7 ms·

Blockchains offer democratized access to programmable money, and you think this is a BAD thing? Where's your creativity?

by j0hnyl 4y ago

pavlov 4y ago
Getting too creative with money historically leads to ordinary people losing their savings and homes. 1980s penny stocks. 1995-2005 Enron creative accounting. 2008 subprime mortgages. 2017-21 crypto ICOs and DeFi. Maybe we don't need any more ultra-creative capitalism, but better regulation and shared financial digital commons where interoperability is guaranteed by government mandate. The EU has been quite successful in making Eurozone cross-country banking just work for the ordinary consumer and small business. After all money itself isn't the point, the business it enables is. Money should ideally get out of the way and not make you think about it, but crypto so far has taken the opposite approach where the money itself is everything and nothing is actually being traded.
- jbaczuk 4y ago
  You can try to regulate Bitcoin but you can't stop it. It will become like the drug war or prohibition.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    It's sufficient to regulate the high-profile crypto on/off-ramps. Exchanges should follow the same rules as banks and brokers, and there probably should be an energy waste tax levied on PoW coin transactions which exchanges would enforce, similar to how brokers do dividend tax withholding today. If someone wants to trade Bitcoin peer-to-peer for cash 2010-style, that's fine by me, it won't create systemic risks.
    - jbaczuk 4y ago
      I agree, and exchanges already are heavily regulated. But taxing energy consumption? How can you tax energy waste? What if someone sets up their own power generation? Is it wasting energy to let sunlight hit a parking lot?
      - kayodelycaon 4y ago
        > What if someone sets up their own power generation? I'd like to see how this is economically feasible for crypto.
        jbaczuk 4y ago
        Me too. It's another financial incentives to make clean power generation more accessible.
      - pavlov 4y ago
        > ...exchanges already are heavily regulated. They are not, compared to banks and brokers. They do all kinds of things that would be absolute no-nos in regular finance, like trading against their customers.
        jbaczuk 4y ago
        Ah, that's a good point. Well, good thing is you don't need an exchange to use it, and there are decentralized exchanges.
  - cliffy 4y ago
    What is there to stop beyond the horrible energy consumption and scams? Bitcoin doesn't do anything useful at all. It's a net negative for the earth and the public at large.
    - jbaczuk 4y ago
      People will just keep using it. But you might be right that it is a net negative since it's mostly used for speculation... But, it's not completely useless (tell that to the criminals who use it regularly). Or people who own it because they don't want all their assets in a highly inflationary currency.
      - hnthrow1010 4y ago
        You're playing a semantic game here. Yes, technically if criminals are using it, it's not "useless". To the rest of us, it's actually worse than useless because the criminal activity is a net negative on society. The idea that crypto is a hedge against inflation is laughable, look at any of the price activity in the last few months. Crypto tokens have no fundamentals or inherent value or anything. The price is completely random.
        jbaczuk 4y ago
        I'm not condoning all the illegal stuff that happens with Bitcoin, to be clear, but just because a government says something is illegal, doesn't mean it should be. For example we're happy in the U.S. (well most of us I think) to be freed from oppressive rulers who taxed without representation, and something like Bitcoin would have been quite useful in that situation. There are many countries who are in a similar situation.
      - dghlsakjg 4y ago
        > Or people who own it because they don't want all their assets in a highly inflationary currency. When compared to world currencies BTC currently has an inflation rate that makes it the second most inflationary currency in the world after Venezuela. As a store of value crypto is not great.
- mypastself 4y ago
  I submit to you that government-induced currency devaluation has caused orders of magnitude greater monetary losses for ordinary individuals than all of those events combined.
Proven 4y ago
elil17 4y ago
First, programmable money is obviously a bad thing - you only need look at the large number of disasters in the DeFi space. Second, it's not really democratized if only the rich can afford the transaction fees. Third, what does "democratized access to money" even mean? Does it solve the problem of poor people being unable to access financial services? Not that I've heard. I don't know anyone who doesn't have access to a bank account but is able to store their money on the blockchain. Does it mean something else I'm not thinking of?
- sowbug 4y ago
  if only the rich can afford the transaction fees For at least the past year, average fees have been below a dollar, and less than five cents if you're willing to wait an extra 30 minutes for a confirmation.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- j0hnyl 4y ago
  Democratized access to money means that I can move my life savings as a refugee from a war torn country by just remembering 24 words. Access to a bank account doesn't preclude this need. Think corrupt countries like Ukraine or even Cambodia, Laos. There are banks, but they go belly up every week and new ones come up. If you think outside of the narrow scope of the first world, there are many unbanked folks that can benefit. As for the rich affording tx fees, maybe a replacement for daily cash isn't everyone's use case? Maybe it doesn't have to be bitcoin? It can be one of many other cryptocurrencies that has low tx fees. There are places in the world where the volatility of crypto looks stable in comparison to the local geo-political and financial climate. Cryptocurrencies offer the world a "splinter economy". Having said all that, of course this stuff is not without issues that need addressing. Regulating this technology into oblivion isn't it though.
  - hnthrow1010 4y ago
    >Democratized access to money means that I can move my life savings as a refugee from a war torn country This has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, blockchains, or "democratized access" at all. What you're suggesting is simply for people to use foreign banks. If your local money is being destabilized by war, I can't see why you'd want to put your money into an extremely volatile offshore casino, which is what cryptocurrency is.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kabdib 4y ago
If cryptocurrencies are "democratic", then so in the same sense are disease, starvation and violence. Available to anyone. Doesn't make them a good thing. All I see are scams, hype, and tricks to get marks to stuff more money into the pockets of bad actors, followed by thievery. Being creative is often fine. Being creative when you're ripping people off for billions of dollars is not fine. Our culture may respect and admire talented criminal underdogs like art forgers and counterfeiters, but we still put them in jail.

