Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#211

Post by shlant » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #154

shlant wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Tether printing is practically responsible for almost all the gains in Bitcoin" It was a meme in the crypto community that when you see tether being printed, you long. Maybe it was true at some point that tether was propping up the market or maybe not fully backed[0], but AFAIK they are now doing audits[1] and transparency reports[2]. > "The day regulators finally ban tether" I'm not sure how you would go about ba…

> I'm not sure how you would go about banning a cryptocurrency (it's been tried 100's of times) The same way we ban heroine. Or murder. We just make trading cryptocurrencies illegal and prosecute people who are found doing it. Many IT people are biased by their work into thinking that any solution to a problem is a failure if it does not solve 100% of the problem. But in practice, most solutions are good enough if th…

> The same way we ban heroine. Or murder

Our attempt to ban heroin (war on drugs) has been a massive failure[1] only replaced/made worse by prescription opioids[2]. Not a good example.

Murder is not something that really needs "banning" to stop the vast majority of people from committing it. The amount of people willing to use crypto is not comparable to the amount of people willing to murder (illegal or not). Not a good example.

If you want a semi-comparable example, take the attempt to make torrenting/pirating illegal. Look how that turned out.

> We just make trading cryptocurrencies illegal and prosecute people who are found doing it

Good luck with that. No other country has made much of an impact and it would require an enormous amount of resources to persecute ordinary people.

> no sane company would touch it with a ten-foot pole

> if the victims don't have a legal way of exchanging legal tender for bitcoin

There will always be another country willing to host exchanges. VPN's exist. You will never get all governments to ban crypto. Again, you are just listing ideas that have been tried and failed.

> but also illegal usage.

You think making crypto illegal... would stop people already using it for illegal reasons? They would be ok with one illegal act, but not another less valid one?

1. https://www.samhsa.gov/data//sites/default/files/report_1943...

2. https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/pres...

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#212

Post by fanf2 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #158

dTal wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explicit purpose of bitcoin is to avoid government interference. In all other respects, it is inferior to standard government-backed currency, with slow transactions and huge amounts of wasted electricity. We should therefore expect BTC's primary use-case to be activity the government would interfere with, i.e. illegal activity.

> with slow transactions How are bitcoin transactions slow? Bank transfers and credit card payments take forever to settle.

Bank settlement is basically instant in Europe

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#213

Post by ragnese » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #210

ragnese wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree about weighing pros and cons, of course. But I think that bitcoin advocates would argue that the bitcoin has the same "non-infringing uses that benefit people" and that it's simply a matter of time/popularity until the proportion of "good" uses vs. "bad" uses is similar to the dollar. Not saying that it's true, necessarily. Just that the current balance isn't the end game and it's not totally fair to…

>But I think that bitcoin advocates would argue that the bitcoin has the same "non-infringing uses that benefit people" I think it would be difficult to argue that it's useful primarily for buying your groceries. I don't think Bitcoin advocates like following this train of thought any further than "USD is also used for crime".

My point is that the true believers do want to eventually buy groceries with cryptocurrency.

My point is that this conversation is unfair:

Person A: I've just invented a new currency! I think it has better intrinsic properties than USD.

Person B: Well, I can't buy groceries with it right now, so it sucks.

Similar vein:

Person A: I've invented a new thing called the lightbulb. I think it will revolutionize lighting.

Person B: It's more expensive than oil lamps and electrifying buildings would be a massive undertaking. Lightbulbs suck.

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#214

Post by pydry » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

agotterer wrote: post #171

elliekelly wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are harmful, fringe, uses of those items but the vast majority of the use-cases fit a slow cooker aren’t harmful. The same cannot be said of bitcoin, where the primary use-case is facilitating nefarious business.

For better it worse, the primary use case of Bitcoin is as a store of value. I find it misleading to tell people that the “primary use-case is facilitating nefarious business”. Do you have some data to back up a statement which says that the vast majority of Bitcoin is used in that way? I’m not suggesting there aren’t bad actors out there. But there are plenty of bad actors who deal in fiat as well. But this was the…

Bitcoin wouldn't function as a store of value if it didn't have an underlying use case. This is true of all stores of value - with gold it's shiny and useful, with cash you can pay taxes, with a home you can live in it, etc.

In Bitcoin that use case is wealth transfer that is uninhibited by law.

That essentially makes it kind of like an index tracker for the underground economy.

