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

blog.evergreengavekal.com

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

#261

Post by airhead969 »

jl6 wrote: post #26
reedf1 wrote: post #7

The context of the quote: > I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth... So, I think I should say modestly that the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interest of civilization. I find it strange to criticize an asset for how it gets used in extremis. I feel like the same criticism could be levied against the dollar.

For any thing that has both positive uses and negative uses, it seems reasonable to weigh the positives against the negatives. The dollar has substantial non-infringing uses that benefit people. Bitcoin less so, and particularly when weighed against the great harms (environmental or criminal) that Bitcoin brings, I don’t find the criticism baseless.

Monetary value and its instruments are amoral. They're neither good nor bad, so "weighing" their uses would be entirely unfair. The demonetization in India was a perfect example of moralizing currency instruments. (The IMF loved it because of the resale of data from digitizing transactions and India loved it for tracking people's financial habits. Modi loved it because it punished poor people.)

If you're trying to ban cash because you can buy illegal things with it, then you have a logic problem.

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

#262

Post by airhead969 »

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".

I never owned any BTC. I wouldn't put all of my savings into BTC, but it would be useful for (semi-/sometimes-) anonymous transactions. That makes it better than credit cards, checks, or cash because it can't be CC skimmed or physically robbed.

I would like to buy groceries with it, but I don't want to hold much BTC for very long.

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

#263

Post by ryanlol »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #215
ryanlol wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

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

This is not true. A few big markets have switched, not “all”.

Besides drug markets, all the conventional cybercrime markets and forums still run on bitcoin.

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

#264

Post by ryanlol »

fanf2 wrote: post #212
ryanlol wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

So? It’s not instant for most of the world.

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

#265

Post by lostmsu »

maxqin1 wrote: post #45
mmahut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same argument can be make about Tor. While it primary uses are probably illegal (doesn't necessary mean immoral) activity, it helps a lot free press in oppressed regimes (also illegal, but by western standards moral).

Bitcoin doesn't have the equivalent of a "free press." And TOR is rarely used. Journalists use apps like Signal now.

In Russia a few independent newspapers were killed by arresting their bank accounts.

Signal does not let public fund jurnalists.

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

#266

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#267

Post by dTal »

fanf2 wrote: post #212
ryanlol wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

And cash is instant everywhere.

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

#268

Post by tomputer »

smt88 wrote: post #255
Valakas_ wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How is BTC a better store of value than real estate or gold? It literally has no intrinsic value, unlike real estate or gold. Stocks are also technically valuable because they are a share of a real company and that company's profits.

These are also a store of value / investments but Bitcoin is different.

As far as I know, I can not buy small parts of real estate. Gold supply is not fixed and it’s hard to validate. Companies can go bankrupt.

I can not transfer real estate, gold or stocks over the internet to someone else directly, without using a third party.

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

#269

Post by jl2718 »

maxqin1 wrote: post #235
jl2718 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the most Pollyanna reports from firms that exist to ‘fight’ crime say it 2% criminal. I don’t know how much of that is illegal source versus regulatory evasion. World black market GDP is estimated somewhere around 25%. And it make sense that it would be so low. Let’s say you just got $1M in Bitcoin and you have to pay your suppliers $500k in cold cash. Not going to happen. Only from other criminals that take pro…

> I just hope that fear of the old power structures doesn’t bring good people to ally with values that we would not want in a new system. That's why people need to call BS on the current hype train. Otherwise, when a sufficient solution surfaces, people are going to distrust it just as much as the old power structures. And I'd say we're already getting close to that point. The problem is, with equal distrust, people…

It is getting pretty ridiculous out there. The gas price today was higher than recent memory with about half of it spent on dog coins. Also, Vitalik is now far wealthier in dog coins than Ethereum. If he was a US citizen he would owe billions on that, and last I checked, the treasury doesn’t accept dog coins.

I’m kind of neutral on which financial system prevails so long as it’s the best for society. I stand to gain a lot more if it’s the cypherpunk version, but, I’m not sure that the conditions that would bring that on would be good. The rule of all aspects of society by a maniacal banking elite is pretty dystopic too though.

Ultimately I think the best monetary system will emerge through competition among societies. Obsolescence more than decision. That might take a long time, and perhaps it’s too hopeful. What evidence do I have for that?

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

#270

Post by majewsky »

shlant wrote: post #211
majewsky wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> take the attempt to make torrenting/pirating illegal. Look how that turned out.

95+% of people don't use torrenting/pirating. That worked out fine. Not great, but it's not the total failure you make it out to be.

> You think making crypto illegal... would stop people already using it for illegal reasons?

No, but it would add more friction if you did not have a choice of legal exchanges.

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