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Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence

ft.com

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

#151

Post by dzamo_norton »

bko wrote: post #111
walnutclosefarm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lastly, we reserve the right to manipulate the money supply. You may dislike the way central banks control and manipulate the money supply, but the reality is that an unmanaged currency is generally a disaster for everyone. To fulfill its role as a stable store of value, a currency has to be managed. The notion that an inherently deflationary unit of accounting (such as Bitcoin), or a completely unmanaged one, or o…

The hard money standard (e.g. precious metals) is older and has outlived nearly all fiat currencies and will likely outlive the existing currencies. What do you think will be worth more in 100 years from now? 1 US dollar or the equivalent of gold? How about 500 years? 1000 years? My money is on the gold. Every fiat will be stable until it blows up. It will necessarily be mismanaged in a long enough time line, and bas…

Currencies are not for hodling. You're supposed to spend them in the same year you get them, not compare their values to assets after 100 years. Their job is not to appreciate but to facilitate efficient commerce in civil societies.

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

#152

Post by dubswithus »

igorkraw wrote: post #90
leftbrain wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is startup investing really regulated, or is it just your mom and dad and nobody else who have heard about your statup? - ”Dad, all I need is 10k loan” - ”I will give you the money, son. And I’ll see you in court if it doesn’t work out.”

Securities are regulated, snd startups which try to collect cash from the public become securities

The government is letting crowd funding happen and the public can still lose a lot of money even when there are disclosures.

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

#153

Post by ls15 »

mjburgess wrote: post #57
jcbrand wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, the people who live under dictators, despots, cartels and organized criminals often more easily realise the benefits of money that cannot be censored, cannot have its issuance be manipulated, is permissionless and very difficult to confiscate. (Talking about Bitcoin here. Not all crypto applies)

Uhuh... and if the state, with its monopoly on violence, wishes to ban these currencies? D'you think an "ordinary person" is going to risk being thrown in a gulag? The problem with all these tech utopians is they think the relevant problems are technical: we've solved trust! (Between machines negotiating over a network). We've solved currency manipulation (oh its not a currency, it's an asset; and oh it can be manipu…

> Uhuh... and if the state, with its monopoly on violence, wishes to ban these currencies?

Then some people comply and some don't

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

#154

Post by mfitzp »

dqpb wrote: post #146
jameshart wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the very definition of a shallow dismissal. You are trying to insinuate that people who believe crypto is bad technology and bad for society, are doing the equivalent of arguing that the web is bad technology and bad for society. But 1) the arguments against crypto are specific to crypto; 2) the very people who are arguing against crypto are the same people who have been the most vocal advocates of an open we…

> This is the very definition of a shallow dismissal Short and succinct is not the same as shallow. > You are trying to insinuate that people who believe crypto is bad technology and bad for society, are doing the equivalent of arguing that the web is bad technology and bad for society. I’m not insinuating anything, I’m explicitly saying that is the case. > 1) the arguments against crypto are specific to crypto “Cryp…

> Short and succinct is not the same as shallow.

No it isn't. Which is presumably why they didn't use those words.

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

#155

Post by mfitzp »

martialg wrote: post #116

So - I love thoughtful criticism. My ego doesn’t, but I generally find it very valuable. This letter is honestly not thoughtful criticism. It reads like a group of academics and specialists annoyed they were too early to profit from a technology they spent a lot of time thinking about esoterically and avoids specificity in…well… any meaningful way. It also makes no effort to segment the space. If a critical letter cr…

> annoyed they were too early to profit

"na na sore loser" is quite the angle for someone bemoaning a lack of "thoughtful criticism."

Do try and grow up.

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

#156

Post by krferriter »

lui8906 wrote: post #35
nl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this arguing both for and against the need for financial privacy at the same time? No. It's a perfectly reasonable position to take. I want my transactions to be private to the world but it's reasonable that law enforcement has a method to investigate criminal behavior.

> I want my transactions to be private to the world but it's reasonable that law enforcement has a method to investigate criminal behavior. If law enforcement has a method to investigate your behavior, its not private. You want to have your cake and eat it too. Either you enjoy privacy (and so do criminals) or criminals do not (and neither do you).

It seems like you're making a sweeping argument against the legitimacy of the subpoena and investigatory power of governments. If a government cannot compel private entities to hand over evidence in criminal investigations, their ability to enforce laws falls apart.

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

#157

Post by ls15 »

RandomLensman wrote: post #23
searchableguy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What is your evidence that in aggregate citizens want what you want/dislike the current state? If that is not the case, you cannot claim that "countries are pressured".

I can imagine that only a tiny minority of citizens was fine with it when Cyprus' government closed the banks in 2013 for a couple of days and took some additional percents of already taxed balances.

Who really would be fine with giving the government 10% of their money, so they can pay their gambling debts?

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

#158

Post by glerk »

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…

> Today the global community of technologists sent a letter to Congress

Bullshit. As a member of the "global community of technologists", I sent no such letter to Congress nor did I appoint anyone to send a letter on my behalf.

I don't even see a point in addressing the same old anti-crypto arguments contained in the letter. The real story here is the presumption of these self-appointed "respected scholars and technologists".

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

#159

Post by vzcx »

jcbrand wrote: post #93
politician wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is a managed monetary system whose policy lever is hash rate.

The hash rate doesn't change the rate of currency issuance, at most what it can do is change the rate at which transactions are verified.

It can't even do that for long, as the difficulty adjusts downward to compensate.

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

#160

Post by cdata »

Even if I didn't already have well-formed opinions on this topic, reading the comments here would be enough to convince me that "tech" does not speak with any sort of unified voice on this topic.

I wonder if we will start identifying factions of tech by the political orientations expressed by the technology in question.

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