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On anti-crypto toxicity

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Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#611

Post by marcosdumay »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #544
marcosdumay wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add a bit. This one: > How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? Is a government mandate away. If you want it, got to the streets or call your representatives. In most countries, a simply executive decree is enough to get it.

In most countries, more equity would not benefit the ruling class. Do you have a political solution that accounts for this which I could suggest to my representative? Because absent one, a digital gold standard seems the least bad option to me.

Granting everybody access to the banking system is just a matter of some regulatory entity requiring that banks create a kind of account they can grant to anyone and that they don't deny it, or of the government itself making a bank that doesn't deny service to people.

There's nothing there about equity. It's a completely different problem.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#612

Post by cuteboy19 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #482
malthaus wrote: post #183

Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How…

Underlying all of our financial transactions is debt. Even an ACH transfer is a very temporary debt in a network of trust. That's why people with "bad credit" can't get accounts at traditional banks. This hurdle does not exist in crypto. I'm not suggesting crypto is some panacea, but it does eliminate this very important problem for people on the bottom of the economic ladder.

There are very few people who do not use a bank account but still use cryptocurrency.

This fantasy of banking the unbanked has remained a fantasy. In fact it is so impractical that barely anyone is working on it.

Meanwhile technologies like UPI have actually transformed people's lives and actually made banking accessible to millions.

Why focus on a dead end technology like crypto when we already have better options?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#613

Post by rvz »

sneak wrote: post #443

> Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots Citation needed. (This is actually me being charitable; it's not remotely "unquestionable", and in my view it's not even supported by the evidence available.)

I am also questioning this claim and given there is zero evidence for that, I can also only conclude that it is completely unfounded and baseless.

That's is the problem with some of the crypto-critics and the crypto-maximalists as they are just as bad as each other attempting to demonize, categorize and outrage one another with such absolutist rhetoric with zero evidence.

It really doesn't help.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#614

Post by 411111111111111 »

tiborsaas wrote: post #333
411111111111111 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, none of their arguments would make sense if substituted with www. People don't speculate with "web", they don't "pay" with web.

> People don't speculate with "web" Right, risky startup ideas/investments are not a thing, understood > they don't "pay" with web Online payments doesn't exists, TIL

If you attribute online payments to "www", then your argument becomes even dumber.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#615

Post by dogman144 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #266
sneak wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of their claims have materially panned out. Well, I can send arbitrarily large amounts of money across the planet, to any country with internet access, for tiny sums, safely, irreversibly, to anyone. Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine, for example. Transnational, permissionless internet money is quite handy. That wasn't possible before, and that's pretty useful, so I think the basic claim (that cry…

> Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine, for example Far more has been sent over traditional rails [1]. Once you consider state aid, e.g. the billions the Congress has authorized, crypto's contribution is irrelevant. Given Ukraine had to convert 80% of its crypto into hard currency before it could use it, crypto was also the most expensive donation vector. If we consider crypto’s likely role in softening Rus…

The amount doesn't matter as much as the latency and resources* used to send it.

*not going to address the green energy mining debate here but yes I know it is a thing.

Given funds sent by congress that went through how many approval gates, delays, and intermediaries, vs. millions sent almost over night to the UKR address...

What are the pros/cons of the the two approaches? - billions were sent via congress, and the last time this occurred at a similar scale and sense of urgency was covid relief. The [0] fraud [1] involved [2] and what scale was somewhat substantial and is now a focused DoJ investigation. Scale of $2bil seizures, for instance. Sending direct to a crypto address also has issues and fraud certainly exists, but wouldn't say irrelevant in the alternative controls it offers. $100 mil almost overnight with no strings attached vs. billions from Congress that has strings and will take some time presumably.

- Zelensky has consistently been upfront about the need is both resources, and speed of receiving resources [3]. What's more in line with that need - overnight donations, or Congressional authorizations that eventually lead into donations.

- Conversion: per Zelensky, biggest need is armaments, and he's been able to buy armaments directly in crypto, so that neutralizes your last criticism a bit, or at least more accurately fills out the picture [4]

Do you have any information the aid issued by Congress - has it actually reached UKR, how much of it, strings attached, etc?

[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-... [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/12/politics/secret-service-covid... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/course-rel... [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/04/ze... [4] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/04/ze...