Blockchains offer democratized access to programmable money, and you think this is a BAD thing? Where's your creativity?

by j0hnyl 4y ago

Blockchains offer democratized access to programmable money, and you think this is a BAD thing? Where's your creativity?

pavlov 4y ago

Getting too creative with money historically leads to ordinary people losing their savings and homes. 1980s penny stocks. 1995-2005 Enron creative accounting. 2008 subprime mortgages. 2017-21 crypto ICOs and DeFi. Maybe we don't need any more ultra-creative capitalism, but better regulation and shared financial digital commons where interoperability is guaranteed by government mandate. The EU has been quite successful in making Eurozone cross-country banking just work for the ordinary consumer and small business. After all money itself isn't the point, the business it enables is. Money should ideally get out of the way and not make you think about it, but crypto so far has taken the opposite approach where the money itself is everything and nothing is actually being traded.

jbaczuk 4y ago
You can try to regulate Bitcoin but you can't stop it. It will become like the drug war or prohibition.
- pavlov 4y ago
  It's sufficient to regulate the high-profile crypto on/off-ramps. Exchanges should follow the same rules as banks and brokers, and there probably should be an energy waste tax levied on PoW coin transactions which exchanges would enforce, similar to how brokers do dividend tax withholding today. If someone wants to trade Bitcoin peer-to-peer for cash 2010-style, that's fine by me, it won't create systemic risks.
  - jbaczuk 4y ago
    I agree, and exchanges already are heavily regulated. But taxing energy consumption? How can you tax energy waste? What if someone sets up their own power generation? Is it wasting energy to let sunlight hit a parking lot?
    - kayodelycaon 4y ago
      > What if someone sets up their own power generation? I'd like to see how this is economically feasible for crypto.
      - jbaczuk 4y ago
        Me too. It's another financial incentives to make clean power generation more accessible.
    - pavlov 4y ago
      > ...exchanges already are heavily regulated. They are not, compared to banks and brokers. They do all kinds of things that would be absolute no-nos in regular finance, like trading against their customers.
      - jbaczuk 4y ago
        Ah, that's a good point. Well, good thing is you don't need an exchange to use it, and there are decentralized exchanges.
- cliffy 4y ago
  What is there to stop beyond the horrible energy consumption and scams? Bitcoin doesn't do anything useful at all. It's a net negative for the earth and the public at large.
  - jbaczuk 4y ago
    People will just keep using it. But you might be right that it is a net negative since it's mostly used for speculation... But, it's not completely useless (tell that to the criminals who use it regularly). Or people who own it because they don't want all their assets in a highly inflationary currency.
    - hnthrow1010 4y ago
      You're playing a semantic game here. Yes, technically if criminals are using it, it's not "useless". To the rest of us, it's actually worse than useless because the criminal activity is a net negative on society. The idea that crypto is a hedge against inflation is laughable, look at any of the price activity in the last few months. Crypto tokens have no fundamentals or inherent value or anything. The price is completely random.
      - jbaczuk 4y ago
