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I'd like to remind the readers that some people use crypto as a payment method and do not speculate. As far as I know there is no alternative with the same lev
by ShowalkKama 4y ago
I'd like to remind the readers that some people use crypto as a payment method and do not speculate.
As far as I know there is no alternative with the same level of convinience that crypto provide (KYC-less and fast payments to anyone in the world with just one secret).
Remember that next time you suggest something among the lines of "crypto should be made illegal".
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> no alternative with the same level of convinience that crypto provide (KYC-less There is a legitimate argument for creating KYC-light rails for small global transfers. That argument is not advanced by crypto's wanton criminality.
- rom-antics 4y ago> There is a legitimate argument for creating KYC-light rails for small global transfers Then let's do it! I keep hearing that we "should" fix regulation or we "should" improve global transfers. Competition spurs innovation. The global financial hegemony can now consider themselves competed against. The proper move is not to ban your competition, the proper move is to build a better product. If, for every citizen in every country on earth, we fix regulations, build efficient payment rails, solve corruption, and stop printing money and causing hyperinflation, crypto truly will have no use case and will quickly go to 0. I'd love to see that happen. Your move, incumbents.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> Competition spurs innovation. The global financial hegemony can now consider themselves competed against This isn’t how politics works. Crypto threw a flaming lint ball of fraud at the rich world. Pleading that it’s also helping the disenfranchised doesn’t help advance a KYC-light discussion as much as a regulatory-vacuum one. It’s easy to ban (or heavily tax and erect stricter KYC guardrails at the interfaces between crypto and the fiat and real economies, what I’m concluding is the best middle path) and punt the “what did we learn” bit to a committee with a few years to write a report. Especially when the beneficiaries don’t vote for you.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoWhich wanton criminality of crypto are you referring to? I thought it is the criminals that make the crime, not the tools they use.
- the_sleaze9 4y agoCrypto bad man! Thieves! Tax frauds! Wanton criminality!
- zmxz 4y agoAlright, because of the unknown number of users that use it and don't speculate - we'll keep the Ponzi scheme going, ignoring the damage and abuse caused so far. Is that good enough solution or?
- empthought 4y ago> KYC-less Is your argument seriously that crypto shouldn't be illegal so it can remain a convenient method of payment for illegal activities?
- marssaxman 4y agoSome laws are immoral; some regimes are oppressive. Helping to circumvent them can be virtuous.
- danaris 4y agoAh, yes; the immoral, oppressive rules of "I can't make as much money as I want by lying to people so they give me their money in exchange for nothing."
- marssaxman 4y agoPerhaps that's not what I was talking about.
- danaris 4y agoThen perhaps you should be specific?
- marssaxman 4y agoI'd prefer that you simply refrain from putting words in my mouth; that was rude. People will disagree about which laws are immoral and which regimes are oppressive. It is fundamentally a matter of conscience.
- _cenw 4y agoSome illegal activity is commonly considered a moral good.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
- mabbo 4y agoThe killer app for crypto is "KYC-less" which usually means "I can evade taxes or sell illicit goods". Otherwise, real money is faster, more scalable, and more resilient to users making mistakes. Nothing I do is illegal; I pay my taxes; sometimes I make mistakes. Why would I ever want to use crypto over real money?
- throwaway98797 4y agoi wonder what you think of tampons and hair extensions
- germinalphrase 4y agoWhat an odd… insult?
- throwaway98797 4y agoit’s not an insult someone not using a product doesn’t mean it’s not useful
- germinalphrase 4y agoAh, got it. That didn’t come through for me (and for others judging by their downvotes).
- DonHopkins 4y agoI think weaving tampons into your hair expresses your unique individuality and shows strong character, and you should definitely go for it, especially if you will be attending weddings, funerals, speaking in public, going on a blind date, receiving an award, sitting for an oil painting, or giving an acceptance speech for being elected to public office. Just stay out of the rain!
- luckylion 4y agoBitcoin will not freeze your assets for 90-180 days if you suddenly make twice as many sales.
- ohgodplsno 4y agoNobody used cryptocurrencies for payment before speculation happened. You had people paying 10k BTC for a pizza and;.. that was it, because they were funny internet coins. The only reason people take cryptocurrencies as payment now is because they have value. Why do they have value ? Because people can speculate on it. Saying that cryptocurrency should be made illegal is a stupid idea, of course. However, cryptocurrency miners should have to declare their activities and pay much higher electricity prices, so that we could actually use that electricity for more useful things. EDIT: because the argument of "how is this different than the dollar hurr durr": it's not! The dollar has value because people trust the US government to keep existing, because I can exchange it for actual goods and people want it. The primary goal of the USD isn't to speculate, it's to exchange goods. The same cannot be said about your favorite shitcoin.
- lezojeda 4y ago[dead]
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoThe majority of all USD in existence is digital, so your reasoning falls somewhat flat.
- ohgodplsno 4y agoThe lack of value for funny internet coins doesn't come from it being digital, it comes from being absolutely worthless because noone wants to take it. When a government, a physical entity is formed and says "the US Dollar is the currency we'll use to exchange goods", you have value in the USD because you know you're going to be able to use it. You'll be able to buy your lunch with it, because the state you live in says that you have to take it. Your bitcoin only has value because it can be used to... have more value. It's worthless, and should speculation be gone, you'll go back to it being an unused toy.
- hbrn 4y ago> you have value in the USD because you know you're going to be able to use it No, you speculate that you're going to be able to use it. Like, you know, people did in Venezuela.
