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

We’re all criminals now

carel.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 110 posts

Re: We’re all criminals now

#101

Post by mrverify »

quonn wrote: post #12
mrverify wrote: post #6

Your honor, can the prosecution please be compelled to demonstrate where the bitcoin physically exists? Oh on this computer? Well, the key is memorized and there are several copies saved all over the world in cloud computers. Can the prosecution show the court, physically, where in the computer the asset exists?

How is that different from an asset in a bank account? What matters who controls the access to it.

A crypto wallet is a handful of bytes. Perhaps a string of words if you are using passphrases as mnemonics. Where does that exist? A bank or exchange does have a physical location and would exist somewhere, but a crypto wallet really has no defined location unless specifically being held in a defined place on a defined server as per business rules. Its like saying "you cannot leave South Africa because your body is worth, like, um 50,000 USD in harvested organs..."

Re: We’re all criminals now

#102

Post by mrverify »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13
mrverify wrote: post #6

Your honor, can the prosecution please be compelled to demonstrate where the bitcoin physically exists? Oh on this computer? Well, the key is memorized and there are several copies saved all over the world in cloud computers. Can the prosecution show the court, physically, where in the computer the asset exists?

> can the prosecution please be compelled to demonstrate where the bitcoin physically exists? Is the claim that courts the world over would be stymied by the supposedly novel concept of an intangible asset?

The claim is that location of the asset is literally impossible to prove short of having the only copy of the key on a drive in possession of the prosecution. An example crypto asset, in this case, perhaps one that is less than the threshold for this law, but used in court can be easily used to show that the asset either exists in multiple places at once, or nowhere at all, and can even exist, ephemerally, in the mind of someone or multiple people.

Re: We’re all criminals now

#103

Post by mrverify »

mrverify wrote: post #102
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can the prosecution please be compelled to demonstrate where the bitcoin physically exists? Is the claim that courts the world over would be stymied by the supposedly novel concept of an intangible asset?

The claim is that location of the asset is literally impossible to prove short of having the only copy of the key on a drive in possession of the prosecution. An example crypto asset, in this case, perhaps one that is less than the threshold for this law, but used in court can be easily used to show that the asset either exists in multiple places at once, or nowhere at all, and can even exist, ephemerally, in the min…

you could probably use CRISPR to literally trans-code it into base pairs and inject it into your genome, but the cost of synthesizing the oligonucleotide might be more than the wallet holds in some cases.

Re: We’re all criminals now

#104

Post by matheusmoreira »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #27
infamouscow wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point of crypto currency is to do the exact thing money laundering laws try to prevent No. That's not the point of cryptocurrency. > to transfer large sums of cash untraceably across the globe Wrong again. You can trace all transactions across the globe with cryptocurrency. > with no way for the government to do anything about it Why is that a bad thing?

> Why is that a bad thing? It inhibits tax collection, which funds common goods. It also thwarts law enforcement, which is counter to public benefit. We can debate whether taxes or laws or governments should exist. But they do, and most people seem to favor that. Debating a thing and actively subverting it are different. Just as subverting a thing and expecting such subversion to have no consequences or response are…

> We can debate whether taxes or laws or governments should exist.

It is pointless to debate the need for taxes with the corrupt governments and their taxmen. They make the laws, they have a monopoly on the use of force and they do not want to relinquish their power. The only possible move is to subvert them.

> Debating a thing and actively subverting it are different. Just as subverting a thing and expecting such subversion to have no consequences or response are different.

We know there are consequences. That is why technology must take that into account. They make their ridiculous laws, we make it impossible for them to be effectively enforced. They'll have to stoop to ever increasing levels of tyranny in order to maintain the same level of control they previously enjoyed.

Is there a limit? I don't know. I fully expect them to try to link cryptocurrency to terrorism or something.

