Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

financialinclusion.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 57 posts

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#31

Post by giaour »

once_inc wrote: post #8
vesinisa wrote: post #3

What's next? Letters in support by money launderers, drug cartels, online scammers, ransomware authors and pedophiles? El Salvador made it a government policy to adopt Bitcoin as an official currency and it is not going too well - it remains a novelty used by just a few privileged individuals. As these technologies are not viable for everyday use, a country with unstable local currency will in reality start using USD…

Check Alex Gladstein(one of the writers)'s weblog and check some of his articles. Bitcoin is inherently a-political and inclusive; it doesn't know who is doing what with bitcoin at the protocol level. Yes, this allows scammers et al to do bad things, but it also makes financial inclusion possible for most of the people currently gatekept away from financial inclusion. El Salvador is frontrunning, and acceptance isn't…

> Bitcoin is inherently a-political

I would disagree pretty strongly with this. Bitcoin has been aggressively libertarian from the start, and its popularity is due in part to the political arguments made in support of its use ("monetary policy bad," "code is law," etc).

This isn't necessarily of all cryptocurrency, but Bitcoin in particular has always been part of a particular political agenda.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#32

Post by solar-ice »

once_inc wrote: post #23
solar-ice wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is not "inherently apolitical"; it encodes several political ideas, including that unregulated capitalism is a good thinng and the environment is not worth worrying about. There's also some more specific ones, even if you generally agree with those; that a deflationary currency is a good thing, for example. "Apolitical" in this context seems to mean "I agree with its politics".

No, bitcoin doesn't care what you do with it. It is regulated by the economic majority. If everyone agrees that we want regulations on transactions, it can be added to the protocol; I suggest you create a BIP for it, and see what the response is. Also; the environment not being worth worrying about is not a political idea that Bitcoin encodes; it simply uses Proof of Work because there is no alternative to it that ha…

> Apolitical means it doesn't enforce you to do things because politics demands it of you; only because the protocol enforces it.

Why is the protocol defined like it is? Could it be... politics, perhaps? What kind of things does the protocol encourage, and what kind of things does the protocol discourage? Could there be a political ideology described in those things?

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#33

Post by danuker »

once_inc wrote: post #22
danuker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the wasteful proof-of-work securing upwards of $1M per hour is destructive - https://www.crypto51.app/ . It can be solved through Pigovian taxes on externalities (carbon emission mainly). But it should apply to all industry fairly, and our energy-industry lobbyists will hear none of it.

Please note that Bitcoin is considerably more carbon emission friendly than most other industries. Also note that PoW is deliberately wasteful as feature.

I agree that PoW is wasteful by design. But it should be tuneable - it should somehow target securing, say, $X/hour, and not more, because it's even more wasteful.

This could be implemented through an oracle that gives the current price to the protocol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_oracle

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#34

Post by vesinisa »

once_inc wrote: post #20
vesinisa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin's resource use, comparable to a mid-size country: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ Lacking viable uses outside of the criminal underworld and speculation, this is wasted energy. And it will only keep growing unless regulators step in.

There is a vast amount of legitimate use on the Bitcoin blockchain. Even companies that have a clear incentive to find criminal use of Bitcoin can only find anywhere between 1 and 4% possibly criminial transaction use. That is considerably lower than estimates for the USD or EUR. Comparing the energy usage of a single global industry to a mid-size country is dumb. All of this fud originates from digiconomist, which a…

Your source does not show how the numbers on Bitcoin's energy use published by Digiconomist are "garbage" and "FUD". In fact, the energy use of these blockchain networks is subject of multiple academic studies, like [1], [2] and [3] (just the top of a quick google). They all come to the same conclusion: these networks require mind-boggling amounts of electricity to operate by design. It is not garbage - it's an inherent fact of cryptocurrency.

The article you linked instead makes the argument that the Bitcoin network will use less energy in the future, because there will be less coins issued for miners. This argument is easily refuted by that the risk of a 50% attack will always require defending the network with stupid large electricity use. The verifier incentives will just shift from mining proceeds to even more ridiculous transaction costs.

[1]: https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index

[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22146...

[3]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S18773...

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#35

Post by giaour »

once_inc wrote: post #23
solar-ice wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is not "inherently apolitical"; it encodes several political ideas, including that unregulated capitalism is a good thinng and the environment is not worth worrying about. There's also some more specific ones, even if you generally agree with those; that a deflationary currency is a good thing, for example. "Apolitical" in this context seems to mean "I agree with its politics".

