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This is good for Crypto. Seriously. Because SBF is probably going to help the US make their case against Binance and that will flush out all the bad actors. Man
by woeirua 4y ago
This is good for Crypto. Seriously. Because SBF is probably going to help the US make their case against Binance and that will flush out all the bad actors. Many coins will go to zero. The entire ecosystem will wither and die, but if Crypto survives it will be because there is some fundamental value to it besides digital beanie babies.
- Sebguer 4y agoBut, it doesn't, so it'll die! Which is the best possible outcome.
- siftrics 4y ago
- polygamous_bat 4y ago[flagged]
- siftrics 4y agoHow does self-custody hand control to someone else?
- polygamous_bat 4y agoSomeone else is still controlling the network updates and the "tokenomics", or even hard forks! See Ethereum DAO hack hard fork, for example: https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao
- siftrics 4y agoThere's no mathematical law that blockchains will survive forever or hard forks will retain the worth of the token. I never argued for that and I'm not arguing that that is the case.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y agoImagine thinking people actually want self-custody. Look around, people want centralization. The fringes who constantly parrot “not your wallet, not your coins” will forever be in the minority as mom and pop don’t trust themselves to any kind of cold storage. Crypto-obsessed will forever live in this fantasy world.
- siftrics 4y agoOkay. People have successfully avoided fraud, theft, and the tyrannical seizure of their assets by arbitrary decisions of arbitrary government officials. Billions of dollars worth of assets are stored on blockchains. Unless you have a mathematical argument against the properties of a blockchain, I will continue to believe the properties are true.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago> Billions of dollars worth of assets are stored on blockchains. There is no mathematical proof that they will be worth billions of dollars tomorrow. I mean, I would wager if the original Satoshi wallets wake up and start selling Bitcoin this time tomorrow the total market cap can be counted in millions. Sure, maybe mathematically there will never be more than X tokens, but no one cares about that. Everyone at the end of the day cares about what they can trade one token for. Otherwise, it's worth less than monopoly money or Chuck-E-Cheese tokens.
- root_axis 4y ago> Billions of dollars worth of assets are stored on blockchains. Nah. As FTT and FTX shows, the marketcap for blockchain tokens means nothing.
- bbddg 4y agoYou think the government won't take your Bitcoin?
- siftrics 4y agoYes, I think the government absolutely will try and it's quite probable they will succeed. But why not offer human beings the _chance_ to flee tyranny with their livelihood? Consider jews fleeing Nazi Germany. Should they have been allowed to escape with their assets? Would the world be a better place had they been able to?
- maxbond 4y agoHow about we create better systems for refugees to gain access to safety and citizenship instead of consigning them to a rickety shadow financial system? Are you putting this much energy into, say, opposing border walls and supporting marginalized communities?
- siftrics 4y agoYes, I think borders violate basic human rights and needlessly destroy lives and families. Your argument that crypto is consuming too much opportunity cost is completely valid. But why fight against something that offers hope for the misfortunate?
- maxbond 4y agoWhat about people suffering brownouts because their electricity is being stolen for mining, or people losing their shirts in ponzi schemes? What about the people and companies being extorted by ransomware? Do you say to the people who've been harmed by cryptoassets, "sorry, this is for the greater good, there are hypothetical refugees who may find this useful?"
- siftrics 4y agoThe utilitarian slant is interesting. I can understand why some people think crypto is a net negative at the moment. The set of businesses adjacent to true, on-chain applications is rife with fraud. Thousands of people have died, maybe even millions have lost life savings. But I ask you an analogous question: what do you say to the people suffering any crime that was aided by free, encrypted communications on the internet? I'm not using this as a fool-proof argument that the utility of crypto is positive. I do not know the true answer. I think it's positive but I acknowledge it very well could be negative. To me, blockchains enable the basic human right of having ultimate authority over your own assets. You can choose whether attempting to circumvent your government is worth it. In most cases, it's not. But I like giving all human beings that option.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Zpalmtree 4y ago
- fullshark 4y agoIllegal transactions and money laundering isn't going to disappear. A generation of engineers obsessed with crypto will not suddenly stop caring even if a bunch of coins go to zero. The potential prize (control of a global currency/commodity) at the cost of just writing a bunch of code is too potentially lucrative to make people stop trying.
- Animats 4y agoMaybe, maybe not. Anyone still working on 3D TV?
- HPMOR 4y agoYes, I believe Meta is and they rebranded it to VR.
- doliveira 4y agoCrypto was much more legitimate when it was used just for illegal transactions. But it was not the "not your wallet, not your coins" folk that made valuation skyrocket, it was these scams.
- hiq 4y ago> A generation of engineers obsessed with crypto I think most of these engineers are interested in the high compensation that the blockchain space has been able to offer so far. If high compensations disappear, I suspect engineers will switch too.
- acdha 4y agoWhen speculators were pouring billions into the field, it wasn’t a surprise that a lot of engineers went after high pay checks and the chance of even greater returns on speculative vehicles. The easy money drying up is going to shrink their number a lot, however – especially since the traditional finance sector is building the things people actually use. The number of people using inappropriate architectures is going to plummet when there isn’t a personal financial incentive from their use.
- smcl 4y agoDo you think crypto is still gonna go survive as an investment asset and maybe go up?
- root_axis 4y agoNew bad actors will replace the old ones, this has all happened before, this will all happen again. Replace SBF with Mark Karpeles and the discourse is exactly the same, except at least back then the critics didn't have a legacy of fraud to point to.
- sn_master 4y ago"flush out all the bad actors". Bad actors will keep on existing as long as crypto is useful, which it will remain for the foreseeable future, specially considering the ever more restrictive personal banking regulations.
- themagician 4y agoIf you flush out all the bad actors there is really nothing left. It will survive because there are enough bad actors to last forever.
- cuteboy19 4y agoIn the absence of regulation, fraud is a comparative advantage. We can point to specific instances of fraud as moral failings. But fundamentally, if people are incentivized towards fraud, then there will only be fraud. If you flush these particular bad actors, others will simply take their place
- 65 4y agoAnd that fundamental value? Allowing a currency for people to sell drugs and other illegal goods online.
- majani 4y agoIt actually might be regulation that kills crypto because once you take out the high risk, you take out the high reward as well, and people are only in crypto for the high rewards
- ratg13 4y agoRegulation will only kill crypto if governments can prevent people from buying drugs with it or using it for ransom payments. Once you take the utility of a product away it becomes worthless.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoWell, unauthorized/illegal transactions will still be done using crypto, preferably one of the better designed ones like monero.
- newbieuser 4y agoyour imagination is too wide.
- chillbill 4y agoWhy is Binance bad?
- hcks 4y agoThis flush out theory is so funny. First because it seems that everything needs to be flushed out. FTX was highly regarded. Binance is the largest exchange. What shouldn’t be flushed by that logic? Bitcoin? Maybe Ethereum? It also makes a weirdly naive distinction, between the « good actors », people who are selflessly coding and building things for the good of humanity (and who also don’t exist), and the « bad actors », who are there for hidden motives. Why is crypto the only place where people make this distinction? We don’t make it for banks, or coffee shops, or car makers, with fantasmatic and ephemeral « good actors» (where nobody agrees on which they are) and bad self-interested bad actors. And secondly because it doesn’t work like that. Bad things don’t get flushed until the good remains. Newer bad things come and replace them, on and on, until things get regulated.