Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

stephendiehl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 630 posts

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#141

Post by tolmasky »

iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #66
slibhb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main premise of the article is that cryptocurrencies are "speculation for speculation’s sake," i.e. gambling, and that's bad. Also, the article claims that they contribute to inequality. The green stuff is basically a side note. I don't think it's a terribly strong case but I suppose it depends on whether you agree that crypto is gambling and if you think gambling should banned. Anyway, I think lots of people stu…

Gambling, e.g. casino or sports betting is different because for some it's a fun pastime and participants are (more or less) aware of what it's about. "Crypto" - not the underlying tech which is potentially interesting and may have merit in some incarnation - but buying or trading "assets" grounded in the tech, is essentially a quasi-legal pump and dump scheme right now. There is a rich history of securities law that…

It would be difficult to qualify Bitcoin as pump and dump without inadvertently also including many other assets at this point (which is perhaps a reasonable position to take!). That is to say, the more time passes, the fewer properties it exclusively shares with things we traditionally consider pump-and-dump. Bitcoin has for example now outlasted many startups (12 years and counting). Again, many people do think startups and/or the VC-ecosystem are a convoluted pump-and-dump, fair enough. Some would say that Uber is a massive pump and dump scheme that gives out rides below market value as a side-effect. I suppose you could argue that Bitcoin is similarly a pump-and-dump scheme that allows some people to for example donate to the internet archive as a side-effect. But if Bitcoin is still around 12 years from now, would we feel safe saying it's probably something "else"?

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#142

Post by rybosworld »

tome wrote: post #127
rybosworld wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My argument would be it's the only thing on that list of inflation hedges that has a fixed supply.

Lot's of gold is mined each year. Houses are built. Stock is issued, etc. Bitcoin has a well-established upper limit.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#143

Post by heywintermute »

scoofy wrote: post #80

>Bitcoin is the textbook speculative mania for our time. This is either false or unknowable, there are plenty of reasons why bitcoin speculation is happening, and it's because it has been a very long time since there has been a new desirable commodity. >The largest elephant in the room is the environmental damage done by bitcoin mining. This is very true, i don't think it's the largest elephant though. >Cryptocurrenc…

>It's easy to steal.

>It only takes one 0-day wipe you out, irreversibly, and completely. My bank could get hacked, but we, as a society, can just decide that I still have the assets I had before, the paper stocks and coupons are in a drawer somewhere. The loan contracts are in a filing cabinet (or they should be). I get my bank statements every month. There's some cash and some gold in a vault. A breach is, at least theoretically, reversible. That's not true with bitcoin.

Isn't this more just an argument that cryptocurrency's are just riskier because unlike tradition financial institutions/investments they are unregulated and lack protections such as insurance etc. Maybe I am just getting caught up in semantics but a 0-day wiping out the value of Bitcoin/Crypto with no vehicle in place to restore that value to its owners if something were to happen just makes it extremely risky/highly speculative investment not necessarily easy to steal

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#144

Post by revel »

_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"…

The big problem with the way that "cryptocurrencies" are talked about is that cryptocurrency is, at least in the mainstream vernacular, synonymous with bitcoin. Bitcoin is an outlier in terms of how it works and what it does. Most tokens sit on top of Ethereum and at this point it's probably more accurate to describe cryptocurrencies as being synonymous with ETH, not BTC.

In my opinion regulatory action against PoW is all but inevitable. Ethereum is a platform, so there are powerful incentives to make it work more efficiently and use less power. Those plans are already well under way and, whenever Ethereum 2.0 gets launched, the power consumption of the crypto sector will drop dramatically and the network will be massively more powerful, attracting subsequent adoption. In this case, miners and developers have aligned interests. That's not the case for Bitcoin. Existing miners benefit from PoW, so I don't expect Bitcoin to migrate without some regulatory arm twisting.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#145

Post by elliekelly »

duckfang wrote: post #109

Notice: When Wall street decides to horrible things with money in its various ways, nobody bats an eye. When fraud happens, nobody goes to jail. It's business as usual. When the People decides to do horrible things with money in its various ways, we see hardware manufacturers attempt to lock down hardware to prevent it (nVidia), we see the SEC collectively lose their shit, we see completely inconsistent rules from th…

> Rules for thee, but not for me.

