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Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

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Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#11

Post by throwaway290 »

jcbrand wrote: post #6

Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. The existing, centralized electronic payment systems are a disaster for financial privacy, and it'll only get worse with CBDCs. If you try to make so…

You bet I think those people act with my interests in mind, since I elected the people who appointed them (unlike random scammers in croin space).

The panopticon you refer to is called "human society", by the way. You cannot participate in one and maintain unlimited freedom. If you are an evil jerk who kidnaps my child or steals life savings from my mom I want to be sure your assets can be seized. If you want to build anarchy, go ahead somewhere else but I think you'll find yourself tired of it rather quickly (and likely get eaten by ruthless command economies).

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#13

Post by roenxi »

RandomLensman wrote: post #9
jcbrand wrote: post #6

Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. The existing, centralized electronic payment systems are a disaster for financial privacy, and it'll only get worse with CBDCs. If you try to make so…

I'd still argue that if you want a society with different rules then there are two broad choices: (i) get enough people on your side to change the society you are in; or (ii) move to a society that operates closer to what you want Technological escape hatches are probably at best a stop-gap measure, but not a replacement for (i) or (ii)

Usually yes, but some technologies are so powerful they do reshape what is possible for society. Things like birth control, the internet, military technologies like cavalry or guns, the development of limited liability corporations. These things are more powerful than mere laws in what they accomplished.

Privacy-coins could be the next big one. It switches accounting from being a tool of coercion (c.f. the famous case of the Canadian truckers) to something like air which just cannot practically be denied.

If politicians banded together and behaved like civilised adults then crypto would be worthless. But they aren't about to try that sort of radical change, so this tech might actually solve a lot of problems. With something like Monero I really do not see, at any level, how they could stop me doing stuff like donating to political causes I agree with. That is scary in some ways, but there is also reason to be optimistic.

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#14

Post by jcbrand »

Shish2k wrote: post #8
jcbrand wrote: post #6

Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. The existing, centralized electronic payment systems are a disaster for financial privacy, and it'll only get worse with CBDCs. If you try to make so…

“Trust a democratically elected government to act in the interests of its citizens” isn’t ideal, but I’m not sure “trust a combination of tech-bros and anarchy” is an improvement? I’m working in a legal-but-taboo industry, where mastercard and visa don’t want to deal with us, which is a huge pain in the ass - but every time I’ve looked at crypto, it seems to fix one or two problems and introduce 10 more...

You're making a mistake in thinking that monetary policy is somehow democratic and that there is some kind of meaningful oversight over it.

Central Banks are privately owned and by design are meant to be "independent" of politics (otherwise politicians would use the money printer to continuously to buy votes, destroying the currency in the process).

There is no real oversight over central banks and nobody (outside of the peanut gallery) has meaningfully questioned the extreme central bank policies of the last 10 years or asked the central bankers any uncomfortable questions.

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#15

Post by searchableguy »

RandomLensman wrote: post #9
jcbrand wrote: post #6

Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. The existing, centralized electronic payment systems are a disaster for financial privacy, and it'll only get worse with CBDCs. If you try to make so…

I'd still argue that if you want a society with different rules then there are two broad choices: (i) get enough people on your side to change the society you are in; or (ii) move to a society that operates closer to what you want Technological escape hatches are probably at best a stop-gap measure, but not a replacement for (i) or (ii)

> move to a society that operates closer to what you want

This doesn't work. All countries are pressured to adopt the same compliance and framework. OECD, IMF, WEF, and other world organizations will successfully force same reforms everywhere.

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#16

Post by Seriomino »

jcbrand wrote: post #6

Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. The existing, centralized electronic payment systems are a disaster for financial privacy, and it'll only get worse with CBDCs. If you try to make so…

So you also believe that a crypto system is inherently better than what we have?

Just because you believe money is printed as much as the dark secret super elite group wants it be printed?

Ah yes the sseg.

But yes we are still living in a democracy (a lot on hn at least) and the solution to all of these problems definitely are not getting solved by crypto.

You as an avg joe you are much better off with our current fiat system. The money they collect is used for a lot of things you depend on.

You might be totally ignorant to this but just switching to crypto doesn't solve a single problem.

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#18

Post by saurik »

roenxi wrote: post #13
RandomLensman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd still argue that if you want a society with different rules then there are two broad choices: (i) get enough people on your side to change the society you are in; or (ii) move to a society that operates closer to what you want Technological escape hatches are probably at best a stop-gap measure, but not a replacement for (i) or (ii)

Usually yes, but some technologies are so powerful they do reshape what is possible for society. Things like birth control, the internet, military technologies like cavalry or guns, the development of limited liability corporations. These things are more powerful than mere laws in what they accomplished. Privacy-coins could be the next big one. It switches accounting from being a tool of coercion (c.f. the famous cas…

> the development of limited liability corporations

I generally agree with you but don't understand this example: the concept of an LLC is not a technology that stands against law in a way that forces the law to adapt but is a construct that only exists by the grace of law... like, what would it mean to illegally form an LLC in a world that didn't agree with such actions?

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#19

Post by rvz »

ghuntley wrote: post #4

From: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1531920908696358912 Today the global community of technologists sent a letter to Congress urging them to resist the crypto industry’s lobbying influence. The letter was signed by some of the most respected scholars and technologists in our field. And now we need your help. Crypto fraud is spiraling out of control. So-called "web3" is not going great. Regulators are paralyzed a…

Seems to be going great for Stripe [0] and Moneygram [1] and FIDE Online Arena [2], but obviously crypto-skeptics and crypto-maximalists will not tell you that. Perhaps these companies waited for this executive order: [3] to go through before getting back into using cryptocurrencies.

The reality is that both the hard crypto-skeptics and the crypto-maximalists will be disappointed in achieving their utopian goals of fully stopping crypto and also gaining full adoption of it.

Only a few of them will survive the test of time and further regulations.

[0] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2020-06-23/algorand...

[3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

Re: Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

#20

Post by tromp »

> Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers.

Is this arguing both for and against the need for financial privacy at the same time?

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