Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

There you go. Some cryptocurrencies will survive once the regulatory framework is more clearer and settles in which will result in most the useless ones and non-compliant ones withering away.

That is the most likely outcome rather than the maximalists believing all of them succeeding or the skeptics like the one in this article believing all of them being destroyed. We've have examples like introducing KYC/AML checks for the exchanges, then unregistered ICOs were made illegal in the US (other countries to follow). It still did not put an end to crypto.

Next will be the exchanges delisting privacy coins and the likely regulation of stable-coins.

That is simply not true.

As an early bitcoin supporter, my sentiment shifted against cryptocurrency as I worked with more and more companies that have been targeted by ransomware. I kept waiting to be able to pay for real things and instead I saw wave after wave of fraud, grift and extortion but no progress on being a usable currency.

> It is the heavy regulation of all things financial which has burdened online transactions.

Really? Online "non-cryptocurrency" transactions have outpaced cryptocurrency transactions by a massive amount.

Cryptocurrency was a neat idea that failed to realize it's potential due to the complexity of operations in the real world. Instead it has become a cesspit of fraud, theft and self-deluding grifters that lie repeatedly to try to bring in more and more greater fools. There are still se cryptocurrency idealists out there, but it gets harder and harder to tell them from the grifters.

Those who have these insights usually also know the aphorism "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".

So they see a significant drop in price, but completely within the bounds of previous drops, and they see it as full meltdown and the ponzi scheme popping, because that fits their narrative.

Yes, really. Those transactions are heavily regulated. You cannot send a 0.000001 USD Paypal transaction for example. The overhead is too high. There are cryptocurrencies which allow these microtransactions.

Observing that there is a high amount of regulated transactions doesn't account for the demand for unregulated transactions.

Perhaps if regulations were lower, services could provide functionality which would make cryptocurrency irrelevant.

From the interview:

>WEAVER: I am holding up a Raspberry Pi computer module. This entire computer is like 50 bucks. So for 500 bucks worth of [computing power], I could do the same functionality as Bitcoin, with just 10 named entities. Why don’t I do this? Because those 10 named entities would have to follow money laundering laws. And apart from getting a structure where the named entities don’t follow money laundering laws, there’s no advantage for the cryptocurrencies, despite burning nine orders of magnitude more power.

Even the die-hard cryptocurrency hater featured in the interview admits that is the heavy cost of regulation which created the market demand for cryptocurrency. The question is if he understands the implications of his own statement and the premises from which they derive from.

>I kept waiting to be able to pay for real things...

Perhaps most people don't want to go through the hassle of doing KYC on an exchange just to buy a pizza. Also, Gresham's law and legal tender laws.

>...and instead I saw wave after wave of fraud, grift and extortion but no progress on being a usable currency.

So the remaining users of cryptocurrency are those who use it out of necessity. That could be innovation in microtransactions, online gaming, speculation or the criminal uses you narrowly focus on.

However you want to value it is up to you. Either within the existing framework of regulation or independently. If you don't like it, don't use it. Calling for what other people value to be destroyed, because Weaver doesn't like it is authoritarian. He's a bully. Live and let live.