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The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#481

Post by tarsinge »

slibhb wrote: post #32
_nckn wrote: post #5

I think the main premise of this article is the fact that crypto's carbon emission is insane, especially Bitcoin, which I agree (I don't hold Bitcoin for this exact reason). But there are many other crypto that uses Proof of Stake, way way greener than Proof of Work, such as Cardano. Even Ethereum is transitioning to Proof of Stake. This article should be re-titled "The Political Case for a Blanket Proof of Work Ban"…

The main premise of the article is that cryptocurrencies are "speculation for speculation’s sake," i.e. gambling, and that's bad. Also, the article claims that they contribute to inequality. The green stuff is basically a side note. I don't think it's a terribly strong case but I suppose it depends on whether you agree that crypto is gambling and if you think gambling should banned. Anyway, I think lots of people stu…

The way people “invest” in the stock market nowadays is no different. Long gone are the days of buying a share for dividends and voting power. People now are just betting on what they will be able to dump the bags at the time of their retirement in a giant casino. Crypto is just the end game.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#482

Post by tubbyjr »

hudon wrote: post #421
dnautics wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't the network soft fork?

If stakeholders can manipulate the network to ignore a chain with more work, you’ve kind of undermined the whole proof-of-work thing and conceded that Bitcoin is ultimately subject to politics just like any other financial system.

Semantics, semantics, semantics, that's all your arguments are.

Soft and hard forks are a defensive mechanism against 51% attacks, essentially making them an always losing proposition outside of the immediate-term where the attack is occuring, because the attacker has to expend so much money, and then a simple code change could revert it, which would likely happen in consensus for the network if such a malicious attack would occur. Hence, no rational actor will likely even consider a 51% attack.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#483

Post by louwrentius »

fcanesin wrote: post #147

What a idiotic essay, the same arguments could be made for the ban of most precious metal mining since majority of it goes to storage deposits. Cryptocurrencies actually bring several benefits and better solutions for the problem of trust in a store-of-value or exchange contract. The world needs Bitcoin now more than ever, we are already living in a multilateral world where US and China exert pressure to force intern…

Governments print money to keep society from collapsing.

What you rail against is a feature not a bug. So many cryptocoin advocates don’t seem to understand how societies work.

The world can do without BTC just fine. Now more than ever. It doesn’t actually solve a problem we face.

Only those who have Bitcoin seem so adamant about it. No coincidence right? Because we know it needs more ‘suckers’ to buy into the ponzi because no value is ever created.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#484

Post by apotheon »

ramphastidae wrote: post #453
abrahamepton wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty damn incoherent. > the core reason for cryptocurrencies; escaping inflation and control Maybe in a whitepaper. In the real world, it's mostly about speculation and enabling crime. > Law and order stands on the backs of a lot of stuff and CO2. Bitcoin is an example of one little piece of this not needing all that stuff. Ok...? This is nonsensical. > Instead it's protected by this mining fleet. And if yo…

> Maybe in a whitepaper. In the real world, it's mostly about speculation and enabling crime. That’s the same line authoritarian governments used to demonize encrypted communications.

The real complaint from the surveillance police state is that people use encryption for privacy -- whether it's basic communications privacy (end-to-end encrypted text and voice) or basic financial privacy (cryptocurrencies that aren't being made progressively more trackable).

Part of that "used for crime" shit is about things that are against the law just because nobody reported buying a car or something like that, too.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#485

Post by c0achmcguirk »

blake1 wrote: post #392
dnautics wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pretty easy"? Exactly how do you Envision this attack going down, step by step?

Government agents show up at the data center and confiscate the servers in the mining pool. The coerce the owners into turning over the login credentials. Or they just deploy their own mining pool. Or the just tax all of their citizens’ cryptos. They have lots of options, since they have the power of the state behind them.

That's an awful lot of work to perform a double-spend. Whoopty doo.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#486

Post by beiller »

saalweachter wrote: post #357
tome wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Fossil CO2 Emissions (2016) 35,753 megatons globally - so gold mining is 0.2% of global CO2 emissions!? - Bitcoin mining energy use is at least 78TWh annually - 480-500g of carbon dioxide produced for every kWh consumed - So mining bitcoin produces 40 megatons of CO2 per year, which is the same order of magnitude of gold mining. - And mining bitcoin is 0.1% of global CO2 emissions (I would be grateful if someone wo…

> so gold mining is 0.2% of global CO2 emissions!? Looks like iron & steel is 7.2%. Non-ferrous metals are listed at 0.7%, so gold is ~1/3 of the CO2 of non-ferrous metal production. Paper ("and pulp") is 0.6%. https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

Wow so all that junk mail I get in the mail every day is dwarfing the co2 emissions of Bitcoin?

