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Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

concerned.tech

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Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#41

Post by TimPC »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #28
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #24

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…

Proof of Work and Bitcoin may be generally trash, and unless they evolve they will eventually crash and burn, but "crypto" on the whole encompasses a wide range of good and bad applications. Here's a prediction: Over the next decade or two, scalable proof of stake crypto currency networks and blockchain-based systems will probably be used as base settlement layers for a growing portion of digital payments, disrupting…

This world would suck for the same reason I don’t use debit to pay for things from untrusted merchants. Credit cards provide an incredible security layer in transaction reversibility that allows you to transact with unknown merchants. Internet payments doesn’t work without it. What cryptocurrency is going to solve this problem?

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#42

Post by rout39574 »

roenxi wrote: post #11
pavlov wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Obviously the more potential someone sees the more they will be involved” This sentence summarizes why crypto is so peculiar. It’s all about belief in some potential, not utility or returns. And you’re supposed to get “involved”. When you buy a stock or a bond or a derivative or a currency hedge, it doesn’t usually become a way of life. But crypto isn’t a practical financial product so much as a club membership. B…

People can (and have) said the same thing about gold for thousands of years. The evidence is in, cryptocurrency is some sort of asset. It is unclear how big the crypto market is, but at this point it seems a safe bet after the last decade that there there is enough interest to sustain a billion dollar market in cryptocurrency even under the most pessimistic of scenarios. It is probably going to be quite a bit bigger.…

It's an asset like a baseball card or a beanie baby.

Notably less asset-like than e.g. MTG cards, with which you can at least play a game.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#43

Post by gjm11 »

rvz wrote: post #9

I can only predict that both the people signing this letter and the crypto maximalists are going to be very disappointed that this will somehow be the end of all cryptocurrencies or the full adoption and dismantling of the current system with one cryptocoin being a reserve currency. An example of such is where the critics were screaming over the so-called NY bill on 'banning' of PoW [0], but it turns out that not onl…

A key premise of this comment -- that the "concerned.tech" open letter only complains about public blockchains (with the insinuation being that some of the people involved are only doing that because their own private-blockchain companies are threatened by public blockchains) -- seems to be false.

Almost everything the open letter says about blockchains is neutral on public versus private. There are two exceptions. (1) They say that public blockchains specifically are a privacy disaster, which seems fair enough since this genuinely is a difference between public and private blockchains. (2) One paragraph refers to "blockchain technology, specifically so-called "public blockchains". (The paragraph suggests that advocates of such technology have "latched onto concepts such as financial inclusion and data transparency", which so far as I know is in fact true of public blockchains and not true of private ones.)

You keep talking about "the folks at Adjoint" etc., but it looks to me as if Adjoint have simply gone out of business. E.g., their website no longer exists. This seems to me like sufficient explanation for why Seng and Diehl are no longer describing themselves as associated with Adjoint. Do you have evidence for whatever more sinister "long utopian conquest" scheme you're suggesting they're engaged in?

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#44

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

bitcoin_anon wrote: post #34

Serious 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…

I propose that they should restructure or go out of business, in the same way as a payday loan company might go out of business if it becomes impractical to offer usurious loans. I wouldn’t support anything like a Bitcoin Confiscation Act, but I fundamentally reject the idea that we can’t impose strict regulations on bad financial products without paying off the people who’ve invested in the unregulated version.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#45

Post by tzs »

politician wrote: post #15
DonHopkins wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Indirectly", huh? But not actually? Exactly how is he doing that?

> "The claims that the blockchain advocates make are not true," said Bruce Schneier. "It's not secure, it's not decentralised. Any system where you forget your password and you lose your life savings is not a safe system," he added. His tweet. He clearly identifies the problem as “lost password” implies disaster. This line of thinking is what the government uses to argue for back doors in cryptography software. The p…

That's a pretty unpersuasive argument.

By your argument anyone who is in favor or reducing child molestation is indirectly advocating Orwellian levels of state surveillance because some people that want such surveillance might use reducing child molestation as one of their arguments for it.

Similarly anyone that argues for reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change is indirectly advocating for a dystopian future where the government monitors everything we do at a fine grained level because people who do want such a dystopian future might use reducing greenhouse gas emissions as one of their justifications.

And what about building bike paths and walkable neighborhoods and public transit? Also indirectly promoting the surveillance state. They make it easier for people to live in dense car-free neighborhoods, and the denser the population the easier it is to surveil them. Dense housing means you neighbors hear more, and those neighbors might be informing the State. Public transit like buses and trains will have cameras (for safety they claim) but really just make it easier for them to track the movements of many people at once.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#46

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pmyteh wrote: post #40
bitcoin_anon wrote: post #34

Serious 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 c…

> is actually confiscated I'm sure that the US government at least will be obliged to pay out

To be clear, nobody is proposing confiscation. Once regulated, the value of these assets will presumably fall. People invested in casino bonds don't have a magic claim to restitution when gambling laws are updated.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#47

Post by tatertots1234 »

TimPC wrote: post #41
tatertots1234 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of Work and Bitcoin may be generally trash, and unless they evolve they will eventually crash and burn, but "crypto" on the whole encompasses a wide range of good and bad applications. Here's a prediction: Over the next decade or two, scalable proof of stake crypto currency networks and blockchain-based systems will probably be used as base settlement layers for a growing portion of digital payments, disrupting…

This world would suck for the same reason I don’t use debit to pay for things from untrusted merchants. Credit cards provide an incredible security layer in transaction reversibility that allows you to transact with unknown merchants. Internet payments doesn’t work without it. What cryptocurrency is going to solve this problem?

You realize that in many countries, credit cards are not common? People pay for things online with their debit card all the time.

Not all consumers need or want transaction reversibility, especially if they trust the contracts they are using, like depositing tokens into a DEX contract address that has not changed for several years - this has an extremely low counterparty risk.

A VISA- or PayPal-like reversible payment system is definitely possible to build on ETH as a rollup that takes a 1-5% fee of all transactions in order to cover cost of chargebacks. Many applications already support various forms of transaction reversal in their contracts, look at USDC.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#48

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

bitcoin_anon wrote: post #34

Serious 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…

> 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?

Penalize you for the collateral damage you caused. Bitcoin has consumed a lot of energy and greatly contributed to global warming. In addition, it has led to a bunch of fraud. In addition, it has made ransomware much more common.

The world is worse off because of Bitcoin and because people like you invested in it.

Bitcoin is the unleaded gas of financial schemes.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#49

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #37

The 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 d…

> imagine this argument being applied to End-to-End Encryption

There's a stark line between encrypted communication and encrypted money. If someone can't see the difference between those bits they shouldn't be handling other peoples' money.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#50

Post by criddell »

bitcoin_anon wrote: post #34

Serious 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…

What was done for those who held vast stores of tulips and tulip bulbs at the end of the tulip craze? As far as I know, very little.

Today companies at least have bankruptcy protection and corporate structures that should shield individuals.

That said, I think Bitcoin should face most of the same regulations that other securities face and in the end I think this will help Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. I don't think they should be regulated out of business.

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