9 ms·
Crypto absolutely has value, and the price of Bitcoin will never go to zero. NFTs are useful. That's because the value these things provide is money-laundering
by valdiorn 4y ago
Crypto absolutely has value, and the price of Bitcoin will never go to zero. NFTs are useful.
That's because the value these things provide is money-laundering, bypassing of international financial regulations and tax fraud.
Yeah that's a superb value proposition right there, and definitely something we want to keep free and available /s
The current system is flawed in many, many ways, but none of it happened arbitrarily; the restrictions we have are the because malicious actors abused the system.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoGambling. Crypto is globalized gambling. It's a money laundering vector, for sure, but for the same reasons crypto competes poorly in the transaction market it's close to a last resort for high-volume launderers.
- TomGullen 4y agoNotably unregulated gambling available without oversight and also readily available to addicts and children. Helpful in smashing down that redundant bureaucratic red tape the gambling industry so desperately is in need of at the small price of destroying, debilitating or general increase in suffering in peoples lives.
- jacknews 4y ago"Gambling. Crypto is globalized gambling." Completely and utterly unlike and in no way whatsoever similar, at all, to stock markets, futures exchanges, CFDs, options, CDOs, etc, etc, etc. Crypto is just a speculative digital asset. Sure it's been a playground for all kinds of scams and charlatanry, because there's no oversight, just as stock markets once were (and still can be in some areas eg pink sheets), but crypto is not a scam in itself.
- astrange 4y ago> Completely and utterly unlike and in no way whatsoever similar, at all, to stock markets, futures exchanges, CFDs, options, CDOs, etc, etc, etc. Those things are backed by cash flows, which crypto isn't because noone ever wants their coin to be considered a security.
- eli 4y agoDon't forget ransom payments
- zmxz 4y agoCrypto allowed regular mortals to conduct the state-level scam that was exclusive only to governments. I can understand the appeal, but I do find it amusing how we (humans) instantly abuse anything if modicum of abuse is possible :)
- darkerside 4y agoWell, there's a lot of us. Someone's bound to. Call it the Malice of Crowds.
- Veen 4y agoE.O. Wilson once said of communism, 'Great idea, wrong species.' Whether or not that was true of communism, it seems true of crypto. It has brilliant technical ideas and clever solutions to problems with traditional currencies, but the result is a system that doesn't work in practice because of how human individuals, communities, and social systems function.
- lezojeda 4y ago[dead]
- cypress66 4y ago> The current system is flawed in many, many ways, but none of it happened arbitrarily; the restrictions we have are the because malicious actors abused the system. And from that you can tell you live in a nice country with reasonable laws. You can't fathom that not all countries are like that.
- valdiorn 4y agoThat is a fault of their own systems, not the system I live within. If people in Venezuela want to use bitcoin, they can go ahead. That doesn't mean we should embrace is in the Western world. It's a net negative for us.
- welshwelsh 4y agoThe western system sucks too. In the US it's still federally illegal to buy weed and it can be very difficult to get abortion pills depending on your state. Darknet markets are desperately needed
- dmitriid 4y agovery few countries are as bad as crypto
- graybies 4y agoIt also props up a large part of the international drug market in addition to money laundering.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoYou seem to be referring to the US Dollar $, a time-honoured currency utilized for such endeavours.
- rawoke083600 4y agoohh please....You think the USD is not being used for this ?
- zirgs 4y agoUSD is used for a lot of things. Most of them are legal. Can't say the same about bitcoin.
- rawoke083600 4y agomost ? source please.
- graybies 4y agoI never said it didn’t. Crypto helps
- rawoke083600 4y ago>Crypto helps ? Come now ! With that statement(s) I can say, sneakers and comfortable clothes are also propping up the drug-market ? What is your point exactly ? -I'm sure there are drug dealers using USD and nice sneakers to sell drugs. -I'm sure there are drug dealers using USD and NOT nice sneakers to sell drugs. -I'm sure there are drug dealers using Crypto and nice sneakers to sell drugs. -I'm sure there are drug dealers using Crypto and NOT nice sneakers to sell drugs. -I'm sure there are drug dealers using Crypto to sell drugs. -I'm sure there are drug dealers using USD to sell drugs.
