This guy didn't buy Bitcoin so he want government to ban it. I am joking, but I am sure there is some truth to that. If we start banning what is a bit shady, we will end up shutting down 80% of businesses out there that make money.
The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
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Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#22Instead of regulating specific areas we think pollute more than they are worth, we should just have a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Let people decide if it is worth it for them to pay for the emissions caused by Bitcoin, or sports cars, or whatever else pollutes without providing real value. What you do with the share of the emissions you have purchased is none of the government's business, but we should make everyone pay for their negative externalities.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#23Most of the article's arguments work if you replace the word "Gold" for the word cryptocurrency. Gold itself is just a yellow metal, it is valuable largely for the human belief that it has value, though admittedly it is somewhat pretty, a good conductor of electrons, and has historical value due to its ease of work and use in numerous ancient artifacts.
Still, as a currency or value holder, gold is simply a metal that people think has value. Crypto too has value because people think it has value. It is "mined" like gold, though newer coins don't have this quality due to Proof of Stake, thus reducing carbon emissions drastically. And if people are willing to trade paper or metal for digital objects, is it anyone's place to ban that trade? What about digital money for digital crypto, can we ban that?
All currencies like pieces of paper, digital objects, metallic circles, seashells, beaver pelts: They all have value because humans value them.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#24We can't allow the poors to pillage the planet.. That's reserved for "wallstreets crazy traders".
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#25Even if you take the most cynical approach towards crypto, banning crypto is simply not the governments job. At best, this is equivalent to banning beanie babies (no real negative affects for society, but stupid and a big overreach). At worst, it's equivalent to banning the internet (sets the country behind decades as the rest of the world adopts the new technology and profits from it).
The government[0] has regulatory authority over environmental issues, so why wouldn't this be the government's job? [0] ie: all of them
Banning crypto is a gigantic overreach when the government won't even try the obvious solutions like carbon taxes (which would indirectly discourage crypto mining).
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#26Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#27I find it funny that the environmental arguments have come out again. Major news companies were making the same argument about the Internet back in the 90s.[1] Pretty much any activity has some effect on the environment, so the argument tends to be used when few other criticisms can stick.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#28This ignores the positive arguments for bitcoin.
Bitcoin is objective, hard, honest money. Many view that as a very good thing, myself included.
Governments steal inordinate amounts of energy from the populace with their money printing.
The Pharaohs built the pyramids using slave labor. This was a monstrous, immoral waste of human energy.
Modern governments accomplish the same thing with money printing.
That is the system Stephen Diehl supports.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#29Even if you take the most cynical approach towards crypto, banning crypto is simply not the governments job. At best, this is equivalent to banning beanie babies (no real negative affects for society, but stupid and a big overreach). At worst, it's equivalent to banning the internet (sets the country behind decades as the rest of the world adopts the new technology and profits from it).
The government[0] has regulatory authority over environmental issues, so why wouldn't this be the government's job? [0] ie: all of them
If the government is able to ban crypto currency because it's unnecessary and uses too much energy, couldn't they apply that logic to nearly any other modern luxury?
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#30I think the main premise of this article is the fact that crypto's carbon emission is insane, especially Bitcoin, which I agree (I don't hold Bitcoin for this exact reason). But there are many other crypto that uses Proof of Stake, way way greener than Proof of Work, such as Cardano. Even Ethereum is transitioning to Proof of Stake. This article should be re-titled "The Political Case for a Blanket Proof of Work Ban"…
I came here to say this exact same thing. There is seriously interesting and useful real work being done under the umbrella term "decentralized finance" or DeFi. It is hard to cut through the noise of get rich quick schemes, but at the core, the DeFi stuff, built on top of green cryptocurrency (proof of stake), along with quickly improving zero-knowledge proof tech, is actually useful and groundbreaking. Bitcoin and…
Indeed, the world of cyptocurrency/blockchain research has many ground breaking papers and news are often real time, even crypto news aggregator can't keep up with it. HN crowd refuses to care about it because of bad taste of crypto in general.