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CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

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Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#61

Post by vmception »

rawtxapp wrote: post #50
vmception wrote: post #40

Capture US regulatory agencies while you can. This has already had varying levels of success with the Chief Legal Officer of Coinbase being the acting chair of the OCC and telling banks it was okay to custody crypto and settle transactions on cryptocurrency networks instead of just SWIFT, ACH, FedWire There are some at the SEC, and the new SEC chair was pro-crypto when he was previously the chair of CFTC Cabinet leve…

Square, Fidelity and Coinbase joined together to start lobbying group [1]. 1: https://seekingalpha.com/news/3679495-square-fidelity-coinba...

The existing crypto lobbying groups were able to get bi-partisan support and co-sponsors for their bills but couldn't get Congress to focus enough to pass things. They got Wyoming and some western states to pass favorable state-level laws though.

Let's see how this one does.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#62

Post by justapassenger »

Crackdown on current state of crypto can only help it in the long run, if you actually really believe it.

Right now it’s market mostly dedicated to get rich quick schemes. While it works great if you’re on top of the pyramid, it’s only hurting crypto case for the future.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#63

Post by puranjay »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #20
liquidise wrote: post #4

> U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other officials have warned about the use of cryptocurrencies for illicit transactions. Wait until you hear about cash. More seriously (and hopefully less reductionist) i feel nations who embrace cryptocurrencies early will see mixed results as the landscape matures. I am more confident that nations which turn their back on it, or shut it out completely, will see a loss of o…

> Wait until you hear about cash. anecdote time: I once travelled to Vietnam for a vacation, people in vietnam prefer $100 bills because they're easier to use for hiding wealth, transporting cross border, and other slightly less than legal reasons. Additionally it's the preferred currency of criminals in the country too (so I heard). They will even pay higher exchange rates for ones in better condition or with more a…

In Uzbekistan, I saw a disproportionately large number of people with gold teeth. When I asked my host about it, he said that that was the older Soviet-era generation that would get gold teeth so that they could carry some useful wealth with them in case they had to flee their homes all of a sudden.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#64

Post by gruez »

lambda_obrien wrote: post #58
winslett wrote: post #46

Instead of killing it by banning it, I suspect they could kill it by buying it. If the Fed wanted to "invest" in Bitcoin, it would kill it by soaking up liquidity and creating a liquidity-squeeze. Because the amount in circulation is fixed, it wouldn't have to buy all of the Bitcoin -- just enough to kill any utility. This is a downside of an asset with a fixed quantity. Once the community discovered the liquidity-sq…

The USG could kill it by using a 51 percent attack; the NSA must have rows upon rows of servers that could be repurposed for a week or two to destroy the market. Split the blockchain every couple of hours into several different versions, eventually there would be little chance to reconcile things.

>the NSA must have rows upon rows of servers that could be repurposed for a week or two to destroy the market

Their general purpose servers are nearly useless for mining bitcoin because their hashrates are orders of magnitude lower than the ASICs that professional miners use. If you want to 51% attack bitcoin you either need an absurd number of general purpose computers (possibly more than all CPUs/GPUs that exist on earth) or pour billions into making hardware that can only be used to mine.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#65

Post by maxerickson »

lambda_obrien wrote: post #58
winslett wrote: post #46

Instead of killing it by banning it, I suspect they could kill it by buying it. If the Fed wanted to "invest" in Bitcoin, it would kill it by soaking up liquidity and creating a liquidity-squeeze. Because the amount in circulation is fixed, it wouldn't have to buy all of the Bitcoin -- just enough to kill any utility. This is a downside of an asset with a fixed quantity. Once the community discovered the liquidity-sq…

The USG could kill it by using a 51 percent attack; the NSA must have rows upon rows of servers that could be repurposed for a week or two to destroy the market. Split the blockchain every couple of hours into several different versions, eventually there would be little chance to reconcile things.

I think specialized chips work too well for repurposing other computing capacity to work.

I expect the most effective attacks would go after control of mining capacity, either directly seizing it or taking it offline.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#66

Post by Karunamon »

lambda_obrien wrote: post #58
winslett wrote: post #46

Instead of killing it by banning it, I suspect they could kill it by buying it. If the Fed wanted to "invest" in Bitcoin, it would kill it by soaking up liquidity and creating a liquidity-squeeze. Because the amount in circulation is fixed, it wouldn't have to buy all of the Bitcoin -- just enough to kill any utility. This is a downside of an asset with a fixed quantity. Once the community discovered the liquidity-sq…

The USG could kill it by using a 51 percent attack; the NSA must have rows upon rows of servers that could be repurposed for a week or two to destroy the market. Split the blockchain every couple of hours into several different versions, eventually there would be little chance to reconcile things.

The NSA/CIA/etc. is precisely why this won't happen, for the same reason the same are launching no wide-scale attacks to take down Tor - the guys in suits doing questionable government things need anonymity too.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#67

Post by puranjay »

justapassenger wrote: post #62

Crackdown on current state of crypto can only help it in the long run, if you actually really believe it. Right now it’s market mostly dedicated to get rich quick schemes. While it works great if you’re on top of the pyramid, it’s only hurting crypto case for the future.

DeFi has a legitimate use case and NFTs have an astonishing number of use cases. Smart Contracts are an incredible, incredible innovation.

We are at the tip of the iceberg and nothing has been more disappointing than seeing the traditional tech world's dismissal of crypto as "get rich schemes". The tech world is surprisingly as complacent now as the legacy dinosaurs it first helped destroy in the 1990s and 2000s.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#68

Post by gruez »

Y_Y wrote: post #60
winslett wrote: post #46

Instead of killing it by banning it, I suspect they could kill it by buying it. If the Fed wanted to "invest" in Bitcoin, it would kill it by soaking up liquidity and creating a liquidity-squeeze. Because the amount in circulation is fixed, it wouldn't have to buy all of the Bitcoin -- just enough to kill any utility. This is a downside of an asset with a fixed quantity. Once the community discovered the liquidity-sq…

But won't you also increase the mining activity if the price shoots up? I'd like to hear more detail on this "liquidity-squeeze" plan.

That wouldn't affect emission rates (at least in the long term), due to network difficulty adjustments.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#69

Post by Animats »

plank_time wrote: post #26

I think this is pretty obvious and even mentioned this is a previous comment a few weeks ago. The US government has been saying that crypto is funding terrorism and money laundering. If you can’t read the writing on the wall then that’s your fault.

What terrorism? Since 9/11, there have been only two major Islamic terrorism incidents on US soil. The Boston Marathon bombing was by two brothers, and the San Bernardino shooting was a husband and wife team. Both were low-budget operations.

Even 9/11 is estimated to have cost the attackers only about $400K.

What costs is setting up an full-sized army, like ISIS.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#70

Post by spurdoman77 »

petertodd wrote: post #23
liquidise wrote: post #4

> U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other officials have warned about the use of cryptocurrencies for illicit transactions. Wait until you hear about cash. More seriously (and hopefully less reductionist) i feel nations who embrace cryptocurrencies early will see mixed results as the landscape matures. I am more confident that nations which turn their back on it, or shut it out completely, will see a loss of o…

> Wait until you hear about cash. I'm always bothered by this arguement because most of the same people in government who want to see a crackdown on Bitcoin also seem to want cash to be eliminated. I've been asked to do consulting on one of these digital cash replacement projects. The requirements included all the stuff you'd expect, like strict ID requirements for every account, and the ability to freeze funds at wi…

Central bankers are often pro-cash but anti-bitcoin. They dont want competition.
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