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I was wrong, we need crypto

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Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#41

Post by muzika »

Comevius wrote: post #27
csee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why must we choose between doing nothing on the one hand and freezing assets without due process on the other? Why can't we just have a functioning liberal democracy that arrests the purported criminals quickly, charges them with a crime, and tries them in a court under the full scrutiny of the voting public?

Canada only enacted the Emergencies Act when things got out of hand. This was separatist group that for a time took control over the border, threatened and blockaded critical infrastructure and committed thousands of crimes (bribery, threats, assault, setting a fire in a building). The criminal investigations are ongoing. Due process will be had.

No post body was provided.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#42

Post by woodrow »

csee wrote: post #18
Comevius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why must we choose between doing nothing on the one hand and freezing assets without due process on the other? Why can't we just have a functioning liberal democracy that arrests the purported criminals quickly, charges them with a crime, and tries them in a court under the full scrutiny of the voting public?

Remember that these financial controls are about limiting access to donations received from outside of Canada —- over half of the contributions to GiveSendGo were _not_ from Canadians.

Canada has the right (just as the US does) to limit foreign influence in its domestic affairs and its democratically elected government is exercising that right.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#43

Post by rosndo »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #39
rosndo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exchanges decentralize trust, you don’t have to work with any specific exchange.

LOL! Sure, pick any exchange you want and I'll bet you a BTC that the price of USDT is effectively $1 USD. USDT remains pegged at $1 USD regardless of how many new Tethers are minted. Have you ever thought about why or how this happens? Once you do, your *trust* in the crypto exchanges/marketplace will start to unravel.

Tether/Bitfinex has more than enough funds to back USDT, especially after the recent DOJ seizure.

Would I hold funds in USDT myself? No, I learned my lesson after losing 50k with Liberty Reserve.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#44

Post by Comevius »

muzika wrote: post #41
Comevius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada only enacted the Emergencies Act when things got out of hand. This was separatist group that for a time took control over the border, threatened and blockaded critical infrastructure and committed thousands of crimes (bribery, threats, assault, setting a fire in a building). The criminal investigations are ongoing. Due process will be had.

Quoted post unavailable.

Who pays for writing comments on HN? Asking for a friend.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#45

Post by jqpabc123 »

rosndo wrote: post #43
jqpabc123 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL! Sure, pick any exchange you want and I'll bet you a BTC that the price of USDT is effectively $1 USD. USDT remains pegged at $1 USD regardless of how many new Tethers are minted. Have you ever thought about why or how this happens? Once you do, your *trust* in the crypto exchanges/marketplace will start to unravel.

Tether/Bitfinex has more than enough funds to back USDT, especially after the recent DOJ seizure. Would I hold funds in USDT myself? No, I learned my lesson after losing 50k with Liberty Reserve.

Tether/Bitfinex has more than enough funds to back USDT

And you know this how? Trust?

Be honest. If the people running things used all the funds to buy a private island in the South Pacific, you wouldn't have any way to know.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#46

Post by rosndo »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #45
rosndo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether/Bitfinex has more than enough funds to back USDT, especially after the recent DOJ seizure. Would I hold funds in USDT myself? No, I learned my lesson after losing 50k with Liberty Reserve.

Tether/Bitfinex has more than enough funds to back USDT And you know this how? Trust? Be honest. If the people running things used all the funds to buy a private island in the South Pacific, you wouldn't have any way to know.

I’m not sure what you are getting at. Who gives a shit about tether?

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#47

Post by jqpabc123 »

rosndo wrote: post #46
jqpabc123 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether/Bitfinex has more than enough funds to back USDT And you know this how? Trust? Be honest. If the people running things used all the funds to buy a private island in the South Pacific, you wouldn't have any way to know.

I’m not sure what you are getting at. Who gives a shit about tether?

This is the attitude that makes fraud so easy.

This is like saying, who gives a shit if the NYSE is minting and selling stocks? Anyone with an IRA or a 401K should.

Who gives a shit if Liberty Reserve was a money laundering operation? Maybe you should have.

More than half of all crypto trades involve tether. The market prices of most crypto is being influenced by it whether you use it personally or not. If/when the price of Tether crumbles, most crypto will have no choice but to follow.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2019/03/14/tethe...

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#48

Post by csee »

Comevius wrote: post #38
csee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then arrest the people who are breaking the laws and blockading critical infrastructure, and charge them with a criminal offence. The BLM protests also saw many criminal elements that did looting and assaults. None of this is a valid argument for freezing accounts of people "involved" without due process.

The Emergencies Act is specifically for when there is an urgent and critical public order emergency. It's invocation is going to be ratified by the Parlaiment today. The police unfortunately dropped the ball, they tried that option too. But just arresting specific people also wasn't enough. Polling shows that the majority of Canadians supported the use of the act.

I don't accept that this wasn't resolvable by normal police action.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/191-arrests-later-ottawa-polic...

Maybe freezing accounts contributed to this particular outcome, but I don't accept that it was necessary.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#49

Post by CodeGlitch »

Comevius wrote: post #15
csee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the article as connecting (not conflating) the two. He's saying that the government can no longer be trusted with this power, as evidenced by this particular misuse, and they therefore should lose that ability.

[flagged]

> and the majority don't want these Nazi flag waving idiots distrupting their lives.

Slightly off topic but the inconsistent treatment/reporting of these protestors and BLM is what gets me. BLM protestors flying "antifa" flags (let's be honest Marxists) are just as bad as Nazis in my book - seriously misled people with unworkable ideas about how the world should be run.

Anyway if you're coming down hard on protestors who are causing disruption but not to protestors who are setting fire to buildings then there's something seriously wrong.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#50

Post by datadata »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #40
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Canadian Gubmint is issuing orders about seizing crypto assets too. Sure, but the entire point is that they can't . If you manage your own private keys, it is significantly harder for the canadian government to seize your assets compared to the gov telling your bank to freeze your account. Crypto people need to work on UX though, so that you don't need to be technically savvy to do so.

>> Sure, but the entire point is that they can't. >> If you manage your own private keys, it is significantly harder for the canadian government to seize your assets compared to the gov telling your bank to freeze your account. If they want your keys badly enough, they will get them: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png

There is a big and meaningful difference between being able to freeze bank accounts at scale without violence and only with the cooperation of a centralized finance institution, versus having to physically torture each account owner to get what they want one by one. A government would have to be substantially more evil and use vastly more resources to do the later. And there is a second order chilling effect in the former, where even if a government does not seize asserts, the threat of it will make citizens think about their words.
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