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The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

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Re: The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

#191

Post by Jabanga »

CJefferson wrote: post #118
Jabanga wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Miners can't change the issuance schedule. They can only delete blocks and form new ones with valid* transactions, and only if they collude, and are okay with destroying the value of their capital assets. * transactions where the private key associated with a public key holding value authorizes an outgoing transfer of value.

They can stop you spending the money, and the "they wouldn't do it as they would kill the goose" applies to banks and governments too.

Yes they can do that. But that's not what the parent comment asserts. With respect to Banks and governments, they're different in that they have a monopoly over their jurisdiction.

Re: The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

#192

Post by chrisbennet »

Houshalter wrote: post #168
chrisbennet wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In th US, "bribing" politicians is actually legal. Large campaign donations are not illegal and occording to Citizens vs United, are protected free speech. As far a white collar crime goes, if you are talking about banking when mention a "parasitic attack on the complexity of the modern economy", I think that bank lobbying has made things that you would hope people would go to jail for, legal or unenforceable. Thankf…

That's not true at all. You certainly cant bribe politicians by giving them money directly. You cant even donate it to their campaign like you say. All you can do is donate to an organization they aren't affiliated with or agree to run ads on their behalf. That's not great, but its a lot different than normal corruption.

What I meant by "bribe" (notice the quotes), was that it isn't illegal to buy influence.

Re: The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

#193

Post by b1daly »

humanrebar wrote: post #140
b1daly wrote: post #128

The author belies the libertarian quirk of mind that conflates something being regulated with something being made illegal. Quite different things! This strikes me as a cousin to the libertarian intuition that if it is possible to craft an activity that is literally impossible for the government to discover, such an activity simply can't be illegal. (I'm sympathetic to this intuition, but it doesn't take long to see…

> The author belies the libertarian quirk of mind that conflates something being regulated with something being made illegal. Quite different things! You're understating how blurred the line is. A Texas regulation on abortion clinics was struck down last year for being too close to a ban on abortion. Regulations on tobacco products are introduced and strengthened over time with the goal of eliminating the use of toba…

I disagree. The practice of medicine in general is one of the most highly regulated professions. It does not follow that such regulation is a slippery slope to the practice of medicine being made illegal.

The contrary argument is easier to make: when an activity is regulated, by the government, it has been officially sanctioned as a legal activity.

There is no logical reason that an activity such as trading bitcoin should be able to be conducted outside of the legal framework of the state the trader does business in.

Re: The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

#194

Post by ThomPete »

mirimir wrote: post #182
ThomPete wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you cant have your cake and eat it. you cant just opt out of regulation and not all the other things. you would litterally have to start your own nation from scratch.

True. But it's not in meatspace. It's primarily online. And it's not really a nation. Voluntary associations only. What you don't get is the ability to fight wars in meatspace. But long term, that's not such a bad thing. You'd need to focus on asymmetric cyber warfare. Maybe drone armies, if it came to that.

It doesn't matter whether it's online. If you want to be able to use it in meatspace for meatspace things then it will be regulated.

Re: The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

#195

Post by chx »

aianus wrote: post #185
chx wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does it cost to buy and sell those BTC? And are you saying transaction fees are zero?

No, I'm saying the market is illiquid enough (or it was a year ago when I was doing this) to write a bot and wait for the price difference across the US exchange and CA exchange to cancel out the 0.5% round trip trading fees. Which, by the way, are already much cheaper than transferwise at 1.4%.

I can't understand what you are talking about. I am in Canada, sending EUR to my brother in Austria. With Transferwise this takes as much as entering the amount, my ebank username and password and it's done.

With bitcoin, hell, I dunno. https://www.quadrigacx.com/account-funding-withdrawal this wants me to do a bank wire to avoid fees which I can't do online, it's one of my major complaints how the simple transfers in Europe are missing in Canada but I digress. If I use interac online, ding, 1.5%. Then I get bitcoins which I need to store securely, send them and it seems https://cex.io/fee-schedule#/tab/trade there are fee schedules expressed in a language I sure never heard of and then my brother also needs to find an exchange to get EUR out of. Seems hell of a bother to me to save a little money. I am not sending 10K, good for you if you do, I am sending 1000 EUR a time or so, we are talking of saving a few EUR. No way.

Re: The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

#196

Post by astrodust »

mirimir wrote: post #178
astrodust wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make yourself a Bitcoin "lottery" and win it.

That's good :) But maybe too obvious. Anonymous lottery, right? Suspicious.

There's a lot of things about the Bitcoin ecosystem that are intrinsically suspicious starting at the very beginning where the creator is unknown.

Re: The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

#197

Post by [deleted] »

wfunction wrote: post #73
kemonocode wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin payments are anonymous, but they are perfectly traceable. Quite the important distinction there. Tainted money like that would need to be put through a Bitcoin tumbler which is unsafe and imperfect or only ever used to pay for other criminal activities as exchanging it for fiat in an exchange cooperating with any authorities could be pretty hard.

> Bitcoin payments are anonymous, but they are perfectly traceable. Quite the important distinction there. And I was merely saying Bitcoin has been making untraceable digital payments possible (and practical/easy). Nowhere was I saying it is impossible to also use Bitcoin for traceable digital payments.

[deleted]

Re: The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

#198

Post by roguecoder »

timbowhite wrote: post #149
ThomPete wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you cant have your cake and eat it. you cant just opt out of regulation and not all the other things. you would litterally have to start your own nation from scratch.

Do you think people like Rosa Parks should have started their own nation? [0] What an incredibly frightening way of thinking. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

Why do so many libertarian dudes suddenly all want to be Rosa Parks? And how did they miss the part where she was arrested and convicted, as part of a coordinated activist effort to change specific laws?

She didn't just break the law and expect there to be no consequences. That's not how non-violence resistance works.

Re: The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

#199

Post by ndr »

arkades wrote: post #137
ndr wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the illogic behind it? The law can say it is illegal, but it is not enforceable is it really a valid claim?

Yes, it is really a valid claim. It's not even "un-enforceable," it's just "difficult to discover." Murdering someone and getting away clean doesn't make murder legal. Largely because, as an extension of the fact that we're discussing the real world and not a fantasy ( https://xkcd.com/538/ ), everything is eventually discover-able, and if you give the government sufficient incentive, they will discover it.

The way you describe this is that it's impossible to make something undiscoverable, which is quite a big claim and one I don't really agree with.
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