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What is the point of having a zillion magic internet moneys if you can't get yourself off the financial grid and living in a non-extradition country? Cmon. Wh

What is the point of having a zillion magic internet moneys if you can't get yourself off the financial grid and living in a non-extradition country? Cmon. What a bunch of jokers. I think it's a hugely bearish case for crypto that none of the crypto guys have been able to use it to avoid authorities for more than a few weeks/months. That's literally one of its alleged use cases. "The government can't control it". SBF, Do Kwon, the Bitmex guys, how's that worked out for everyone?

cuteboy19 4y ago
The safemoon guys are free, Logan Paul remains free, many smalltime pump and dumpers remain free. Though this is a product of lax enforcement rather than crypto itself
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Yes its really just lax enforcement at this point. When it sporadically turns on, they net a bunch of these guys again, in waves. The US has a very expansive view of jurisdiction when it comes to financial dealings with Americans, dealings with American companies, dealings within the US, transacting in US dollars or US dollar derivatives. Crypto largely ends up triggering 1 or more of these. Nonetheless it does seem to be failing at its job of being immune from governments if you are still going to end up in jail / having to pay billon dollar settlements in "fiat" to avoid jail, etc.
sacrosancty 4y ago
[dead]
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> That's literally one of its alleged use cases. "The government can't control it". > > SBF, Do Kwon, the Bitmex guys, how's that worked out for everyone? Well the government still, so far, cannot make it so that there's more than 21 million Bitcoins. So in that sense they cannot control Bitcoin. Those you mentioned and the likes of Justin Sun (now charged for fraud), Mark Karpeles (from MtGox fame, who server prison time), the Quadriga guy, Crypsy, etc. have all one thing in common: they "exit scammed" / "rug pulled" / ponzi'ed and whatnots. The government collect taxes on realized gains honest people make selling cryptocurrencies they legally bought? The government send the likes of SBF to jail. As simple as that.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  If you do crime with it you go to jail. If you make profit in it you pay tax. So isn’t this just regular money with a bunch of extra steps? Sure the government can’t print bitcoin anymore than you or I can but.. the no devaluation angle is kind of meh in the face of its volatility and number of high profile frauds. No one should be sitting with a million dollars in the bank. Dollar denominated assets are a better inflation hedge than BTC. Some basket of bonds ETFs whatever.
  - steveBK123 4y ago
    As we saw from the SVB weekend of tweets, none of the VCs who were going to reinvent the banking system with crypto actually understood how the existing one works, so...
    - EGreg 4y ago
      Right and the same VCs were also trying to reinvent every other system including our social interactions. You think they understand those?
      - steveBK123 4y ago
        Do VCs understand social interaction? Again given my limited exposure to their twitter tantrums I’d have to say no, lol.
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        And some of them control LLM AI.
- kibwen 4y ago
  > Well the government still, so far, cannot make it so that there's more than 21 million Bitcoins. Of course it can. The only thing capping the supply of bitcoin is a variable in a C++ source file. The only thing preventing a modified version of that variable from being deployed as the dominant protocol on the network is countervailing hashrate. The government knows exactly where all the major bitcoin mines are, both because the power draw makes them obvious to local grid operators and the immense waste heat makes them obvious to anyone with aerial surveillance imagery. Governments have plenty of funds to spend on ASICs and cruise missiles to hard-fork the network whenever they feel like it. At least the goldbugs are correct that there's only a finite amount of gold in the Earth's crust. Bitcoin's limits, by comparison, are entirely arbitrary. (Of course, both of these ignore that fact that inflation is not solely caused by increases to the money supply, so it's unclear what trying to hard-cap the money supply actually achieves.)
throwawaylinux 4y ago
You don't think the crypto scammers believed the currency somehow made them immune to government force? That's even more delusional than the crypto bros themselves, how on earth is that "bearish for crypto"??
tobyjsullivan 4y ago
*Satoshi Nakamoto enters the chat*
- rippercushions 4y ago
  Satoshi's coins have sat untouched since pretty much the beginning, so no, they certainly have not been able to make any use of them.
  - tobyjsullivan 4y ago
    And their identity and whereabouts remains concealed - which I believe is the more relevant factor here.
    - steveBK123 4y ago
      Being able to remain anonymous and concealed as long as you don’t touch your magic internet money is.. not a great ad for the magic or the money.
  - ashwagary 4y ago
    >they certainly have not been able to make any use of them. That cannot be said with 100% certainty since transfer of ownership doesnt require an onchain transaction and secondly, funds aside, signing with his keys (aka proof of identity) is extremely valuable to a large % of the Bitcoin whale community. Many whales would send Satoshi millions of dollars just for the act of signing with those keys, no strings attached.
    - Jolter 4y ago
      This sounds extremely speculative. I expect that's why you're being downvoted. Exotic crypto conspiracies are not very popular on HN.
      - ashwagary 4y ago
        >so no, they certainly have not been able to make any use of them. >This sounds extremely speculative. My statement is less speculative than the parent's claim. Did Satoshi already receive 10s of billions $ of coins just for owning his keys? Yes. Off-chain transactions and proof-of-keys based value transfer are far from exotic in the space we are discussing. Countless airdrops and fork coins have been sent to offchain wallets controlled by Satoshi using these two methods over the last 13 years.
lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
Terra was centralized garbage from the beginning. Serious players in the crypto industry did not take it seriously.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Right. No one. It didn’t help bring about the demise of one of the biggest US crypto exchanges?
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    I wish the history of my finances were this easy to rewrite on a whim
noneoftheaboveu 4y ago
I think Arthur Hayes converted much to fiat > 100m usd and gave this to the US government and did never go to prison. He is the man, amongst all of them. Arthur, my friend, where have u been?
eric_cc 4y ago
Crypto was never built to magically help you evade justice. This is a ridiculous take.
- hodgesrm 4y ago
  Any financial mechanism that can move money across national boarders while evading regulatory requirements like "know your customer" seem useful for criminal activity. That's the case even if it was not a design goal. It's telling that ransomware payments typically use crypto.

