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Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

cointelegraph.com

171–180 of 221 posts

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#171
post #152
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One defining aspect of a free market is destruction. The other is creation. You don't get one without the other.

On the contrary, the core thesis of Wealth of Nations is that a free market in an industrial economy is not zero-sum. Creation exceeds destruction, and the former does not require the latter.

>On the contrary, the core thesis of Wealth of Nations is that a free market in an industrial economy is not zero-sum.

Technically yes, but there are always exceptions. Just because a well oiled and well functioning free market economy can be positive sum doesn't mean we have such an economy. Things can get really weird and backwards over the short term. The problem is that the short term can last decades and may waste a quarter of a human's life and cause irreparable damage. Therefore we should make the economy as positive sum as possible.

For example, we have in our mind that every single individual is supposed to take care of themselves. This implies that we have to contribute to society by working but full employment isn't guaranteed, there there may be a large chunk of the population that is without a job over the short term. The pandemic is a pretty good example.

A simple solution would be to just give them a temporary job, even if the job is stupid or pointless (think Keynesian gold digging). These people receive a salary and proceed to spend it on actually useful things, which will create useful jobs. By useful I just mean something someone wants, a government deciding to produce something may produce something nobody wants (see the Trabant). Those products not only need labor but also natural resources so they are twice as wasteful. Of course you can skip this whole work thing and just declare that finding a job is your job and increase unemployment benefits like Biden did.

Of course there will be some inflation but economic activity is a good thing.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#172

Nobody, not even Biden has the political goodwill to make Bitcoin illegal and enrage so many constituents (aka lost votes) The only ones who maybe can do it are Xi and Putin, and the latter seems more pro than against because everything which goes against the dollar is Putin's friend. Xi is also on and off again with Bitcoin but every day which goes by in which he is not decisive is a day in favor of Bitcoin. You are…

I doubt that making Bitcoin illegal will achieve anything. I think "crippling" Bitcoin and making it very inconvenient to use is a better approach.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#173
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read more about this experiment before jumping to conclusions https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lif... The smallness of the country doesn’t mean this isn’t significant. They have problems, and through an experiment found solutions to those problems and are scaling them up

Again, what "conclusion" do you think I'm jumping to? Modernizing payment systems is having a huge impact across the entire developing world. I spent two years of my life building a system for payments (mobile to mobile) for a variety of African countries. Negligible fees, immediate, robust and reliable. This isn't new or novel. Bitcoin has shockingly little to do with El Salvador. It is a lightning network being pit…

So you think this is just to pump Bitcoin?

Well that’s where I disagree with you.

What happened with those apps in Africa? And why is Nigeria increasingly looking to BTC? Could also be corrupt central banks, which I admit is less an issue in El Salvador.

Bitcoin is also censorship resistant, Nigeria tried to ban BTC but P2P usage went up after the “ban”.

And to be clear: I don’t think BTC is necessarily THE BEST conceivable solution out there - a USD backed coin probably is better for ES in the next few years.

But I also do think BTC is better than status quo for ES

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#174
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people say "transactions cost X amount to process", they mean "in the current state of bitcoin", not in the past when there were very few transaction validators there are only so many miners (and so much energy spent) because security of bitcoin is what gives it value. so when people say "transactions cost X amount to process" they are saying something non-sensical, because it's not transactions that cost , it…

this is pretty much the same thing as saying that "guns kills people" is nonsensical because there are many non equivalent ways a gun could be involved in killing someone

wow, it's amazing how you got that completely backwards. saying "guns kill people" is exactly the same as saying "bitcoin uses energy" - it's a way to shift blame from the real perpetrator to the instrument.

perpetrator in this case being people who want to secure their assets via energy expenditure. if bitcoin disappears - exactly the same amount of energy will be used because the cat is out of the bag - satoshi showed the world how asset security can be expressed as energy expenditure and for as long as there is a demand on the market for that kind of security, energy will be spent.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#175
post #112

bitcoins show the nasty nature of the people all about profits, nobody care about solving problems, they just want the price to grow to make profit from their investment

>nobody care about solving problems It solves the problem of corporate censorship. Visa for example is notorious for refusing to do business with people they don't like (porn companies, 4chan, etc). If the US government wants more people to use the dollar and less to use Bitcoin, they can come out with a public, first-amendment-protected payment system.

