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

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#591

Post by jl2718 » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #503

jl2718 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It’s worth $10 because you saved your (non-inflationary) money. And you spent the last 10 years making a bread robot instead of working in the financial sector. And how is ‘investing’ a productive use of capital? In deflationary regime, business is about cash flow. Inflationary regime investments are all speculation, and everybody has to play the game. This Keynesian argument comes from a nihilistic disregard for…

When you earn money in 1800 and use it in 2021 then a baker in 1800 failed to get your money and his time was wasted. He could have used that time to bake bread but you didn't buy bread. Now that it is 2021 you are asking the baker to bake twice as much bread for your sake even though you did nothing to help the baker run his business. In fact, you did the opposite. Turns out there are less bakers in the future and y…

These are all valid arguments in the extreme. As are all arguments about inflation in the extreme.

There is actually no difference between inflation and deflation. For every inflationary asset basis, there is a deflationary asset basis. Flip bread/money in your own text and you see the problem.

The only difference is taxes. Tax basis could be anything. Let’s say, SHA-256 hashes. Every year, the hash value of your dollar investment account quadruples. You need to pay for half of those gains, or else you go to jail, and if you resist, you can be legally killed. The price of food and shelter is irrelevant to me. Pay me. Can’t? Okay, we’ll collect tax in Bitcoin, but we’ll have to raise the tax rate to 90%. We can go back and forth on this as much as you want. In the end, I guarantee the guy with the legal right to kill you ends up owning everything.

In conclusion: inflation and deflation are both the same thing, and they both suck.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#592

Post by jude- » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

mujina93 wrote: post #562

jude- wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares what Satoshi wanted? He/she/they do not control the system.

Yes, actually. His/her/their wallet has the majority of bitcoins. If they were to move them, everything would crash.

If a majority of miners wanted, they could block those BTC from moving.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#593

Post by andreilys » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

SkyBelow wrote: post #399

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.

>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.

Why wouldn’t it be likely?

Currency flight from China is a serious problem, and the CCP has instituted controls to make sure money doesn’t leave the country (except for some permitted amount)

I don’t think it’s unlikely that BTC gets cracked down on by the CCP if they notice that a large volume of citizens are using it to skirt capital controls.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#594

Post by quickthrower2 » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #587

quickthrower2 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bitcoin network could happy live without those things, as could trade, but price action depends on them. For example the 10000 BTC pizza was one of the early purchases. If BTC stayed at 0.1c then you could still use it and it was used. Caveat to this is now the mining infra means that returning to 1c coins would kill Bitcoin as a secure network since no one would mine for profit - the only reason to mine is the 5…

What does "happily live without it" even mean? Fact is that Bitcoin is used a whole lot for laundering and transferring money in illegal businesses or across borders without taxation. The "legal" part of Bitcoin transactions which aren't just for investment or speculation, like "Pizza sales" or something, are, for one thing not that practical, for another not that popular or significant. So it does stand to reason th…

I mean you can have nodes, miners, block creation without the dark things you mentioned. Bitcoin price might be lower.

But this is hypothetical anyway because with ASIC mining and dedicated power plants you can’t go back to a low price (other than zero i.e. network trust is lost!).

I would imagine even $1000 Bitcoin now would introduce issues of too much hash power. With too much has power and not enough mining incentive in USD terms you’ll just get network attacks.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#595

Post by quickthrower2 » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

fancyfredbot wrote: post #163

quickthrower2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A carbon tax/price might work assuming you could get that through. Then tax a percentage on Bitcoin purchases via exchanges to aloe for the carbon emissions.

Agree it might be workable, although Tobin taxes like this haven't had a lot of support in the past. Also, enforcement is likely to be a bit of a nightmare! It would raise some money you could use to mitigate environmental impact, but I'm not sure that a reasonable tax level would actually disuade anyone from putting their money in so less helpful from that point of view.

I would imagine enforcement would be similar to tobacco or alcohol or gambling duty which is already done.

I agree it would be hard to get the tax in because of vested interests and yeah people will still buy it but if the money is used to properly offset carbon it might be worth it. But I’m a dreamer!

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#596

Post by ostenning » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 8:30 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…

Tell the people of Venezuela that. Cryptocurrencies have the ability to free people from broken dictatorial economies.

While you may enjoy the benefits of a first world currency, check your privilege for just one moment and realise the world is much bigger than you would believe.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#597

Post by fulafel » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #40

Is "Electricity Neutrality" a concept? Does the government have any control over how I use the electricity that I pay for? This is a genuine question and I'm not trying to be snarky.

Some (many?) countries have big subsidies on industrial electricity use and high taxes for other uses.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#598

Post by gobrewers14 » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

I thought this was an April Fool's joke. It is frightening there are people that think giving the State another reason to fine, harass, and imprison people is an actual solution to a problem.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#599

Post by einpoklum » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #276

einpoklum wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-b…

I meant more the actual nuts-and-bolts of fiat currency, not the entire political structure of capitalism. Obviously this is an unanswerable question, but ultimately the point is that the current currency system no doubt consumes a huge amount of energy. If the predominant currency of the world were a Proof of Stake crypto, it seems logical to assume that actual energy costs would go way down.

> but ultimately the point is that the current currency system no doubt consumes a huge amount of energy

But is it really huge? I mean, compared to BitCoin mining? Or, if you like - compared to, say, the energy consumed by people's personal computers and mobile phones? I'm not so sure. I mean, I would guess it's not all that much, but it's pure speculation on my part.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#600

Post by einpoklum » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

smeej wrote: post #187

einpoklum wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impo…

You're right that the political case is easy to make. Governments do already claim the authority to control and regulate these things. The interesting question about Bitcoin is whether it could ever be robust enough that they couldn't successfully regulate or control it, even if they very much wanted to and most people agreed it would be appropriate for them to do so.

> The interesting question about Bitcoin is whether it could ever be robust enough that they couldn't successfully regulate or control it,

Oh, I doubt that. I mean, if it were banned by most world states, then you wouldn't have reputable exchanges operating legally and openly. So established investment firms and investors would probably stay away from it. And of course, no person or business could officially accept BitCoin, and it would be risky to accept it even unofficially, since it would be admitting to a crime.