There are all kinds of rules that apply to Wall Street that cryptocurrency seeks (and for the most part, has managed) to avoid. I don’t disagree there is an entirely different system of “justice” for wealthy, white collar, Wall Street criminals but to say Wall Street is without regulation while cryptocurrency is somehow beholden to rules is patently and laughably untrue.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#146

Post by smeej »

tome wrote: post #127
rybosworld wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Nobody knows how much gold is in the earth, much less in not-so-distant asteroids.

The supply of gold might, technically, be "fixed" in the sense that no more of it is being created, but more of it could be discovered at any time.

Bitcoin's supply is mathematically demonstrably fixed. Nobody's ever going to discover a new vein of Bitcoin in the earth's crust, or on an asteroid.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#147

Post by fcanesin »

What a idiotic essay, the same arguments could be made for the ban of most precious metal mining since majority of it goes to storage deposits.

Cryptocurrencies actually bring several benefits and better solutions for the problem of trust in a store-of-value or exchange contract. The world needs Bitcoin now more than ever, we are already living in a multilateral world where US and China exert pressure to force international contracts to be denominated in USD abs RMB.

That is an awful deal when both countries can print unlimited amounts and distribute to their preferences like happened during this pandemic, specially in the US.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#148

Post by quickthrower2 »

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…

If we are Saying fiat is backed by fighter jets then Bitcoin is backed by selling dangerous fake MDMA. That’s if we are getting into that way of arguing which hopefully we are not.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#149

Post by einpoklum »

keiferski wrote: post #125

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 essen…

> and the political structure that keeps it in use?

1. False equivalence, since the environmental concern is about the generation of cryptocurrency not its social implications vs a crypto-currency-free world.

2. You've expanded this question so much that it is not possible to answer. The political structure that keeps money is use is basically the political structure of almost all world states, and capitalist/money-based economies. So the cost is about 100% of all energy expenditure. What's the alternative? You would need to imagine an anti-capitalist revolution creating a non-exchange-based economy (so not USSR-style either). I happen to think that's a swell idea, but you realize there is absolutely no way you can estimate how much less energy humanity would use up in such a different reality than today's.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#150

Post by SavantIdiot »

hervature wrote: post #96
slibhb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main premise of the article is that cryptocurrencies are "speculation for speculation’s sake," i.e. gambling, and that's bad. Also, the article claims that they contribute to inequality. The green stuff is basically a side note. I don't think it's a terribly strong case but I suppose it depends on whether you agree that crypto is gambling and if you think gambling should banned. Anyway, I think lots of people stu…

The problem with governments creating welfare states is that other citizens (and the government) become responsible for the financial implosion of individuals which incentivizes stupid behavior. I don't believe gambling should be banned but should taxpayers be liable for the healthcare of someone who used their health insurance money to speculate on cryptocurrency? This is actually the main division between conservat…

> healthcare of someone who used their health insurance money to speculate on cryptocurrency?

You've got it backwards. You are making health insurance profit-driven, when it should be a government service. So then there would be no "individual's health insurance money" to quibble about.

> Once the government is responsible for the well-being of its citizens, it has weird effects like banning cryptocurrency

Wow, that's one helluva strawperson argument. Governments have always been responsible for the well-being of its citizens.

This idea of blaming hypothetical "stupid people" is trotted out by libertarians who want to punish the poor for dumb behavior, but give the rich a pass for equally-or-more dumb behavior that has a 1,000x more negative impact on society, simply because rich=smart=superior in their minds.

Post reply on HN