No, bitcoin doesn't care what you do with it. It is regulated by the economic majority. If everyone agrees that we want regulations on transactions, it can be added to the protocol; I suggest you create a BIP for it, and see what the response is. Also; the environment not being worth worrying about is not a political idea that Bitcoin encodes; it simply uses Proof of Work because there is no alternative to it that ha…

> Bitcoin isn't a deflationary currency. It's emission is deflating to 0, after which it is neither inflationary nor deflationary.

There is no mechanism to replace coins to which private keys have been lost. There are most certainly deflationary pressures that are being compensated for by mining new BTC, but eventually new coin minting will happen less often than coin access loss, leading to an overall deflationary system.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#36

Post by jfk13 »

once_inc wrote: post #20
vesinisa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin's resource use, comparable to a mid-size country: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ Lacking viable uses outside of the criminal underworld and speculation, this is wasted energy. And it will only keep growing unless regulators step in.

There is a vast amount of legitimate use on the Bitcoin blockchain. Even companies that have a clear incentive to find criminal use of Bitcoin can only find anywhere between 1 and 4% possibly criminial transaction use. That is considerably lower than estimates for the USD or EUR. Comparing the energy usage of a single global industry to a mid-size country is dumb. All of this fud originates from digiconomist, which a…

> There is a vast amount of legitimate use on the Bitcoin blockchain

What kind of legitimate use? If the answer primarily boils down to "cryptocurrency speculation, wash trading, and attempts at get-rich-quick schemes", I won't be all that impressed.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#37

Post by Cederfjard »

once_inc wrote: post #20
vesinisa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin's resource use, comparable to a mid-size country: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ Lacking viable uses outside of the criminal underworld and speculation, this is wasted energy. And it will only keep growing unless regulators step in.

There is a vast amount of legitimate use on the Bitcoin blockchain. Even companies that have a clear incentive to find criminal use of Bitcoin can only find anywhere between 1 and 4% possibly criminial transaction use. That is considerably lower than estimates for the USD or EUR. Comparing the energy usage of a single global industry to a mid-size country is dumb. All of this fud originates from digiconomist, which a…

> > Lacking viable uses outside of the criminal underworld and speculation

You gave numbers for criminal activity, but the original claim also included speculation. If you take that into account as well, how much do you have left then? If Bitcoin remains primarily a vehicle for transferring wealth from new investors to incumbent holders by building hype, is it really a benefit to society?

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#38

Post by golergka »

astoor wrote: post #5

The problem is that any "legitimate" use case is negated many times over by all the illegitimate ones. It would be like saying let's legitimise terrorism because sometimes the terrorists might (just might) be freedom fighters, when in actual fact terrorism on the whole does way more harm than it does good. In the opening example, sure some money may have got through to Ukraine via cryptocurrency (although some was st…

Depends on what you consider legitimate or not. Many proponents of crypto hold the view that taxation is theft by definition, and any tax evasion, therefore, not only legitimate, but also a moral obligation.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#39

Post by 300bps »

danuker wrote: post #26
astoor wrote: post #5

The problem is that any "legitimate" use case is negated many times over by all the illegitimate ones. It would be like saying let's legitimise terrorism because sometimes the terrorists might (just might) be freedom fighters, when in actual fact terrorism on the whole does way more harm than it does good. In the opening example, sure some money may have got through to Ukraine via cryptocurrency (although some was st…

The way I use Bitcoin is as a personal defense against hyperinflation. I find this very valuable. Also, apparently people pay a lot of transaction fees, therefore the network must be offering at least that much in benefits. What examples of terrorism or other illegitimate uses have been financed through Bitcoin? How much damage have they caused to society?

Without Bitcoin, Ransomware would essentially not exist. With Bitcoin, 37% of global organizations said they were the victim of some form of ransomware attack in 2021.

Even more statistics here:

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/feature/Ransomware...

Beyond that, there are plenty of inflation hedges that don't require massive damage to the environment. Look into Series I Savings Bonds from TreasuryDirect.gov. Currently yielding 9.6%. There's gold, silver, productive assets like stocks and rental properties.

I think Cryptocurrency is one of the worst hedges against inflation anyone could come up with.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Crypto Policy

#40

Post by danuker »

ejb999 wrote: post #29
once_inc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making blanket statements without backing it up with evidence. Even if you do back it up with evidence, it will be anecdotal, since Russia has been actively working on crypto infrastructure and reserves, while Ukraine hasn't. Also, you are comparing individual Ukranians with the Russian state. Also; Bitcoin isn't net negative for society and environment. Another blanket statement given without any form of evi…

I am going to criticize your blanket statements without backing it up with evidence by making other blanket statements also not backed up with any evidence.

They did provide some evidence after my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31692813
Post reply on HN