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#616

Post by clarky07 »

Traster wrote: post #46

I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's some promise in some places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises. Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stup…

>Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stupid, toxic, illegal, scammy behaviour

are you talking about the internet or crypto? or maybe you were referring to finance. wall st? i get hundreds of scam emails a day, shall we get rid of email too? seriously, just because there are scams, doesn't mean that the internet, or wall st, or crypto are all worthless. that's just lazy and ignoring that scams are from people, and not from the tech. some people will use whatever means they have available to scam other people out of money. that doesn't remotely mean that all of crypto is a scam.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#617

Post by atchoo »

eimrine wrote: post #357
gwbas1c wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree, and I must add: Those are all political problems. Technology does not solve political problems. Politics solves political problems. All cryptocurrency does is obfuscate the politics behind its monetary system. As flawed as our monetary system is, the politics behind it are visible and under control of a government. In my country, my government is elected, and I'm an active and informed voter. Thus, I thin…

> Technology does not solve political problems. Bitcoin has solved an international transaction of money which were political problem.

It's probably more accurate to say that it's creating a political problem by circumventing existing political solutions like sanctions, currency controls and law enforcement.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#618

Post by dogman144 »

Traster wrote: post #292
sneak wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of their claims have materially panned out. Well, I can send arbitrarily large amounts of money across the planet, to any country with internet access, for tiny sums, safely, irreversibly, to anyone. Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine, for example. Transnational, permissionless internet money is quite handy. That wasn't possible before, and that's pretty useful, so I think the basic claim (that cry…

Okay, provide some evidence for that claim. Because again, that's the claim of "Well crypto is doing amazing things" but it needs actual evidence. I know it theoretically could happen if you ignore all the glaring problems in practice. But does it actually happen? What has cyrpto provided that you can't provide via Paypal or bank transfer? Hell - here's a paypal address for a bunch of guys who want to buy Ukraine a f…

What has crypto provided: If paypal/bank transfers decide to exit that space, no more donations. Not the case with crypto. Also, weapons are getting bought directly with crypto in UKR, so your last point is not not necessarily true[0].

Question of course is has such exiting happened. Have payment processors threatened or actually left a space over somewhat subjective judgements? Answer in this case in recent years is yes: Assange, OnlyFans, Canadian Truckers, etc.

Stating the above doesn't imply I support the above 3/etc., but it does show to me that based on which way the wind is blowing, payment censorship can and does happen. Assuming a payment processor/corporation will always be on your side ideologically isn't a great call. Popular German firms today were popular German firms under National Socialism. Or, are you going to tell me there isn't a single successful and well-regarded corporation today that wasn't enforcing segregation happily 60 years ago?

I'm also not implying necessarily an equivalence in present day payment censorship to segregation. But I certainly standby that hedging your bets on your ideological views always aligning to corporate/govt entities and as such you don't have to consider payment censorship is a bad call. Crypto isn't perfect, and 999/1000 times I'll use a credit card, but its an important alternative.

What happens when Climate Action groups get fed up, really start turning the screws on Exxon, and also rely on corporate infra (GSuite, Slack, Paypal) for running everything internally? Who does a payment processor side with - climate action groups perhaps doing not nice activism, or their ~largest client (ignore details here for a second) Exxon who is fed up with the activism and starts turning screws back? This has already happened with communications platforms via warehouse unionization, and QED Signal is pretty widely used. Are you saying it won't happen with payments, or there is at least a risk worth acknowledging?

[0] https://time.com/6155209/ukraine-crypto/#:~:text=Ukraine%20h....

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#619

Post by reedjosh »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #601
reedjosh wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TIPs [1] come damn close TBH I don't know too much about them, but from what I'm seeing they're something like 1-2% interest. Inflation is > 8% right now per the government's own numbers https://www.bankrate.com/rates/interest-rates/treasury/ Am I mistaken? If so, I'd love to find a way to get guaranteed inflation beating returns.

> from what I'm seeing they're something like 1-2% interest. Inflation is > 8% right now per the government's own numbers That's a real yield. TIPs "adjust in price (principal amount) in order to maintain their real value" when inflation rises [1]. So if you buy a TIP for 100 that pays 2%, and inflation is 8%, the face value is adjusted to 108 and you get a 2.16 coupon. (Super simplified, to the point of being techni…

Thanks! I'll do some more research.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#620

Post by dogman144 »

Traster wrote: post #435
lui8906 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, provide some evidence for that claim. Because again, that's the claim of "Well crypto is doing amazing things" but it needs actual evidence. I know it theoretically could happen if you ignore all the glaring problems in practice. But does it actually happen? Which part of the claim are you refuting here? It is a fact that one can send very large sums of value between two addresses for a trivial transaction fe…

>one can send very large sums of value between two addresses This is not the same thing as sending money to Ukraine. If I send money between two addresses, I've just sent money between 2 addresses. > This value can be swapped across other tokens with low slippage in the millions (denominated in USD). But not to actually buy anything in Ukraine. To do that you have to find someone with Fiat. As you see with all the ot…

Ukraine had a govt address(es), so it was sending money to Ukraine per the account ownership model.

No, weapons are getting purchased in crypto in Ukraine.

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