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"At this point I'm convinced Satoshi Nakamoto was actually a public administration professor trying to teach kids why financial institutions have the rules in p

by gzer0 4y ago

"At this point I'm convinced Satoshi Nakamoto was actually a public administration professor trying to teach kids why financial institutions have the rules in place that they do. Given enough time, the entire crypto space will have reinvented every regulation they tried to get rid of and understood why they existed in the first place."

ineedasername 4y ago
It’s like the thing schools used to do, give kids an egg they had to carry around for a week without breaking.
febusravenga 4y ago
I like to call it "eventual civilisation" ...
- fritzo 4y ago
  Nice, like there's a CAP theorem for finance. Pick two: - civil: transactions are just - accessible: customers can withdraw their assets - partitioned: customers can exchange assets with other customers
tootie 4y ago
People look at all the market failures and declare the system is broken. Crypto is here to show us all the market failures that didn't happen.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  That's the way I see it. Anarcho-libertrian cryptobros who think government regulation is a net negative are like people who don't wear seat belts because they know somebody who died in a crash despite wearing one. It is true that sometimes these safety measures don't prevent the bad thing from happening, but if you focus on those cases then you miss all the times it did work.
  - oblio 4y ago
    Basic statistics, really. Nothing is yes/no. Everything is maybe/maybe not. We're just moving the needle towards maybe or towards maybe not. A seat belt moves the needle a lot in the "maybe not" section for the "dying in a car crash" category. Government regulation is mixed but guess what, the empirical evidence shows it works. How do we know that? What do we call countries with crap, weak and abused regulation? Failed states.
disruptalot 4y ago
This was a failure of traditional financial institutions and people who are ok with them, not of crypto. Satoshi wouldn't be encouraging people to put their coins on a trusted third party like that. All fundamental crypto values say this.
- anon291 4y ago
  Unfortunately, absent the crypto exchanges, which let you easily convert crypto to fiat, there is no reason why crypto has any value. Given that bitcoin transaction times are nowhere near VISA or cash times, bitcoin is fairly useless to purchase things in person and few online vendors take bitcoin alone (most use an exchange to convert bitcoin to cash instantly). So without exchanges, there is literally no purpose or use of bitcoin. Currently it mainly serves as a way to record a store of fiat value. There is no conspiracy here. The reason exchanges came into being and were successful was that there was no other purpose to bitcoin. Few users successfully use bitcoin as it was intended.
  - alangibson 4y ago
    I can't believe it's been 5 minutes and no one has said 'lightning network' yet.
    - m348e912 4y ago
      It's because the ones who would have said it now know.
    - anon291 4y ago
      I'm fully aware of the lightning network. I'm also aware of something called VISA and American express. Which number do I call to get concierge service with bitcoin? That's what I thought.
  - raspberry1337 4y ago
    > there is no reason why crypto has any value. Given that bitcoin transaction times are nowhere near VISA or cash times, You interchanged crypto with bitcoin, but bitcoin is not all crypto. The value of crypto comes from them being decentralized and independent of a financial bank. This has the negative side effect of it being very valuable to illegal and fradulent activity, too.
netheril96 4y ago
Centralized exchanges are the polar opposite of what Satoshi was advocating for.
- rtkwe 4y ago
  Exchanges are the primary reason crypto value is as high as it is though. Without the easy way to get money in (and usually out) of $COINs there's less speculation, less money flowing in, less market to drive prices. If we were back in the days of Local Bitcoin being the best way to buy coins there'd be even less of the meager adoption we've seen in business too.
  - koheripbal 4y ago
    Satoshi also never said Bitcoin should have a high value or be an investment vehicle.
    - littlestymaar 4y ago
      Right, they said it should be a payment method over the internet. But they failed, mostly for two reasons: - they not anticipate ASICs, or even GPUs, which destroyed the idea of decentralized mining where individuals would just mine to get coins to spent, and forced people to buy coins instead (leading to the rise of exchanges). - their Austrian economics prejudice misled them about the nature of money, and the link between money and scarcity. The bitcoin supply was much too small, and too limited in growth, to accommodate for a exponential growth in usage. As a result, bitcoin instantly became deflationary, which is the second worse thing that can happen to something aiming to be a mean of payment (the first one being hyperinflation). For something to be a mean of payment, you need people to be willing to spend their tokens. Economies survive two-digit inflation, but even 10% deflation makes as much damage as Venezuela or Zimbabwe-like hyperinflation. Had Satoshi not been libertarian, and decided for instance to index the amount of mined bitcoin to the difficulty of the block, they'd have not created an investment asset headed to the moon but they'd have been much closer to create the payment system over the internet they dreamed about (putting aside the privacy and scalability issues of course).
hwbehrens 4y ago
The best large-scale example of Chesterton's Fence that I've seen so far.
- WFHRenaissance 4y ago
  Maybe... depending on where you say the fence is.
racl101 4y ago
Maybe the name 'Satoshi Nakamoto' is an anagram that I'm too stupid to decipher.
memish 4y ago
Totally, if only they had been regulated and too big to fail as a result of regulatory capture, which is how our system works, the taxpayers would get to bail them out and award SBF a multimillion dollar bonus. Bailing out the banks and execs in 2008 to perpetuate this was just great. Would you be surprised to learn that SBF was the champion for regulation, was advising congress and a top political donor?
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Does regulation inevitably lead to too big to fail?
  - memish 4y ago
    That's a good question. I would hope it's not inevitable, but you would need a system that is vigilant about avoiding regulatory capture.
jupp0r 4y ago
Like: "you don't gamble with other people's money that they didn't give you for that purpose"?
jimbokun 4y ago
That's a great quote. What's the source? EDIT: Ah, looks like it's from wise Hacker News contributor gzer0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32415093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32415093
olalonde 4y ago
At this point? This platitude has been reposted on about every cryptocurrency thread on HN for the past decade. In case, I'm getting downvoted because I didn't provide a source, see for yourself: https://www.google.com/search?q=rediscover+regulation+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=rediscover+regulation+site%3...
codedokode 4y ago
Regulated banks and currencies have similar issues, for example: - the government can print more money and devaluate your savings (it's like a form of tax one cannot avoid). But it is difficult to "print" more cryptocurrency. - the government can put limits on amount of money one can withdraw from a bank account. So you legally have the money but cannot use it. - the bank can refuse to deal with you under AML acts without need to prove anything. But nobody will ban you from mining and exchanging crypto. - the bank can go bankrupt The most reliable way to keep your savings safe seems to be to store it as gold. However, there are usually high taxes for buying/selling gold (because why let people store their savings safely) and often governments outright ban gold (folks from US are probably familiar with such situations [1]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
- parkingrift 4y ago
  >But it is difficult to "print" more cryptocurrency. Except it's not. It's trivially easy. Any exchange (or person/entity) can mint a coin, and FTX collapsed in-part because they were backed by their own coin.
  - codedokode 4y ago
    I meant cryptocurrency like Bitcoin which is incredibly difficult to mint.
- diogenescynic 4y ago
  >The most reliable way to keep your savings safe seems to be to store it as gold. This is nonsense. FDIC insurance is adequate for most people and you can open multiple bank accounts without any issues to expand your coverage limit. Stop giving people bad advice. And everything you said about banks is an issue with gold. Most people don't have a vault at home they are storing gold in... they are simply buying a certificate that says they own gold in someone else's vault--which has all the same issues as banks and exchanges.
  - codedokode 4y ago
cm2187 4y ago
Mostly agree. But not all those regulations. The power given to Trudeau to freeze the bank accounts of his political opponents does not serve any public good. Those regulations are also being abused all over the place at various degrees. Doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be any regulation but over regulation is a thing.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rglullis 4y ago
Hopefully, people will understand that crypto is about self-sovereignty and not get-rich-quick schemes.

