CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by beambot » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #432

beambot wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ethereum smart contract can advertise the file in perpetuity by being memorialized on the blockchain in an irrevocable way

You'd have to embed the whole file in the blockchain for that. At that point Filecoin is not relevant. That's not censorship-free either - the use of Eth network can be banned too. And LE or govs see who to target too.

> You'd have to embed the whole file in the blockchain for that

No, you don't. The eth contact can control ownership of and permissions to the Filecoin files.

> Eth network can be banned too

Banning the entire network is different than granular censorship of individual files

> And LE or govs see who to target too.

Anonymity is also different from censorship.

You are talking about a lot of adjacencies and "what-abouts"... There are at least half a dozen projects in this vein at the moment, so I'll kindly leave the rest as an exercise to the reader

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

#472

Post by plank_time » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

yunesj wrote: post #111

plank_time wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People from the US and other countries are sending money abroad via crypto to fund terrorism outside the US

People from the US are sending crypto abroad to feed their families.

They are also funding terrorism.

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

#473

Post by plank_time » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

slenk wrote: post #145

plank_time wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People from the US and other countries are sending money abroad via crypto to fund terrorism outside the US

People from the US and other countries are sending money abroad via cash to fund terrorism out the US

Yes, but with crypto it’s much easier and undetectable. With cash it’s much easier to trace because of global regulations.

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

#474

Post by plank_time » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #125

Animats wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wikipedia lists a couple more Islamic terrorism incidents: * Fort Hood shootings * 2009 SUV attack at UNC * 2015 Chattanooga shooting The DC sniper attacks might also qualify as Islamic terrorism. The perpetrators were Islamic, and their goal was terrorism, but it's not clear that the terrorism was actually perpetrated to further Islamism.

2010 attempted car bombing in Times Square

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

#475

Post by hatsunearu » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

MR4D wrote: post #431

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?

A firm created at Rice University is actually trying to solve exactly that problem. [0] [0] - https://statistics.rice.edu/news/student-founded-blockchain-...

And how exactly are they going to blockchain-ify the coporation's interactions with other normal corporations?

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

#476

Post by hatsunearu » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

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.

The vast majority of finance deals with "real" assets--stocks of companies (arguably blockchainable, like the Topl thing that a sister comment mentioned), commodities (e.g. futures), logistics, etc etc

Not sure how that all can be trustlessly secured with blockchain technology

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

#477

Post by hatsunearu » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

pcthrowaway wrote: post #301

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?

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 availabl…

Who operates those checkpoints? Isn't there going to be some sort of implicit trust there? Even if somehow you built a machine that executes instructions that is verified on the blockchain, how are you going to make sure that machine's firmware is secure?

edit: I think this is a valid thing to tackle potentially as a company, but right now it seems impossible.

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

#478

Post by MR4D » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

hatsunearu wrote: post #475

MR4D wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A firm created at Rice University is actually trying to solve exactly that problem. [0] [0] - https://statistics.rice.edu/news/student-founded-blockchain-...

And how exactly are they going to blockchain-ify the coporation's interactions with other normal corporations?

I don't follow it at enough of a detailed level other than to know the UN is using it as a proof of stake concept for the transactions, and then reimbursing the token holder in their local currency (caveat - I think this is correct, but again I'm not involved with them at any detailed level).

You may also want to see these for more info:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/darrynpollock/2020/02/27/blockc...

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201203005110/en/Tra...

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

#479

Post by intotheabyss » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #408

intotheabyss wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The asset won't be the bulldozer, but ownership of the bulldozer. How did the natives of the Yap islands know who owned which Rai stones? Through social contracts. The same would be the case for bulldozer ownerships on Ethereum. It's just a way for you to prove to other humans (or programs) that you own the bulldozer. If you sell the bulldozer in real life, then presumably the buyer would want the ownership. The diff…

> There are stablecoins backed by USD reserves, like USDC. Again, the ethereum contract is only a ledger. The people responsible for giving you USD is going to be Gemini who control the supply of USDC. You having proof that you own USDC allows you to withdraw USD. This still depends on trust. The blockchain doesn’t verify the backing. And USDC’s attestation is rather late.

Well, yeah, it's a centralized stablecoin. The advantage is that it can be used in Ethereum contracts in DeFi. If you want a stablecoin with no trust assumptions (other than the protocol and governance), there's MakerDAO's DAI.

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

#480

Post by joe_the_user » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #144

joe_the_user wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, privat…

I'd say they can. Enforcement divisions have sole heads who can make unilateral decisions that the commissioners never review. Commissioners and Chairs can make make rulings favorable or ignore making unfavorable rulings, they can do anything they want regardless of what happens during the comment periods. The CFTC, OCC, CFPB all have single head directors. The SEC has up to 5, and the FRB is the most decentralized b…

Enforcement divisions have sole heads who can make unilateral decisions that the commissioners never review.

I'd just point out that at the end of the day, broad power of social institutions are going to trump the overt lines of command.

Capture in this context (and all contexts of regulatory capture) just mean that someone joins for a certain purpose, does all of the other tasks correctly and with high competence, but also makes sure their single issue is protected.

Well, Regulatory capture can have a lot of meanings I suppose. One really pernicious phenomena is when things that don't have institutional power on their own ("the environment", "average people's health", overall cyber-security of the country, etc) get shunted aside for particular institutional interests (chemical companies, IoT sellers/consumers etc). This is the umbrella where "regulatory capture" lets these externalities run wild. Now, if you want to use "regulatory capture" as more akin the general phenomena known as "getting a seat at the table", know yourself out. The point is that seats of that allow some special consideration, yes, but you can't carve up existing institutions the EPA can carve up restrictions on pesticides. I wish it was the opposite, obviously but there you are.