The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban • Hacker News Board

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#531

Post by ablekh » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 12:35 AM UTC

karpierz wrote: post #521

ablekh wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ca…

> On the other hand, if income >> costs, that's a totally different story ... I'm looking at excess capital used for funding loans, business, etc. So I'm more focused on this case. I take you point that inflation eats up ~2% of cash savings yearly, and that it's a bigger deal the less wealthy you are. > it is a very diplomatic way of avoiding touching the core of the income inequality issue. I'd say that deflation is…

Fair enough, points taken. I appreciate your clarifications and our brief, but nice, discussion. :-)

> And so if the good becomes cheaper to produce over time, you'd want to inflate the cost of it to keep it level.

I'm a bit confused about this part - why would you want to "keep it [the cost] level" between 1921 and 2021?

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#532

Post by jonkho » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 12:38 AM UTC

redisman wrote: post #406

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the competition is fiat; backed by fighter jets and nukes; literally. I don't like this meme. Fiat currency is backed by an entire democracy that includes a military, but the key piece here isn't the military, it's the democracy. Despite all the problems in the US and our economic system, the folks in charge of the currency generally have the right mandate (stable employment and stable prices).

Bitcoin also runs on infrastructure that is backed by the exact same forces. Networks, electricity, the computers. You couldn't have Bitcoin if those resources weren't protected by your government. Otherwise I can for example find the top 100 largest Bitcoin miners and walk up to their door with guns and demand all their Bitcoins or I'll blow up the mines.

Do you think you may be unsuccessful and get blown away by their own security apparatus?

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#533

Post by jude- » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 12:38 AM UTC

Paradigma11 wrote: post #451

jude- wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> switching to Proof Of Stake would solve almost all bitcoin problems This will also create a very severe problem: it makes it so the means of coin production exist solely in the hands of the coin owners today. Those coin owners won't ever sell you enough coins for you to be a competitive staker. At least with PoW, I can make more coins through extrinsic means -- i.e. better mining hardware.

1.) If they dont sell it, its the same as it not existing or having been lost. Liquidity is not a problem in the PoS blockchains that have been operating for years (for example Tezos). 2.) You have to pay taxes on staking rewards. So unless they intend to lose money they have to sell at least that much.

Oh they can and will sell some, and I never claimed otherwise. My point is that they won't sell enough that the buyer(s)' token production rate through staking will exceed their own.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#534

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

boc wrote: post #445

RinTohsaka wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe in a whitepaper. In the real world, it's mostly about speculation and enabling crime. Speculation I could agree with... however, Crime? Really? Got anything to back this up? The vast majority of crime is performed using cash. https://hodlhard.io/blog/bitcoin-crime/

> Just last week, the United Nations alleged that North Korea was funding its nuclear weapons program using funds from hacked cryptocurrency exchanges, alongside other thefts. The U.N. believes that over $300 million in crypto assets have been stolen by various North Korean hackers.[1] > Iranian thinktanks have also emphasized the need for the nation’s government to use cryptocurrencies to circumvent US-led internati…

Can we actually show that nuclear weapons are bad for the environment? Obviously there is a baseline production cost and various detonation costs plus issues of trying to get a scalar judgement from a complex systtem but they could perversely be helpful theoretially by stopping other polluting activities.

Isn't it perversely possible that the environmental impact of another two more Iraq War scale conflicts plus end of ongoing middle east presence means that ironically Bitcoin and nuclear weapons combined could help the environment net in comparison.

Sort of the logic behind a joke "They say that nuclear weapons kept the cold war cold, they say want peace in the middle east yet when I give Palestine Iran and Palestine nuclear ICBMs suddenly I am now the bad guy here?"

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#535

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #468

pas wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just denominated, settled. They literally want USD for their oil instead of SAR (riyal). (Sure, SAR is pegged to USD.) Here's a very thought provoking article about the "dollar system": https://phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-class-politics-of-t...

The "exorbitant privilege"? You mean the exorbitant privilege to create government debt to cancel out a savings glut? I've never understood this argument. I always heard how the USA is "riding" or "abusing" the US to achieve some nefarious goal when from my perspective it was always the inverse. Since I lacked the necessary knowledge I tried to think about how the effects work from first principles and I always came…

It is clear that if you want to be viewed as the demon whose vileness exceeds all other demons you just give everybody who wants something what they want reliably. After that nothing you do will fail to be evil. If you restrict them you are a tyrant. If you don't you enable all evils of the world. If you vanish from the world you destroyed all out of spite.

Whether it is hosting videoes or simply not guarding your currency from export like a jealous dragon.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#536

Post by saalweachter » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

beiller wrote: post #486

saalweachter wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I wouldn't say dwarfed but the answer looks to be ... maybe?

