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We should ban crypto anyway. It was a nice grift but it needs to stop. We are almost edging to 16+ years and there is no legitimate use case at all, except onl

We should ban crypto anyway. It was a nice grift but it needs to stop. We are almost edging to 16+ years and there is no legitimate use case at all, except only the worst kind, (Speculation, Ransomware Enablement, Funding North Korea, etc..) And before you mention the 3rd world needs crypto as a "usecase", India, Brazil and other countries have real time payment systems such as UPI, Pix, PayNow that work and are used in the hundreds of millions, almost infinitely way more than crypto is. Crypto is a alleged 'solution' eternally searching for a problem. Some recommended reading: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3.lifeitself.org/guide https://web3.lifeitself.org/guide

saurik 4y ago
So, I want to be very clear about this, as I don't think you should get to just sidestep this point as if it doesn't matter, and this is where the rubber hits the morality for me: are you seriously saying you believe that private money should simply not exist and that "when I call my bank there 100% should be a person there looking at my billing history getting to judge me for the things I buy and the places I shop and what those things imply about my sexual orientation (maybe you see me going to a specific bar a lot) or the medical conditions I have (based on the medications I am buying or the clinics I visit)"? As it stands, your comment seems to come off as the kind of authoritarian viewpoint that the narrative of the first world supposedly bristles against (even as it then pushes ridiculous agendas to build out the surveillance state... which I guess is you, huh ;P).
- colesantiago 4y ago
  As long as crypto gets regulated out of existence, Yes. As long as the crypto exchanges collapses, Yes. As long as we are building better alternatives that are actually in use such as UPI, Pix and the like, Yes. As long as we as a society reject the crypto pyramid schemes and stop allowing more people to join it and in turn losing their life savings completely, Yes. As long as long as crypto dies and withers out of interest, then YES. We have tried private money before in the US and other countries and it completely failed. You mention 'first world narratives' I don't see India complaining about payment issues or surveillance. See for yourself: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/india-digital-payments-upi.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/india-digital-pa... Not a single mention of crypto, decentralisation, web3 or any useless crypto technobabble at all. Just damn well engineered real time payments that 300M+ people are using in the real world. https://navendu.me/posts/upi-vs-crypto/ https://navendu.me/posts/upi-vs-crypto/ This is where the future is headed, not crypto.
  - saurik 4y ago
    > You mention 'first world narratives' I don't see India complaining about payment issues or surveillance. I mean, I realize people have weird connotations associated with this phrase--and maybe it should be put out of its misery (but I will remind you that you're the one that started us down using this terminology, not me: I only talked about the "first world" because YOU--not ME--decided to start talking about the "third world", when you decided to pre-attack a strawman) but India is considered the "third world", not the "first world". I can't tell if I struck a nerve there, but I meant "the Western Bloc". https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries... Regardless, UPI doesn't offer privacy, as like... that just isn't within the scope of the design criteria for authoritarians such as yourself. On the other side of that particular divide, those of us disagree with the surveillance state, that makes all of this tech you are enamored with a non-starter: I want decentralized and private money--something at least as, if not MORE, private than paper cash--because I actually believe us non-terrorists deserve privacy despite the clear existence of terrorists. https://scroll.in/article/1045536/are-your-upi-payments-farming-your-personal-data-without-your-consent https://scroll.in/article/1045536/are-your-upi-payments-farm... > On February 22, while returning from his morning run, Kiran Jonnalagadda, a technologist, went to buy a coffee from a cafe in Indiranagar in Bengaluru. When the cashier asked him for his phone number while billing, Jonnalagadda refused. However, after making the payment, he was surprised that he got a message on his number from the merchant’s bank, thanking him for making the payment. Yeah: I fundamentally don't believe that anyone--including my bank--should know who I am making payments with. I don't want anyone--including my bank--to be able to discern things about my sexual orientation or my medical conditions based on where and when I make payments. I continue to believe that everyone, everywhere, should have the right to such privacy, and that a world with a CBDC--or where all payments are made via cards and digital mechanisms such as your beloved UPI--fundamentally undermines that right. > Several privacy experts have pointed out that this data sharing is part of UPI’s architecture, which is premised on collecting huge amounts of data from users and sharing it with multiple participants involved in a particular transaction. Being data-centric is one of the reasons, they say, UPI can sustain without any fees, as opposed to other digital payments, such as card transactions, which cost money. Ugh. I mean, this is so much worse than I even thought this was going to be... and you seriously want this? You want the entire world to turn into the full-on dystopian version of surveillance capitalism, with every transaction being data-mined and where we are perpetually the product instead of the true consumer? This is just horrible, and if the occasional grift that comes with crypto is the price we have to pay to avoid this kind of authoritarian viewpoint, then I'm going to have to side with crypto. > The amount of data shared on the digital spending habits of consumers is significantly more in UPI as compared to traditional forms of digital transactions. “In a card payment system, such as credit cards, there are fewer parties,” Lakshmanan explained. “Further, the data stored is not identifiable, since it stores credit card numbers, that too in a redacted fashion.”
madmax96 4y ago
>And before you mention the 3rd world needs crypto as a "usecase" I'm an American. I got into crypto completely by accident. I needed to quickly send a large amount of cash to a family member out-of-state. I couldn't wire the money due to transfer limits on my family member's account. My banker told me it would take up to a week for a personal check to clear. My bank charges $10 for a cashier's check. FedEx told me it would be $65 to overnight the check. Someone suggested I try Bitcoin. I purchased the amount in Bitcoin on Binance for no fees. I sent the Bitcoin to my family member for a transaction fee <$3. They received the amount within an hour. Within another hour, they had converted back to fiat. Bitcoin solved a problem for me, as an American. I'd be glad to learn of a cheaper, easier alternative.

