Here's a prediction: Crypto is the next cancer from cigarettes, lead in fuel, climate change etc. The thing linking them is that even after it was widely acknowledged these were a net negative, they continued for a long, long time. Harming a wide group of people uneccesarily and massively profiting a select few. If I'm correct, the key indicator will be right wing governments around the globe being paid off to allow…
Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
31–40 of 149 posts
Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
#32Here's a prediction: Crypto is the next cancer from cigarettes, lead in fuel, climate change etc. The thing linking them is that even after it was widely acknowledged these were a net negative, they continued for a long, long time. Harming a wide group of people uneccesarily and massively profiting a select few. If I'm correct, the key indicator will be right wing governments around the globe being paid off to allow…
>If I'm correct, the key indicator will be right wing governments around the globe being paid off to allow the abuse to continue and their media going on the attack.
>Communist computer scientists, what do they know? They just want to keep the poor white men from getting rich because of political correctness etc. etc. Anyone seen any signs of that yet?
This strikes me as a rather wrong-headed take. What I've actually seen happen is several statist types propose creating a centralized (government controlled and monitored) digital currency in response to the rise of cryptocurrencies. China's e-CNY is the most obvious example, but there have been similar proposals from politicians and bureaucrats in the US, EU, and elsewhere, with the idea being that the governments can track financial activity even more closely than they already can.
FWIW, I'm pretty anti-crypto and think there are better alternatives for 99% of the things I see crypto proposed as a solution for.
Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Boy, that escalated quickly... Can we not critique content in submissions now?
Yes, he certainly escalated to mournful self pity and casting himself as the victim then pivoted to shilling quite quickly, I agree. Of course you can critique: that's exactly what you and I are both doing right now. You don't have to ask me for permission.
Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
#34Serious question for those of you who want to regulate Bitcoin out of existence:
What do you propose to do with those of us who, despite your attestations of its uselessness, have deemed it useful and purchased it with our hard earned money? For example, MSTR has ~$4 billion in Bitcoin on its balance sheet. It purchased it on the free market for reasons that were valid to it. However, you disagree and want to step in and do something about it. What do you propose to do about entities like MSTR?
Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
#35Serious question for those of you who want to regulate Bitcoin out of existence: What do you propose to do with those of us who, despite your attestations of its uselessness, have deemed it useful and purchased it with our hard earned money? For example, MSTR has ~$4 billion in Bitcoin on its balance sheet. It purchased it on the free market for reasons that were valid to it. However, you disagree and want to step in…
Bankruptcy
Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, that seems like a reasonable demand? We all know that most politicians have a shaky understanding of technology at best, and corporate lobbyists fill that information void with a narrative that advantages their employers. This is a neutral (as in not on crypto payroll) group of technologists saying “hey, we understand this stuff at a technical and/or economic level, we’re willing to talk too”. The signatures…
They're aren't all neutral, many of them are working on private blockchain technologies. For example, anyone working for Meta is on the crypto payroll - just not the Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc ones. My pointed questions are: 1) What are their specific concerns/demands? 2) Who specifically are politicians supposed to be listening to? 3) Why aren't the government appointed CBDC research groups already informing politicians?…
[deleted]
Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
#37The letter has some good and bad.
Good because it advocates for more regulation and consumer protection, and points out some obvious concerns with crypto like energy expenditure in proof of work.
Bad because the letter misrepresents the technology and paints privacy as a purely criminal behavior, and suggests the entire technology sector is useless.
> 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.
Imagine this argument being applied to End-to-End Encryption. "Most chat messaging apps are a disaster for user privacy; except the ones that are privacy-focused and use E2EE, and those are a gift to terrorists and criminals."
There's lots of privacy preserving crypto tech: Monero, ZCash, TornadoCash, and soon Aztec. zk-SNARK and zk-STARK are recent advances here that dramatically change the future landscape. You can also use CEX as a mixer to provide soft anonymity, allowing regulators and IRS to track your finances, without revealing your accounts to the whole world.
> Blockchain technology cannot, and will not, have transaction reversal mechanisms because they are antithetical to its base design.
This is false. There is a lot of blockchain technology that has transaction reversal mechanisms. USDC and other centralized stablecoins can freeze and mint tokens. Optimistic rollups are built around the very design of transaction reversal. Many NFT projects give the contract owner ability to mint, burn, change metadata, and so on. The original DAO itself was drained and funds reverted by a hard fork, and yet ETH and ETC still continue to exist just fine.
> By its very design, blockchain technology, specifically so-called "public blockchains", are poorly suited for just about every purpose currently touted as a present or potential source of public benefit.
Bah! Perhaps some of the authors would like to shill their own private blockchain companies (Adjoint Inc).
Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, that seems like a reasonable demand? We all know that most politicians have a shaky understanding of technology at best, and corporate lobbyists fill that information void with a narrative that advantages their employers. This is a neutral (as in not on crypto payroll) group of technologists saying “hey, we understand this stuff at a technical and/or economic level, we’re willing to talk too”. The signatures…
They're aren't all neutral, many of them are working on private blockchain technologies. For example, anyone working for Meta is on the crypto payroll - just not the Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc ones. My pointed questions are: 1) What are their specific concerns/demands? 2) Who specifically are politicians supposed to be listening to? 3) Why aren't the government appointed CBDC research groups already informing politicians?…
[deleted]
Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you considered the possibility that maybe he's simply advocating for a customer service representative who can reset your password in the sql database after verifying your identity, instead of going back on everything he's ever said and repudiating his life's work as a well respected security professional, and that perhaps Bruce Schneier is not just an unethical hack like the crypto bros he's criticizing? https:…
I am allowed to be disappointed in his advocacy of a position that undermines his life’s work. That his major accomplishments are cryptographic in nature is precisely why I called him out specifically, and not some random hack. Don, sometimes people can find themselves advocating for policies that accidentally undermine their long held positions in other areas. Without the man coming on HN and explaining his apparent…
It’s only your weird interpretation of what he’s saying that undermines this though.
He’s saying systems where you could lose your life savings to a forgotten password are unsafe. This is clearly true. He hasn’t proposed a specific solution but I think it’s far more likely he believes in “use other systems” than inserting a back door into the system he’s identified as fatally flawed.
Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy
#40Serious question for those of you who want to regulate Bitcoin out of existence: What do you propose to do with those of us who, despite your attestations of its uselessness, have deemed it useful and purchased it with our hard earned money? For example, MSTR has ~$4 billion in Bitcoin on its balance sheet. It purchased it on the free market for reasons that were valid to it. However, you disagree and want to step in…
Most bitcoin regulation scenarios would just be an ordinary investment risk, in some senses. If you invest in commercial property and then changes in the tax treatment of real estate mean that the value of your investment falls then that just sucks for you. I can't see that it's any different if, for example, the US Government started demanding annual declarations of crypto wallets on tax returns and started taxing capital swings as income.
If cryptocurrency is actually confiscated I'm sure that the US government at least will be obliged to pay out. Given the volatility of bitcoin (and the extent to which it will likely drop if governments come out full square against it) I'm sure there will be legal arguments about what the compensation for the taking should be. But if the use-case is largely either (1) speculation or (2) hiding things from governments and governments limit the upside of (1) with tax or structural changes and crack down on (2) I don't think anyone's going to make the bag-holders whole in case of regulation rather than confiscation. Bigger companies than ~$4bn have gone bankrupt by misreading their market risks before.