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Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

concerned.tech

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Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#71

Post by thomzane »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #37

The letter has some good and bad. Good because it advocates for more regulation and consumer protection, and points out some obvious concerns with crypto like energy expenditure in proof of work. Bad because the letter misrepresents the technology and paints privacy as a purely criminal behavior, and suggests the entire technology sector is useless. > Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a d…

Climate emissions are only mentioned in a brief side-note. Makes me wonder what their motivation is. Sounds like the writer was a crypto investor, got scammed out of their money, got mad that they could not reverse the payment, and are now against the entire tech stack.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#72

Post by alaricus »

notinfuriated wrote: post #69
bitcoin_anon wrote: post #34

Serious question for those of you who want to regulate Bitcoin out of existence: What do you propose to do with those of us who, despite your attestations of its uselessness, have deemed it useful and purchased it with our hard earned money? For example, MSTR has ~$4 billion in Bitcoin on its balance sheet. It purchased it on the free market for reasons that were valid to it. However, you disagree and want to step in…

> What do you propose to do with those of us who... Not my problem. It's your life and your money. And of course you know that not everyone who has purchased it has deemed it "useful" beyond the use of hodling until you sell to someone else for more money. I've used BTC myself, to buy drugs 10 years ago. Sadly, it seemed more useful then than it is now. Anyway, I don't think anything should be done to dramatically af…

No post body was provided.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#73

Post by alaricus »

This is one of the most ridiculous things I read in a very long time.

Why does it concern those 1500 people how I decide to store my money? What's next, regulating where I can spend my money and where I can't?

There is nothing responsible about the government interfering in things it should not be interfering with.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#74

Post by generationP »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #62
generationP wrote: post #58

> Finally, blockchain technologies facilitate few, if any, real-economy uses. On the other hand, the underlying crypto-assets have been the vehicle for unsound and highly volatile speculative investment schemes that are being actively promoted to retail investors who may be unable to understand their nature and risk. Other significant externalities include threats to national security through money laundering and ran…

More Venezuelans used Zelle with dollars than crypto. I was able to donate dollars without issue directly to the Ukrainian government. Crypto proponents trot out these edge suboptimal use cases as excuses to allow an entire global Ponzi scheme to continue, when the discussion should be “what mechanisms can be provided to support refugee value protection and transferring value to friendly nations under attack using ex…

Can a random Venezuelan sign up for Zelle? I needed an SSN if I recall correctly (in the US at least).

And yes, I've donated to the Ukrainian military through https://uahelp.monobank.ua/ , with a normal credit card donation. But these are slightly different things. One is a catch-all army account, which will probably take its time to percolate the money to whomever the higher-ups think needs it most. The other are grassroots initiatives supporting small divisions or local ter-oboronas (and yes, some of them are probably fake, but I don't think the majority is; it's a risk you take when you're funding anything). Neither replaces the other; in a war, there are things that the central government can do that a local volunteer bataillon can't, and vice versa.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#75

Post by NikolaNovak »

bitcoin_anon wrote: post #34

Serious question for those of you who want to regulate Bitcoin out of existence: What do you propose to do with those of us who, despite your attestations of its uselessness, have deemed it useful and purchased it with our hard earned money? For example, MSTR has ~$4 billion in Bitcoin on its balance sheet. It purchased it on the free market for reasons that were valid to it. However, you disagree and want to step in…

Serious answer: nothing. Absolutely utterly nothing. Why should we? Why is there an expectation that we should? Where does this sense of entitlement come in from those who gambled, that others are responsible for rescuing you out of it?

I assume you understood the landscape, and the risks, and took the gamble as an informed, consenting adult, and are willing to stand by it as an adult if gamble doesn't work out.

If NOT, well that's exactly what regulations are meant to prevent - make it a little bit harder for uninformed or unconsenting people to make a foolish or unaware gamble. Mostly, about treating it the same as everything else under the sun ("cry me a river", as they say:)

If it helps understand my seemingly heartless position: I have exactly as much sympathy and empathy for somebody spending $4bil on crypto, as for investing $4bil in Phillip Morris or another tobacco company a couple of decades ago.

Just because you "deemed it useful" (i.e. hoped to profit massively), doesn't mean we as society cannot decide otherwise and attempt to limit, regulate, inform, or otherwise stop the madness. And we owe you nada.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#76

Post by generationP »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67
searchableguy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial inclusion tech letter: https://www.financialinclusion.tech/ Support from activists and people in corrupt, poor, and developing countries.

