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Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

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Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#481

Post by elzbardico »

ryan_lane wrote: post #295
nroets wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax evasion is rife: How many tradesmen fixing stuff around your house for cash will report that income on their return ? Governments can get most of their revenue with little economic distortion by taxing stuff where evasion is much harder: Fuel taxes and property taxes.

Tax evasion is people stealing from you, just in an indirect way. Just because some people already steal from us doesn't mean it's OK for other (richer) people to steal even more from us. You may believe there's a better way for the government to tax us, but that's not how the system works currently. Crypto being used for tax evasion is a good reason for it to be regulated out of existence.

Tax is the burden of the middle class.

If you are Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi, other rules apply to you, because they are the ones who write the rules or lobby for them.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#482

Post by EscapeFromNY »

lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

There are plenty of real world uses.

- https://time.com/5486673/bitcoin-venezuela-authoritarian/

- https://coincodecap.com/danish-reporters-in-ukraine-buy-used...

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644090

People from wealthy countries tend to reject the legitimacy of these uses because "my country is stable and could never have these problems", or "if buying food is illegal, you shouldn't buy food, you financial criminal", or "I have no trouble sending fiat money where I need to at the click of a button", but that doesn't mean everyone on the planet is in as fortunate a position as you. It's quite selfish to say a technology is useless unless it benefits you personally. I wish humanity as a species could rise above that level of selfishness. Crypto gets its value from being a system that continues working quietly and reliably in the background when other centralized systems falter or turn against their users. As long as it's still helping people, we should keep building it.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#483

Post by tomputer »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #476
lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

>I don't understand how... It's actually fairly simple. They're financially invested, one of the strongest biases of all.

Isn't that almost always the logical consequence once you understand how Bitcoin works and you believe it can actually work as a safe haven investment?

Those who believe it can not work are most probably not invested. Those who believe it can work are most probably invested.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#484

Post by codetrotter »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #470
codetrotter wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money of account (debits and credits on ledgers) have existed for 30,000 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money But a system that takes the concept of ledgers, and makes it tied to pseudonymous addresses instead of persons, is distributed across the world, resilient to tampering, and which gives its users control over their money, and which has been in use for 15 years is 1. “Not innovative”, and 2. Tha…

Beer has been a thing for ~5,000 years but we've only had beer hats for the last 28. Our society could benefit from extensive investment into ongoing research and development of beer hat related industries, as we clearly haven't had enough time to determine if they're bullshit novelty garments.

Beer hats are both funny, and in some cases practical.

I don't personally own any beer hats. But I see how they are useful at a baseball game for example.

Thanks for reminding me that beer hats exist. Now, if only I can find a store that sells beerhats for BTC :thinking_face:

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#485

Post by [deleted] »

lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

[deleted]

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#486

Post by olalonde »

lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

> After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses

The use case was found over a decade ago: "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"[0]. I don't know why HN commenters seem to think we are supposed to come up with other use cases.

[0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#487

Post by ethbr0 »

taffronaut wrote: post #412
ethbr0 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People will start asking where your funds are coming from. This is a weird statement. If it's a cash offer, it's a seller's job to determine if you have the money, not if you paid taxes on it. If it's a mortgage down payment, then the bank is more interested in if your assets are going to disappear (e.g. are they actually a loan from a third party?). I've never had a mortgage bank inquire about my tax situation. If…

>> People will start asking where your funds are coming from. >This is a weird statement. Not in the UK. Here there's a legal obligation on the conveyancing practitioner - which you have to use - to confirm the source of funds for the purchase. They "will ask questions about your salary, request bank statements and ask you to give details of any family inheritances"[1]. [1] https://www.bannerjones.co.uk/your-property…

Are those the new UK regulations intended to prevent dirty money from buying real estate?

Or has it always been a thing?

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#488

Post by dagaci »

lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

(1) The sole reason Bitcoin exists is because all governments decide inflate the money supply by printing, and in doing so, they knowingly devalued the efforts and work of everyone who saved their money or relied on fixed income like a pension.

(2) Just this May the USA decided to add 1.5 trillions of inflation on top of the already high levels of inflation people are already experiencing. And I can guarantee that they will do this again and again, in good years and in bad years, both democrats and republicans equally (look at the record, not what they say).

(3) Bitcoin was explicitly created for these reasons, and it has _way_ over succeeded in its goal _financially_.

(4) The other complaints you have are the fault of the government, they have purposely let the space become lawless in the hope that it would diminish the space, or that it would die by itself, but the problem with this is (1), (2) and (3)

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#489

Post by gwbas1c »

logicchains wrote: post #478
lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

>hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality Lots of people believe the war on drugs is a stupid, counter-productive endeavour, and indeed empirically there's no evidence of its success. The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-e…

> Lots of people believe the war on drugs is a stupid

Agree 100%. I must emphasize that the war on drugs is a political problem.

> The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives.

Cryptocurrency claims to offer a solution to political problems, but the political problems it creates are worse than the problems it claims to solve: Its very hard to conduct commerce when the value of your money fluctuates widely; and (for drugs) there's no regulations guaranteeing the quality of the product.

I voted to legalize pot 8 years ago, and now I can go to a store and I have plenty of safe products to choose from. I wish I could do the same for psychedelics; and I'm rather sure that the opiate epidemic would be easier to contain if recreational opiates were also guarantied quality.

Cryptocurrency (and drug markets hidden on Tor) aren't going to solve what really is a political problem.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#490

Post by treestander »

lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

SVB just collapsed. Do you blame the fiat dollar for that?
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