Crypto lobbying is going ballistic • Hacker News Board

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#151

Post by tomp » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #22

andruby wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think there is at least one problem that crypto currencies solve better than the status-quo: sending money internationally. It has less regulation than the official channels. Can have better privacy. Can be cheaper. Can be faster. Compared to Western Union, international wire transfers and the likes, sending money home for foreign workers (remittance), seems to be much better with Stellar, or other low-fee crypt…

Thing is, your quality judgement is questionable by society as a whole. Less regulation -> more crime. Better privacy -> more crime. Cheaper -> more unstable currency markets. Faster -> more unstable currency markets. There is a balance to be found, but at the moment most cryptocurrencies are a nightmare from the perspective of people who value stability and order in social arrangements. And none of the current playe…

Crime is what the government says is a crime. E.g. Wikileaks.

Bitcoin is permissionless money. You might not value that, but others do.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#152

Post by nradov » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

lui8906 wrote: post #93

gambiting wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a fundamental issue here that prevents us from reaching an understanding. ANYTHING can be used as money. The systems that we currently have in place have lots of big problems, but "we" decided to use them and that's why they are popular. We could also decide to use a cryptocurrency as money, and it would be equally valid, and it would become our "money" - that bit is fine and I'm not arguing with it.…

I hold a decent chunk of change in stable coins most of which I lend out to earn interest. Sometimes I top up a VISA card with those stables and then buy groceries. You might reply "you're just using a proxy of USD the original currency, its not new". That's true my reply to that would be: Having the USD be on chain allows very efficient lending. For eg. I can use a lending aggregator that is constantly polling many…

Yield is meaningless without knowing risk. What is the expected default rate under adverse economic conditions? Are borrower credit ratings available from independent sources? What is the counterparty risk for the lending aggregators and sources?

Chasing yield is a recipe for disaster.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#153

Post by toyg » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #151

toyg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, your quality judgement is questionable by society as a whole. Less regulation -> more crime. Better privacy -> more crime. Cheaper -> more unstable currency markets. Faster -> more unstable currency markets. There is a balance to be found, but at the moment most cryptocurrencies are a nightmare from the perspective of people who value stability and order in social arrangements. And none of the current playe…

Crime is what the government says is a crime. E.g. Wikileaks. Bitcoin is permissionless money. You might not value that, but others do.

In democratic societies, in theory and largely in practice, crime is what society as a whole decided is a crime.

Bitcoin is indeed permissionless, which means you can use it for things society might find nefarious: tax evasion, drug trade, uncontrolled arms trade, human trafficking, money laundering, etc etc. You might not value that, but society as a whole does.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#154

Post by kungito » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

numair wrote: post #102

Since this seems to be yet another HN comment thread filled with people who feel really smart for dismissing the potential of cryptographic digital currencies and the emerging liquid market for these digital assets, I'll just copy and paste my thoughts (which I might end up having to do often, since these sort of crypto-hate-fests are now popping up on HN at a rate of several per day): > Money moves fast in the crypt…

It's about doing things for money, not with the money itself. Moving cash around does not benefit anyone. My biggest fear is tax avoidance with crypto. You lose the main way to continuously return the money into the "people money pool". People say governments waste and steal money, but it's a people problem and this is the best mechanism we have

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#155

Post by tzs » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #37

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If climate change is finally taken seriously at some point, I hope they get clamped down on very hard. Unlike meth labs and "terrorists", a large mining farm can be traced by power usage. (Unless you're using solar, then go ahead and mine all you want.) Crypto fanatics are doing nothing of any practical value while greatly helping out with destroying our planet. We've been having rolling blackouts recently because of…

> doing nothing of any practical value while greatly helping out with destroying our planet Serious question, where does this line of thinking end? Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Watching sitcoms on a television has no practical value. Phones capable of doing things other than making calls have no practical value, but we charge them all the time. Honestly I think providing…

> Serious question, where does this line of thinking end? Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Watching sitcoms on a television has no practical value. Phones capable of doing things other than making calls have no practical value, but we charge them all the time.

