Live data from Hacker News

Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

thehill.com

111–120 of 184 posts

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin does a lot. A store of value that hedges against government inflation is by definition a valuable service. I don't understand why everyone is looking for a swiss-army knife like application from BTC. The value has already been proven in the marketplace, hence why everyone is buying it.

I'm sure everyone who bought bitcoin at >$50,000 would have something to say about whether its utility as a "store of value" has been proven in the marketplace.

They will in 5 years when it's worth 2x that.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto in general isn't liked because it generally is BS propped up by holders to others to help their position like an MLM coworker. It isn't green (in it's current form for most). It doesn't solve real world problems(in it's current form for most). And it has effectively no avenue to ever being supported by major governments because lol, shocker, they would rather regulate money. The thing about it all is that it h…

Ok. While you're in denial - its being adopted by social media platforms (twitter), ecommerce platforms (Amazon), its on corporate balance sheets (tesla, spacex, microstrategy, some others), all major payment vendors, banks (JMP), and something like 70 million americans, hundreds of millions globally own it and disagree with you. Its useful to have a money system that isnt abused by central banks, destroying what you…

not to mention millions of dollars are being loaned out and moved around platforms like yearn and aave right now.

There was also a crypto-downturn in their years of operation and these two protocols didn't need "bailouts" to survive.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#113
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just because you don't use it or put in the effort to look at different decentralized projects doesn't mean there are "no use-cases". I think with the amount of activity on AAVE and yearn, plus the growth these projects have received have killed that argument. Very 2017 argument that no longer makes any sense and is presented by luddites. Most the bottlenecks right now to why you don't have day-to-day apps deployed o…

It would be more persuasive if you could point to something that has utility and viability in the here and now. A killer app or something that benefits society and offsets the much talked about negative externalities. From the outside it’s hard to see the good and so the crypto community would benefit greatly by focusing on pr at least as much as the technology itself. When I talk to working class people, the view of…

Trustless banking is the killer app.

Credit card payments, bank deposits, stock holdings: nearly everywhere humans hold value currently is a trust-based system that leaves you at the whims of more powerful counterparties.

If the bank decides to zero out your account balance, they can. You can sue them, and should be able to get you money back if you take them to court, but they have the absolute ability to destroy your wealth.

Bitcoin gives technologically savvy people the opportunity to store value in a way which is not subject to any other party. If I lock 1BTC up in an encrypted wallet, nobody can deprive me of that 1BTC without my consent and participation. That is the killer app.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#114
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be more persuasive if you could point to something that has utility and viability in the here and now. A killer app or something that benefits society and offsets the much talked about negative externalities. From the outside it’s hard to see the good and so the crypto community would benefit greatly by focusing on pr at least as much as the technology itself. When I talk to working class people, the view of…

A decentralized marketplace is more akin to what you would see in ancient bazaars of Mesopotamia. It will allow vendors to collect more money for their service while at the same time allowing customers to pay less for the same service. This is because a decentralized service does not need a thousand people and billions of dollars of VC funding to run (take Uber for instance). Instead there will be the smart contract…

> Instead there will be the smart contract (which will require funding so there will be a very small fee per transaction)

So you are saying there are still middlemen who take a cut of the transactions?

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not OP but this doesn't seem to answer the question. You presented a lot of speculation and mentioned two things that I've never heard of

the onus is not on me to hand-deliver you information. I'm just here to say OP is wrong, speaking emotionally/egotistically, and spreading trite arguments that have been debunked time and time again. Go ahead and google "L2 ethereum" and "ethereum proof-of-staking migration". If you want to dive deep into the ecosystem it's all in plain sight for you to do so. There is a lot going behind the scenes and I simply don't…

L2 has been delayed years, still years out, and optimistic rollup seems to be following the course of delays

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#116
post #52
post #12

This is some of the worst junk writing I've seen on the hill. Some pretty wrong things in here, like insinuating that the only value of crypto is to criminals, and all but saying that the reason there are hackings to things like critical infrastructure is because crypto exists, which is just silly. Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard, though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewabl…

> Some pretty wrong things in here, like insinuating that the only value of crypto is to criminals, and all but saying that the reason there are hackings to things like critical infrastructure is because crypto exists Both of these are true. > Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard This is true.