- achow 4y agoSpeaking of convenience, secret, fast, out of govt' oversight.. Hawala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala is in practice for long long time, and it is almost exclusively used to avoid tax and for underground operations (ex. illegal betting). Huge volume is moved, so should it made legal? No.
- _cenw 4y agoI bought a new video game in 2011 with BTC and whenever I tell the story the crypto bro in the room laughs at me for not holding on to what amounts to something like half a million dollars now. Sort of like people keep bringing up the guy who bought pizza 2 years prior. How dare I use a self-proclaimed currency as a currency. I lost all interest once I realized very few people actually want it to be a currency and the main excitement stems from the potential to make money, not the tech or a very idealistic view of banking independent from banks.
- luma 4y agoThe main excitement is hopes of getting rich quick with very little skill or effort applied.
- nightski 4y agoThe exact same logic is applied to USD all the time. You know, if you just skip the Starbucks you'll have hundreds of thousands!
- unyttigfjelltol 4y agoCrypto-- the original view of it-- is anarchy. The crypto ecosystem we see today is a mode of failure of anarchy as a governance model. You ultimately need a financial authority to promote "stable" prices, and even that statement is highly political. You also need some serious gravitas to protect the currency, and this is where the crypto episode is most curious. Governments that for years prohibited "competition" of this nature for years in the most draconian of ways, suddenly have been missing in action. That created an environment where crypto metastisized into something socially corrupt, and also it fosters doubt in the competency and motivation of governments to protect what has forever been their turf.
- _cenw 4y agoAnarcho-capitslism has always been laughably self-destructive if you are half-serious about modeling the incentives. Most anarchists don't seem to believe that capitalism as-is and anarchism can co-exist. Market socialists are probably the closest you get to having them co-exist.
- Spooky23 4y agoAgree with you but would say that it’s more like virtual silver. A legit commodity of sorts but whose accessibility and supply makes it a good vehicle for bad actors to act. The big difference is the infrastructure required. If crypto goes out of fashion, your random numbers get riskier to test as virtual silver because transactions will get slower and riskier. The other big thing is that crypto fills a void between dealing with bank settlement costs and cash. Once the US government or Eurozone come up with a digital currency model, crypto is pretty much dead as a means of transacting. These risks are what make it so attractive to scammers.
- fwlr 4y agoThis is what jumped out at me too. I agree with most of his statements but not with “Crypto is not a medium of exchange”. Yes, all the investment and speculation and “financial instrument” stuff is a mug’s game, but it does mean when I want to make a transaction it’s easy for me to buy some Bitcoin and it’s easy for the other party to sell that Bitcoin. I barely trust my bank to transfer money between different accounts inside the bank; when it goes from bank to bank it’s passing through at least two inscrutable “fraud detection” algorithms implemented by bankers, and if it’s going international it’s likely going through at least two more “fraud detection” algorithms implemented by governments.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago"crypto as a payment method" 1 BTC currently is 22,987 USD. "The 2023 Honda Civic has a base MSRP of $24,650" [1]. No sane person, i.e. person not having more money than they can count [2], wanting to buy a car would ever spend the 1 BTC today for a Honda Civic, maybe the 'market' will go up and they will be able to afford a 48K Mustang Mach-E, or maybe it will go really up and be able to afford a 250K Lucid Air Sapphire. Actually spending the crypto 'money' is irrational behaviour, from an economical standpoint: just wait a few months/years, maybe it will go up: crypto forces the users into typical pyramidal thinking, a forever delayed gratification. [1] https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/honda/civic https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/honda/civic [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory
- hnuser847 4y agoI’m not going to defend crypto, but this is a bad argument. One Satoshi (the smallest increment of Bitcoin) is currently worth $0.0002289.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y agoOk. So maybe you can accept as economically rational to spend a few Satoshis for a bagel. Then where do you draw the line where BTC (or the other cryptos) stops being an effective currency? 15K?, 10K?, 1K? Let's say you want to buy a computer: 1 ETH is currently 1,637 USD, one Macbook Pro 13 M2 is 1,300 USD. Aren't you an irrational economic agent if you spent the 1 ETH today instead of waiting a few months maybe ETH will be back at the 4.6K ATH, when you will be able to buy a MacBook Pro 16 with M2 Max?
- naasking 4y agoYou could say the same about stocks, but clearly this isn't a failure mode. Sometimes people need to actually buy things.
- TimPC 4y agoThe difference is stocks have a reliable basis for going up based on an underlying asset that generates wealth. Most crypto is backed by nothing, some is backed by other crypto which is also in the end nothing.
- TomGullen 4y agoSome people also log on to live blackjack at 3am and drop a few thousand dollars just for the fun of it as well. You are in a very small minority.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago> I'd like to remind the readers that some people use crypto as a payment method and do not speculate. Yes, there should be something better for these people.
- eli 4y agoSure, some people use gold as a payment method too. Usually people trying to prove a point, not because it's the best or most convenient method.
- Veen 4y agoBut most cryptocurrencies are terrible for payments because they are so volatile. The ones that are useful for payments are stablecoins, which are scams in a different way—when Tether falls a lot people are going to lose their shirts.
- eli 4y agoIt's only KYC-less until you need to buy something that can't be bought with crypto, which is 99+% of the things I buy. Payments are fast and relatively easy if the recipient wants to be paid in crypto. There are lots of fast and easy payment options if the sender gets to dictate how the value is stored. I can email you an IOU right now. But most people would prefer their local currency, and getting currency A -> crypto -> currency B is neither fast nor easy and almost always involves a KYC process.