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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

#581

Post by Macross8299 »

louwrentius wrote: post #483
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…

I'm not sure billions of dollars of QE that disproportionately benefit banks and the financial class is a desirable feature in any way.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#582

Post by caeril »

smeej wrote: post #577
splistud wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Alright. I tried to do this. I'm certainly open to learning. But it looks like I'm actually going to need citations from you because everything I'm finding so far confirms that we do NOT know how much gold exists in the earth, or where it might be found, or whether it will become economically feasible to extract it. All we know is that discoveries are slowing down.[0][1][2][3] I've tried to read a variety of sources,…

This is ultimately a matter of perspective.

If you're a cornucopian, and you're certain that new technology will unlock much more efficient smelting/separation/filtration/asteroid mining techniques, then sure, gold is virtually limitless.

If you're a realist, you understand that ore quality degrades as a function of the fact that we smelt the highest purity ores first, and that while (usually very small) new vein discoveries do occur, they occur as already understood as a statistical variance against a much much larger backdrop of averaging functions.

I'm not discounting the possibility of an extraction breakthrough - it's certainly possible. But revolutions of the kind you're assuming are certain to occur extremely infrequently.

And to that point, I'm a "very long term corncucopian", in the sense that a thousand years out, we will probably eventually realize the Minsky dream of nanobots that can act effectively as the Maxwell's Demon of elemental extraction. But I'm old enough, and have awaited the Singularity long enough, to realize that optimism doesn't make a science, and that this won't be for at least a few hundred years, at minimum. (I'll leave what 300 years of quantum computing work could do to 256 bit hash collisions as an exercise for the reader.)

And that's assuming that we even survive the coming climate and/or resource catastrophe that awaits 10 billion souls in 20 or so years.

Upvoting you because you are precisely me, 20 years ago before understanding how things actually work :)

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#584

Post by hungryforcodes »

_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"…

A bitcoin mining operation is effectively no different than say an Amazon or Microsoft data center. But no one ever talks about those or demonizes them.

"The music video for “Despacito” set an Internet record in April 2018 when it became the first video to hit five billion views on YouTube. In the process, "Despacito" reached a less celebrated milestone: it burned as much energy as 40,000 U.S. homes use in a year."

One youtube video.

https://fortune.com/2019/09/18/internet-cloud-server-data-ce...

At the end of the day it comes down to where people want to put their energy allocations. Large scale Bitcoin and or cryptocurrency mining operations are mostly just other buildings with racks of computers.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#585

Post by tanseydavid »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #522
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is speculative trading in stocks and bonds, but not as frequently. It is a choice that a trader can make, though and hasn't been regulated away. I have no problem with government regulation on Cryptocurrency for speculation if the same laws effect the trading of stacks and bonds. The "green" issue of Crypto mining is a harder regulatory issue for our government to get involved in, though. While on the one hand,…

Stocks are usually shares of a company with assets. Assets that can be sold off to pay back shareholders when things go sideways.

Usually, "when things go sideways" there is nothing left to be sold off.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#586

Post by kragen »

Gendun wrote: post #561
kragen wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally posted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 >. Slightly edited. If you live in a country with a highly functional banking system and no kleptocracy, Bitcoin is probably a bit puzzling unless you have family in Cuba. But it’s not puzzling at all for those of us who live somewhere in the middle of the broad spectrum between Switzerland and Somalia, because most places have a little kleptocracy. A…

"Argentina is a stable democracy, far from being “a failed state,”† but if you want to send US$500 abroad via non-Bitcoin means it’s basically impossible...." So about that: https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2018/06/134729-transferwise... I believe in fact one of the core aspects of this critique is that cryptocurrency is often presented as the only solution to problems that are either already solved or that have obvi…

Probably it's true that "cryptocurrency is often presented as the only solution to problems that are either already solved or that have obvious conventional alternatives," but I don't think my comment or the sentence you cited from it is an example of that.

That article says that TransferWise was going to offer service in Argentina. Looking at TransferWise's web site (now wise.com) they currently support converting money to Argentine pesos but not from Argentine pesos. So maybe if you're in Argentina and you have US dollars in your TransferWise account you can send them to someone else abroad.

But how do you get the dollars into the account in the first place? TransferWise doesn't seem to have a storefront in Argentina where you can walk in and deposit dollar bills. Their nearest office is in Brazil. Apparently to pay them you have to use the banking system.

But, as I've explained above, the Argentine banking system prohibits most people from buying any dollars at all, and the people who are allowed to buy dollars are limited to US$200 per month. It's easy enough to buy dollars on the black market, but there's no way to put those dollars into a bank account, and thus no way to send them to TransferWise.

