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CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

netherlandsnewslive.com

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Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#201

Post by tirpen »

Varqu wrote: post #179
tirpen wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, some people will ignore the law and it's impossible for law enforcement to catch all law breaker. Great insight. I guess we might just as well make murder legal as well, since it's some people will still kill each other no whether it's illegal or not.

There is a big difference between things that are directly harming to other people and things that the gov bans because they think they know better :) It is basically saying: You are forced to participate in our inflationary financial system or we will arrest you.

Bitcoins are directly harming people!

Climate change will probably kill millions and Bitcoin is creating an economical incetive to accelerate it.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#202

Post by kemonocode »

dataflow wrote: post #4

Everyone 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…

Blanket statements like these come from privilege. That a supposedly vanishingly small amount of people use crypto to transact and safeguard the fruits of their labor is irrelevant because, well, I know I exist.

To me, the value Bitcoin brings to the table is much, much greater than the one from countries that enforce unjust embargoes and overthrow governments only to replace them with even worse dictators... and also pollute the planet.

Also, specifically on the second article you linked: it references the first and even mentions why such runaway growth necessitated by that argument wouldn't happen.

EDIT: Before some tries to gotcha me with the same old tired memes or accuses me of building up the typical "oh, but X uses more power than the entire crypto system" strawman argument, what I'm trying to say is: value is relative. If you have a comfortable life and live in a reasonably free country, Bitcoin is very likely to have negative value to you, as its cons outweigh its pros. But that's not going to be the same for the rest of the world, and blanket bans on things are reductionist and hardly ever get anywhere good, especially when you should be looking at why such thing exists.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#203

Post by andirk »

paulgb wrote: post #134
emn13 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. Are you suggesting that e.g. the US military wouldn't exist if the US used bitcoin rather than dollars? And similarly for other currency+military combos? That strikes me as really implausible.

I think the best representation of the argument is that if governments couldn’t print fiat they wouldn’t be able to fund huge militaries and we’d have less destructive wars. It seems fairly utopian to me, given that wars existed on the gold standard too, and if they were less destructive it was for want of technology. But maybe if I held Bitcoin I’d be more inclined to believe it was the solution to world peace.

FDR confiscated all gold to thwart the Great Depression and fund the war effort, and froze bank accounts for a handful of days, a Bank Holiday. For better or worse, it would be much more difficult to do this with btc.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#204

Post by Varqu »

tirpen wrote: post #201
Varqu wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big difference between things that are directly harming to other people and things that the gov bans because they think they know better :) It is basically saying: You are forced to participate in our inflationary financial system or we will arrest you.

Bitcoins are directly harming people! Climate change will probably kill millions and Bitcoin is creating an economical incetive to accelerate it.

This way I can also reason that you are also directly harming people because you breath in Oxygen and breath out CO2.

By shopping for food you are also creating an economical incentive for companies to produce which accelerates climate change.

Please, lets be serious and reasonable.

Bitcoin probably creates more incentives for renewable energy (because it enables to "store" it) than any other initiative.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#205

Post by serverlessmania »

nomercy400 wrote: post #69

Nah, not based on this piece. This is the opinion of a director of one of many government agencies. CPB is the economic planning agency, so he is supposed to say things like this. But he is only one of many stakeholders in this subject. Once national bank, politics and public sentiment start making statements like this, it would get more weight. There's no way The Netherlands is going to lead the pack so publically o…

Crypto is already banned in many countries, in my country Tunisia [1] you risk a big sentence if you get caught selling or buying crypto in the black market (Facebook/telegram groups)

[1]https://www.businessnews.com.tn/Arrestation-d%EF%BF%BDun-jeu...

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#206

Post by Tepix »

dangerface wrote: post #191
Tepix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't exchange your crypto currency against fiat it will become worthless.

I can exchange it with the guy down the street like I currently do, how are you going to stop this? LOL

That sounds rather combersome. What is the guy down the street going to do with it?

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#207

Post by celticninja »

emn13 wrote: post #126
bigger_inside wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and the US military effectively backs the dollar, which makes this the energy footprint of the dollar. meanwhile, gold stripmines the soil in poor countries, where children die in mines, while the loot is carried off to the west, AND it uses much more energy than bitcoin. and bitcoin is technology to replace, at least partially, those two things. And like a car versus a bike, it does so with more utility: better t…

This makes no sense. Are you suggesting that e.g. the US military wouldn't exist if the US used bitcoin rather than dollars? And similarly for other currency+military combos? That strikes me as really implausible.

I think the argument is that the dollar would not be the worlds reserve currency if it was not for the US military. The value of the dollar is in part attributable to the US military. We know the dollar wont collapse and be worthless overnight because e.g Russia invaded the USA. This wont happen because of the US military, not because the dollar is inherently special.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#208

Post by dangerface »

Tepix wrote: post #206
dangerface wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can exchange it with the guy down the street like I currently do, how are you going to stop this? LOL

That sounds rather combersome. What is the guy down the street going to do with it?

Same thing any one does with money.

The point is that bitcoin exited before there where institutions built around it, you can ban those institutions you can ban coal power plants you can ban whatever you want people will still continue to use it the way they currently do.

Mine bitcoin on renewable energy not connected to the grid and transact with each other not large institutions, if you want to ban bitcoin you need to prevent the core value of bitcoin not just show off your fud.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#209

Post by Tepix »

dangerface wrote: post #208
Tepix wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds rather combersome. What is the guy down the street going to do with it?

Same thing any one does with money. The point is that bitcoin exited before there where institutions built around it, you can ban those institutions you can ban coal power plants you can ban whatever you want people will still continue to use it the way they currently do. Mine bitcoin on renewable energy not connected to the grid and transact with each other not large institutions, if you want to ban bitcoin you need…

> Same thing any one does with money.

Let's see.. i earn my wage with money. I pay my taxes with money. I pay everything with money. I can pay almost nothing with bitcoin and it's getting worse.

> people will still continue to use it [bitcoin] the way they currently do

They are using it for speculation and for ransomware. Seems like both of these uses will be hindered by outlawing all official exchanges.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#210

Post by emn13 »

andirk wrote: post #203
paulgb wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best representation of the argument is that if governments couldn’t print fiat they wouldn’t be able to fund huge militaries and we’d have less destructive wars. It seems fairly utopian to me, given that wars existed on the gold standard too, and if they were less destructive it was for want of technology. But maybe if I held Bitcoin I’d be more inclined to believe it was the solution to world peace.

FDR confiscated all gold to thwart the Great Depression and fund the war effort, and froze bank accounts for a handful of days, a Bank Holiday. For better or worse, it would be much more difficult to do this with btc.

Let's hope we never get to test this hypothetical, because it might even be easier to confiscate BTC - certainly to merely destroy BTC, and thus raise the value of your own. When a physical force comes knocking, it's going to be tricky to resist sharing a key - and unlike physical stores of value, digital trails of ownership might make it quite a lot trickier to deny ownership; it really depends on how much information that occupying force has.

Also, it's trivial to freeze BTC accounts too; that just means controlling the network - which in the even of a physical occupation is going to be obvious anyhow.

Then there's the fact that occupiers may be able to engage in a 50% attack (assuming occupation is large scale and impacts many miners) - and may well force usage of their fork of the chain, even in absence of a global 50% control, making the whole thing rather tricky to predict.

Let's hope it never comes to that, but I'm certainly not convinced BTC would be immune from a physically occupying force's influence. I bet it depends hugely on the details of that occupation.

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