4 ms·

I think its pretty shitty to want an entire sector of possibilities to just collapse and die just because some people are greedy.

by kaycey2022 3y ago

kredd 3y ago
Pardon my ignorance, but what possibilities? It’s been more than 10 years since BTC was promoted as “peer-to-peer money transfer with no middle men!”, but in all western countries this idea has been rejected by public due to limitations posed by blockchain itself (e.g. no reversals). The past 6 years, all I’ve seen is either ICO scams, or casino-like trading which impacts the poor mostly (same concept as why lottery is being bought by poorer population at large). We can’t even say “oh, it’s not even mainstream yet!”, as I’m sure almost everyone has heard of Coinbase, FTX, Crypto.com and etc. through superbowl ads or casual bar conversations. So, I get a bit confused nowadays when people say “US will lose by not adopting the technology”, since there’s nothing really to adopt yet.
- kaycey2022 3y ago
  I can think of many use cases that may be non trivial to get running. For example, if crypto had a privacy layer, which a lot of people are working on right now, it could easily enable a secondary market in digital goods, subscriptions etc. Imagine you bought a 1 year subscription to something which is locked behind some credentials. 2 months down the line you feel you're not using it a lot and would like to get some of your money back by trading those credentials. Crypto networks would enable a secondary market for those. Sure it can be done with web2 but crypto presents another possible solution. It could also be a way to organise open source software communities around paid work that can incentivise activity around the preferences of the donor, in addition to the current model of free volunteer work. Even NFTs could be used as an abstraction for the access of digital properties. Their popular use for distributing art became a limiting distraction. 10 years since BTC is hardly enough time for anything. As more sophisticated features are developed for the underlying networks, good use cases will come. A lot of oxygen was sucked out by use cases involving speculative investment. The gambling aspect of crypto is never going away and I don’t think its a problem. Some responsibility has to be taken by the people who chose to trust scammers with their money. In fact at the height of the NFT craze people who are public influencer types were openly scamming and rug pulling marks on fucking youtube. How many of them got arrested? It is right to ask for action against criminals. But instead of that you have US government agencies trying to shut down an entire sector of commerce just because some guy made important people in seats of power look bad. None of this is being done to protect the people who lost money. I don't think crypto is valuable for things like poverty alleviation etc. That is a challenge which has to be taken up by individual countries. Anyone who says crypto is going to save the world should be looked at with as much scepticism as the tech founders 10 years back who were claiming to do the same thing. Crypto is super interesting technology that is one of the few tools that can fight the inexorable oligarchization and centralisation of all things in this world. It can make a lot of people very rich by providing them with opportunities that wouldn’t be possible under the current system of monopolies and governments controlling access to everything. For that reason it doesn’t deserve to die. In any case, SEC can only set back the adoption of crypto networks in the US. But as tech proliferates around the world, cutting crypto off from the home of “tech” will not kill crypto. It just pushes the timetable back a little bit.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> shitty to want an entire sector of possibilities to just collapse and die just because some people are greedy Crypto could continue as an academic activity and non-commercial hobby.
- mattdesl 3y ago
  How? If CEX operations are restricted in the US due to excessive, antiquated, or ambiguous regulations, citizens would be left with fewer ways to acquire these assets including research and hobby usage. To continue with Molly’s drug analogy: look at psilocybin, where academic, hobbyist, and medical research in them has been delayed for many decades due to unreasonable legal restrictions and ideological campaigns against them.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > If CEX operations are restricted in the US due to excessive, antiquated, or ambiguous regulations, citizens would be left with fewer ways to acquire these assets including research and hobby usage They can publish hypothetical blockchains in peer-reviewed journals and sell overseas. The point is to separate "acquir[ing] these assets," which has been a money pit, from the potential benefits of the data structure and technology. The emerging system appears to be China outsourcing this work to Hong Kong and America to London. We don't want the mess at home. But nobody wants to write off the people and projects.
    - mattdesl 3y ago
      A “hypothetical blockchain” sounds useless if it cannot legally be applied in practice. It’s the sort of draconian policy that HN commenters would abhor if it were anything but blockchain. To use these networks—and to test & objectively measure them—you need to be able to acquire tokens.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > to test & objectively measure them—you need to be able to acquire tokens There is nothing in this that requires the tokens be distributed to the public, or if they are, that they be sold in exchange for cash and/or traded.
rvz 3y ago
Well their entire careers is to endlessly scream the complete destruction of all cryptocurrencies, which is simply not going to happen. It's all about the rolling out of the FedNow rails, to place their own CBDCs there. Overall, this outrage (and the article) is nothing short of wanton alarmism and sensationalisation of the situation. Not a mention of the Ripple Labs vs. SEC case which in the latest of the case the SEC attempted to request the sealing of documents on Hinman's speech in 2018 which that request was denied [0] and will benefit Ripple's case against the SEC's internal decision making of the matter which is also relevant to the current Coinbase vs. SEC litigation. China on the other hand is now doing the exact opposite. [1] [0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/c3mfvibgxig0vrx/Decision%20Denying%20SEC%20AC%20Privilege%20Claims.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/s/c3mfvibgxig0vrx/Decision%20Denying... [1] https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-20230609-tokenized-notes.html https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-2023...