saurik 4y ago

So, I want to be very clear about this, as I don't think you should get to just sidestep this point as if it doesn't matter, and this is where the rubber hits the morality for me: are you seriously saying you believe that private money should simply not exist and that "when I call my bank there 100% should be a person there looking at my billing history getting to judge me for the things I buy and the places I shop and what those things imply about my sexual orientation (maybe you see me going to a specific bar a lot) or the medical conditions I have (based on the medications I am buying or the clinics I visit)"? As it stands, your comment seems to come off as the kind of authoritarian viewpoint that the narrative of the first world supposedly bristles against (even as it then pushes ridiculous agendas to build out the surveillance state... which I guess is you, huh ;P).

colesantiago 4y ago
As long as crypto gets regulated out of existence, Yes. As long as the crypto exchanges collapses, Yes. As long as we are building better alternatives that are actually in use such as UPI, Pix and the like, Yes. As long as we as a society reject the crypto pyramid schemes and stop allowing more people to join it and in turn losing their life savings completely, Yes. As long as long as crypto dies and withers out of interest, then YES. We have tried private money before in the US and other countries and it completely failed. You mention 'first world narratives' I don't see India complaining about payment issues or surveillance. See for yourself: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/india-digital-payments-upi.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/india-digital-pa... Not a single mention of crypto, decentralisation, web3 or any useless crypto technobabble at all. Just damn well engineered real time payments that 300M+ people are using in the real world. https://navendu.me/posts/upi-vs-crypto/ https://navendu.me/posts/upi-vs-crypto/ This is where the future is headed, not crypto.
- saurik 4y ago
  > You mention 'first world narratives' I don't see India complaining about payment issues or surveillance. I mean, I realize people have weird connotations associated with this phrase--and maybe it should be put out of its misery (but I will remind you that you're the one that started us down using this terminology, not me: I only talked about the "first world" because YOU--not ME--decided to start talking about the "third world", when you decided to pre-attack a strawman) but India is considered the "third world", not the "first world". I can't tell if I struck a nerve there, but I meant "the Western Bloc". https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries... Regardless, UPI doesn't offer privacy, as like... that just isn't within the scope of the design criteria for authoritarians such as yourself. On the other side of that particular divide, those of us disagree with the surveillance state, that makes all of this tech you are enamored with a non-starter: I want decentralized and private money--something at least as, if not MORE, private than paper cash--because I actually believe us non-terrorists deserve privacy despite the clear existence of terrorists. https://scroll.in/article/1045536/are-your-upi-payments-farming-your-personal-data-without-your-consent https://scroll.in/article/1045536/are-your-upi-payments-farm... > On February 22, while returning from his morning run, Kiran Jonnalagadda, a technologist, went to buy a coffee from a cafe in Indiranagar in Bengaluru. When the cashier asked him for his phone number while billing, Jonnalagadda refused. However, after making the payment, he was surprised that he got a message on his number from the merchant’s bank, thanking him for making the payment. Yeah: I fundamentally don't believe that anyone--including my bank--should know who I am making payments with. I don't want anyone--including my bank--to be able to discern things about my sexual orientation or my medical conditions based on where and when I make payments. I continue to believe that everyone, everywhere, should have the right to such privacy, and that a world with a CBDC--or where all payments are made via cards and digital mechanisms such as your beloved UPI--fundamentally undermines that right. > Several privacy experts have pointed out that this data sharing is part of UPI’s architecture, which is premised on collecting huge amounts of data from users and sharing it with multiple participants involved in a particular transaction. Being data-centric is one of the reasons, they say, UPI can sustain without any fees, as opposed to other digital payments, such as card transactions, which cost money. Ugh. I mean, this is so much worse than I even thought this was going to be... and you seriously want this? You want the entire world to turn into the full-on dystopian version of surveillance capitalism, with every transaction being data-mined and where we are perpetually the product instead of the true consumer? This is just horrible, and if the occasional grift that comes with crypto is the price we have to pay to avoid this kind of authoritarian viewpoint, then I'm going to have to side with crypto. > The amount of data shared on the digital spending habits of consumers is significantly more in UPI as compared to traditional forms of digital transactions. “In a card payment system, such as credit cards, there are fewer parties,” Lakshmanan explained. “Further, the data stored is not identifiable, since it stores credit card numbers, that too in a redacted fashion.”

madmax96 4y ago

>And before you mention the 3rd world needs crypto as a "usecase" I'm an American. I got into crypto completely by accident. I needed to quickly send a large amount of cash to a family member out-of-state. I couldn't wire the money due to transfer limits on my family member's account. My banker told me it would take up to a week for a personal check to clear. My bank charges $10 for a cashier's check. FedEx told me it would be $65 to overnight the check. Someone suggested I try Bitcoin. I purchased the amount in Bitcoin on Binance for no fees. I sent the Bitcoin to my family member for a transaction fee <$3. They received the amount within an hour. Within another hour, they had converted back to fiat. Bitcoin solved a problem for me, as an American. I'd be glad to learn of a cheaper, easier alternative.