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CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

netherlandsnewslive.com

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Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#191

Post by dangerface »

Tepix wrote: post #38
Varqu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck banning internet access. Even if you ban crypto exchanges and money transfers to them, you cannot ban a single entity called Bitcoin Co, nor you can ban individuals from possessing it. You could potentially ban crypto miners from using the electrical energy, but that doesn't ban Bitcoin either. Any other ideas? :)

If you can't exchange your crypto currency against fiat it will become worthless.

I can exchange it with the guy down the street like I currently do, how are you going to stop this? LOL

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#192

Post by dangerface »

adrianN wrote: post #169
Bishizel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main argument against crypto is actually an argument against the way we generate power. If our power generation wasn’t so dirty, this argument against crypto goes away. Banning crypto isn’t going to fix the root cause.

So maybe we should ban crypto until the world reaches net zero emissions?

Why not ban electricity since its the culprit?

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#193

Post by lottin »

skylabmelody wrote: post #186
lottin wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you just can't Sorry, that's not an argument.

You could make it illegal by law tomorrow, it doesn't change the fact that bitcoin would still exist and be used due to its decentralized nature.

The government can severely impair its appeal as a speculation vehicle and people would stop speculating with it. This is Bitcoin's primary use case. Some people who use it as a medium of exchange because they can't use real money for a variety of reasons might continue to use it, true, as well as a minority of hard-core fanatics who are attracted to bitcoin for ideological reasons regardless of practicality.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#194

Post by celticninja »

rspoerri wrote: post #180
celticninja wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the comment I replied to said all bitcoin mining is done exclusively with coal. I never made claims, I merely pointed out the original statement was incorrect and offered evidence to support it. So what is your point in relation to that? Am I wrong? Is my evidence not sufficient? Do you also believe all bitcoin mining is powered by coal?

I dont assume that bitcoin is only powered by coal. Some website mentioned 85%. With its 150 TWh it uses thats a 130TWh in from coal power plants. Thats about 24 Coal power plants that could be shut down, if bitcoin would disappear today (usa has 241 coal power plants with approximately 1300 THw produced). I do think that will make a difference, especially because the power demand of bitcoin is getting worse.

You stated exactly that:

>Everybody mining bitcoin is using the cheapest energy source available which currently is coal.

'Some website said...' some other website said vaccines will make my arm magnetic. Doesn't make it true. Don't spout nonsense just because you agree with it, check the veracity of the statement first.

>Thats about 24 Coal power plants that could be shut down, if bitcoin would disappear today

No they wouldn't. They existed before bitcoin, they will exist even if bitcoin is outlawed and shut down. The demand would come from elsewhere, but if you understand power generation you would also know that gas and coal power stations are used to keep a base level of power on the grid, solar doesn't generate at night and wind doesn't always blow. Hydro power cannot be transported everywhere it is needed. So coal, gas and nuclear make up the rest. Until we get better storage they will continue to be used and required.

Honestly this comment of yours has just highlighted how little you know about the subject. You don't even mention which website but I can guess it's digiconomist, which has been debunked before. That site relies on showing extreme figures to get page views.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#195

Post by moepstar »

TrackerFF wrote: post #184
moepstar wrote: post #111

> “After all, the product itself has no intrinsic value and derives its appeal only from acceptance by others.” Ok, what's the intrinsic value of a $ or € bill then?

Ask yourself this: Assume that you have little or no knowledge in foreign countries, but you want to purchase some of their currencies - how would you go on and classify these currencies as "good" or "bad", when viewing them as potential investments. Besides simply looking up their historical exchange rates. It's obviously a complex problem, as we're dealing with parities here - but war/conflicts, poor economies, ext…

Not arguing that what you said isn't true, however, if we just take the statement of the article like it's been written - it just doesn't make a difference if we're talking about the intrinsic value of either - BTC/$/€

Bitcoin is a stream of 1s and 0s, $ and € bills are pieces of paper (not talking about the raw material value of coins rn..).

The value of $ and € (and ultimately any currency / fiat) is that has its appeal only from acceptance by others - which is part of the sentence i've copied from the article.

Neither do have any intrinsic value.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#196

Post by TrackerFF »

moepstar wrote: post #195
TrackerFF wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask yourself this: Assume that you have little or no knowledge in foreign countries, but you want to purchase some of their currencies - how would you go on and classify these currencies as "good" or "bad", when viewing them as potential investments. Besides simply looking up their historical exchange rates. It's obviously a complex problem, as we're dealing with parities here - but war/conflicts, poor economies, ext…

Not arguing that what you said isn't true, however, if we just take the statement of the article like it's been written - it just doesn't make a difference if we're talking about the intrinsic value of either - BTC/$/€ Bitcoin is a stream of 1s and 0s, $ and € bills are pieces of paper (not talking about the raw material value of coins rn..). The value of $ and € (and ultimately any currency / fiat) is that has its a…

As far as I know, the USD doesn't have any intrinsic value after they went away from the gold standard - but again, people use all sort of measures as proxies for intrinsic value.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#197

Post by IkmoIkmo »

dangerface wrote: post #190
airza wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cut off its access to the global banking and finance system. That will curb its usage real quick.

How?

Making laws that prohibit purchasing, selling or holding bitcoin, with penalties.

Laws already exist requiring gatekeepers of the financial system (e.g. Banks and payment processors) to monitor transactions on illegalities, e.g. money laundering. Bitcoin would just be added to the list. Banks are required to set-up their own systems for this. It'd be trivial for banks to find out which bank accounts are owned by exchanges or bitcoin companies like Coinbase, and close those bank accounts, as well as freeze any transactions to these bank accounts. New companies can't open new accounts. If you try to make transactions you get your money frozen/seized. And even if you hold bitcoin, to use your profits (e.g. to buy a house, a car, pay rent) you'd need to go back to dollars through a bank, or launder tons of cash, or find a counterparty to your transaction willing to illegally accept bitcoin e.g. when selling his house, all things extremely unlikely to happen at any scale by regular joes.

At that point the amount of capital flowing to bitcoin will massively decline and bitcoin plummets. Nobody is investing in an asset class speculatively if the only way to buy it is to go to a street corner and meet up with an Internet Guy with a bunch of cash. That's fine for buying drugs, it's not going to drive a trillion dollar market cap (like today) illegal virtual coin that's otherwise useless.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#198

Post by tutuca »

adflux wrote: post #73
Tepix wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've head many cryptocurrency crashes already so chances are pretty good that he is right ;-)

A stock market crash is inevitable, let's ban the stock market! A commodity crash is inevitable, let's ban trading commodities! A housing market crash is inevitable, let's ban real estate purchasing!

I really see no problem with all the above.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#199

Post by joshspankit »

dataflow wrote: post #12
oblio wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to ban all proof-of-work and generally all resource intensive cryptocurrencies.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe we should in general ban things that are a certain amount less energy efficient (say, 5x more wasteful) than the best technology we've achieved for a similar purpose so far. And progressively tax anything that's moderately more wasteful (say, 2x-5x). It's bad enough that we have cars on roads that are twice as wasteful as they could be, let alone a transaction processing…

While I feel like the words you used caused some debate, if I’m understanding the premise correctly I think you’re on to something:

If a technology is objectively more wasteful than it could be it should be penalized, and as we move forward with newer/better/more efficient technologies the standards bar should raise with them.

For anyone who has further concerns: let’s imagine that we have a magic calculator that tells us the total and complete cost of anything, from the true local socioeconomic impact of extracting materials to the CO2 emitted in production to the cumulative future cost of disposing of it. And that we could use that as the measuring stick.

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