I think its pretty shitty to want an entire sector of possibilities to just collapse and die just because some people are greedy.

kredd 3y ago

Pardon my ignorance, but what possibilities? It’s been more than 10 years since BTC was promoted as “peer-to-peer money transfer with no middle men!”, but in all western countries this idea has been rejected by public due to limitations posed by blockchain itself (e.g. no reversals). The past 6 years, all I’ve seen is either ICO scams, or casino-like trading which impacts the poor mostly (same concept as why lottery is being bought by poorer population at large). We can’t even say “oh, it’s not even mainstream yet!”, as I’m sure almost everyone has heard of Coinbase, FTX, Crypto.com and etc. through superbowl ads or casual bar conversations. So, I get a bit confused nowadays when people say “US will lose by not adopting the technology”, since there’s nothing really to adopt yet.

kaycey2022 3y ago
I can think of many use cases that may be non trivial to get running. For example, if crypto had a privacy layer, which a lot of people are working on right now, it could easily enable a secondary market in digital goods, subscriptions etc. Imagine you bought a 1 year subscription to something which is locked behind some credentials. 2 months down the line you feel you're not using it a lot and would like to get some of your money back by trading those credentials. Crypto networks would enable a secondary market for those. Sure it can be done with web2 but crypto presents another possible solution. It could also be a way to organise open source software communities around paid work that can incentivise activity around the preferences of the donor, in addition to the current model of free volunteer work. Even NFTs could be used as an abstraction for the access of digital properties. Their popular use for distributing art became a limiting distraction. 10 years since BTC is hardly enough time for anything. As more sophisticated features are developed for the underlying networks, good use cases will come. A lot of oxygen was sucked out by use cases involving speculative investment. The gambling aspect of crypto is never going away and I don’t think its a problem. Some responsibility has to be taken by the people who chose to trust scammers with their money. In fact at the height of the NFT craze people who are public influencer types were openly scamming and rug pulling marks on fucking youtube. How many of them got arrested? It is right to ask for action against criminals. But instead of that you have US government agencies trying to shut down an entire sector of commerce just because some guy made important people in seats of power look bad. None of this is being done to protect the people who lost money. I don't think crypto is valuable for things like poverty alleviation etc. That is a challenge which has to be taken up by individual countries. Anyone who says crypto is going to save the world should be looked at with as much scepticism as the tech founders 10 years back who were claiming to do the same thing. Crypto is super interesting technology that is one of the few tools that can fight the inexorable oligarchization and centralisation of all things in this world. It can make a lot of people very rich by providing them with opportunities that wouldn’t be possible under the current system of monopolies and governments controlling access to everything. For that reason it doesn’t deserve to die. In any case, SEC can only set back the adoption of crypto networks in the US. But as tech proliferates around the world, cutting crypto off from the home of “tech” will not kill crypto. It just pushes the timetable back a little bit.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> shitty to want an entire sector of possibilities to just collapse and die just because some people are greedy Crypto could continue as an academic activity and non-commercial hobby.

mattdesl 3y ago
How? If CEX operations are restricted in the US due to excessive, antiquated, or ambiguous regulations, citizens would be left with fewer ways to acquire these assets including research and hobby usage. To continue with Molly’s drug analogy: look at psilocybin, where academic, hobbyist, and medical research in them has been delayed for many decades due to unreasonable legal restrictions and ideological campaigns against them.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > If CEX operations are restricted in the US due to excessive, antiquated, or ambiguous regulations, citizens would be left with fewer ways to acquire these assets including research and hobby usage They can publish hypothetical blockchains in peer-reviewed journals and sell overseas. The point is to separate "acquir[ing] these assets," which has been a money pit, from the potential benefits of the data structure and technology. The emerging system appears to be China outsourcing this work to Hong Kong and America to London. We don't want the mess at home. But nobody wants to write off the people and projects.
  - mattdesl 3y ago
    A “hypothetical blockchain” sounds useless if it cannot legally be applied in practice. It’s the sort of draconian policy that HN commenters would abhor if it were anything but blockchain. To use these networks—and to test & objectively measure them—you need to be able to acquire tokens.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > to test & objectively measure them—you need to be able to acquire tokens There is nothing in this that requires the tokens be distributed to the public, or if they are, that they be sold in exchange for cash and/or traded.

rvz 3y ago

Well their entire careers is to endlessly scream the complete destruction of all cryptocurrencies, which is simply not going to happen. It's all about the rolling out of the FedNow rails, to place their own CBDCs there. Overall, this outrage (and the article) is nothing short of wanton alarmism and sensationalisation of the situation. Not a mention of the Ripple Labs vs. SEC case which in the latest of the case the SEC attempted to request the sealing of documents on Hinman's speech in 2018 which that request was denied [0] and will benefit Ripple's case against the SEC's internal decision making of the matter which is also relevant to the current Coinbase vs. SEC litigation. China on the other hand is now doing the exact opposite. [1] [0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/c3mfvibgxig0vrx/Decision%20Denying%20SEC%20AC%20Privilege%20Claims.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/s/c3mfvibgxig0vrx/Decision%20Denying... [1] https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-20230609-tokenized-notes.html https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-2023...