cuteboy19 4y ago

The safemoon guys are free, Logan Paul remains free, many smalltime pump and dumpers remain free. Though this is a product of lax enforcement rather than crypto itself

steveBK123 4y ago
Yes its really just lax enforcement at this point. When it sporadically turns on, they net a bunch of these guys again, in waves. The US has a very expansive view of jurisdiction when it comes to financial dealings with Americans, dealings with American companies, dealings within the US, transacting in US dollars or US dollar derivatives. Crypto largely ends up triggering 1 or more of these. Nonetheless it does seem to be failing at its job of being immune from governments if you are still going to end up in jail / having to pay billon dollar settlements in "fiat" to avoid jail, etc.

sacrosancty 4y ago

[dead]

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> That's literally one of its alleged use cases. "The government can't control it". > > SBF, Do Kwon, the Bitmex guys, how's that worked out for everyone? Well the government still, so far, cannot make it so that there's more than 21 million Bitcoins. So in that sense they cannot control Bitcoin. Those you mentioned and the likes of Justin Sun (now charged for fraud), Mark Karpeles (from MtGox fame, who server prison time), the Quadriga guy, Crypsy, etc. have all one thing in common: they "exit scammed" / "rug pulled" / ponzi'ed and whatnots. The government collect taxes on realized gains honest people make selling cryptocurrencies they legally bought? The government send the likes of SBF to jail. As simple as that.

