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The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#391

Post by jonnycomputer »

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…

And frankly, bitcoin is intentionally deflationary, and that is almost certainly bad for economies. Why should I buy now when I'll save money by buying later? Why should I start my business now when my investment capital will be worth more later?

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#392

Post by blake1 »

dnautics wrote: post #383
andreilys wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you want to contest ownership there's no one to invade, no one to attack; the best you can do is make a fleet and try to mine No one except for the owners of major BTC mining operations. If a state actor, such as China, was motivated enough to identify, capture and coerce these miners it would be pretty easy to perform a 51% attack given that China accounts for around 65% of all bitcoin mining globally.

"pretty easy"? Exactly how do you Envision this attack going down, step by step?

Government agents show up at the data center and confiscate the servers in the mining pool. The coerce the owners into turning over the login credentials.

Or they just deploy their own mining pool.

Or the just tax all of their citizens’ cryptos.

They have lots of options, since they have the power of the state behind them.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#393

Post by djschnei »

kanwisher wrote: post #156
djschnei wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cardano mainnet doesn't exist? What?... The Mainnet has 2,289 active stake pool operators, which comes out to >99% decentralized, with 71.09% of the total ADA in circulation being actively staked on those pools ($26.83b/$37.7b). It has an incredibly active and healthy mainnet...

With no smart contracts or actual usable functionality. Its just a chain with staking and nothing useful

https://i.redd.it/9v8n8zaugjp61.jpg

Nothing useful is a HUGE stretch - unless only smart contracts are 'useful'. The ecosystem is new but growing rapidly. Let's circle back to this comment in 1-2 months?

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#394

Post by nbardy »

salawat wrote: post #270
jtolds wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Proof of Stake is not inherently decentralized, you realize that, right? It'll trend toward centalization over time as coins end up getting delegated to the asset class equivalents of banks and brokers. They will pop up. Once they do, They will be regulated. Then you're back to square one.

And then you have a monetary system that runs a blockchain instead of this paper system the US has.

Not everyone wants to take down banks or destroy fiat.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#395

Post by hudon »

paulgb wrote: post #384
andreilys wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you want to contest ownership there's no one to invade, no one to attack; the best you can do is make a fleet and try to mine No one except for the owners of major BTC mining operations. If a state actor, such as China, was motivated enough to identify, capture and coerce these miners it would be pretty easy to perform a 51% attack given that China accounts for around 65% of all bitcoin mining globally.

> it would be pretty easy to perform a 51% attack Yes, and the elephant in the room with Bitcoin is that it's only going to get easier. Despite the categorization of Bitcoin as non-inflationary, the computational power of the network is currently ~85% subsidized by block rewards that grant miners new coins (i.e., inflation). Once those are diminished through halvings, either transaction costs will have to go up about…

Or the network finds consensus on an algorithm change where the block subsidy keeps going, thereby continuing to pay the miners. The 21 million bitcoin cap isn’t as immutable as people claim. It’s just that most Bitcoin stakeholders agree to keep it there, for now.

That Bitcoin is some immutable “backed by math” financial system has been a charade all along. It’s very much backed by people, and proof-of-work is a Rube Goldberg machine used to distract the tech-literate.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#396

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#397

Post by dnautics »

blake1 wrote: post #392
dnautics wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pretty easy"? Exactly how do you Envision this attack going down, step by step?

Government agents show up at the data center and confiscate the servers in the mining pool. The coerce the owners into turning over the login credentials. Or they just deploy their own mining pool. Or the just tax all of their citizens’ cryptos. They have lots of options, since they have the power of the state behind them.

Why wouldn't the network soft fork?

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#398

Post by ahallock »

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…

There seems to be an inverse correlation between the value of BTC and DXY.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#399

Post by SkyBelow »

andreilys wrote: post #359
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…

And if you want to contest ownership there's no one to invade, no one to attack; the best you can do is make a fleet and try to mine No one except for the owners of major BTC mining operations. If a state actor, such as China, was motivated enough to identify, capture and coerce these miners it would be pretty easy to perform a 51% attack given that China accounts for around 65% of all bitcoin mining globally.

>If a state actor, such as China, was motivated enough to identify, capture and coerce these miners it would be pretty easy to perform a 51% attack given that China accounts for around 65% of all bitcoin mining globally.

This is because people don't consider it likely. Once it happens, people will move to new crypto and will devalue any crypto that is too centrally mined by a single country.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#400

Post by nradov »

pydry wrote: post #343
caeril wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is far from proven that target inflation is bad Target inflation is specifically intended to promote consumption. Consumption, particularly in the form of atoms, not bits, is approximately 90% correlated with greenhouse gas emissions, despite all our efforts to roll out renewables. Setting the "inflation is good" argument alongside an article decrying the climate impact of inflation-resistant currencies is . . .…

>Target inflation is specifically intended to promote consumption. No, it's intended to erode debt. Inflation is effectively a transfer of wealth from creditor to debtor.

No that's not how it works in the typical case. Lenders set their interest rates based on expected future inflation rates over the term of the loan. Debts only really get eroded when interest rates are fixed and actual inflation greatly outpaces expected inflation. Like in the hyper inflation that occurred in Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Serbia, etc.
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