The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban • Hacker News Board

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#121

Post by rybosworld » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #74

DickingAround wrote: post #53

This article seems to intentionally ignore the core reason for cryptocurrencies; escaping inflation and control. The article then proposes to use the law to bring those people back within the control of fiat and government oversight. I no longer think the environmental argument is really plausible here. Clearly crypto mining is emitting using a lot of power and some of that is CO2. But the competition is fiat; backed…

> This article seems to intentionally ignore the core reason for cryptocurrencies; escaping inflation I'm extremely confused by this argument that I see again and again. If you want to avoid your assets losing value to inflation that you can buy assets that are resistant to inflation, such as stocks, real estate, land, gold, inflation-adjusted bonds ... I just don't see that cryptocurrencies are particularly useful f…

I think the major point is that Bitcoin seems to benefit disproportionately from inflation. It may be the case that it's the single best hedge against inflation. But yes, there are lot's of things that protect against inflation.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#122

Post by Ensorceled » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

Dumblydorr wrote: post #23

Most 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 tha…

Gold has been valuable for centuries. There is no BitGold network that, if it went under, would cause your gold to simply evaporate. Once mined and processed, gold is incredibly stable, 2000 year old gold coins can be dug up and sold as antiques.

All currencies have value, not because "humans" value them, but because some organization of humans said "this piece of paper is legal tender". They lose their value when that political organization falters. What political organization is behind bitcoin etc.

Beaver pelts stopped being useful as a "currency" when there was no ready market for furs, it was never a currency, it was a fungible asset.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#123

Post by aarongray » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #74

DickingAround wrote: post #53

This article seems to intentionally ignore the core reason for cryptocurrencies; escaping inflation and control. The article then proposes to use the law to bring those people back within the control of fiat and government oversight. I no longer think the environmental argument is really plausible here. Clearly crypto mining is emitting using a lot of power and some of that is CO2. But the competition is fiat; backed…

> This article seems to intentionally ignore the core reason for cryptocurrencies; escaping inflation I'm extremely confused by this argument that I see again and again. If you want to avoid your assets losing value to inflation that you can buy assets that are resistant to inflation, such as stocks, real estate, land, gold, inflation-adjusted bonds ... I just don't see that cryptocurrencies are particularly useful f…

Real estate has clearly been shown to not be resistant to inflation over the past year.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#124

Post by javert » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

kibleopard wrote: post #95

javert wrote: post #28

This 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 s…

> Bitcoin is objective, hard, honest money Yes, definitely makes sense when the main usage of it is money laundering and mindless speculation

That isn't the case, but believe what you want.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#125

Post by keiferski » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

The hullabaloo over Bitcoin’s environmental cost is a classic example of people focusing on things that are easily visible and being totally oblivious to ones that are unseen or not obvious. What is the energy cost of the current currency system and the political structure that keeps it in use? I’m going to guess that it is significantly higher than Bitcoin.

That’s not even mentioning Proof of Stake, which will essentially solve all of these problems.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#126

Post by einpoklum » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

thebean11 wrote: post #11

Even 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).

Without arguing for or against such a ban - it is literally in the purview of governments. Control and regulation of financial mechanisms is a key part of state sovereignty. So, such a ban would is much more "the government's job" than banning a product like beanie babies.

It's also not the equivalent of banning the Internet; perhaps - similar to banning gambling through the Internet. In the sense that it may be impossible to properly enforce, but can certainly happen and in some world states:

https://www.nodeposit365.com/features/countries-that-have-ba...

Again, none of this is to say cyptocurrencies should or shouldn't be banned; or even that governments should or shouldn't ban things at all, or exist at all etc.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#127

Post by tome » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

rybosworld wrote: post #121

tome wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This article seems to intentionally ignore the core reason for cryptocurrencies; escaping inflation I'm extremely confused by this argument that I see again and again. If you want to avoid your assets losing value to inflation that you can buy assets that are resistant to inflation, such as stocks, real estate, land, gold, inflation-adjusted bonds ... I just don't see that cryptocurrencies are particularly useful f…

I think the major point is that Bitcoin seems to benefit disproportionately from inflation. It may be the case that it's the single best hedge against inflation. But yes, there are lot's of things that protect against inflation.

> Bitcoin seems to benefit disproportionately from inflation

Does it? On what basis would one know that? Why should it benefit from inflation more than gold, say?

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#128

Post by sitkack » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

Luker88 wrote: post #81

So yesterday in HN there was a link to a medium post on the same thing, but limited to Proof of Work instead of the whole cryptocoins. Got flagged pretty quickly, but there was a link to a petition inside with links to various problems of proof of work: https://www.change.org/StopBurncoins IMHO the problem is not cryptocoins themselves as is suggested here, but just proof of work. A total ban would barely work anyway…

NFTs are interesting because they are an entity in of themselves, they could be the root of value. Apologies, I don't have all the money words to make this sound smart.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#129

Post by scsilver » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #55

rybosworld wrote: post #36

Seems to me that Stephen is not well informed on crypto in general. This article is really only relevant to Bitcoin. Take a project like Brave for instance which is disrupting the online advertising model: https://brave.com/ (I am completely unaffiliated, just a fan of the project) Can you look at this project and tell me with a straight face it is bad for the environment and should be banned by government? Because t…

The thing is, Im not sure Brave really needs a cryptocurrency. It seems that a centralized DB would be enough.

The unifiying protocol of a token(BAT) is a political feature. It aligns incentives out of the box. Stakeholders become shareholders, stakeholders become financially aligned. The problem with this can be speculation distorting the market, making it to expensive to transact, reducing or eliminating its value.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#130

Post by runj__ » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

louwrentius wrote: post #82

_nckn wrote: post #5

I 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 think personally that proof of stake and proof of work both don’t matter in the end. I believe that all cryptocurrencies are at their heart scams. Proof of stake doesn’t change this dynamic. As I see it, cryptocurrencies doesn’t actually solve any real, significant problems we face as a (global) society. And to pick one important thing: they exclusively enable crypolocker randsomeware, and we know their devastating…

"Scam" would indicate intent which I'd seriously think you'd be hard pressed to find behind the bitcoin white paper, it would be a really bad, slow scam if it included the number of steps where bitcoin would be where it is right now.

I can put a virus on someone's computer and make them mail physical dollars or make dead-drops or whatever to remove it, ransomware is not a problem of cryptocurrency.