Protected classes aside, you can't tell a business whom they have to do business with. That's freedom of association and also in the First Amendment. For example, you couldn't force someone to sell a Coke to a Neo-Nazi.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#176
post #19
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who bribed or put the pressure on El Salvador? Outwardly, it doesn’t make any sense except as a publicity stunt.

22% of their GDP is remittance based. The US treats them like shit since they have the USD as currency. God forbid a country wants more independence 70% of the country has no bank, for Bitcoin all you need is the internet and a simple wallet app.

I'd like to mention that remittances are great. For a poor country to catch up with a rich country there has to be a technology/skill/money transfer.

Either the rich people are coming to the poor country (export oriented economy) or the poor people are coming to the rich country (remittance oriented economy).

If your economy is suffering from high inflation then remittances are a balancing force that is fighting against high inflation because people abroad are exchanging their USD/EUR for the inflating currency and thereby support attempts to peg the inflating currency to USD/EUR which are currencies with low inflation.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#177
post #139

The official narrative in the UK is "don't invest your money in cryptos, you are going to lose it all". However, if you happen to have cryptos you must declare them! I wonder if the dutch government bans Bitcoin, that means that there is no need to declare anything. After all, it doesn't fulfill any function as money, means of payment or store of value.

That logic makes absolutely no sense. Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it has no value. Selling drugs is illegal in most countries. Drugs are still a store of value in those countries and most of them require you to pay taxes on gains from selling or trading them.

I must admit that I found that difficult to believe, but you are right. One of many links I found with a google search:

https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/28/news/economy/illegal-income...

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#178
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read about the Bitcoin beach experiments there before jumping to conclusions like that https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lif...

Not the OP, but I don't really get it. Maybe I'm missing something. They're basically creating cash accounts? Not quite a bank but... not far off it. I feel like a simpler solution is just mandating that banks are required to offer a basic cash account at a set maximum cost. It doesn't feel like the bitcoin part of the experiment is really doing anything special. It's all in a single app and all held by a holding org…

Isn't it based on the lightning network? Does the wallet only connect to a single preapproved node?

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#179
post #75

Supporters of Bitcoin should be in favor of making it illegal in as many jurisdictions as possible. It's the only way to be sure it's as resistant to government power as it claims to be.

Yea its really great to be prosecuted for no reason except the whims of the powerful, we should really all be in favor of making everything illegal by default.

Look, one problem with crypto is that there exists anonymous super-whale actors that are using it to siphon money off of smaller average-joe investors. No doubt some of these actors have nation-state backing (China, Russia, Iran...)

The other problem is that for every idealist crypto supporter, there's exists another thousand crypto investors who have only one intention; to convert their investment back to fiat at a profit.

The latter (the 99.9% super-majority) ensures that crypto, no matter its supposedly idealist origins, are intricately linked to fiat (virtual fiat at that).

In fact crypto has gone from being a form of anti-banker for-the-people idealist payment options to being a form of virtual faith-based shares whose value is literally linked to nothing.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#180
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elections are only close in some states, and its hard to predict which issues voters will care about, especially since nobody has proposed exactly what a "bitcoin ban" would look like. The linked article also mentioned that coinbase number, but it's a little hard to interpret: not everybody having an account will be in the US, nor will they necessarily own any bitcoin, nor, if they own bitcoin, will it necessarily be…

Okay, let's do the reverse. If you are somebody who wants to win an election, whose vote are you winning by proposing and/or signing a bitcoin ban? It's not like Bitcoin has a CEO that you can point at in the Forbes billionaires list and claim that you are going against him. You have to explain and present to people the coins per wallet distribution statistics and convert it to dollars to get to the topic of inequali…

I think we're in agreement, this isn't going to happen. I'd just frame it differently.

If a politician were to try and ban this, I'm sure compentent spin doctors would think of better lines of attacks than bitcoin == rich people == evil. They might throw a line in the direction of nationalism (chinese control, dangerous!), or note its environmental impact, or note the risks due to instability (so we'll compensate you small fry, but not ), or claim a connection to organized crime, or note the issues of tax evasion...

I mean, it's not hard to come up with a list, and I firmly believe - not just because it's crypto, but just in general - that people just dont care about this kind of technicality. To be clear: they would need to buy out at least the vast majority of current holders or some such scheme to at least take out the sting for most people - but then, that's something that's attractive to a few special interests too, so that could well fly.

But why would they bother? It's just not going to happen.

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