        I'm not condoning all the illegal stuff that happens with Bitcoin, to be clear, but just because a government says something is illegal, doesn't mean it should be. For example we're happy in the U.S. (well most of us I think) to be freed from oppressive rulers who taxed without representation, and something like Bitcoin would have been quite useful in that situation. There are many countries who are in a similar situation.
    - dghlsakjg 4y ago
      > Or people who own it because they don't want all their assets in a highly inflationary currency. When compared to world currencies BTC currently has an inflation rate that makes it the second most inflationary currency in the world after Venezuela. As a store of value crypto is not great.
mypastself 4y ago
I submit to you that government-induced currency devaluation has caused orders of magnitude greater monetary losses for ordinary individuals than all of those events combined.

Proven 4y ago

elil17 4y ago

First, programmable money is obviously a bad thing - you only need look at the large number of disasters in the DeFi space. Second, it's not really democratized if only the rich can afford the transaction fees. Third, what does "democratized access to money" even mean? Does it solve the problem of poor people being unable to access financial services? Not that I've heard. I don't know anyone who doesn't have access to a bank account but is able to store their money on the blockchain. Does it mean something else I'm not thinking of?

sowbug 4y ago
if only the rich can afford the transaction fees For at least the past year, average fees have been below a dollar, and less than five cents if you're willing to wait an extra 30 minutes for a confirmation.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
j0hnyl 4y ago
Democratized access to money means that I can move my life savings as a refugee from a war torn country by just remembering 24 words. Access to a bank account doesn't preclude this need. Think corrupt countries like Ukraine or even Cambodia, Laos. There are banks, but they go belly up every week and new ones come up. If you think outside of the narrow scope of the first world, there are many unbanked folks that can benefit. As for the rich affording tx fees, maybe a replacement for daily cash isn't everyone's use case? Maybe it doesn't have to be bitcoin? It can be one of many other cryptocurrencies that has low tx fees. There are places in the world where the volatility of crypto looks stable in comparison to the local geo-political and financial climate. Cryptocurrencies offer the world a "splinter economy". Having said all that, of course this stuff is not without issues that need addressing. Regulating this technology into oblivion isn't it though.
- hnthrow1010 4y ago
  >Democratized access to money means that I can move my life savings as a refugee from a war torn country This has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, blockchains, or "democratized access" at all. What you're suggesting is simply for people to use foreign banks. If your local money is being destabilized by war, I can't see why you'd want to put your money into an extremely volatile offshore casino, which is what cryptocurrency is.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kabdib 4y ago

If cryptocurrencies are "democratic", then so in the same sense are disease, starvation and violence. Available to anyone. Doesn't make them a good thing. All I see are scams, hype, and tricks to get marks to stuff more money into the pockets of bad actors, followed by thievery. Being creative is often fine. Being creative when you're ripping people off for billions of dollars is not fine. Our culture may respect and admire talented criminal underdogs like art forgers and counterfeiters, but we still put them in jail.