5.8 million tons of junk mail each year in the US. Mass of CO2 to mass of paper looks to be 10.5x for new paper and 3x for recycled, so depending on whether junk mail is primarily recycled or new, that is somewhere between 17 and 60 megatons of CO2 / year.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#537

Post by blindgeek » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

louwrentius wrote: post #464

Jetrel wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One point of comparison that's a hell of a point in favor of fiat currencies, is the that because fiat is just based on a really nebulous 'general consensus' rather than any sort of 'hard store of value', the same thing that's a bogeyman (of authorities deciding to cancel out all of your assets by executive decision) can work in reverse. Most of our forms of fraud protection, like identity theft, bank robbery, etc, b…

Thank you for sharing this. I think many people may not know/understand this aspect /feature of our existing banking system and the role of government. Or they deliberately try to ignore the entire safety mechanism because it goes against their narrative that government control is bad, it collides with this libertarian spiel. All to keep the grift going. When not understanding or misunderstanding things makes you mor…

It is really telling that the people who complain most bitterly about fiat currency fall into a few different camps, most of which want to destroy any kind of government social safety net. On the one hand we have the right-libertarians / "anarcho"-capitalists promoting bitcoin etc. On the other hand, elements of the wacko/fringe right in the US have been attacking "fiat" currency and Keynesian economics for decades, loudly calling for a return to the gold standard. By wacko right, I mean organizations like the John Birch Society, Liberty Lobby, and similar, and ideological descendants thereof.

These seemingly disparate camps -- fringe right and "anarcho"-capitalist -- share a fundamentally anti-democratic philosophy. For example, one of the seminal texts of "anarcho"-capitalism is Hans-Hermann Hoppe's _Democracy: the God that Failed_. If you look through my posting history, you'll find a quote from Tim May, an "anarcho"-capitalist and leader of the cypherpunk movement, wherein his anti-democratic sensibilities are on full display.

I'll end with a quote:

Begin quote. More than that; we can tell them that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance where the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of the gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have declared for a gold standard, but not where the masses have. End quote, from William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech.

I'm totally in favor of a cryptocurrency ban; we will not be crucified on a cross of bitcoin.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#538

Post by biztos » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #436

biztos wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, people are using Bitcoin as a store of value, but I think a lot of those people think it will just keep going up. Which is not a super rational thing to believe about an asset whose value has no relation to anything in the real world, and nothing to prop it up but the people who believe the same thing. Bitcoin is up something like 800% for the year. It might be up another 800% in six months! Or it might go down…

>> Bitcoin is up something like 800% for the year. It might be up another 800% in six months! Or it might go down to $10000! That was the case in 2017. Not anymore, things have changed. the fundamentals of bitcoin are based on what people believe it will be worth and this has changed drastically in mid-2020. Mid 2020 is the year WallStreet "got" bitcoin. this fundamentally changed it's future path. You have all these…

> destruction of an existing asset class: fixed income

I find it very intriguing that this could be the driver, but what do you base that on?

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#539

Post by karpierz » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

ablekh wrote: post #531

karpierz wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, if income >> costs, that's a totally different story ... I'm looking at excess capital used for funding loans, business, etc. So I'm more focused on this case. I take you point that inflation eats up ~2% of cash savings yearly, and that it's a bigger deal the less wealthy you are. > it is a very diplomatic way of avoiding touching the core of the income inequality issue. I'd say that deflation is…

Fair enough, points taken. I appreciate your clarifications and our brief, but nice, discussion. :-) > And so if the good becomes cheaper to produce over time, you'd want to inflate the cost of it to keep it level. I'm a bit confused about this part - why would you want to "keep it [the cost] level" between 1921 and 2021?

Money is a debt from society to its holder. You can exchange work or stuff for it, with the expectation that society will accept it at a later time for some stuff. So it's just a matter of deciding how the debt evolves over time.

That part is specifically meant to contrast deflation with either stagflation or inflation. If you drop the nominal price over time, you're setting a Ponzi scheme. By virtue of selling something in the past and holding on to the token, you're entitled to more of it in the future, without any risk. And you're preventing the token from being spent by someone now who could use it.

And likewise, I appreciate the line of questioning, it helps me reflect and think about this. The details are a bit fuzzy, and I'll need to think more about some goods that seem deflationary (computers for example)

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#540

Post by splistud » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

smeej wrote: post #417

caeril wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know to a pretty good approximation how much gold is in the earth, and where it is. That's not even a minor consideration for mining geologists and engineers anymore. The primary limitation as of now is ore quality, which directly dictates how much energy is required for smelting, and we have a good idea of the decline curve thereof. We know roughly when it will be economically profitable to extract the stuff from…

We certainly think we know. But we've thought an awful lot of things as a human species that turned out not to be true. Gold is presumably scarce. Bitcoin is provably scarce.

You are wrong about gold, either learn or drop that, its not central to your argument.

A lot of things are scarce. Some of those things are valued. Bitcoins may or may not be valued in the future, and if they are it is unknown at what price point they might be valued. Scarcity is only part of the equation.