to do? https://www.bitchute.com/video/QXU4fgltvHyN/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/QXU4fgltvHyN/

cloudsec9 5y ago

> The government [is] not going to have [it] where anyone [...] can just anonymously send / receive coins You mean, like you can with cash? I understand being skeptical of the government, but we already have "electronic" money in the form of Credit cards, where everything you speculate about is already possible by BOTH the government AND private banks. Government enforcement against people committing all kinds of crimes is uneven and unfair, but I doubt the Federal Government is interested in mobilizing against parking ticket offenders, unless their crimes somehow relate them with Al Capone. If the Federal Government believes you have ill-gotten money in your possession, you can have that money seized right now; no need for fancy digital or crypto stuff. The Feds have taken on ransomware gangs and others in the crypto realm already -- doing "bad things" that are illegal with crypto is still illegal, without the need to have fancy escrow/approval/gov't stuff in there.

pa7ch 5y ago

If it also does my taxes automatically, sign me up.

cuteboy19 5y ago
Agreed. The only reason why government want CBDCs is convenience. They can already seize whatever bank account they like, it doesn't give them any more powers. It's just easier than having 50 different systems to have one unified system.
babyshake 5y ago
Nah they will want you to be scared of the panopticon surveillance and the threat of punishment for getting your taxes wrong.
nly 5y ago
Are taxes in the US that painful? In the UK I do my tax return every year and it takes me all of about 30 minutes and I only need a few browser tabs open in front of me (typically just my broker and HMRC)
- parkingrift 5y ago
  > Are taxes in the US that painful? For most people, no. However, as you make your way up the income bracket or acquire investments or property it gets more and more complicated. …and if you mess it up the IRS will be sure to tell you what you’ve done wrong and what you actually owed.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Yeah it sucks pretty bad. Like my wife’s company does RSU transactions every like month and we need to adjust the cost basis for each one for some reason. This is a Fortune 50 company.
- AitchEmArsey 5y ago
  Thank you citizen! (check username)

TameAntelope 5y ago

Crypto != digital. A digital currency can be a database at The Fed. I feel like too many people confuse the two, but it's fundamentally different, in every meaningful way.

madballster 5y ago
Exactly this. We already have digital currencies. They are called US Dollar and Euro. They exist as numbers in bank accounts, transfers are safe and very efficient.
astrange 5y ago
The explanation of a digital currency, when you get past the paranoia about an increase in tracking you[1], sounds exactly like a "narrow bank". But the Fed has always been against those, because they think customer banks will be too poorly capitalized if everyone uses a government bank directly. That seems like the best reason we wouldn't get one. A good reason to have them would be that it'd be really easy for the government to pay you, for instance if we had a UBI or one of those things everyone on here loves. Right now they're surprisingly bad at it. A lot of government agencies have to pay people with prepaid debit cards, and there's people who never got their stimulus checks still. [1] mainly unjustified because they're already tracking you in regular bank accounts so it can't even be any worse…
- civilized 5y ago
  > The explanation of a digital currency, when you get past the paranoia about an increase in tracking you[1], sounds exactly like a "narrow bank". But the Fed has always been against those, because they think customer banks will be too poorly capitalized if everyone uses a government bank directly. This sounds uncomfortably similar to the "reason" the IRS can't do our own taxes for us and send us the bill.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Sort of, but TurboTax actually lobbies for that. A lot of large banks don't even want you as a customer in the first place, but the government makes them do it. Also, everyone here is arguing "the government shouldn't know about my finances", and I feel like "the government should do my taxes for me" conflicts with that?

forum_ghost 5y ago

Eventually? That's is the actual plan, the only plan. Control of ordinary citizens. The rest are just pro-forma excuses. If they were serious about money laundering, why are the banks only fined 10-15% of profits they make from laundering cartel money, and literally no key decision makers go to jail? And you still think they care about money laundering? lmao. It's not about money laundering, never was. It's just to CONTROL you, and absolutely nothing else. Here is right from the horse's mouth: General Manager of the Bank of International Settlements: “We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000 peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that… and that makes a huge difference.” absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use absolute control on the rules absolute control

anm89 5y ago

CBDCs have zero intrinsic link to crypto. They are digital in the same way your credit card is digital which is to say they use servers that run on a computer which access a database. You could implement a block chain somewhere in there but it's not really clear what a central bank would gain from that. They have central in the name. They aren't interested in decentralizing

daniel-cussen 5y ago

With all these things there's degrees of freedom. Yeah, if you don't support your government for shit, and always value the taxes you pay them at exactly 0, don't volunteer for anything for it, lie to get out of jury duty, film the police when they're in the right, well in time you get the government you deserve. Although I see your point about targeting ordinary citizens, so the thing about that is the real criminals are scary, nowadays because they are getting into America at such alarming rates they have tons of ways of getting to the people that get to them, while the ordinary citizens will never retaliate for cracking down on them, so the natural thing to do, the cowardly thing but at any rate, is to crack down on ordinary citizens. Similar to recording police or criminals with your phone. People do it to police all the time, because it's safer at least in California, whereas violent criminals will retaliate criminally, so recording them to their face takes courage.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dablweb 5y ago

> only be given if the government's gotten a name / SSN / real-life identity to associate with that address A.K.A. biometric vaccine passport

skocznymroczny 5y ago

> such as money launderers / tax dodgers / deadbeat dads / unpaid parking tickets, and eventually ends up targeting ordinary citizens. we already got a tease in Canada of what is to come.

werdnapk 5y ago
He said "ordinary citizens". The "occupiers" gave up their rights by holding an illegal protest. Canada has done nothing wrong to ordinary citizens.
- adh636 5y ago
  Gave up their rights by "illegally" protesting, huh? So basically if you protest the government, and that government says your protest is illegal, you lose your rights. I don't see that being such a healthy path for a free society.
  - martythemaniak 5y ago
    A free society is not one where a few hundred idiots get to take a road trip to the capital and demand they form government. It is not the one where you are free to break any law you choose as long as you label it "protest"
    - hackernewds 5y ago
      This principle and precedent only seems digestible since the majority is on the side of it. In practice, one can imagine the SAME principle and practice being applied against us and in nefarious ways. It is indeed a slippery slope.
- pibechorro 5y ago
  A protest isnt a protest unless its illegal and disruptive, that is the point. You are protesting as last resort against laws that need disruption.
- 5y ago