All of those things have practical value. Humans need relaxation and entertainment in order to be productive, which gaming and sitcoms provide. (I'm not going to explain how smartphones have practical value because I assume that was included due to some sort of editing buffer mix up or similar while you were simultaneously writing something else while commenting here).

> Honestly I think providing an alternative financial system is more practical than most of the other energy intensive things we do these days.

That can be done for orders of magnitude less energy. The high energy use of Bitcoin and similar is not due to its providing a financial system aspect. It is due to the particular implementation details of its ledger.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#156

Post by newswasboring » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

Quindecillion wrote: post #85

naruvimama wrote: post #29

My biggest fear is that institutions & governments jumping into this pyramid scheme, throwing our hard earned money to make billionaires out of snake oil men. Bitcoin was fine as long as it was a small geeky fun currency with actual small transactions. It became a pyramid scheme once speculators jumped in. I am open to government or industry backed crypto or digital currency.

> I am open to government or industry backed crypto or digital currency Then you don't understand the point of Bitcoin. Any "government backed" crypto (also known as Central Bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs) will be under the complete control of bureaucrats, much like how money currently is. That means they can create as much of that money as they like to fund whatever they want. That kind of monetary expansion is n…

I think government backed is not government controlled, right? For example now in El Salvador bitcoin is government backed. You can pay your taxes in it and I think eventually you can settle contracts with it.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#157

Post by traeregan » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

lui8906 wrote: post #93

gambiting wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a fundamental issue here that prevents us from reaching an understanding. ANYTHING can be used as money. The systems that we currently have in place have lots of big problems, but "we" decided to use them and that's why they are popular. We could also decide to use a cryptocurrency as money, and it would be equally valid, and it would become our "money" - that bit is fine and I'm not arguing with it.…

I hold a decent chunk of change in stable coins most of which I lend out to earn interest. Sometimes I top up a VISA card with those stables and then buy groceries. You might reply "you're just using a proxy of USD the original currency, its not new". That's true my reply to that would be: Having the USD be on chain allows very efficient lending. For eg. I can use a lending aggregator that is constantly polling many…

> use a lending aggregator that is constantly polling many lending sources and moves my money to the best source of yield regularly

If you live somewhere where cryptocurrency gains are taxed as income, how do you handle the reporting of this at tax time? It seems like it would be tedious to keep track of every transaction across multiple defi platforms.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#158

Post by asterix_pano » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

throwaway52355 wrote: post #98

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If climate change is finally taken seriously at some point, I hope they get clamped down on very hard. Unlike meth labs and "terrorists", a large mining farm can be traced by power usage. (Unless you're using solar, then go ahead and mine all you want.) Crypto fanatics are doing nothing of any practical value while greatly helping out with destroying our planet. We've been having rolling blackouts recently because of…

Miners are securing the only censorship-resistant, permissionless hard money we have. The only people who don't see any practical value in this either don't understand Bitcoin or hate freedom.

There are many different cryptos that offer the same attributes without the energy cost. If Bitcoin was created today, no one would even bother to look at it.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#159

Post by asterix_pano » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #153

tomp wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime is what the government says is a crime. E.g. Wikileaks. Bitcoin is permissionless money. You might not value that, but others do.

In democratic societies, in theory and largely in practice, crime is what society as a whole decided is a crime. Bitcoin is indeed permissionless, which means you can use it for things society might find nefarious: tax evasion, drug trade, uncontrolled arms trade, human trafficking, money laundering, etc etc. You might not value that, but society as a whole does.

Bitcoin is probably one of the worst asset to use for crimes, since all transactions are publicly available on the blockchain, with no privacy.

Re: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic

#160

Post by lostmsu » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #155

donatj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doing nothing of any practical value while greatly helping out with destroying our planet Serious question, where does this line of thinking end? Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Watching sitcoms on a television has no practical value. Phones capable of doing things other than making calls have no practical value, but we charge them all the time. Honestly I think providing…

> Serious question, where does this line of thinking end? Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Watching sitcoms on a television has no practical value. Phones capable of doing things other than making calls have no practical value, but we charge them all the time. All of those things have practical value. Humans need relaxation and entertainment in order to be productive, which g…

No, the problem with the line of thinking is not that gaming has no practical value, it is that some people think gaming has no practical value.