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Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

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Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#181

Post by tromp »

hesk wrote: post #164
tromp wrote: post #20

> Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers. Is this arguing both for and against the need for financial privacy at the same time?

No, they are arguing against extreme positions. With public ledgers like Bitcoin, everybody can reconstruct your financial history if they know your wallet address. With privacy-focused blockchains, nobody can do that. However, with a bank, your financial history is not publicly available but the bank still can perform checks to guard against money laundering.

> With privacy-focused blockchains, nobody can do that.

There are several different levels of privacy [1]. Some hide amounts and wallet addresses, while still exposing the transaction graph.

[1] https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#182

Post by jcbrand »

mjburgess wrote: post #147
jcbrand wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issuance of Bitcoin is about as fair as one could hope for, for a non-state currency. Satoshi advertised the currency and the start of mining beforehand, to give other people a chance to participate. There was no pre-mine. In the early days there were faucets that handed out bitcoins for free. Due to the boom and bust cycle of Bitcoin, many of the early holders cashed out instead of holding all the way to untold…

I believe it's estimated c. 10 individuals own c. 50% of Ethereum. A deflationary asset, like land for example, is not a good currency. As a powerbase, it's called feudalism. And that's not a good politics. Power in crypto is radically centralised to the owners , not the users (unlike democracies). One has to imagine people like you know this, or feel it, in the lust for the value increases to your own stake: that is…

I believe it's estimated c. 10 individuals own c. 50% of Ethereum.

I wrote about Bitcoin, not Ethereum. There are lots of Bitcoiners that think Ethereum is a scam due to the large premine and larping as a decentralized project.

Either way, you're playing the role of a daemon here, whether you realise it or not.

And the devil you are putting on the thrown are a handful of billionaires with power and control executed by a machine.

The fact that you have to start using flowery religious language of condemnation appears to me an indication that you're running out of logical arguments.

Thankfully bitcoin has no army

That's one of its features, which proponents value.

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#183

Post by RandomLensman »

forum_ghost wrote: post #176
RandomLensman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do the citizens of those countries using those rules mostly object to those rules? Do Germans or Italians want different anti-money laundering standards, for example?

> Do Germans or Italians want different anti-money laundering standards, for example? Yes. Germany is the highest user of cash in G-7 and has radically different views on privacy from other G-7/G-20 country, doesn't even have a centralized citizen register. They have very little in common with Italy on many aspects, and certainly standards would vary as well. But what does it matter? You think supra-national organiza…

Show me the survey on AML, please.

Edit: German citizens are all properly in registers, more local, but very registered nonetheless. You need to have government ID by law. Plus there is a national tax ID.

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#184

Post by RandomLensman »

forum_ghost wrote: post #175
RandomLensman wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, organizations do (and should exert) pressure when they give something, but is it done against the will of the citizens (i.e., government agreeing to things the citizens don't want. A vocal opposition is not enough to claim that)? A country is free to isolate itself etc. if the people there are happy with it.

can you find people in Cyprus that were enthusiastic about losing money so that the government can pay bankers' gambling debts? a 2-3 verified examples will suffice, tia.

Depends what the alternative would have been... lose all deposits?

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#185

Post by forum_ghost »

RandomLensman wrote: post #184
forum_ghost wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you find people in Cyprus that were enthusiastic about losing money so that the government can pay bankers' gambling debts? a 2-3 verified examples will suffice, tia.

Depends what the alternative would have been... lose all deposits?

You are not aware at all how Cyprus went down, are you?

The banking holiday was declared in Cyprus, banks and ATMs shutodnw, everyone local is locked out completely, meanwhile deposits were drained by the rich international depositors thru oversease branches that remained open.

Why do you love defending the indefensible so much? Take the L and move on.

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#186

Post by RandomLensman »

forum_ghost wrote: post #185
RandomLensman wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what the alternative would have been... lose all deposits?