So maybe that's why I know people who have successfully sent money out of Argentina with Bitcoin, and I think I know someone who has sent money into Argentina with TransferWise, but I've never heard of anybody successfully sending US$500 or more out of Argentina with TransferWise.

If it turns out that TransferWise actually does work for this at some point in the future, though, it would downgrade "sending US$500 abroad via non-Bitcoin means" from "basically impossible" to "a hundred times slower, expensive, and unavailable to the 51% of the country without a bank account". Cryptocurrency would go from being the only solution to just being the best solution.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#587

Post by bayesian_horse »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #330
bayesian_horse wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin does seem to depend to a large degree on money laundering and speculation on money laundering. You might not like it, but that is definitely the reality. Other kinds of currency and investment are a few times more useful as long as you are doing legitimate business.

The Bitcoin network could happy live without those things, as could trade, but price action depends on them. For example the 10000 BTC pizza was one of the early purchases. If BTC stayed at 0.1c then you could still use it and it was used. Caveat to this is now the mining infra means that returning to 1c coins would kill Bitcoin as a secure network since no one would mine for profit - the only reason to mine is the 5…

What does "happily live without it" even mean?

Fact is that Bitcoin is used a whole lot for laundering and transferring money in illegal businesses or across borders without taxation. The "legal" part of Bitcoin transactions which aren't just for investment or speculation, like "Pizza sales" or something, are, for one thing not that practical, for another not that popular or significant.

So it does stand to reason that most of the speculation is around the use of Bitcoin for laundering money. And even those with the best intentions are helping the money launderers by keeping the network alive and secure.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#588

Post by bayesian_horse »

tome wrote: post #243
bayesian_horse wrote: post #206

There are some good reasons for banning cryptocurrencies. "Speculative nature" certainly isn't a good reason.

Really? The SEC bans all sorts of securities issuances for exactly that reason.

Bitcoins isn't a security issuance. Just like the SEC can't regulate the trade on a lot of speculative investment goods like collectible items.

The SEC can't regulate Bitcoin out of existence. A government can make using Bitcoin for payment purposes, even mining, to some extent, illegal. That wouldn't extinguish any cryptocurrency, but it could squeeze them to a fraction of their former value or relevance.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#589

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

biztos wrote: post #538
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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?

Take a look at what's been happening in US Treasuries. Yields have been dropping for the last 40 years. Investors have still been happy with their returns because they make up for low yields with increasing prices on those bonds (bond prices and yields are inversely relational).

But, now that US treasury prices have reached their peak (yields can not possibly go lower), it's game over for US treasuries. this is playing out in other bond markets as well too. So, everyone is dumping bonds: see article "Why would anyone hold bonds?", it was shared on hacker news a few weeks ago.

Listen to just about any financial professional speak about bonds: they wouldn't "touch it with a 10' pole", is what you hear more often than not. Especially in the inflationary environment we're in now. Governments everywhere across the globe are up to their eyeballs in debt. the only way out is inflation - they've all realized this. you can't raise taxes, you cant decrease spending. you can only inflate your way out of the debt.

so, basically 100T worth of bonds, a very significant percentage of global assets, is being sold off. And it can't go into cash. So where's it going? Well, equities for the most part, hence the relentless rise of equity markets. but also, other places too like bitcoin because people need some diversification, which used to be served by bonds. In the past, investors recommended 60/40 equity bonds mix. in the future, maybe it's 60/40 equity/commodities/crypto.

Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban

#590

Post by wk_end »

beiller wrote: post #452
wk_end wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if there’s a good way to measure how much CO2 is used to enforce fiat, but I very strongly suspect that it’s nowhere near as much as Bitcoin requires per economic unit or whatever. Bitcoin’s already using several country’s worth of CO2 and it’s still (compared to fiat) very fringe. Also bear in mind that much of that CO2 generated by the force you’re describing, aside from the people guarding the banks d…

Bitcoin doesn't use several countries worth of CO2. It has been "calculated" that "cryptocurrency" uses as much electricity as a small country. But that is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not use GPUs to mine. They use specialized chips which are far more efficient than GPUs. Etherium is the currency burning all the electricity. Also, you are conflating CO2 with electricity. Which is not correct in my opinion because elect…

Please see https://cbeci.org/cbeci/comparisons

If Bitcoin were a country, on its own, it'd be ranked 27th in the world on energy consumption. Looking at the chart there it very clearly uses as much energy as several countries (say: New Zealand, Hungary, and Peru) put together.

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