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#215

Post by trompetenaccoun » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #168

whoisjohnkid wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

criminals tend to prefer privacy coins like monero over bitcoin because of how easy it is to track bitcoin transfers. If any of their bitcoin transfers ever touches a KYC wallet they are screwed; until taproot gets activated for bitcoin it requires a ton of work to truly stay anonymous

> criminals tend to prefer privacy coins like monero over bitcoin This is speculation with very little connection to reality. If you actually go on crime forums you will see that privacy coins are not as widely used as you might think.

As far as known darknet markets go they've all switched from Bitcoin to Monero.

If we're talking bigger fish it's speculation that they prefer cryptocurrency over traditional assets or cash in the first place. Follow the money and it often leads you to illegal activity. Banks like HSBC know all about laundering drug money and enabling scams.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-...

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#216

Post by ragnese » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #187

ragnese wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, of course there are other subtleties involved, but even the money that I pay for a given stock doesn't just go to the company unless it's an IPO. It might indirectly benefit the company because I'm adding to the demand and driving the stock price up, which helps all holders of the stock, including the company that issued the stock originally. However, my point is that people are not buying stocks to own OR to b…

A trillion dollars a year are disbursed by the companies of the S&P 500 to their shareholders, in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. Berkshire Hathaway itself bought back $25B of its stock in 2020.

Buybacks absolutely count under speculation-then-bigger-sucker.

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#217

Post by shlant » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

bronzeage wrote: post #164

shlant wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Tether printing is practically responsible for almost all the gains in Bitcoin" It was a meme in the crypto community that when you see tether being printed, you long. Maybe it was true at some point that tether was propping up the market or maybe not fully backed[0], but AFAIK they are now doing audits[1] and transparency reports[2]. > "The day regulators finally ban tether" I'm not sure how you would go about ba…

Just because they held appropriate balance at one point in time doesn't mean they are actually sitting on dollar reserves corresponding to tethers. They could have borrowed to reach these numbers for the report. The current state is still that the majority of Bitcoin volume comes from tether, and these tethers aren't regulated and required to exist the same way dollars traded for stocks are required to exist. They al…

Again, you can have rational reasons for not trusting tether - and I don't necessarily disagree - but the fact is that people have been trying to "expose" it for years with no success.

The NYAG didn't find anything substantive, and neither has anyone before them. In the crypto sphere that builds trust and proves resiliency. With every piece of FUD about tether that comes and goes, the chance of it all coming crashing down gets smaller and smaller.

Nothing you have stated is a new accusation. They have been around as long as tether and the entire ecosystem has only gained more and more legitimacy.

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#218

Post by MagnumOpus » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

jamesfisher wrote: post #208

Also Buffett: "I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty."

Your point is that Buffett is usually right and speaks inconvenient truths?

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#219

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #118

sschueller wrote: post #5

"And I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth" You mean like cash? I'm sorry, I'm sure Warren is a nice guy but that picture reminds me of the Dukes in the movie Trading Places [1] with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_Places

How many big computer sabotage extortion cases can you list that were handled by cash handover? That's an entire industry that simply did not exist prior to decentralised cross-boarder electronic value transfer. How long until this spreads to 20th century extortion schemes like point of sale product poisoning threats that never really picked up because transfer we such a headache?

[deleted]

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#220

Post by Valakas_ » Mon, May 10, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #10

If you think of all investments as a bet, what are you betting on when you buy crypto? In my opinion, you're betting that crypto will be useful as an exchange of value, which means the people exchanging it are either: A) criminals or B) living in a failed state. Personally, if crypto becomes so widely used that it justifies its market caps, that means a lot of states have failed, and I don't want to live in (or bet o…

I'm betting that finally there is an asset that works as store of value that doesn't deflate and which is easy to use. Let's be honest, BTC could be the best one. Owning gold (or other rare metal) is an assle. Need a safe place to store it and transport it is so risky. Or I need to trust someone else or an institution to hold it if I don't want to hold it myself.

Real estate takes a lot of time and research to chose a proper investment. Besides, what I want to store 100 dollars only? Or 10000? not enough for that. And REITs again require a lot of research and are not risk-free. Then you have other assets like art and so on, but again, needs research, and what are the likelyhood of findind something exactly at my price range? Besides they can be destroyed in fire or something else.

Also not stocks sorry. I don't want to risk my hard earned money. Maybe part of it, i can, and I nicely get some positive return. But not all. Also not bonds or bank interest. I don't want to have my money stuck for years. I want something where I can easily set and forget, liquid, immaterial, which is safe, and where I don't need to trust anybody but myself. It doesn't even need to appreciate, just hold its value. What do you propose besides BTC?

I don't see anything that can be potentially better.