You are not aware at all how Cyprus went down, are you? The banking holiday was declared in Cyprus, banks and ATMs shutodnw, everyone local is locked out completely, meanwhile deposits were drained by the rich international depositors thru oversease branches that remained open. Why do you love defending the indefensible so much? Take the L and move on.

How would you know what I know about what happened in Cyprus?

Was what happened the best possible result - probably not. But I would say that goes for all European responses to the financial crisis then - but that is not the same as being totally indefensible. The question has to be: what outcome could we have now that would be better and what should we have done then and could that have been done? And with Cyprus one issue is the smallness of the economy, which meant what a US might be able to do might not be possible for them on their own.

EDIT: and one of the issues in Europe certainly seems to be that broad, untailored measures are not very popular even though ex-post they appear to perform better - so popular opinion does matter

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#187

Post by Zerverus »

mjburgess wrote: post #57
jcbrand wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, the people who live under dictators, despots, cartels and organized criminals often more easily realise the benefits of money that cannot be censored, cannot have its issuance be manipulated, is permissionless and very difficult to confiscate. (Talking about Bitcoin here. Not all crypto applies)

Uhuh... and if the state, with its monopoly on violence, wishes to ban these currencies? D'you think an "ordinary person" is going to risk being thrown in a gulag? The problem with all these tech utopians is they think the relevant problems are technical: we've solved trust! (Between machines negotiating over a network). We've solved currency manipulation (oh its not a currency, it's an asset; and oh it can be manipu…

Moreso ordinary people using fully traceable digital money in these situations is a special kind of stupid

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#188

Post by AbrahamParangi »

mfitzp wrote: post #155
martialg wrote: post #116

So - I love thoughtful criticism. My ego doesn’t, but I generally find it very valuable. This letter is honestly not thoughtful criticism. It reads like a group of academics and specialists annoyed they were too early to profit from a technology they spent a lot of time thinking about esoterically and avoids specificity in…well… any meaningful way. It also makes no effort to segment the space. If a critical letter cr…

> annoyed they were too early to profit "na na sore loser" is quite the angle for someone bemoaning a lack of "thoughtful criticism." Do try and grow up.

One does have to wonder if the level of vitriol around crypto would be quite so high if it was merely popular and had not made some people a lot of money.

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#189

Post by roenxi »

RandomLensman wrote: post #28
roenxi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody likes homelessness. How is democracy going at putting an end to it? The list of similar examples is endless; democracies are forced to put up with a lot of stuff that nobody likes when everything that is tried turns out not to work. Democracy is a very powerful technology, no argument there. But it can't overcome technical realities. It is better at adjusting to them and giving up when the cost gets too high.

Nobody likes homelessness, but do people care about it enough to vote for people with an agenda for it or pay for it to change? And no, technologies do not freely diffuse through societies, some stuff remains pretty firmly in highly policed boxes when the cost of letting it run free is deemed to high (can you just go buy nuclear weapons, for example?). Who is to say that the cost of banning crypto would be too high -…

> ...do people care about it enough to vote for people with an agenda for it...

Yep. Happens regularly.

> ...or pay for it to change?

And nope, certainly not. But crypto will fall into the same category - stamping out the ability to do the - rather simple - necessary maths would require horrific compromises that are simply not supportable. This technology has radically altered the power balance of moving funds around. Sure that isn't sunshine and roses, but at least we don't have to worry about so much about asset freezes.

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#190

Post by forum_ghost »

RandomLensman wrote: post #186
forum_ghost wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not aware at all how Cyprus went down, are you? The banking holiday was declared in Cyprus, banks and ATMs shutodnw, everyone local is locked out completely, meanwhile deposits were drained by the rich international depositors thru oversease branches that remained open. Why do you love defending the indefensible so much? Take the L and move on.

How would you know what I know about what happened in Cyprus? Was what happened the best possible result - probably not. But I would say that goes for all European responses to the financial crisis then - but that is not the same as being totally indefensible. The question has to be: what outcome could we have now that would be better and what should we have done then and could that have been done? And with Cyprus on…

Do you think Germany should use more cash or less?
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