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China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

dailybusinessgroup.co.uk

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Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#551

Post by tablespoon »

dangerface wrote: post #410
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most mining has already shifted out of China, and Bitcoin mining is a very small percentage of electricity usage on the scale of "all electricity usage" - there are plenty of bigger fish (the argument then turns, validly, to the usefulness of said bigger fish in comparison to bitcoin).

Here come the comments of people who see no value in crypto calming it has no value. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. A few years ago people laughed at me for buying bitcoin, it's good to see bitcoin adoption moving along nicely.

> First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Not so much. That sounds like like The Power of Positive Thinking-style BS (crypto is full of it). Usually when "they" fight "you," they win, but losers are usually forgotten and an accurate statement wouldn't make a very good motivational slogan.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#552

Post by arcticbull »

nightski wrote: post #470
arcticbull wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a negative sum wealth redistribution scheme the takes money from new entrants and gives it to miners and to old entrants. The miner portion is what makes it negative-sum. It doesn't meet the traditional definition, no, which is why I referred to it as a "distributed Ponzi scheme" - it's closer to an MLM in classical parlance. [edit] Here's the SEC definition: > A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays exi…

Miner fees are paid from transaction fees (since mining is quite literally verifying transactions). You don't lose value for miners being paid.

They then have to liquidate the coins to pay for the electricity. This extracts real dollar liquidity from the system and the sell pressure pushes down prices.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#553

Post by arcticbull »

ksml wrote: post #479
arcticbull wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a negative sum wealth redistribution scheme the takes money from new entrants and gives it to miners and to old entrants. The miner portion is what makes it negative-sum. It doesn't meet the traditional definition, no, which is why I referred to it as a "distributed Ponzi scheme" - it's closer to an MLM in classical parlance. [edit] Here's the SEC definition: > A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays exi…

Based on your phrasing of the SEC definition, the real estate market also feels like it fits the bill :-/ Edit: parent comment was edited, originally said: > It actually matches the SEC definition of a Ponzi scheme haha, which happens to be a little bit less restrictive than a traditional definition. > It's a negative sum wealth redistribution scheme the takes money from new entrants and gives it to miners and to old…

Real estate is a productive asset, because you need somewhere to live. If folks were holding the real estate, empty, simply to resell I would agree - but I wouldn’t advocate real estate as the future backing of money either way.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#554

Post by jollybean »

gfodor wrote: post #541
jollybean wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is a delusion. It's a very bad idea to move money into an 'asset' that has no value other than to the degree other people share that delusion. Real-estate is valuable on some level, so are most other assets - even 'currencies', however poorly managed, are valuable because people need them to do stuff. The worst place to go is crypto, it's the bottom of the 'store of value' equation in almost every way - the fa…

Your opinion is duly noted, my opinion is that your opinion has little bearing on what the price of BTC will be if the purchasing power of a dollar drops quickly. My prediction is that demand for it will surge and so the price will go up somewhat inversely. I'll note that you're not taking the counter position, just stating why that would be a "very bad idea" for people to demand it. I'm guessing you've been saying t…

You talk exactly like an MLM salesperson.

Do you have a seminar I can register for?

...

But seriously, people will speculate on things and bubbles will happen in all assets, some are more resilient than others.

While the future is never easy to know, your predictions can be dismissed out of hand because we definitely have some 'hard parameters' we have to deal with.

BTC is definitely an outlet for illegal activity and tax evasion, and to the extent that it becomes material in that way, it will just be banned. And when it's banned in China, EU, USA, UK, Aussie, Canada, Japan, Korea etc. - well it probably won't be of much use to anyone.

No regime will allow their tax base to be challenged in that way. And neither will the population, so the banning will be a popular measure.

So by nature if it's own design, it can only be an annoying parlour game.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#555

Post by ethbr0 »

cm2187 wrote: post #548
sudosysgen wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who needs CNY, that can then buy real goods and export them.

OK, so that may have worked before the ban, but unless you have a way to export under the counter, I presume this route is gone after the btc transaction ban.

Well, you'd have to do an off the books / private transaction of BTC-for-CNY, but there's presumably an infinite number of ways for someone to loan / give CNY for (to the government) nothing (and in reality, BTC, etc).

And with the CNY, you can buy real goods. And with those real goods, you can export them. And with those exports, you can sell them for foreign currency.

