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China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

dailybusinessgroup.co.uk

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Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#71

Post by FabHK »

trident5000 wrote: post #39
holoduke wrote: post #14

I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.

Define volatile. The only currency that has stood the test of time is gold, a private currency. Every fiat currency in history has failed. Probably because heads of state like to print it to solve their short term problems essentially robbing everyone with an inflation tax. I dont call that stable or just. I work and save and expect my currency to hold up and not be abused which is not happening currently. Edit: HN m…

> Every fiat currency in history has failed.

That's funny. The extant fiat currencies haven't failed. So, the only ones that have failed... are the failed ones. And those have failed, 100%, indeed.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#72

Post by baybal2 »

Factorium wrote: post #17
holoduke wrote: post #14

I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.

Europe is currently facing electricity and chip shortages. Banning crypto in the EU would be an acceptable measure for addressing that.

Why not to ban steelmaking first?

Steel manufacturing requires tons of electricity, and it is already impossible in EU without enormous subsidies. It's an industry surviving entirely on life support.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#73

Post by ddorian43 »

hacknews20 wrote: post #38
holoduke wrote: post #14

I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.

“Nothing more volatile…” erm energy prices in the UK just jumped 70% and it’s not to do with crypto, co2 supply shrank to levels never seen before again nothing to do with crypto both of which affect whole populations. Try to avoid crypto hyperbole. Lastly, I don’t know anybody invested in crypto that hasn’t made money, so anecdotally that indicates the number is much higher than 5%.

> Lastly, I don’t know anybody invested in crypto that hasn’t made money, so anecdotally that indicates the number is much higher than 5%.

You make money when you exit and sell the asset for cash. Have they sold ?

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#74

Post by Graffur »

holoduke wrote: post #14

I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.

Yours is the top comment on this thread and it's a bit surprising. When you say less than 5%, what are you talk about? Can you point to any sources that back that up?

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#75

Post by tuesdayrain »

holoduke wrote: post #14

I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.

> The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5%

I find it amusing how casually you just made up a statistic and used it as justification to ban something. Here's an actual statistic: 100% of people who held Bitcoin for longer than 4 years are up on their investment.

edit: Lots of downvotes for an easily verifiable fact. Anyone can look at the BTC chart and see that there is no 4 year span where the price ends up lower than it was at the start.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#76

Post by Loughla »

dougmwne wrote: post #68
tgtweak wrote: post #47

For those of you keeping track, this is about the 20th time China has declared to have banned Bitcoin or crypto. The only thing they've done is demonstrated that crypto is a threat to their all-reaching power grab and that they are mostly powerless to control it.

This is a country rounding up a whole population of a religious minority and sending them to reeducation camps. A country that mobilized over a billion people to almost completely control covid. You are vastly underestimating the CCP, as most Westerns continue to do.

I've noticed this quite a bit, and I don't understand it. People keep writing articles and saying things amounting to 'it just won't last forever'. But the reason is, because it just won't, totalitarian governments don't last.

Why wouldn't it? Strong central government. Clear economic and social goals with the ends justifying whatever unethical means. A complacent middle and upper class satiated by enough new wealth to make them fat(ter than they used to be) and happy.

Why won't they be the next world power for the foreseeable future? Is there an anti-party faction in China that's larger and more powerful than I see in US media?

Or is this just wishful thinking from the west?

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#77

Post by avianlyric »

Offpics wrote: post #66
holoduke wrote: post #14

I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.

You should educate yourself. Energy consumption is an old myth and cryptocurrency pushes a lot of innovations in this field. There is a great documentary on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-7dMVcVWgc .

Energy is a zero sum game. Every watt you use for crypto mining is a watt not used for something more productive.

Every watt of renewable power generated to power a crypto miner, is a watt not being used to reduce the use of non-renewables in the wider energy grid.

I don’t care if your crypto gear is hooked up to a dedicated hydro plant, I care that the hydroplant is not connected to the wider grid and shutting down gas fired power stations.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#78

Post by _ph_ »

noxer wrote: post #36
Factorium wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is currently facing electricity and chip shortages. Banning crypto in the EU would be an acceptable measure for addressing that.

Only PoW cryptos need extensive electricity and hardware. Its completely absurd to ban crypto. Thats like if you would ban all motorized vehicles to get rid of coal blasting diesel trucks without catalytic converter. Needless to say that its also technically impossible to ban crypto. Its like banning torrents or even harder and we all know torrent was attacked heavily in the past but it did not go away.

Well, for the energy consumption part yes. There the need for banning crypto concerns those "currencies" which do use PoW. Like Bitcoin what the article was about.

Banning crypto in a practical sense is actually quite easy. Prohibit any business and any bank in dealing with them. If you cannot do legal transactions with e.g. Bitcoins any more, the market mostly dries up. It is not necessary to ban any single coin in existance, but its wide-scale usage in the normal economy.

By the way, there was never an attempt to ban torrents itself. That would have been reasonably easy on a protocol level. It was about banning illegal torrents. As in the content, not the protocol.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#79

Post by ricardobeat »

tuesdayrain wrote: post #75
holoduke wrote: post #14

I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.

> The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% I find it amusing how casually you just made up a statistic and used it as justification to ban something. Here's an actual statistic: 100% of people who held Bitcoin for longer than 4 years are up on their investment. edit: Lots of downvotes for an easily verifiable fact. Anyone can look at the BTC chart and see that there is no 4 year span where the pri…

Even more amusing to call what is supposed to be a currency, an “investment”.
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