Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

tftc.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 611 posts

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#221

Post by Eridrus »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #213
Eridrus wrote: post #201

I think the case for why strong encryption is important is much clearer than why untraceable financial instruments are important and I don't think it's super compelling to argue that these things are actually the same, even if your opposition to government control is the same. I think it's actually pretty clear that almost all people are not capable of secure and reliable self-custody and would be better off with an…

I think it makes sense to start from the idea that you should be able to transfer funds to someone, like $100 to your mother, without needing the government or a megacorp to facilitate it. The same way I can gift my TV to my mom. Whether that's cash or cryptocurrency doesn't seem to matter since your argument would also apply to cash.

If you start from an assumption that there should be no regulation, then your conclusion will be that there should be no regulation.

That's not actually an argument for anyone who doesn't share your assumptions though and is largely just lazy thinking.

Cash also has physical limitations that make large cross-border transactions hard, which crypto does not.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#222

Post by shadowgovt »

komali2 wrote: post #160
jordanb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever leftists say that "Trump is a symptom of an illness that has been metastasizing for a long time" this is what we mean.

My big ask is, was it always this stupid? Like, all these huge historical events and figures, did it all go down as stupidly and clownishly as the modern USA? Was there an early 20th century fascist Europe equivalent to a man named Big Balls being beat up by children and a fascist police action being triggered as a result? Was there a Napeolonic era equivalent to a media figure known for making light of school shooti…

Details vary but from time-to-time, yes, things do go this wildly off the rails.

You could argue that the entirety of Europe declaring war on itself over the death of one royal (and not even a reigning monarch; an heir-apparent) is such an example; tens of millions dead over something as transient as birthright rulership. Others that come to mind are much of the reign of Henry VIII (everyone knew he was dangerously paranoid, nobody with the potential to do so mounted an overthrow of his power, and his son was shaping up to be worse and England was narrowly spared his reign by the luck of his own bad health). Then there's the French overthrow of a monarchy to replace it with a bloody civil war that liquidated, among others, most of the people who overthrew the monarchy (and replaced it with an empire).

Power consolidation begets perverse effects.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#223

Post by cratermoon »

komali2 wrote: post #160
jordanb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever leftists say that "Trump is a symptom of an illness that has been metastasizing for a long time" this is what we mean.

My big ask is, was it always this stupid? Like, all these huge historical events and figures, did it all go down as stupidly and clownishly as the modern USA? Was there an early 20th century fascist Europe equivalent to a man named Big Balls being beat up by children and a fascist police action being triggered as a result? Was there a Napeolonic era equivalent to a media figure known for making light of school shooti…

> was it always this stupid?

Excellent question. There are two easily readable sources I know of covering historical events of the sort you're asking about. The first is Barbara W. Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, where the entire premise is that stupid people did stupid things and then doubled down on stupidity as they went along. The second is Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, in which Hannah Arendt details just how dull and unimaginative Eichmann was. She writes, "it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown", and suggests that Eichmann was not especially different from anyone he worked for, right up to the top.

History doesn't seem clownish because of the way it is recorded and taught. Even Arendt's writing is cool and formal compared to the histrionics we see on social media and many news outlets.

> Was there a Napeolonic era equivalent to a media figure known for making light of school shootings, getting killed in a school shooting, a second after again making light of school shootings?

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and subsequent events leading to the start of the First World War, were filled with errors and stupidity, so much that history mostly lumps them all under the term "July Crisis", and rarely goes into detail. If you're familiar with the Abilene paradox, you have a framework for how the Great War started as the result of collective actions by soldiers, diplomats, and national leaders.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#224

Post by SubiculumCode »

M question was on what legal/Constitutional basis does the Treasury have for expanding the Patriot Act? Is it because the law provides powers to the Treasury department to define areas that the law should apply? Or is it a case where the administration (once again) is assuming it can do something, the Constitution be damned?

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#225

Post by dmix »

delusional wrote: post #120
electric_muse wrote: post #10

[flagged]

> concentrating power in a few regulated intermediaries. That’s not healthy for innovation, or democracy. How are "regulated intermediaries" not democratic? If they're regulated by the democratically elected government, that seems entirely democratic to me.

He said "not healthy for democracy", that doesn't imply the process to create the law wasn't democratic.

Democracy always has the risk of sabotaging itself by naive actors who don't respect fundamental freedoms because they fear the public.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#226

Post by fsflover »

chain030 wrote: post #178
fsflover wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People prefer centralized services until they enshittify, after which people move to the next thing, thanks to the decentralization.

Google, Meta and so on are not dying. So whats your point fella?

It might be slow for the megacorps, which don't even try to follow laws, but

> Google

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347719

> Meta

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30186326

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44210689

> Apple

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11034071

And

Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA (ostechnix.com)

1021 points by marcodiego 58 days ago | 620 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44580682

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#227

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Eridrus wrote: post #221
hombre_fatal wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it makes sense to start from the idea that you should be able to transfer funds to someone, like $100 to your mother, without needing the government or a megacorp to facilitate it. The same way I can gift my TV to my mom. Whether that's cash or cryptocurrency doesn't seem to matter since your argument would also apply to cash.

If you start from an assumption that there should be no regulation, then your conclusion will be that there should be no regulation. That's not actually an argument for anyone who doesn't share your assumptions though and is largely just lazy thinking. Cash also has physical limitations that make large cross-border transactions hard, which crypto does not.

> If you start from an assumption that there should be no regulation, then your conclusion will be that there should be no regulation

To be fair, they argued against intermediation. Not regulation. Requiring a filing for every $100 cash transfer to one's mother would satisfy their requirement.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#229

Post by AngryData »

bongodongobob wrote: post #89
conception wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine the world today if Bernie had won?

Yes, it would have been 4 years of zero progress because he would have been stonewalled by both parties.

That still sounds like a dream compared to everything else we have seen done.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#230

Post by mothballed »

Eridrus wrote: post #221
hombre_fatal wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it makes sense to start from the idea that you should be able to transfer funds to someone, like $100 to your mother, without needing the government or a megacorp to facilitate it. The same way I can gift my TV to my mom. Whether that's cash or cryptocurrency doesn't seem to matter since your argument would also apply to cash.

If you start from an assumption that there should be no regulation, then your conclusion will be that there should be no regulation. That's not actually an argument for anyone who doesn't share your assumptions though and is largely just lazy thinking. Cash also has physical limitations that make large cross-border transactions hard, which crypto does not.

If you start with the assumption there should be regulation, even then IDK how you get there.

You're regulating an "untraceable" utterance of a string of data.

Pragmatically it's worse than trying to stop fentanyl, which is already impossible, and even trying to stop it has just made the gangs that much more powerful because they now control whole small nation-state tier light-infantry militias funded by black-market profits induced from trying to ban it.

I honestly don't see any way to effectively ban cryptocurrency that has net positive utility. "Yay we caught some criminals, all it cost us was a dystopia!"

Post reply on HN