by gzer0 4y ago

ineedasername 4y ago

It’s like the thing schools used to do, give kids an egg they had to carry around for a week without breaking.

febusravenga 4y ago

I like to call it "eventual civilisation" ...

fritzo 4y ago
Nice, like there's a CAP theorem for finance. Pick two: - civil: transactions are just - accessible: customers can withdraw their assets - partitioned: customers can exchange assets with other customers

tootie 4y ago

People look at all the market failures and declare the system is broken. Crypto is here to show us all the market failures that didn't happen.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
That's the way I see it. Anarcho-libertrian cryptobros who think government regulation is a net negative are like people who don't wear seat belts because they know somebody who died in a crash despite wearing one. It is true that sometimes these safety measures don't prevent the bad thing from happening, but if you focus on those cases then you miss all the times it did work.
- oblio 4y ago
  Basic statistics, really. Nothing is yes/no. Everything is maybe/maybe not. We're just moving the needle towards maybe or towards maybe not. A seat belt moves the needle a lot in the "maybe not" section for the "dying in a car crash" category. Government regulation is mixed but guess what, the empirical evidence shows it works. How do we know that? What do we call countries with crap, weak and abused regulation? Failed states.

disruptalot 4y ago

This was a failure of traditional financial institutions and people who are ok with them, not of crypto. Satoshi wouldn't be encouraging people to put their coins on a trusted third party like that. All fundamental crypto values say this.

anon291 4y ago
Unfortunately, absent the crypto exchanges, which let you easily convert crypto to fiat, there is no reason why crypto has any value. Given that bitcoin transaction times are nowhere near VISA or cash times, bitcoin is fairly useless to purchase things in person and few online vendors take bitcoin alone (most use an exchange to convert bitcoin to cash instantly). So without exchanges, there is literally no purpose or use of bitcoin. Currently it mainly serves as a way to record a store of fiat value. There is no conspiracy here. The reason exchanges came into being and were successful was that there was no other purpose to bitcoin. Few users successfully use bitcoin as it was intended.
- alangibson 4y ago
  I can't believe it's been 5 minutes and no one has said 'lightning network' yet.
  - m348e912 4y ago
    It's because the ones who would have said it now know.
  - anon291 4y ago
    I'm fully aware of the lightning network. I'm also aware of something called VISA and American express. Which number do I call to get concierge service with bitcoin? That's what I thought.
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  > there is no reason why crypto has any value. Given that bitcoin transaction times are nowhere near VISA or cash times, You interchanged crypto with bitcoin, but bitcoin is not all crypto. The value of crypto comes from them being decentralized and independent of a financial bank. This has the negative side effect of it being very valuable to illegal and fradulent activity, too.