- rom-antics 4y agohttps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume. Note that: 1. This quote is talking specifically about bitcoin, not crypto overall 2. This paper is written by a notable crypto skeptic, so he's not using bro logic. He found the main usage by volume is speculation, with very little illegal activity. In fact, the US underground economy is 11-12% of US GDP[1], which is a much worse proportion than bitcoin. [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/underground-economy.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/underground-economy.asp
- luma 4y agoThe overwhelming volume is in wash trading, which is just a different kind of fraud. It's all fraud.
- readthenotes1 4y agois using bitcoin to transfer some of l your wealth out of country to avoid currency controls fraud? I don't think so but IANAL I read that crypto is also being used for rapid cross country remittances, which may be totally legal. -- Don't think I'm a crypto fan. The value is all based purely on shared beliefs. At least government fiat is backed by the taxing authority (while undermined by the printing authority)
- luma 4y agoIf it's being used instead of some other wire transfer in order to dodge government rules on capital controls etc, then yes it's used to evade the legal system and thus also fraud. The fees are not incredibly low nor is the service particularly user friendly or reliable compared to something like Western Union. Bitcoin et al is not providing a useful alternative to existing, legal services. They do of course provide an alternative for other services.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago"main usage by volume being speculation" doesn't help the case. A little bit of speculation helps price discovery. A lot leads to tulips etc, and is very dangerous.
- naasking 4y ago> The current system is flawed in many, many ways, but none of it happened arbitrarily; the restrictions we have are the because malicious actors abused the system This seems like a good example of the just-world fallacy. The current system absolutely has many arbitrary restrictions. The problems those restrictions allegedly solve don't have only one possible solution, but that's what we got stuck with.
- acdha 4y agoIs it really accurate to call things “arbitrary”? Usually if you look at any safeguard you’ll find a real historical problem it was designed to reduce. Sometimes that’s something best solved otherwise – the drug war provides many examples of that - but I’d usually describe those as ineffective rather than arbitrary. The distinction matters because it raises the question of that process repeating again. Since it’s not random, the same forces will push in the same direction unless those problems can be recognized and countered in a different means.
- naasking 4y agoI think an outcome that could have gone another way but for some random historical circumstance counts as arbitrary. For instance, do you think our regulatory framework would look the same today had Prohibition not happened? That's a case where the State created a problem (black market funding large scale organized crime) and then added yet more rules to try and fix that problem. Edit: so one could argue that we "need" those regulations because of crime, but another could say if we eliminate the prohibitions funding those crime syndicates, then the problem is equally solved. Doesn't that make those regulations kind of arbitrary?
- acdha 4y agoThe common definition of “arbitrary” has a connotation of randomness to it. My point was that this isn't random but directed, and that if you don't understand who those rules serve you'll just end up repeating it in a different form or having the old rule adapted for new purposes, similar to how various measures originally intended to prevent alcohol or drug money being laundered were repurposed as part of the War on Terror but they all stemmed down to the base problem of law enforcement wanting a way to trace previously anonymous cash flows. Since this was a very vaguely defined claim, it might be more useful if you had something specific to talk about.
- amelius 4y agoCrypto is also a gift from heaven for ransomware operators.
- 734129837261 4y agoFun fact: so are Rolex watches and so many other luxury nonsense products with a high price. Wear one on each arm. Travel via airplanes across borders. Sell the watches. Now you have a lot of untraceable cash. Fly back and forth for business purposes seven times in one week. Maybe bring more expensive watches, perhaps that $200,000 USD Patek Philippe is a great way to get that payoff across borders. Crypto and NFTs are just easier, less risk, less chances of being caught. Maybe we should talk diamonds. Inherently worthless objects, easy to hide and transport, easy to make part of jewelry, and thus free to transport almost anywhere. Yet that one tiny rock can cost tens of thousands and will allow the corrupt politician to sell for cash money perfectly fine.