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#487

Post by Sargos »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #458
DickingAround wrote: post #53

This article seems to intentionally ignore the core reason for cryptocurrencies; escaping inflation and control. The article then proposes to use the law to bring those people back within the control of fiat and government oversight. I no longer think the environmental argument is really plausible here. Clearly crypto mining is emitting using a lot of power and some of that is CO2. But the competition is fiat; backed…

The "mining fleet", if it uses computers, requires electricity. Who controls the supply and sale of electricity. Nothing against desire to solve world problems but Bitcoin (edit: or any other example of a cryptocurrency) seems to be creating more problems than it purports to solve. The author calls cryptocurrencies a "predatory investment scheme". In practice, is this not correct. Is it not the lack of "law and order…

>The original Satoshi paper made his idea sound like it would be possible to implement as peer-to-peer^1 without third parties. All the implementations I have seen to date involve third parties.

Bitcoin sort of stopped being developed years ago and pretty much everything shifted over to Ethereum where the ethos of Bitcoin were further developed and most of the things people talked about in 2010-2013 were actually developed. For example, Uniswap is completely peer-to-peer and decentralized. Most of DeFi is. If you are at all interested in what is happening in this space it's worth taking a look at what exists and what is being developed.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#488

Post by amanaplanacanal »

ramphastidae wrote: post #453
abrahamepton wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty damn incoherent. > the core reason for cryptocurrencies; escaping inflation and control Maybe in a whitepaper. In the real world, it's mostly about speculation and enabling crime. > Law and order stands on the backs of a lot of stuff and CO2. Bitcoin is an example of one little piece of this not needing all that stuff. Ok...? This is nonsensical. > Instead it's protected by this mining fleet. And if yo…

> Maybe in a whitepaper. In the real world, it's mostly about speculation and enabling crime. That’s the same line authoritarian governments used to demonize encrypted communications.

In the real world most encrypted communications is probably people using HTTPS.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#490

Post by ablekh »

karpierz wrote: post #463
ablekh wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way to break the cycle is to have cash start to lose value, or inflate. Then the interest rates drop, and people start to spend their money. If people's money starts losing value, the last thing they would do is to be concerned with interest rates. With less valuable money, people would simply be able to afford a smaller consumption basket and, thus, spending will stay flat & consumption will decrease. > ... pe…

> If people's money starts losing value, the last thing they would do is to be concerned with interest rates. With less valuable money, people would simply be able to afford a smaller consumption basket and, thus, spending will stay flat & consumption will decrease. If your money starts losing value, do you A) put it under the mattress or B) trade it for things that you can either use now or that retain/grow their va…

> If your money starts losing value, do you A) put it under the mattress or B) trade it for things that you can either use now or that retain/grow their value in the future?

It depends on the situation. For example, if one lives paycheck to paycheck or close to that, then I don't see how they would not put a bit "under the mattress" (emergency fund) and spend the rest on basic needs. There is only so much food one can buy to store at home for future consumption. On the other hand, if income >> costs, that's a totally different story ...

> Sorry, I understand the confusion given I used the term 'salary'. I should have said something along the lines of 'value' or 'goods'. The split between workers and owners depends on the surrounding conditions.

No problem. Re: "depends on the surrounding conditions" - it is a very diplomatic way of avoiding touching the core of the income inequality issue.

> The point is that dollars are tokens that represent goods produced, at the time they were produced. Not how much energy or effort went into those goods.

Not sure I understand this point. It seems to be against one of the basic economic principles that I remember (price of goods = cost of production + margin / added value) - where cost of production implies exactly "how much energy or effort went into those goods". Perhaps, I'm dumb as rock or completely forgot Economics 101. :-) For example, if a TV model A costs $200 and model B costs $2000, it is not just because they "represent [different] goods produced", but because model B is much more expensive to produce and/or it has much more added value [real and/or perceived] than model A.

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