netheril96 4y ago

Centralized exchanges are the polar opposite of what Satoshi was advocating for.

rtkwe 4y ago
Exchanges are the primary reason crypto value is as high as it is though. Without the easy way to get money in (and usually out) of $COINs there's less speculation, less money flowing in, less market to drive prices. If we were back in the days of Local Bitcoin being the best way to buy coins there'd be even less of the meager adoption we've seen in business too.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  Satoshi also never said Bitcoin should have a high value or be an investment vehicle.
  - littlestymaar 4y ago
    Right, they said it should be a payment method over the internet. But they failed, mostly for two reasons: - they not anticipate ASICs, or even GPUs, which destroyed the idea of decentralized mining where individuals would just mine to get coins to spent, and forced people to buy coins instead (leading to the rise of exchanges). - their Austrian economics prejudice misled them about the nature of money, and the link between money and scarcity. The bitcoin supply was much too small, and too limited in growth, to accommodate for a exponential growth in usage. As a result, bitcoin instantly became deflationary, which is the second worse thing that can happen to something aiming to be a mean of payment (the first one being hyperinflation). For something to be a mean of payment, you need people to be willing to spend their tokens. Economies survive two-digit inflation, but even 10% deflation makes as much damage as Venezuela or Zimbabwe-like hyperinflation. Had Satoshi not been libertarian, and decided for instance to index the amount of mined bitcoin to the difficulty of the block, they'd have not created an investment asset headed to the moon but they'd have been much closer to create the payment system over the internet they dreamed about (putting aside the privacy and scalability issues of course).

hwbehrens 4y ago

The best large-scale example of Chesterton's Fence that I've seen so far.

WFHRenaissance 4y ago
Maybe... depending on where you say the fence is.

racl101 4y ago

Maybe the name 'Satoshi Nakamoto' is an anagram that I'm too stupid to decipher.

memish 4y ago

Totally, if only they had been regulated and too big to fail as a result of regulatory capture, which is how our system works, the taxpayers would get to bail them out and award SBF a multimillion dollar bonus. Bailing out the banks and execs in 2008 to perpetuate this was just great. Would you be surprised to learn that SBF was the champion for regulation, was advising congress and a top political donor?

Apocryphon 4y ago
Does regulation inevitably lead to too big to fail?
- memish 4y ago
  That's a good question. I would hope it's not inevitable, but you would need a system that is vigilant about avoiding regulatory capture.

jupp0r 4y ago

Like: "you don't gamble with other people's money that they didn't give you for that purpose"?

jimbokun 4y ago

That's a great quote. What's the source? EDIT: Ah, looks like it's from wise Hacker News contributor gzer0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32415093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32415093

olalonde 4y ago

At this point? This platitude has been reposted on about every cryptocurrency thread on HN for the past decade. In case, I'm getting downvoted because I didn't provide a source, see for yourself: https://www.google.com/search?q=rediscover+regulation+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=rediscover+regulation+site%3...

codedokode 4y ago

Regulated banks and currencies have similar issues, for example: - the government can print more money and devaluate your savings (it's like a form of tax one cannot avoid). But it is difficult to "print" more cryptocurrency. - the government can put limits on amount of money one can withdraw from a bank account. So you legally have the money but cannot use it. - the bank can refuse to deal with you under AML acts without need to prove anything. But nobody will ban you from mining and exchanging crypto. - the bank can go bankrupt The most reliable way to keep your savings safe seems to be to store it as gold. However, there are usually high taxes for buying/selling gold (because why let people store their savings safely) and often governments outright ban gold (folks from US are probably familiar with such situations [1]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

parkingrift 4y ago
>But it is difficult to "print" more cryptocurrency. Except it's not. It's trivially easy. Any exchange (or person/entity) can mint a coin, and FTX collapsed in-part because they were backed by their own coin.
- codedokode 4y ago
  I meant cryptocurrency like Bitcoin which is incredibly difficult to mint.
diogenescynic 4y ago
>The most reliable way to keep your savings safe seems to be to store it as gold. This is nonsense. FDIC insurance is adequate for most people and you can open multiple bank accounts without any issues to expand your coverage limit. Stop giving people bad advice. And everything you said about banks is an issue with gold. Most people don't have a vault at home they are storing gold in... they are simply buying a certificate that says they own gold in someone else's vault--which has all the same issues as banks and exchanges.
- codedokode 4y ago

cm2187 4y ago

Mostly agree. But not all those regulations. The power given to Trudeau to freeze the bank accounts of his political opponents does not serve any public good. Those regulations are also being abused all over the place at various degrees. Doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be any regulation but over regulation is a thing.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rglullis 4y ago

Hopefully, people will understand that crypto is about self-sovereignty and not get-rich-quick schemes.