- phonescreen_man 4y agoProblem with that though is finding a buyer, let’s say I buy 2 rolexs for 50k, I want to pay off my dealer in Ireland, so I fly there with my two watches.. how do I sell them? Do I just hawk em in a pawn shop, if so would I still get back my 50k?
- eli 4y agoI buy 50k in bitcoin on a US exchange and send it to someone in Ireland and they transfer it to their exchange and cash it out do they get back exactly 50k?
- phonescreen_man 4y agoSometimes.. sometimes more, sometimes less. The point is there is a crypto exchange they can cash out at, in fact many.. and usually the prices are similar across exchanges. John’s pawn shop doesn’t offer the same price for the Rolex as Patricia’s pawn shop.. anyway.. not really important in the grand scheme of things. Bitcoin bad mmmkay ;)
- eli 4y agoEven if the market price of crypto is magically stable and the exchanges are perfectly in sync, you're still paying the big-ask spread plus the fees to send the crypto itself. I suspect in most cases Wise or similar would be cheaper and safer.
- amluto 4y agoYou identified a source of genuine (if perhaps undesirable) value for cryptocurrency, but not necessarily bitcoin. And is BTC goes close enough to zero, double spend protection becomes increasingly tenuous, and the incentive to switch to something else gets stronger.
- conanbatt 4y agoThe runners of the system are the abusers
- ynniv 4y agoBitcoin is a useful mechanism for exchanging value, but NFTs have yet not shown any utility. The difference is that a currency only needs to solve scarcity and double spend, which blockchains accomplish, but ownership of property requires physical and/or legal protections, which they do not. Once you introduce an organization that enforces property rights there's no reason to use an expensive blockchain instead of a cheap Merkle tree.
- ravingraven 4y ago>...but ownership of property requires physical and/or legal protections, which they do not. This is not true for digital property. Digital property is just as "made up" as the NFT that proves its ownership. People hear "NFT" and for some inexplicable reason jump to physical art. If the network believes, by whatever consensus methods for proof of ownership that are employed by this network, that you own one coin then those same methods can be used so that the network can believe that you own a certain digital asset. That ownership is just as real as the ownership of a coin. What people get confused with is the concept of copying or using (both are actually the same problem) this asset. But, this is not an NFT problem, it is a digital problem. All digital assets have this problem, if you give me the asset I can copy and use it without your consent. Example: I can trivially copy the entire Netflix catalogue on my hard-drive. Since those bits land on my system to be shown on a screen they can just as easily land on my HD as an mp4 file. Are we on any disagreement that Netflix owns those shows? No. But once made available to me, I can use them however I want. Ownership and "use" are to unrelated things when it comes to digital.
- ynniv 4y agoDigital ownership is enforced by the code that’s interpreting the data, so the app publisher is the organization responsible for enforcing property rights. Tokens signed by an app-trusted key solve the problem with almost zero resource cost.
- ravingraven 4y agoDigital ownership is enforced by laws and nothing else. There is no amount of code that can technically prevent me from copying any data that lands on my system. >Tokens signed by an app-trusted key solve the problem with almost zero resource cost. This ensures safety against access and not against copying. Of course I can not copy assets I don't have access to but the same is true for NFTs.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoFinancial regulations differ. For example, in a certain country at this very time, transferring money for another country's defense fund is punishable by 20 years of hard labor in very very cold places. The system where governments have complete control over money transfers is only a few decades old. Before that, people actually had some freedom in how they spend their money.
- mmcnl 4y agoBitcoin has theoretical value. However, how many people are in bitcoin because of said reasons? I'd argue less than 1%. The other >99% are in it to make money out of thin air. So indeed, the value will never go to zero but the current nominal value of bitcoin is orders of magnitude higher than the intrinsic value.
- RestlessMind 4y ago> Yeah that's a superb value proposition right there, and definitely something we want to keep free and available /s Yeah because every single government out there is competent, non-corrupt and cares for its citizens. You are definitely not living in a bubble /s
- latchkey 4y agoNah, it isn't just that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410