> 'A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable'
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Housing market crash is inevitable - The Netherlands must ban housing market and other housing initiatives.
CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
101–110 of 210 posts
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#102Why should others decide if I can run useless hashing functions on my computer? Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible. Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. The real enablers of ransomware are the countries that shelter the R10 groups, raking in millions. There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian languag…
> Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. This meme really needs to die. It's driving me more and more insane every time I read it. Ransomware may have existed previously but it was nowhere nearly as prevalent before cryptocurrencies came around. It is not a mere coincidence of the cosmos that almost every single darn time (I think literally 98% of the time, a…
Did you know that before Bitcoin you couldn't buy drugs and crime couldn't operate? Only if bitcoin never existed.
There was and always will be a crime, and criminal will find a way to make money and scale it if they can.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm only talking about Pieter Hasekamp's arguments, which don't seem to be good ones. If he wants to argue that Bitcoin is a pyramid game, that's a different argument, but I can't see many people taking him seriously. Pieter's arguments are along the lines of a "Think of the Children"[1] style argument, or an appeal to consequences[2]. "We must ban cryptocurrency because if we don't, people might lose their money!" […
Isn't he just trying to call it a pyramid game without actually calling it a pyramid game? (or ponzi scheme, etc etc same same). I don't know the nuances of his position but maybe him calling it what it is (ie a scam) can get them into all kinds of legal trouble if they don't have hard proof. And because the fraudsters are as distributed as the ledger, it's hard to come by hard proof. I mean, I think that Jack Dorsey…
It's hard to know what his true intentions are, perhaps it's altruistic or perhaps he has his own reasons for being bearish. If he has hard evidence, he should present it, if he doesn't, perhaps he could instead use his position to call for an investigation or inquiry.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
We need to ban all proof-of-work and generally all resource intensive cryptocurrencies.
One energy-efficient approach is the one used by the Pi network: - https://minepi.com/ The whitepaper is pretty detailed about how they avoid the proof of work and the energy waste associated: - https://minepi.com/white-paper If cryptos really make it in their ideological goal of a truly free capitalistic society, something like Pi which can be mined by everyone will have to win out over Bitcoin which can be "produce…
I have little faith in a coin that claims in its whitepaper "Pi creates a fixed supply of Pi for each person that joins the network up to the first 100 Million participants" without so much as mentioning Sybil attacks.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I'm fully aware of the problems with our current economic system. I just don't see how toppling fiat currencies and returning to representative (or even commodity) currencies solves any of the problems. Especially if the process involves the full destruction of the state while maintaining our current notion of property. Property only exists insofar as people are able to enforce their claims of it. Under the domin…
you're mistaking me for a libertarian. Which is understandable, because you run into so many of those in the bitcoin space, so no hard feeling! :D They irritate me as well. The problem with the current system is obviously not that it's not "free market" enough. I fully agree with you on property. And fiat currencies are fine with me in principle, the structural underpinnings of our current ones are the horrid part, a…
Okay, but at that point from a leftist perspective it's just accelerationism and hoping that the revolution comes down in our favor without laying any of the ground work to prevent a rise of fascism (to "heal" the state) or a decline into feudalism (via stateless capitalism).
There's also no reason to believe that the existing hegemons won't be the ones ultimately controlling crypto if doing so becomes necessary to their survival. Crypto may be digital and out of reach for states, but the humans owning it are physical and very susceptible to physical injury. Capitalism has recuperated anti-capitalism, it will recuperate crypto if necessary (and some may argue it's already happening).
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#106I don't think it is technically possible to ban bitcoin, only centralized exchanges.
If a country decides to ban exchanges, it could end up creating an untraceable black market since people might start exchanging crypto cash in the streets.
Intelligence agencies would probably not be happy to lose such traceability capability.
Drug dealers would be taking over this black market as it creates new incomes while simultaneously helping some of their money laundering needs.
Blockchain startup ecosystem and crypto friendly entrepreneurs would leave your country. You would lose all related tax revenues and high-paying jobs.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#107Everyone needs to ban Bitcoin... and likely other cryptocurrencies. Not only are they by far the biggest enablers of ransomware (which we're supposedly taking seriously now), but Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. [1] Bitcoin already consumes 0.55% of energy produced globally. [2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 [2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-a…
Bitcoin is the biggest enabler of cheap renewable energy, gtfo with the list about bitcoin causing global warming. It is getting ridiculous. Pollution causes fucking global warming, ships, cars industry concrete. This idiotic scapegoat of BTC is killing the planet is akin to the crying Indian campaign. Its a misdirection to avoid talking about real causes and solutions to global warming.
Thats bs. Everything that requires energy advances global warming. Bitcoin is a disaster compared to any other value or money transfer. Everybody mining bitcoin is using the cheapest energy source available which currently is coal.
Get your facts right, stop destroying the world of our children!
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe we should in general ban things that are a certain amount less energy efficient (say, 5x more wasteful) than the best technology we've achieved for a similar purpose so far. And progressively tax anything that's moderately more wasteful (say, 2x-5x). It's bad enough that we have cars on roads that are twice as wasteful as they could be, let alone a transaction processing…
A million? Can you back this up somehow? Did you take in account the infrastructure and offices of our existing "technology"?
Do you take in to account the infrastructure and offices of new technology? Do you take in to account how many people does the new technology serve compared to existing? Do you take in to account how many services does the new technology provide compared to the existing?
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
you're mistaking me for a libertarian. Which is understandable, because you run into so many of those in the bitcoin space, so no hard feeling! :D They irritate me as well. The problem with the current system is obviously not that it's not "free market" enough. I fully agree with you on property. And fiat currencies are fine with me in principle, the structural underpinnings of our current ones are the horrid part, a…
Okay, but at that point from a leftist perspective it's just accelerationism and hoping that the revolution comes down in our favor without laying any of the ground work to prevent a rise of fascism (to "heal" the state) or a decline into feudalism (via stateless capitalism). There's also no reason to believe that the existing hegemons won't be the ones ultimately controlling crypto if doing so becomes necessary to t…
well, I hadn't thought about it as accelerationism, and I'll have to think about it more. It's a good point.
My first reaction would be that it actually does help in steps beyond just strengthening existing structures, like I said, by banking the unbanked and freeing them from banking systems, by giving states ways out from under US sanctions, by whittling away at the hold corporatism has. Empirically, it's not the case that this is only adopted by the rich. Bitcoin use is massive in Africa, especially Nigeria and Ethiopia, among not so well-to-do people, in Central and South America, mostly for remittances and for peer to peer economies among people who have no bank accounts. And those are the first to really jump onto it, the corporate leeches are following, not leading. It's not just a toy for rich people. I'm far from rich by any metric.
But you're correct, the powers that be will absolutely try to capture it. Holders are not out of reach, though holding it can be dome quite clandestinely (as can supporting the network; you can run a bitcoin node, and nobody will know; and if you raid houses to take them, new ones will spring up.) The power of decentralization is rather persistent, as we have learned with filesharing over decades.
Bottom line, I wouldn't reject the idea that bitcoin can be reformist outright, but of course nobody can guarantee that.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#110Everyone needs to ban Bitcoin... and likely other cryptocurrencies. Not only are they by far the biggest enablers of ransomware (which we're supposedly taking seriously now), but Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. [1] Bitcoin already consumes 0.55% of energy produced globally. [2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 [2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-a…
We need to ban all proof-of-work and generally all resource intensive cryptocurrencies.
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