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SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

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Re: SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which boils down to the fact that it's entirely rational to be negative about crypto. Crypto is interesting as a kind of libertarian pseudo-oppositional secular religion that flatters itself that it's edgy and non-conformist but is actually dead-centre mainstream in a capitalist culture with consistent shades of criminality dedicated to making money at any cost.

And that applies to everything except for Bitcoin. Otherwise we’re just telling fairytales.

No, the meme goes: "Even Bitcoin?" / "Especially Bitcoin".

The tech is interesting, it was still embedded in and made to promote an ideology that's frankly just immature fantasy. You can't separate the symbol from the religion it was born in, and born to promote.

Re: SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that it can somehow "escape" the legal frameworks of human beings And yet multibillion dollar companies whose entire business is illegally running hotels or taxis get nowhere near the vitriol? Airbnb clearly causes harm for locals in popular tourist cities.

You must not have been reading HN for the past two years then.

Make it at least five; I've been calling Uber and AirBnB all kinds of things for at least as long, and I was neither the first nor the most vocal one here.

Re: SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

#193

The quality of discourse at this stage of the thread (2 hours, 20 comments) is incredibly disappointing. Hn usually has high quality discussions. What is it about crypto that causes us to lose our minds?

There are a great many people who chose to see crypto as an existential threat to the earth because proof of work requires energy and energy is derived from fossil fuels and therefore any expansion of its use exacerbates climate change. Proponents of crypto are frequently corralled into a “climate change denier” corner by this faction. The other large contingent, myself included, sees the never ending scams, shady de…

> There are a great many people who chose to see crypto as an existential threat to the earth because proof of work requires energy and energy is derived from fossil fuels and therefore any expansion of its use exacerbates climate change. (...)

Don't miss: and energy costs grow much faster than linear with that expansion, and the incentives are all wrong - with traditional financial systems, energy expenditure is waste, upkeep, something you need to pay but want to minimize; with PoW, it's value generation and something everyone wants to maximize.

Long-term, fossil fuels don't even matter here. Even with 100% clean energy derived from a Dyson sphere or something, it's still pure waste of energy, done for the sake of not having to ever trust each other. What crypto people missed is that trust is a feature, not a bug.

Re: SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anyone who wants to voice a reasonable opinion is likely to avoid doing so in order to not get piled on with downvotes, hatred, etc I think refraining from posting due to fear of downvotes is a massive disservice to HN. People should be exposed to views of all kinds. It wouldn't be very interesting if we all agreed. I actively try to post and reply even when downvoted. In the course of doing so I often discover tha…

Downvoting tells you, that this kind of comment is not something the community wants. Of course, I'll avoid posting such comments. I'm not going to evangelize for seeing other positions, when the majority seems to prefer one-sided views.

Not at all. It tells you someone didn't like your post. Don't think it's possible to infer anything other than that. Many times I've had posts oscillate between negative and positive scores. It's very likely there are people who agree out there.

Re: SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

#195
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or the US government is just afraid of not being able to easily track all monetary transactions legal and illegal. Big brother needs to see all in order to control all.

crypto makes things much easier to track

Not all crypto is created equal. Monero is pretty much the state of the art for private electronic money.

Re: SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

#196
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo, it's the opposite. I just think HN's anti-crypto sentiment just hows how "normie" this community is.

Why do you think that the people that understand the technology generally have a negative view about it? Are "normies" just dense? Or do you think everything is based on jealousy? What community that wouldn't have confirmation bias would understand crypto currency better? And what are their thoughts on it?

I thought I understood the technology after reading the Bitcoin paper, but later realized that there's a lot more to it. See the ZeroCash/Zexe papers, ZK rollups, optimistic rollups, BFT literature like HotStuff, or scaling research like Block-STM.

Some HNers just aren't that interested in the use cases, which is fine. But others tend to critique decades-old technology, and don't seem interested in learning about modern solutions, since their minds are made up.

Re: SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoting tells you, that this kind of comment is not something the community wants. Of course, I'll avoid posting such comments. I'm not going to evangelize for seeing other positions, when the majority seems to prefer one-sided views.

Not at all. It tells you someone didn't like your post. Don't think it's possible to infer anything other than that. Many times I've had posts oscillate between negative and positive scores. It's very likely there are people who agree out there.

When certain comments get consistently downvoted, that’s not someone not liking your post.

Re: SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that the people that understand the technology generally have a negative view about it? Are "normies" just dense? Or do you think everything is based on jealousy? What community that wouldn't have confirmation bias would understand crypto currency better? And what are their thoughts on it?

I thought I understood the technology after reading the Bitcoin paper, but later realized that there's a lot more to it. See the ZeroCash/Zexe papers, ZK rollups, optimistic rollups, BFT literature like HotStuff, or scaling research like Block-STM. Some HNers just aren't that interested in the use cases, which is fine. But others tend to critique decades-old technology, and don't seem interested in learning about mod…

Yea, I'm not sure what proportion of the negative camp is negative because of issues in early iterations like power consumption used by bitcoin which is solved with newer tech and what proportion is negative due to the use cases themselves. I do think that a lot of the tech itself is pretty elegant but I'm less certain on whether it's the right solution. I also think the fact that many in the pro camp have investments in crypto currency can muddy the waters some and it's not clear whether a person in this camp believes it can be a proper technology that can benefit humanity or if they like it because it's a historically high growth investment where they are trying to make money currently.

At least for me, my main concerns are with the seemingly short sighted libertarian implementations that don't take into account the bad actors of this world. I think there are definitely some issues with our current financial system, but I think its like democracy in that it seems to be the least bad solution. I wouldn't want to live in a world without regulation of our financial markets. It is too easy for people to defraud the little guy and for criminal organizations to prosper. Do you think there are solutions in newer technologies for those concerns?

I feel like both sides should be able to agree that there are pros and cons to the different technologies and use cases, that there are some that are better for the pro camp and less negative for the against camp. Maybe pushing harder to make the cream rise to the top could make these conversations less tribal and divisive?

Re: SEC asks for emergency order to freeze Binance US assets anywhere in the world

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what "discourse" you are talking about. I've been reading about crypto on hacker news before bitcoin hit one dollar. Other than r/buttcoin and yahoo groups, this site has been one of the most anti crypto places you can visit, to the point of being an absolute embarrassment. It has been a lesson to me about humans and intelligence since that time. Still love the place though, but I learned never to let co…

Could it be that a tech savvy community like hn largely understands the implications of, the actual utility of and can see through the hype of crypto currency? I would put my money on hn understanding crypto currency over any other community. It should probably be a red flag to true believers that hn is generally suspicious of it.

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