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China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

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Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#281

Post by cloakandswagger »

rothbardrand wrote: post #162
sametmax wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. The fact something is yours is irrelevant. If it's your gun, i still want the state to make it illegal to shoot your kids with it.

Did you just morally equate investing in a failed startups with shooting kids?

Reductio ad absurdum seems to be the statists' argument of choice.

While all but the most radical libertarians will concede that some level of regulation is required, nearly every collectivist I talk to implies that permitting any level of individual human agency would turn the world into a Mad Max hellscape.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#283

Post by cloakandswagger »

irishsultan wrote: post #250
lettergram wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh what? If you're not directly hurting someone there shouldn't be a law against it. For instance, a law against DUIs make sense, it's so you don't kill people. A law requiring seat belt wearing - not so much.

If you don't wear a seatbelt and are in an accident you are much more likely to hurt others than if you do wear a seatbelt.

Citation needed

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#284

Post by skummetmaelk »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #278
skummetmaelk wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people like you should try eating food produced by unregulated companies and see how you like it. Enjoy your sawdust bread.

I buy bread from a farmer's market some weekends. It's made by one guy in his home kitchen who isn't accredited or regulated in any way. By your approximation I should be dead by now. The salient point is that it's my human right to associate with whomever I please.

Your experience at the farmer's market is surely equivalent to what most people would experience in Walmart.

Many humans will do anything it takes to make a profit and not care about who they are screwing over. If you think that's okay that's fine, but then go to Somalia and see how a lawless country works in practice.

Food safety in particular was mandated by populae request. I cannot wrap my head around free market believers like you who apparently think that humans are omniscient beings who have access to all information about every product and every seller they encounter so they can make informed purchasing decisions. That's just bullshit. You are a religious cult at this point.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#285

Post by wav-part »

dsacco wrote: post #200
tudorconstantin wrote: post #129

I assume most of the HN readers are from USA and I can't believe my eyes what I'm reading here. People cheering a government's ban on what its citizens can do with their lawfully earned money. I worked for my money, I paid huge amounts of taxes on them. Why is it ok for somebody to come and tell me what I can and can't do with them, and then telling me it's in my best interest to not be allowed to invest them.

> People cheering a government's ban on what its citizens can do with their lawfully earned money. Are you okay with laws about how money is earned? Why? If yes, why are you not okay with laws about how money is spent? There are a vast number of regulations imposed on how you spend your money is spent in any government. Do you categorically disagree with them or are you okay with some of them? EDIT: Every time a thre…

LOL its like asking victim to prove why attacker should not attack him. The onus is NOT on victim but the attacker. Its the attacker who made the first contact. Its the attacker who has to prove from the mutually agreed upon set of axioms.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#286

Post by vortico »

vortico wrote: post #57
nickserv wrote: post #27

Had to dig around 3 sites before finding a definition for ICO: ICO (Initial Crypto-Token Offering) refers to financing through the issuance of encrypted tokens (Crypto-Token).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Coin_Offering People should really learn to define acronyms before using them in all writing mediums. I don't care if the author has used the term 10,000 with colleagues, he should still define them upon their first use in the article body.

10,000 times, I mean.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#287

Post by patrickaljord »

askmike wrote: post #152
patrickaljord wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the scam is very well executed, it will thrives for a bit longer even with laws against scams, as your link shows. However, once publicly exposed, the scammer's bad reputation will ensure no one will trust doing business with him again in his field, much more so than any anti-scamming laws that punished him with those 22 months in jail.

> the scammer's bad reputation will ensure no one will trust doing business with him again in his field That doesn't like a problem for people who can fill a ~20 million ICO in half an hour, do they need to work (=be trusted) ever again?

They don't, but if it happens with a few ICOs people won't trust ICOs anymore and these kinds of scams won't repeat much.

Anyway, has there been any verified ICO scams yet? Seems to me like it's not much different from startups promising BS/bad ideas to gullible VCs who end up losing millions. In this case, ICOs are selling these ideas to the little guy through crowd funding which is different but the little guy usually invest a few bucks in these ICOs so if the ICO fails to delivers it's not as big a deal unless one invests his/her life's saving in said ICO but then that's a pretty risky idea one needs to take responsibility for.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#288

Post by cloakandswagger »

justonepost wrote: post #170
tudorconstantin wrote: post #129

I assume most of the HN readers are from USA and I can't believe my eyes what I'm reading here. People cheering a government's ban on what its citizens can do with their lawfully earned money. I worked for my money, I paid huge amounts of taxes on them. Why is it ok for somebody to come and tell me what I can and can't do with them, and then telling me it's in my best interest to not be allowed to invest them.

Anarchy is not a lot of fun. it usually ends up in pure might makes right. North Korea is a timely example of what the philosophy of might makes right leads us to.

Are you saying that North Korea is an example of what happens when individualism runs amok?

On the contrary, North Korea seems like a collectivist's paradise. Total state control with omnipresent regulation. I wonder what the punishment for trading cryptocurrencies looks like there.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#289

Post by Nursie »

mcguire wrote: post #277
Nursie wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so protecting people from scams is now banning people from their own decisions? I suppose we should drop all laws about fraud really, why should we ban people from freely transacting with "microsoft" support services who just want to help them with their computer?

Can Libertarianism Sustain a Fraud Standard? ( https://www.jstor.org/stable/2382215 )

OK so I got about two thirds of the way through that before my brain rebelled and my focus went elsewhere.

Thanks for the link though, that was an interesting read. I was aware that "Caveat Emptor" was a bit of a libertarian tenet, and that people like to rely on things like reputation to enforce good trading practice, but that is an interesting explanation of why a libertarian may be against any and all government interference in even blatant fraud.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#290

Post by vasilipupkin »

rothbardrand wrote: post #147

Why don't rich people need protection? Here's the answer: this is their protection. It reduces their competition. Seriously, these securities rules keep people like me from investing in AirBnB and Uber (two that I caught very early and wanted into)... but we can all go to Vegas and lose $100k in a single weekend. But putting $10k into Uber's seed round is somehow a crime I need to be protected from? Truth of the matt…

I don't understand. To invest in Uber seed round you had to be an accredited investor. That's a pretty low bar in the US. But now, crowdfunding rules have removed this requirement for those raising less than 5 million.
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