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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

#301

Post by pcthrowaway »

hatsunearu wrote: post #258
rudderz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The majority of economic activity is not "programmable"--if I order a ship load of steel from some country, how is that contract going to be enforceable/verifiable with cryptoeconomic techniques?

That's not programmable today, but may be in the future.

Presumably the shipment has a series of checkpoints, which add some amount of traceability. There's also the potential for insurance for blockchain contracts.

I only recently learned about oracles, but I suspect we're only getting started on unlocking the potential of blockchain.

If there are oracles making the progress at each checkpoint along the way available from the blockchain, and insurance contracts for potential disruptions at each stage, your contract can ensure payment on delivery, and the supplier can be insured against any disruptions.

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

#302

Post by graeme »

cslarson wrote: post #253
graeme wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name some use cases that aren’t trading crypto derivatives or crypto debt? Ethereum is certainly more interesting than Bitcoin but the use cases so far seem to be more speculation.

Sovereign identity, DAOs, NFTs (not just the art stuff which atm is a little cringe but game items, land registries, deeds), stablecoins (usdc, dai, yes there is also wilder experimentation here). I think people can quickly get dissuaded by some negatives like lack of scaling or environmental issues. These are real but are being solved. We really need communities like HN to engage because if proponents are right then…

And what are some example use cases you can do with those things, or that people are using them for? Genuinely asking. I see people very excited about things like DAOs, but most descriptions seem to be about inter crypto use cases.

With the early internet it was easy enough to see there were use cases like “instantly send a letter to someone across the world” or “order a book not stocked at your local store” or “go directly to Nintendo’s website and read their info”. I remember doing this last one as a kid in the library and was instantly taken with the internet.

What are some similar ELI5 use cases of the Ethereum chain and those names you mention? Other than intra crypto loans, derivatives etc

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

#304

Post by tiborsaas »

Jasper_ wrote: post #298
tiborsaas wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain tech is a next generation internet still in its early days. I don't think it will go away. What do you think these networks will look like in 20 years? It might be a negative for society now (I assume you are referring to the shady nature of using it as an alt currency), but it's precisely the tech you need to provide an alternative against Facebook or other walled gardens many people love to hate on here.…

> What do you think these networks will look like in 20 years? Exactly the same as it looks today. Because nothing has changed in the last 15 years either (Bitcoin was released in 2006). > it's precisely the tech you need to provide an alternative against Facebook or other walled gardens many people love to hate on here. How does cryptocurrency help with any of that? > tech is open an transparent and scalable. Citati…

Just as an example, have you heard of smart contracts? There's a cambrian explosion happening now among networks, everybody tweaks something to be different from others. I suggest you to take a look around, there's a shocking diversity.

> How does cryptocurrency help with any of that?

How can a globally spanning Turing complete computer help? I don't know, but we will see attempts.

> Citation needed.

Haha, I always forget we are at academic level of discussions :)

But for fun's sake, go to https://coinmarketcap.com/ click a random currency and click source code / read the whitepaper.

Smart contracts deployed to the networks are also open to be inspected, here, take a look: https://etherscan.io/address/0x00c83aecc790e8a4453e5dd3b0b4b...

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

#305

Post by devmunchies »

maest wrote: post #282
devmunchies wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the take from the Mayor of Miami (from a podcast about cryptocurrency): "they [governments] will have to borrow money like everybody else borrows money, they can't just print their own money. They have to borrow money at an interest rate. And if governments don't behave fiscally then they are going to have to borrow at worse and worse rates. They can't just invent their own interest rates and currency, which…

Why would a government with a sovereign currency ever have to borrow any sort of money? They can issue as much of their own currency as they want.

that's the point. if money is backed by something with a max-supply (like gold or some cryptocurrency) or if there were a law limiting the max money supply then eventually they will have exhausted their reserves if they aren't careful, and will need to borrow. The american dollar is not backed by anything but the "full faith and credit of the american govt"

Even cryptocurrency projects like Brave browser's BAT has a max supply, so Brave will have to buy BAT back from the market (at the market rate) if it wants more.

His point is that a government is more fiscally responsible when it has maintain real reserves, where there is a risk of depletion. The federal reserve is a misnomer, since it doesn't have meaningful reserves (like gold). It just prints.

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

#306

Post by acdha »

puranjay wrote: post #80
kec wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point you need to convert your crypto gains back to fiat to actually use it, especially in the hypothetical case where crypto trade is banned locally. The IRS/FBI/etc are not going to arbitrarily constrain themselves when trying to go after folks who do this.

Nigeria banned banks from trading in crypto, killing off the fiat. Nigerians just started making telegram and whatsapp groups, made codenames for different coins and traded them for cash or bank transfers. Unless you decide to bank commerce and phones and the internet and talking to your neighbor and running a computer, you can't ban crypto.

This only protects you if the government is powerless or chooses not to target you. In the other cases, what happens is that banks and other businesses are required to report transactions and, since a blockchain helpfully gives the police a full signed transaction log, anyone who is arrested is going to in turn give the police leads on everyone they've ever exchanged money with.

In that world, using cryptocurrencies has a high risk factor: do you trust the other party to go to jail rather than identify you, or that they have personal security good enough to even be able to prevent that? Simply using an unapproved payment mechanism, much less one of the ones which tries to provide some anonymity (fewer will deliver in practice), will likely be seen as proof of intention to commit financial crimes and … I sincerely hope you can convince them that you aren't hiding something they haven't yet scared you into confessing.

This is not a recipe for a functioning economy. Technology can't fix social problems like that and the vast majority of people making claims otherwise won't personally be affected but are recklessly endangering anyone who makes the mistake of trusting them.

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

#307

Post by Daishiman »

leppr wrote: post #216
kelnos wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Cryptocurrency/web3 is at its core just technology. Fundamentally, the technology is still not that far advanced from the early Bitcoin days, but the little that is currently implemented successfully allows for ponzis and gambling. Cryptocurrencies currently trade for over $2 trillion, most of that value may indeed be a net negative for society, but that doesn't say anything about the core technology in itself. If cr…

> Decentralized networks have the potential to resolve many of the issues we techies love to complain about.

I continue to hear this yet I never get a _single_ convincing example from DeFi advocates.

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

#308

Post by p1peridine »

fastball wrote: post #113
Karunamon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hell, Satoshi Nakamoto probably is the NSA.

I don't think NSA would include a video poker game in the source code

https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/master/src...

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

#309

Post by LB232323 »

demosito666 wrote: post #262
hatsunearu wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of economic activity is not "programmable"--if I order a ship load of steel from some country, how is that contract going to be enforceable/verifiable with cryptoeconomic techniques?

Economic != financial, which was the point of the parent I believe.

Finance is one of the largest sectors of the US economy, it is central to its role in leading the world economy.

Additionally, finance is what controls and directs the economy. It is the business of money itself, in both the public and private sector.

Banks play a central role to any economy. Digital currencies can be centralized and controlled in the same way as any state owned enterpeise.

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

#310

Post by CJefferson »

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…

My main problem with crypto is I like the rule of law. If someone steals my bitcoin it's gone. Normal bank transactions have (imperfect) protections. There is a reason the world switched from storing cash, or gold, under a mattress.

If a country was running on a crypto coin which had a major hack, it could collapse the whole countries economy.

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