So as long as they're running an export-oriented economy, it's going to be very hard to fundamentally stamp out crypto as an option. This mostly strikes retail traders / buyers.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#556

Post by xtracto »

milliams wrote: post #58

crypto currency ?

Hah you brought a grin to my face. I fondly remember the late 90s when I was doing my BSc on computing. I was pretty into cryptography, stenography, data obfuscation and reverse engineering. Back then people doing "crypto" were called nerds by Software Engineers (the nerds of the nerds). Pretty great time.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#557

Post by tablespoon »

gfodor wrote: post #456
arcticbull wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine living in a civilized country that can't bring itself to ban a massive distributed Ponzi scheme with huge environmental consequences. Bitcoin alone uses about 1/10th as much energy as the entire world's concrete production. Even if it were to transition entirely to renewable energy it also generates as much e-waste as an entire first-world country. These things actually have huge meaningful state security ris…

It's going to look a lot less like a Ponzi scheme if/when the dollar collapses.

> It's going to look a lot less like a Ponzi scheme if/when the dollar collapses.

Even if it does, Bitcoin may very well collapse before the dollar.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#558

Post by reedjosh »

jollybean wrote: post #544
reedjosh wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aside from that, anyone declaring monetary value on a crypto asset should have to declare it, and if they don't, they go to actual prison for tax evasion. I'm looking forward to those people replacing weed smokers in prison - that would be effective public policy. You're both pro legalization of weed and pro government? The war drugs is one the many fronts of the war on personal freedom. Ironically the thing you're…

I'm 'not' for people not going to jail because they smoke weed, and 'for' people going to jail for tax evasion. The kind of straw manning that reveals itself here due to the complete lack of civic thinking in some circles is really disturbing. There is no necessity for mass energy usage for crypto, there are any number of ways to distribute new units of currency. Again the use of the term 'necessary' here is a hint a…

> the complete lack of civic thinking in some circles is really disturbing.

I used to love the idea of the government fixing societies' woes. Unfortunately in my lifetime I've seen several business cycles wherein the rich get bailouts and the rest of us lose our shirts. My country has entered wars I didn't then, and don't now support. I've seen 3 letter agencies topple foreign governments, and I'm watching China leverage its social credit system and implementing CBDCs. I've seen the infrastructure in my country become dilapidated and homelessness skyrocket. I voted for 'change' and got none.

I am civic minded, and to me the government is starting to look like the problem. As such, I support any peaceful alternative. There is no such thing as consent of the governed, and I plan continue believing what I see with my lying eyes.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#559

Post by paulgb »

guilhas wrote: post #420
paulgb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an externalities problem. I can not use it, but I can’t opt out of the climate impact. (Save the “it’s not really that bad” arguments, I’ve heard all the industry’s gaslighting, but their claims don’t match reality)

You can't also opt out of the Swift/Visa/MasterCard climate impact, or the ATM network, or the internet! how many millions of servers are running, day and night, to host millions of terabytes of content where only a fraction ends up being accessed ...and it's a cat video What you can do is use and support the climate friendlier alternatives. There are crypto currencies created with that in mimd

It's true, and I'm allowed to (and do) care about the emissions of those, too. I'm objecting to the idea that I shouldn't be allowed to care (“don't use it duh”) as a non-user.

I am encouraged to see the transition to PoS and would love to see PoS overtake PoW, just from a bystander-concerned-about-the-environment perspective.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#560

Post by tablespoon »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #483
toomuchtodo wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you propose as a solution for central banks and monetary policy attempting to operate in structural stagnation [1]? Do you believe digital tulips will maintain their value as real productivity declines due to demographics? Physical cash can be inflated with relatively the same ease as a CBDC through QE. You're seeking a level of control and authority of monetary policy only accessible to nation states. We agr…

My desired solution is for central banks and their abusive monetary policy to die in a fire. One way to achieve that is to have many competing currencies that are not controlled by a central bank. If any are a worthy replacement for government fiat people will use it. But, that is precisely why governments will do their best to regulate use of competing currencies. China has the most restrictive capital controls in t…

> My desired solution is for central banks and their abusive monetary policy to die in a fire. One way to achieve that is to have many competing currencies that are not controlled by a central bank. If any are a worthy replacement for government fiat people will use it. But, that is precisely why governments will do their best to regulate use of competing currencies.

So your "solution" is a regression to something that was tried and didn't actually work well? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_central_banking_in_...

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