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I do think that cryptocurrency is nonsense and should be banned, but let’s be honest. There wasn’t any cryptocurrency in OneCoin. They didn’t even literally ha

I do think that cryptocurrency is nonsense and should be banned, but let’s be honest. There wasn’t any cryptocurrency in OneCoin. They didn’t even literally have any cryptocurrency. It was all completely 100% MLM. That’s different from, say, BitConnect, that was a MLM with some sort of cryptocurrency. Or of course all the “DeFi” that’s MLM but with more steps. But yeah OneCoin had literally nothing to do with any cryptocurrency. They said they are planning one one day.

carleverett 4y ago
> I do think that cryptocurrency is nonsense and should be banned A good definition for "real" cryptocurrency is whether or not it's possible for it to be banned.
- forgetfreeman 4y ago
  We pretending miners and exchanges can't be legislated out of existence at a scale that would render use of said coin virtually impossible? Edit: Apparently someone is, in fact, pretending just that. Nifty.
  - hnarn 4y ago
    > We pretending miners and exchanges can't be legislated out of existence Yes? I am assuming you are either not very technical, or do not know a lot about how cryptocurrencies work. Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of cryptocurrency, I don't own any cryptocurrency, and I am only arguing the technical issue. If you're talking about banning the hardware, it's probably possible to essentially stop the production and sale of ASIC miners since they have no other purpose, but that's only one type of hardware. People would still be able to use regular CPUs and GPUs to mine. If you're talking about completely banning the participation in a blockchain, this would be impossible to detect as long as the traffic is encrypted -- if you constantly look for IP addresses and keep a blocklist up to date, you could essentially null-route them (breaking DNS is not enough). If you do all of the above, which is a lot of work and already completely untenable to sort out on an international level, you still haven't solved the issue of darknets, like Tor or any similar solution. Take the Silk Road for example, probably one of the most famous darkweb marketplaces for illicit drugs ever. We can only guess how much money and time the FBI spent building a case, and even when they managed to find him by bending every opsec weakness they could find, they still had to ambush him in a library and catch him with his laptop unlocked. My point here is that nobody claims darknets will protect you completely, but it raises the bar immensely for the amount of necessary work to catch you. If blockchains (currencies) were made illegal globally, it's a pretty safe bet this would accelerate technology for doing the exact same things as before, just in an anonymized fashion. Then what? Do you illegalize writing code that facilitates cryptocurrency? Illegalize darknets? Just saying "make it illegal" is naive. It chooses to ignore the massive violations of our rights that would have to be made to not even succeed, but create the appearance of succeeding. If you have a concrete proposal on how it would be technically possible to ban miners and exchanges, without also banning encryption and anonymity online, I'm listening.
    - forgetfreeman 4y ago
      Sad news friend. I am extremely technical and was mining btc 18 months before Starbucks would let you buy a cup of coffee with it so yeah I know how it works. What modern internet funbux aficionados consistently fail to grasp is there isn't a coin in existence that cannot be trivially decoupled from the larger economy through nothing more complicated than removing market-makers incentives to accept them as value tokens. Go meditate on the xkcd where a crypto geek gets worked over with a wrench for his password until enlightenment is achieved.
dibt 4y ago
- survirtual 4y ago
  Crypto people should just call it a religion and get 1st amendment protections. The general pop already call it a cult anyway. Wild people think mathematics, cryptography, OSS, and free markets should be banned. No one is forcing anyone to buy/sell/hold crypto. It is completely voluntary.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > saying Free and Open Source Software should be banned Nobody is proposing banning blockchains. Cryptocurrency, however, is clearly more than just software in the way missile-targeting system is more than ones and zeroes.
  - dibt 4y ago
    > Nobody is proposing banning blockchains. Cryptocurrency, however, is clearly more than just software The block reward is the incentive for miners/stakers to operate a decentralized network. It is not a separate concept. The actual value of each reward is emergent. It is the result of resources being used to operate the network, and how we value that network. If we don't value the network enough, the value of the block reward will drop below the resources required to maintain it. I don't see why any external party should dictate how we may value that block reward or network. > the way missile-targeting system is more than ones and zeroes. This is an irrelevant comparison attempting to moralize software by comparing it to a weapon.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > block reward is the incentive for miners/stakers to operate a decentralized network. It is not a separate concept The moment that reward becomes a currency, and is traded for U.S. dollars, it leaves the domain of just being software. Banning that is quite different from banning the software per se. > an irrelevant comparison attempting to moralize software by comparing it to a weapon Comparing Bitcoin to free software seems similarly disingenuous.
kurisufag 4y ago
>“DeFi” that’s MLM but with more steps Any system that uses decentralized verification to wrap trading deals is DeFi. The core quality of a MLM is that early adopters benefit more, which is totally unrelated.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  Practically speaking they all work the same way. A good way to know is if they have their own bespoke utility token instead of eth or whatever else
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  What cryptocurrency has a distribution curve where more coins will be given out in the future, preventing benefit from going to early adopters?
  - kurisufag 4y ago
    anything where mining is inflationary (or at least disinflationary where the rate of inflation outpaces the rate of "lost" coins). Monero/XMR kind-of-sort-of falls into the second category, with "fresh" coin minting being a part of the mining process, although probably not at a rate that outpaces regular rot/deflation. the mindset of securities trade, even when they have some external utility, will always be "getting in before it gets big". this is the idea behind essentially all analytical stock trading, yet the NYSE never seems to get called a ponzi scheme.

