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India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says

reuters.com

171–180 of 244 posts

Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says

#171
Honest question I constantly think about and have never been able to answer about the future of cryptocurrency development: Why/when would a government ever want less control over the primary means used to transact within its borders?

This is one of the, if not the most, important levers it has to wield power. Governments have fought wars and enslaved entire continents to protect and increase the value of their means of account. Even recently, think of how hard the US works to maintain the dollar as the only currency that can be used international oil transactions aka the petrodollar.

Ultimately, cryptocurrency is a technological attempt to solve the problem of a fundamental lack of trust in our traditional institutions. After all, its powered by a set of de-centralized, trustless protocols. If you use crypto as an inflation hedge, that means you don't trust your government to not de-value your labor via printing tons of new currency. If you use it to carry out transactions, it means at least a small part of you has doubts that our that our current, centralized payment processing institutions won't unilaterally roll those transactions back or eliminate them outright in the future. Ditto for property rights and NFTs (and all the other use cases that guarantee a transaction is recorded by distributing it on chain).

Allowing crypto-currencies to supersede local currencies would not only put governments at the mercy of the mob (or perhaps a small number of whales and exchanges) for determining the value of their citizen's output, it would be an existential admission of their failure. Other than governments that have already failed at administering a currency like El Salvador, why would any self-respecting government with a functioning currency admit defeat like this?

Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are CBDCs the "endgame for tyranny" in a way that (presumably) fiat currencies or cryptocurrencies aren't? Seems a bit hyperbolic, but maybe you have good reasons to be so alarmed.

Not hyperbolic at all. CBDCs are a permissioned private ledger controlled by the central bank. The central bank controls what addresses are allowed to transact and have access to every transaction. If they dont like what you are spending your money on you are no longer allowed to transact. If they think you have too much money they can just take it. https://youtu.be/UW9LbfuCTP0

How is that in any way different than today's bank accounts, besides removing a largely useless intermediary ( a retail bank)?

Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says

#173
post #144

The discussions around crypto here kind of proves that you cannot use popular opinion in HN to predict the future. People were very negative (and still are) about crypto. Market cap kept proving them wrong year after year and we are here with around $2.6 Trillion and yet people here still think crypto is going to die. It's interesting because in startups, you learn from the first day that you should listen to custome…

marketcaps in crypto mean nothing. The universe is full of wash sales, there is not 2.6T of liquidity, a ton of volume is insanely leveraged and amplified through defi pools, and looking at a transaction volume adjusted view of the world, like 99.9% of transactions are valueless gambling OR money laundering. Lets see what happens after the run on tether happens, then we can talk about what the crypto world looks like…

That's like saying market caps in public companies mean nothing because you can't sell all of Apple's stock for $2T.

Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's illegal to exchange goods or official currency for cryptocurrency in the nation you are in, the usefulness of cryptocurrency is going to be considerably constrained. This depends on how thorough or draconian the state is but a lot of people just shy away from illegal activity without enforcement being that strong. After all, if buy a tangible good, I want legal title to it and having engaged in an illegal tra…

This is an important point - I think a lot of us tech people like to think "no it only exists on the internet the govt can't touch it! It's like international waters!", but then you have countries that can completely restrict or shut down the internet. As long as the infrastructure exists in the real world and is controlled by a govt, then the "imaginary online stuff" is still ultimately under their control. Even in…

> I think a lot of us tech people like to think "no it only exists on the internet the govt can't touch it! It's like international waters"

Do people really think that today? I did, when i was a teenager discovering the Internet, and then quickly realised how naive that is when my favourite torrent site got taken down, and when a public digital library website got taken down like a terrorist organisation with a SWAT team taking their servers.

Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not hyperbolic at all. CBDCs are a permissioned private ledger controlled by the central bank. The central bank controls what addresses are allowed to transact and have access to every transaction. If they dont like what you are spending your money on you are no longer allowed to transact. If they think you have too much money they can just take it. https://youtu.be/UW9LbfuCTP0

As far as I'm aware CBDCs are a largely theoretical concept right now, do you have any links to an implementation such as you're describing? No videos please, I don't watch them.

A cursory google search on your part would have easily turned up web pages like these from the central bank of Canada:

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2020/02/contingency-planning-cen...

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/research/digital-currencies-and-...

Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says

#179

Honest question I constantly think about and have never been able to answer about the future of cryptocurrency development: Why/when would a government ever want less control over the primary means used to transact within its borders? This is one of the, if not the most, important levers it has to wield power. Governments have fought wars and enslaved entire continents to protect and increase the value of their means…

Agreed. As long as people make some quick profits, they will blindly support anything, even fight governments - even if that thing makes it easy for criminals to launder money.

It is going to be an interesting battle. I got my popcorn and enough fiat currency to survive whichever way this goes. In the worst case my plan is https://xkcd.com/538/

Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says

#180
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many chains, L1's, defi products, etc., have already expressed their eagerness to comply and implement KYC and other regulatory controls. My warning is that the open-source Pandora's box of zk proofs is necessary, technically feasible, and inevitable. ZK proofs are coming, and there will be systems built on top of them. Our governments and societies need to be ready for this reality.

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the technology can do. There is a system that currently exists, and that system will protect itself through regulation. Cryptocurrencies will come within the fold or they will be outlawed. It is irrelevant what is technologically feasible. Governments and state actors don't exist in stasis, any advance in technology will be met with an appropriate response even if that…

>Cryptocurrency fanatics

I am a person with nuanced thoughts and opinions, unique and diverse from the rest of the world.

>cryptocurrency

Let's not confuse zk proofs with cryptocurrency. Powerful, non-cryptocurrency systems that use zk proofs are coming. Alone their power is something we must reconcile, even before combined with distributed, autonomous systems.

And that's my point. ZK proofs are astoundingly powerful. Our societies and governments should be getting ready to deal with them.

>protect itself through regulation

Yes, this is a tool of the state. But it's just that, a tool. People have tools too.

The assertion of absolute state control is contrary to the state loosing the Crypto Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars). The Crypto Wars were one of the first examples establishing the limits of state power in the face of the Internet. This is before other global projects like BitTorrent or Gnutella.

The world is wide and I suspect the future is going to be weird.

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