Re: We’re all criminals now

#105

Post by matheusmoreira »

kerng wrote: post #30
jeroenhd wrote: post #5

The point of crypto currency is to do the exact thing money laundering laws try to prevent: to transfer large sums of cash untraceably across the globe, with no way for the government to do anything about it. Recently it's become a game of baseless investment, but anyone actually wanting to use crypto currencies as payment should've seen this coming from miles away.

The whole crypto is bad, reminds me of the crypto wars where governments to this day try to outlaw encryption technology because bad guys can use it also. You know ransomware encrypts data to make it inaccessible - we should ban encryption also. Funny how it even shares the name with cryptocurrencies

Completely agree. Money laundering laws are just the financial version of global surveillance. This cryptocurrency debate is just the financial version of the crypto wars. History just keeps repeating. I find it interesting how the government is a lot more heavy handed when money is involved...

Re: We’re all criminals now

#106

Post by matheusmoreira »

RustyConsul wrote: post #46

I miss the old crypto. When it was this fringe, nerdy digital coin i could transfer to my friends to pay my bar tab. Yeah - Venmo/paypal/ a billion other systems that did the same thing, but to my friends btc and eventually eth was cooler. I could stake coins, provide liquidity, mine random coins from my laptop - It was fun. The concept of a global computer was awesome, interesting and nerdy. I've never used an excha…

> Make stablecoins have 24/7 auditability of their investments

This is the only regulation I would welcome. I'd rather have a wild west when it comes to the rest of the cryptocurrency space.

Re: We’re all criminals now

#107

Post by octopoc »

tablespoon wrote: post #84
mhuffman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or the inflation fears turn out to be a mirage We have many examples throughout history where dumping large amounts (multiples) of money into an economy causes inflation. And to my knowledge, we have no examples to the contrary (ie, it being a mirage). What would make you think that this time it could be a mirage?

> What would make you think that this time it could be a mirage? Because people have been wailing about hyperinflation fears for the last decade at least, and it hasn't happened.

You can delay the consequences of bad currency management, but eventually the consequences will hit you, hard.

The normal rules are on hold because the USD is the world reserve currency. When USD are manufactured, a huge chunk of them is bought by wealthy foreigners to store value. That means that we haven't felt the consequences of printing lots of money because we've been sharing the consequences with a huge and growing number of wealthy foreigners.

But the only reason the USD is the world reserve currency is because there's nothing better. When something better enough comes along, all that USD will come flooding back and we'll suffer all the inflationary consequences of printing money for decades. Those consequences will be compressed to a very short amount of time.

Re: We’re all criminals now

#108

Post by tim333 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #5

The point of crypto currency is to do the exact thing money laundering laws try to prevent: to transfer large sums of cash untraceably across the globe, with no way for the government to do anything about it. Recently it's become a game of baseless investment, but anyone actually wanting to use crypto currencies as payment should've seen this coming from miles away.

Though the article isn't really about that - it's about South Africa's capital controls which long predate crypto.

Re: We’re all criminals now

#109

Post by BTCarel »

csomar wrote: post #90

> This is a fairly recent “announcement” and many people are upset about the Reserve Bank making up seemingly hostile and uninformed rules regarding something that has no notion of borders and is practically impossible for the regulators to control in terms of owning and transferring. Something that arguably does not even exist in any one location... Actually it's pretty simple. By "owning" Bitcoins, you own money/ca…

Thank you, this is probably the only insightful comment on this post...

Re: We’re all criminals now

#110

Post by JetSpiegel »

octopoc wrote: post #107
tablespoon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would make you think that this time it could be a mirage? Because people have been wailing about hyperinflation fears for the last decade at least, and it hasn't happened.

You can delay the consequences of bad currency management, but eventually the consequences will hit you, hard. The normal rules are on hold because the USD is the world reserve currency. When USD are manufactured, a huge chunk of them is bought by wealthy foreigners to store value. That means that we haven't felt the consequences of printing lots of money because we've been sharing the consequences with a huge and gr…

> The normal rules are on hold because the USD is the world reserve currency.

As it has been for more than 50 years. Entire people's lives happened between those "consequences".

On the long term, we are all dead.

Post reply on HN