Fossil fuel production is an environmental hazard.

Motivating wealth production through destruction of the environment is irresponsible.

Green Energy production is an environmental boon

Motivating wealth production through green energy utilization is responsible.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#117
post #6

What's interesting about this article isn't so much the contents as the biography of the author: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/robert-a-manning/ - Atlantic Council, ODNI, US National Intelligence Council, US Secretary of State's staff, Council on Foreign Relations and more. I'm not sure how much attention the idea of banning cryptocurrency has had from these kind of circles before.

Yeah, when the pipeline ransomware thing happened, I figured that we'd see some big crackdowns on internet freedom as a result. And he mentions the pipeline early on in the article.

CFR folks like Bob might be equally interested in stopping cryptocurrency as a way for countries subject to US sanctions, like Iran and Venezuela, to have access to the international payment system. But that's probably not as appealing a pitch for the UN Security Council, the G7, and the G20, who I think are his real audience here. He knows a unilateral move against cryptocurrency by USG would be not only very difficult because of domestic opposition but also a bit of an own goal, cutting the US off from the developing permissionless international economy.

But if he can convince other governments' advisors that Bitcoin poses a threat to them that outweighs any potential protection it grants them from the US, then those concerns go away. PRC is already on board; Russia and India could maybe be persuaded, having flirted with total cryptocurrency bans and then backed away from them; Brazil, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the EU and Commonwealth countries are likely to be more difficult. No idea about Mexico, the Saudis, Turkey, and Indonesia—they've all been rather nervous about it, except in Mexico where it's fully legal.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#118
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be more persuasive if you could point to something that has utility and viability in the here and now. A killer app or something that benefits society and offsets the much talked about negative externalities. From the outside it’s hard to see the good and so the crypto community would benefit greatly by focusing on pr at least as much as the technology itself. When I talk to working class people, the view of…

A decentralized marketplace is more akin to what you would see in ancient bazaars of Mesopotamia. It will allow vendors to collect more money for their service while at the same time allowing customers to pay less for the same service. This is because a decentralized service does not need a thousand people and billions of dollars of VC funding to run (take Uber for instance). Instead there will be the smart contract…

This is a great answer. I think my problem is explaining it to poor people, who see Elon musk and jack dorsey, pushing Bitcoin as “for the people” and they just think, oh it’s for those rich guys to hype their startup options into the stratosphere, not for us folks living in debt on the verge of homelessness. I want to help those people get in on it, so they aren’t left even further behind if that makes sense.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#119
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what does it doooooo??? The blockchain is just a platform. You have to build projects on top of the platform. Asking what does it do doesn't make any sense. It's like asking what does a piece of paper do. The real question to ask is not what does it do but whether the trade offs of using decentralised tokenised platform for building real world apps is useful or scalable. The answers to which are still being dis…

What has been built on Blockchain? Specifically I'm looking for examples of things that solve a problem that couldn't be solved without Blockchain, or at least were unsolved before.

Portable assets is one. You can buy and NFT on one market, use it within a game, display it in your virtual home, then sell it on a different market.

Blockchain allows individuals to actually own digital assets. (Whether those digital assets are valued correctly is a totally separate discussion - personally I think there are many that are grossly overvalued...)

World of warcraft items, amazon video or ebook purchases, etc. - you don't actually own those things: you are locked in and subject to the whims of the platform. If the platform wants to kill your account or remove your items, they can.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure everyone who bought bitcoin at >$50,000 would have something to say about whether its utility as a "store of value" has been proven in the marketplace.

They will in 5 years when it's worth 2x that.

So it's actually a speculative instrument then?
Post reply on HN