steveBK123 4y ago
If you do crime with it you go to jail. If you make profit in it you pay tax. So isn’t this just regular money with a bunch of extra steps? Sure the government can’t print bitcoin anymore than you or I can but.. the no devaluation angle is kind of meh in the face of its volatility and number of high profile frauds. No one should be sitting with a million dollars in the bank. Dollar denominated assets are a better inflation hedge than BTC. Some basket of bonds ETFs whatever.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  As we saw from the SVB weekend of tweets, none of the VCs who were going to reinvent the banking system with crypto actually understood how the existing one works, so...
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Right and the same VCs were also trying to reinvent every other system including our social interactions. You think they understand those?
    - steveBK123 4y ago
      Do VCs understand social interaction? Again given my limited exposure to their twitter tantrums I’d have to say no, lol.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      And some of them control LLM AI.
kibwen 4y ago
> Well the government still, so far, cannot make it so that there's more than 21 million Bitcoins. Of course it can. The only thing capping the supply of bitcoin is a variable in a C++ source file. The only thing preventing a modified version of that variable from being deployed as the dominant protocol on the network is countervailing hashrate. The government knows exactly where all the major bitcoin mines are, both because the power draw makes them obvious to local grid operators and the immense waste heat makes them obvious to anyone with aerial surveillance imagery. Governments have plenty of funds to spend on ASICs and cruise missiles to hard-fork the network whenever they feel like it. At least the goldbugs are correct that there's only a finite amount of gold in the Earth's crust. Bitcoin's limits, by comparison, are entirely arbitrary. (Of course, both of these ignore that fact that inflation is not solely caused by increases to the money supply, so it's unclear what trying to hard-cap the money supply actually achieves.)

throwawaylinux 4y ago

You don't think the crypto scammers believed the currency somehow made them immune to government force? That's even more delusional than the crypto bros themselves, how on earth is that "bearish for crypto"??

tobyjsullivan 4y ago

*Satoshi Nakamoto enters the chat*

rippercushions 4y ago
Satoshi's coins have sat untouched since pretty much the beginning, so no, they certainly have not been able to make any use of them.
- tobyjsullivan 4y ago
  And their identity and whereabouts remains concealed - which I believe is the more relevant factor here.
  - steveBK123 4y ago
    Being able to remain anonymous and concealed as long as you don’t touch your magic internet money is.. not a great ad for the magic or the money.
- ashwagary 4y ago
  >they certainly have not been able to make any use of them. That cannot be said with 100% certainty since transfer of ownership doesnt require an onchain transaction and secondly, funds aside, signing with his keys (aka proof of identity) is extremely valuable to a large % of the Bitcoin whale community. Many whales would send Satoshi millions of dollars just for the act of signing with those keys, no strings attached.
  - Jolter 4y ago
    This sounds extremely speculative. I expect that's why you're being downvoted. Exotic crypto conspiracies are not very popular on HN.
    - ashwagary 4y ago
      >so no, they certainly have not been able to make any use of them. >This sounds extremely speculative. My statement is less speculative than the parent's claim. Did Satoshi already receive 10s of billions $ of coins just for owning his keys? Yes. Off-chain transactions and proof-of-keys based value transfer are far from exotic in the space we are discussing. Countless airdrops and fork coins have been sent to offchain wallets controlled by Satoshi using these two methods over the last 13 years.

lazzlazzlazz 4y ago

Terra was centralized garbage from the beginning. Serious players in the crypto industry did not take it seriously.

steveBK123 4y ago
Right. No one. It didn’t help bring about the demise of one of the biggest US crypto exchanges?
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  I wish the history of my finances were this easy to rewrite on a whim

noneoftheaboveu 4y ago

I think Arthur Hayes converted much to fiat > 100m usd and gave this to the US government and did never go to prison. He is the man, amongst all of them. Arthur, my friend, where have u been?

eric_cc 4y ago

Crypto was never built to magically help you evade justice. This is a ridiculous take.

hodgesrm 4y ago
Any financial mechanism that can move money across national boarders while evading regulatory requirements like "know your customer" seem useful for criminal activity. That's the case even if it was not a design goal. It's telling that ransomware payments typically use crypto.