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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

#131

> 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…

I am sorry but that’s a very weak argument about cash being involved in illicit transactions. As it stands right now cash is still TANGIBLE. If you want to launder cash you still need to be physically present. Crypto not so much.

I will leave you with this: the reason why crypto will inevitably fail is because no one and no country will be willing to go to war to defend it. As for USD? There’s the single greatest military power assembled by mankind backing all US interests.

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

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

DeFi main value proposition isn’t tech (that’s cool) but avoiding regulations. Blockchain has lots of potentially interesting use cases like NFT, but crypto currency is still not one of them. And by not cracking down on scams in cryptocurrency will only make any future adoption harder.

DeFi's main value proposition is the automation of money.

NFTs main value proposition is fractional ownership and assertion of ownership rights in a transparent manner.

Imagine owning 1% of a Drake song - and getting paid 1% of the royalties every time it plays on Spotify. Or creating a yield earning strategy that automatically moves money around based on fixed paramters without ever interacting with a banker or fund manager.

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

#133

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…

Capture US regulatory agencies while you can.

I'd perhaps quibble a bit to say US financial regulatory agencies can't be captured in the fashion of traditional regulators (where the "revolving door" is awful). This is because they were "captured from the beginning", operated specifically for the benefit of large financial firm from the very start. The Federal Reserve isn't even a traditional agency but public, private partnership ("has a 'unique structure that is both public and private'). EPA theoretically protects "the environment" a thing outside markets. Financial regulators protect markets. Protecting markets is completely compatible with protecting the profits of the largest players in the markets. So it seems logical regulators will remain "objective" in their assessments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve

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

#134

Tangentially related. Cryptocurrency is just a side effect of blockchain. Once blockchain technology matures and if one day we see blockchain to store files and blockchain to run cloud services, then will the US government censor it as well? If they will, how? It is practically impossible. You can upload anything there, including child porn, instructions on making bombs, videos that contain brainwashing propaganda fo…

When they realize, they will kill on/off-ramps into cash and make any transactions not legal.

The software itself they can treat is as malware - blackhole IPs and shutdown any hosts involved.

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

#135

> 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…

Crypto maximalists - and I know a LOT of them - are drawn to crypto because of ideology, not just the money. The idea that a person should own his/her own assets, be able to share and use them whenever they want, and be free from government censorship and foolhardy economic stewardship is incredibly powerful.

When governments talk about banning crypto, what scares them isn't crypto; it's this ideology. And this ideology also makes crypto incredibly hard to ban. You can create all sorts of regulations but that will only harden the stance of crypto maxis because it will only prove them right.

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

#136

> 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…

USG knows how to deal with cash - you can't take any decent amount over the border or even on trains without being questioned.

Bitcoin main use (regardless of what it was designed for) is for laundering money.

Also it's not a currency, but an asset - as it is designed to appreciate due to how mining works.

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

#137
post #109

> 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…

> Whatever your stance on cryptocurrencies are, what is of little dispute is the business opportunities they have created. Binance and Coinbase are large, successful companies. Poloniex was sold for ~400M. I find this argument a little weird, because I think we can all agree that bubbles and fad tech isn't really great for society as a whole. If you believe cryptocurrencies aren't a fad and actually provide useful be…

Take crypto out of the equation, what are the implications of the fed issuing a programmable currency? Many financial services would become obsolete. What do I need a stock broker for? What do I need a bank for? You have Wall St and other sophisticated investors profiteering and competing against the general public, devaluing our purchasing power, making leveraged trades because they know the public will hold the bag. It's a system that exists to favor the few and it's time to disrupt the orgy.

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

#138
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't ever see most nations willingly giving up monetary policy by ceding to cryptocurrencies. This is especially true for China and the US. They can however adopt their own version, where they remain the authority and would operate the nodes responsible for handling transactions. This would allow many of the advantages of cryptocurrencies while still allowing a country to control not only the money supply but also…

I believe that is exact where the value of bitcoin is: because any nations will not giving up their own currency. Bitcoin is anti-establishment. Of course, the real test will only happen when some country start banning bitcoin. No one knows what's going to happen.

It will only prove Bitoin holders right.

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

#139
Some discussion from knowledgeable people of what plausible "crackdown" rules would look like would be interesting. The article mentions an ID requirement for transactions above $3k.

Personally, I think the idea of the physical nation state is converting to a global credit score, where instead of transacting across borders, you are transacting across classes of businesses and people, and tarriff and tax policy will be enforced on a risk basis instead of a national border one. Instead of black market electronic transactions, the transaction is just taxed at a higher rate because of the relative social credit score of your counterparty, so your transaction with a non-KYC enrolled wallet would incurr a 100%+ excise liability on your tax reporting. It's the sort of totalitarian idea that is appealing to the sort of people you really need a popular revolt against to unseat, but worth considering what they think about to remove their element of surprise.

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

#140
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stable coins exist.

Backed by the issuing companies' heartful statements of best intent.

The second largest is issued by a soon-to-be-public $100B company. I'm sure the backing assets will have to be disclosed to the public.
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