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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

#111

Post by darawk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49
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.

It's certainly true that there's a line, but i've never heard a principled case for why they ought to be different. Money and speech are really not much different in terms of their power to organize problematic activity.

Certainly dragnet surveillance of speech could prevent a fair amount of terrorism, mass shootings, child pornography, etc. Dragnet surveillance of money flows accomplishes that too.

We just as a society decided it was worth it in the case of speech, but for some reason have decided the opposite in the case of money, except when that money is physical cash. None of this seems particularly well grounded in any kind of principled argument for one vs the other.

The benefits to anonymity and privacy are always highly diffuse and hard to observe, particularly in the moment. In another comment you ask for someone to enumerate the upsides, but i'd ask you the same question for speech privacy. What are the upsides to you being able to talk to your friends without the government listening in?

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#112

Post by rvz »

gjm11 wrote: post #43
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. (…

> A key premise of this comment ... seems to be false.

Seems false? I don't think you are even sure yourself.

> Almost everything the open letter says about blockchains is neutral on public versus private.

And is that why they didn't 'mention' stopping all 'blockchains' and they knowingly hid their ties to Adjoint Inc.? At least the Bitcoin maximalists are a bit honest at disclosing their associations and holdings when discussing such topics despite their delusional view of a cryptocurrency replacing the whole financial system.

> 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.

Ah yes, A 'privacy disaster' especially when no-one knows who the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin really is (unless you do somehow?) or how one can't easily figure out which address belongs to another random address or even when users can generate and have multiple addresses tied to them which makes it harder to trace. No different to tracing someone's IP addresses.

As with having 'privacy', it is also a double-edged sword as it is no different to why E2EE messengers like Signal is also a favourite and safe-haven for terrorists, extremists and scammers to hide and encrypt their communications. Does that mean we need to ban E2EE messengers?

> You keep talking about "the folks at Adjoint" etc...

So they are not at Adjoint? Is that what Crunchbase [0] and Companies House [1] says? Why is Stephen Diehl still CTO of Adjoint? [0] Their services of their private blockchain offering has shutdown but the company has not.

> Do you have evidence for whatever more sinister "long utopian conquest" scheme you're suggesting they're engaged in?

Evidence of what? Trying to ban all cryptocurrencies and projects just like those wanting to get rid of all non-free software completely? Have they all 100% fully gone yet? It's been like 37 years for the free-software movement to remove all non-free software and 13 years for cryptocurrencies to be totally stopped.

A very long utopian conquest indeed attempting to stop all of them.

[0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/adjoint-inc

[1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#114

Post by kevinpet »

Why is a letter about crypto referring to Fintech in general in the title? To me this shows a distinct lack of context and the view that these people think they know a lot about crypto, but know very little about finance and moreover the authors don't think they need to know much about finance. For example, the bald assertion that crypto has no real world use cases ignores the work happening within traditional finance to use blockchain for trade settlement.

Do I know everything about these topic? No, but I'm not writing a public letter soliciting signatures.

Am I a crypto shill? No, I think current crypto is a rip off, but this letter isn't a good argument for that. It's too light on details and doesn't acknowledge the areas where it could be valuable.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#115

Post by wmf »

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…

Realistically regulations don't take effect out of nowhere so people would have time to exit their positions. Of course the price would crash but that's going to happen anyway.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#116

Post by JumpCrisscross »

darawk wrote: post #111
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's certainly true that there's a line, but i've never heard a principled case for why they ought to be different. Money and speech are really not much different in terms of their power to organize problematic activity. Certainly dragnet surveillance of speech could prevent a fair amount of terrorism, mass shootings, child pornography, etc. Dragnet surveillance of money flows accomplishes that too. We just as a soci…

> i've never heard a principled case for why they ought to be different. Money and speech are really not much different in terms of their power to organize problematic activity

Speech is more primitive, and far less dependent on community efforts, than money. We can theorise working societies without money. I don't think we can do similarly without speech, at least not without changing what it means to be human.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#117

Post by ironlake »

bitcoin_anon wrote: post #106
pavlov wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to be the least convincing argument for not regulating Bitcoin: “What about this obscure enterprise software company that took billions of loans to buy Bitcoin? The company’s shareholders would be very sad if they had a margin call on those loans.” MSTR would presumably have to go back to selling software instead of speculating on unrelated assets. And everybody else can keep their Bitcoins too, it might jus…

Nice strawman.

>What do you propose to do about entities like MSTR?

He answered the question.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#118

Post by yks »

generationP wrote: post #74
toomuchtodo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More Venezuelans used Zelle with dollars than crypto. I was able to donate dollars without issue directly to the Ukrainian government. Crypto proponents trot out these edge suboptimal use cases as excuses to allow an entire global Ponzi scheme to continue, when the discussion should be “what mechanisms can be provided to support refugee value protection and transferring value to friendly nations under attack using ex…

Can a random Venezuelan sign up for Zelle? I needed an SSN if I recall correctly (in the US at least). And yes, I've donated to the Ukrainian military through https://uahelp.monobank.ua/ , with a normal credit card donation. But these are slightly different things. One is a catch-all army account, which will probably take its time to percolate the money to whomever the higher-ups think needs it most. The other are gr…

You can send money to any Ukrainian bank account via SWIFT. This includes all personal bank accounts. A recipient needs to lookup the bank's SWIFT code and IBAN which can be non-obvious but working with crypto is also non-obvious. Fees vary as do crypto fees. Crypto is not a qualitative improvement here, it's just one option out of many with pros/cons.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#119

Post by mistrial9 »

TimPC wrote: post #107
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast, vast majority of money laundering and illicit financial activity happens within the confines of the traditional banking system. Why don’t we start with regulating that properly first?

We’ve done a lot to regulate banking and when we catch banks engaging in problematic behaviours there are hefty fines attached. We’ve seen huge numbers of crypto schemes without any real consequences to those involved or those knowingly profiting off a scam. If we should be regulating all illicit financial activity the largest gap exists in cryptocurrencies not traditional banking.

references : cost of doing business; front-running; political nepotism; private equity; regulatory capture; machine-goes-brrrr

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#120

Post by generationP »

yks wrote: post #118
generationP wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can a random Venezuelan sign up for Zelle? I needed an SSN if I recall correctly (in the US at least). And yes, I've donated to the Ukrainian military through https://uahelp.monobank.ua/ , with a normal credit card donation. But these are slightly different things. One is a catch-all army account, which will probably take its time to percolate the money to whomever the higher-ups think needs it most. The other are gr…

You can send money to any Ukrainian bank account via SWIFT. This includes all personal bank accounts. A recipient needs to lookup the bank's SWIFT code and IBAN which can be non-obvious but working with crypto is also non-obvious. Fees vary as do crypto fees. Crypto is not a qualitative improvement here, it's just one option out of many with pros/cons.

For many Americans, SWIFT is harder than crypto. I don't think I can transfer via SWIFT without physically going to my bank here in the US.
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