> Signatures from activists, people in corrupt, poor, and developing countries Speaking purely from a political perspective, this is a terrible argument. You're addressing the U.S. Congress. The letter this comment thread attaches to lists harms crypto brings on Americans. Your letter lists benefits accruing to non-Americans. If I were a lobbyist for the original letter's writers, I'd line these two up and end my cas…

> Your letter lists benefits accruing to non-Americans.

This is the literal reading, yes.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#77

Post by logicalmonster »

thawaya3113 wrote: post #53
tatertots1234 wrote: post #37

The letter has some good and bad. Good because it advocates for more regulation and consumer protection, and points out some obvious concerns with crypto like energy expenditure in proof of work. Bad because the letter misrepresents the technology and paints privacy as a purely criminal behavior, and suggests the entire technology sector is useless. > Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a d…

E2E privacy has a lot of uses. Crypto has none. It’s just an enabler and hotbed of a variety of scams. Any use it may have can only possibly reveal itself after the crypto asset bubble/scams die. So even if you’re a crypto enthusiast, you should be in favor of this whole disastrous phase for crypto ending so you can try again and actually make it useful this time. Since crypto has become a completely speculation driv…

> Crypto has none.

Posts on HN about some payment provider robbing somebody blind and destroying their life's work are a common occurrence here.

We're not too far gone from wrong-think protesters in Canada having their bank accounts seized by the government.

But crypto has no use case. Gotcha.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#78

Post by hnthrow1010 »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #64
thawaya3113 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E2E privacy has a lot of uses. Crypto has none. It’s just an enabler and hotbed of a variety of scams. Any use it may have can only possibly reveal itself after the crypto asset bubble/scams die. So even if you’re a crypto enthusiast, you should be in favor of this whole disastrous phase for crypto ending so you can try again and actually make it useful this time. Since crypto has become a completely speculation driv…

Your post is so perfectly in line with the blanket dismissal and absolutist attitude of the letter that you could pass as one of the authors. Crypto has its uses. Crypto also has lots of scams. Crypto bubble popping will not destroy the scams; these are endemic to any semi decentralized system, see email spam and robocalls. We can do much more to regulate, moderate, and improve the tech for better consumer protection…

>Crypto has its uses.

No, this is wrong. By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. The technology fundamentally doesn't enable anything else, if you take that out it's just a really niche and inefficient distributed database. You may be suggesting that some companies have been able to build useful things on top of a blockchain. That might be true but out of all the examples you gave, they're useful in spite of cryptocurrency, not because of it. The exercise for crypto builders now becomes how to separate the useful parts from the ponzi tokens and build just those.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#79

Post by tatertots1234 »

hnthrow1010 wrote: post #78
tatertots1234 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is so perfectly in line with the blanket dismissal and absolutist attitude of the letter that you could pass as one of the authors. Crypto has its uses. Crypto also has lots of scams. Crypto bubble popping will not destroy the scams; these are endemic to any semi decentralized system, see email spam and robocalls. We can do much more to regulate, moderate, and improve the tech for better consumer protection…

>Crypto has its uses. No, this is wrong. By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. The technology fundamentally doesn't enable anything else, if you take that out it's just a really niche and inefficient distributed database. You may be suggesting that some companies have been able to build useful things on top of a blockchain. That might be true but out of all the examples you gave, they're useful in sp…

> By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling.

And the earth is flat, and I refuse to accept any evidence to the contrary.

A simple example of crypto being useful is as a timestamped, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof ledger of cryptographically signed messages. That is one use case for it besides gambling, ergo your statement is easily refuted. I presume you will move the goalposts, though.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#80

Post by faddypaddy34 »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #64
thawaya3113 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E2E privacy has a lot of uses. Crypto has none. It’s just an enabler and hotbed of a variety of scams. Any use it may have can only possibly reveal itself after the crypto asset bubble/scams die. So even if you’re a crypto enthusiast, you should be in favor of this whole disastrous phase for crypto ending so you can try again and actually make it useful this time. Since crypto has become a completely speculation driv…

Your post is so perfectly in line with the blanket dismissal and absolutist attitude of the letter that you could pass as one of the authors. Crypto has its uses. Crypto also has lots of scams. Crypto bubble popping will not destroy the scams; these are endemic to any semi decentralized system, see email spam and robocalls. We can do much more to regulate, moderate, and improve the tech for better consumer protection…

I see a lot that crypto has it's uses. Please explain like I am 5 what some of the best ones are.
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