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On anti-crypto toxicity

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Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#361

Post by falcolas »

sneak wrote: post #230
logifail wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one corner we have types who want to send > arbitrarily large amounts of money and in the other corner we have the types who know about and enforce AML and KYC legislation. How is this possibly going to end well for the first group?

It turns out there are actually things that lawmakers don't really have the power to effectively ban, drugs and prostitution and gambling and cash transactions principally among them. A lot of people don't seem to integrate this fact. The practical power of a lawmaking body is not unlimited. There are certain things they simply cannot stop, no matter how many laws are passed. It won't "end" for either group, really.…

Theres one big weakness in the use of cryptocurrencies: swapping back and forth with the local fiat currency at scale. All a government has to do is shut those commercial ventures down, and the value of the $coin will disappear for those residents.

Plus, unlike drugs and prostitution, the ledger is public and permanent… simplifying enforcement against the remaining fringes dramatically.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#362

Post by TomSwirly »

trutannus wrote: post #220
ModernMech wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law isn’t magic though. It’s a system we designed for this purpose and we know how it works.

Except that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is: 1. Bad laws got us into this place 2. There's a lot of inertia in government 3. There's a lot of stake holders in government who don't have citizen's interests at heart 4. It's illogical to think you can, in light of this, just pass a law and fix it. Yeah, we designed the law, and we know how it works. Sadly, we know also that the way it works is generally…

"The economic system isn't working well, so let's smash it, eliminate the ability of the government to tax people, and give almost all the world's money to a tiny number of anonymous people, 90%+ of whom are affluent white Libertarian males."

Honestly, this whole thing just makes me tremendously sad now.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#363

Post by dcolkitt »

Traster wrote: post #46

I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's some promise in some places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises. Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stup…

> None of their claims have materially panned out.

* Starknet is running a Turing complete VM using nothing but zero knowledge proofs. It's now possible and practical to trustlessly prove general purpose computation with O(logN) proof sizes.

* Uniswap processes nearly $2 billion of trading volume a day. For reference that's about as much as the Australian stock exchange. In an entirely decentralized, non-custodial, trustless manner.

* The Solana network processes 65,000 transaction, about equivalent to the entire Visa network.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#364

Post by reedjosh »

gwbas1c wrote: post #311
malthaus wrote: post #183

Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How…

100% agree, and I must add: Those are all political problems. Technology does not solve political problems. Politics solves political problems. All cryptocurrency does is obfuscate the politics behind its monetary system. As flawed as our monetary system is, the politics behind it are visible and under control of a government. In my country, my government is elected, and I'm an active and informed voter. Thus, I thin…

Politically working in sound money (no printer go brrrr) is governmentally forbidden. Bitcoin subverted the corrupt political process and has brought that choice back.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#365

Post by snapcaster »

tablespoon wrote: post #321
koonsolo wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> society won't be worse off in the end. That is most definitely a political question. I think the article has a strange reasoning about crypto trying to "save the world". For me it's pretty clear: individuals can now store and transfer value on the internet using a consensus algorithm. Plenty of you claim that it's enough to have a democracy that controls a central bank. That way you also have some kind of consensus…

> Problem is that this democracy/central bank is not stable in every country. So crypto provides real "internet money", with all benefits and drawbacks. Except that, from a practical perspective, if you live in a country without a stable "democracy/central bank," using fiat from a stable country (e.g. dollars or euros) is a better solution than cryptocurrency in pretty much all cases. AFAIK, cryptocurrency isn't in p…

Well on your last point it does. "Money should be inflationary" is a "weird ideological monetary policy idea" it's just one that you agree with?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#366

Post by rockostrich »

jfk13 wrote: post #301
koonsolo wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> society won't be worse off in the end. That is most definitely a political question. I think the article has a strange reasoning about crypto trying to "save the world". For me it's pretty clear: individuals can now store and transfer value on the internet using a consensus algorithm. Plenty of you claim that it's enough to have a democracy that controls a central bank. That way you also have some kind of consensus…

> it's clear that cryptocurrencies try to live outside of governmental control As a species, we have developed government control because in general, large-scale anarchy doesn't work well.

But that's in the vacuum of some other kind of authority. In the case of crypto, there's still authority. It's just algorithmic instead of human.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#367

Post by kingaillas »

______-_-______ wrote: post #345
tablespoon wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People shitting on crypto, while sitting on their ass without addressing the problems in other ways are doing society a disservice. But cryptocurrency doesn't address any real problems. The claims that it does are mostly BS and marketing. The problems cryptocurrency solves are ones that are created by holding to peculiar ideologies and/or speculating about problems that haven't happened and may never happen. The on…

Crypto has addressed real problems for Ukraine's military. > “In a situation like this, where the national bank is not fully operating, crypto is helping to perform fast transfers, to make it very quick and get results almost immediately,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/technology/bitcoin-ukrain... Is this BS and marketing?

I would characterize this situation (of crypto helping perform fast transfers) as a very temporary "advantage" that would almost certainly disappear over time.

For one thing, this advantage over the national bank, is during a WAR. Assuming the war disrupts the national bank, yet over the long term will not also disrupt all the infrastructure that bitcoin needs (cheap high speed computing, available networking, reliable electricity, etc) strains credibility.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#368

Post by rockostrich »

soco wrote: post #347
nikanj wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the claims has panned out: Plenty of people have gotten rich. To be fair, they've gotten rich from selling their early-adopter cryptos to the next fool. But many people have won the lottery.

The same argument can be made about Ponzi or MLM schemes...

And venture capitalism.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#369

Post by BoxOfRain »

Jach wrote: post #302
sneak wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out there are actually things that lawmakers don't really have the power to effectively ban, drugs and prostitution and gambling and cash transactions principally among them. A lot of people don't seem to integrate this fact. The practical power of a lawmaking body is not unlimited. There are certain things they simply cannot stop, no matter how many laws are passed. It won't "end" for either group, really.…

"The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia." --Malcolm Turnbull, Australia Prime Minister (2015-2018) There are some people who see attitudes like that in the government and think how can [things backed by math] survive a coordinated government onslaught that'll happen any year now? And then those that just look at such statements as the unlettere…

I definitely think a huge part of the business of government generally is enforcing society's suspension of disbelief, it's a lot cheaper to merely convince everyone that you're all-powerful and resistance is futile than to actually become all-powerful.
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