carleverett 4y ago

> I do think that cryptocurrency is nonsense and should be banned A good definition for "real" cryptocurrency is whether or not it's possible for it to be banned.

forgetfreeman 4y ago
We pretending miners and exchanges can't be legislated out of existence at a scale that would render use of said coin virtually impossible? Edit: Apparently someone is, in fact, pretending just that. Nifty.
- hnarn 4y ago
  > We pretending miners and exchanges can't be legislated out of existence Yes? I am assuming you are either not very technical, or do not know a lot about how cryptocurrencies work. Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of cryptocurrency, I don't own any cryptocurrency, and I am only arguing the technical issue. If you're talking about banning the hardware, it's probably possible to essentially stop the production and sale of ASIC miners since they have no other purpose, but that's only one type of hardware. People would still be able to use regular CPUs and GPUs to mine. If you're talking about completely banning the participation in a blockchain, this would be impossible to detect as long as the traffic is encrypted -- if you constantly look for IP addresses and keep a blocklist up to date, you could essentially null-route them (breaking DNS is not enough). If you do all of the above, which is a lot of work and already completely untenable to sort out on an international level, you still haven't solved the issue of darknets, like Tor or any similar solution. Take the Silk Road for example, probably one of the most famous darkweb marketplaces for illicit drugs ever. We can only guess how much money and time the FBI spent building a case, and even when they managed to find him by bending every opsec weakness they could find, they still had to ambush him in a library and catch him with his laptop unlocked. My point here is that nobody claims darknets will protect you completely, but it raises the bar immensely for the amount of necessary work to catch you. If blockchains (currencies) were made illegal globally, it's a pretty safe bet this would accelerate technology for doing the exact same things as before, just in an anonymized fashion. Then what? Do you illegalize writing code that facilitates cryptocurrency? Illegalize darknets? Just saying "make it illegal" is naive. It chooses to ignore the massive violations of our rights that would have to be made to not even succeed, but create the appearance of succeeding. If you have a concrete proposal on how it would be technically possible to ban miners and exchanges, without also banning encryption and anonymity online, I'm listening.
  - forgetfreeman 4y ago
    Sad news friend. I am extremely technical and was mining btc 18 months before Starbucks would let you buy a cup of coffee with it so yeah I know how it works. What modern internet funbux aficionados consistently fail to grasp is there isn't a coin in existence that cannot be trivially decoupled from the larger economy through nothing more complicated than removing market-makers incentives to accept them as value tokens. Go meditate on the xkcd where a crypto geek gets worked over with a wrench for his password until enlightenment is achieved.

dibt 4y ago

survirtual 4y ago
Crypto people should just call it a religion and get 1st amendment protections. The general pop already call it a cult anyway. Wild people think mathematics, cryptography, OSS, and free markets should be banned. No one is forcing anyone to buy/sell/hold crypto. It is completely voluntary.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> saying Free and Open Source Software should be banned Nobody is proposing banning blockchains. Cryptocurrency, however, is clearly more than just software in the way missile-targeting system is more than ones and zeroes.
- dibt 4y ago
  > Nobody is proposing banning blockchains. Cryptocurrency, however, is clearly more than just software The block reward is the incentive for miners/stakers to operate a decentralized network. It is not a separate concept. The actual value of each reward is emergent. It is the result of resources being used to operate the network, and how we value that network. If we don't value the network enough, the value of the block reward will drop below the resources required to maintain it. I don't see why any external party should dictate how we may value that block reward or network. > the way missile-targeting system is more than ones and zeroes. This is an irrelevant comparison attempting to moralize software by comparing it to a weapon.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > block reward is the incentive for miners/stakers to operate a decentralized network. It is not a separate concept The moment that reward becomes a currency, and is traded for U.S. dollars, it leaves the domain of just being software. Banning that is quite different from banning the software per se. > an irrelevant comparison attempting to moralize software by comparing it to a weapon Comparing Bitcoin to free software seems similarly disingenuous.

kurisufag 4y ago

>“DeFi” that’s MLM but with more steps Any system that uses decentralized verification to wrap trading deals is DeFi. The core quality of a MLM is that early adopters benefit more, which is totally unrelated.

cuteboy19 4y ago
Practically speaking they all work the same way. A good way to know is if they have their own bespoke utility token instead of eth or whatever else
UncleMeat 4y ago
What cryptocurrency has a distribution curve where more coins will be given out in the future, preventing benefit from going to early adopters?
- kurisufag 4y ago
  anything where mining is inflationary (or at least disinflationary where the rate of inflation outpaces the rate of "lost" coins). Monero/XMR kind-of-sort-of falls into the second category, with "fresh" coin minting being a part of the mining process, although probably not at a rate that outpaces regular rot/deflation. the mindset of securities trade, even when they have some external utility, will always be "getting in before it gets big". this is the idea behind essentially all analytical stock trading, yet the NYSE never seems to get called a ponzi scheme.