Binance US No Longer Allows USD Withdrawal for Users(thenewscrypto.com)
thenewscrypto.com
Binance US No Longer Allows USD Withdrawal for Users
https://thenewscrypto.com/binance-us-no-longer-allows-usd-withdrawal-for-users/
422 comments
As much as I would like to believe BTC's market is completely fake, there has to be some real liquidity there. The hashrate is ~421 EH/s which represents a tremendous amount of ongoing spending on mining equipment and energy. That spending has to be funded somehow and the only way that makes sense is by selling the mined BTC.
So there may be a lot of wash trading and games played with stablecoins trying to prop up the price, but there also must be enough real buyers to purchase the 6.25 BTC (~$175k) generated every 10 minutes. Otherwise the miners would not be able to pay their bills (surely owed in Real Money), would shut down, and we would see evidence of that in the network's hashrate plummeting.
So there may be a lot of wash trading and games played with stablecoins trying to prop up the price, but there also must be enough real buyers to purchase the 6.25 BTC (~$175k) generated every 10 minutes. Otherwise the miners would not be able to pay their bills (surely owed in Real Money), would shut down, and we would see evidence of that in the network's hashrate plummeting.
You have to consider that mining has traditionally been gently and benignly disregarded by most of the media interest in crypto. This is not an accident, the miners are very aware that calling attention to themselves would reveal exactly how suspiciously the valuations in crypto are constructed, and they've done a fantastic job of deflecting attention (with enormous help from the unbelievably clownish behavior of certain exchange operators) and acting like the adults in the fun house.
Serious scrutiny of how exactly the hash rate in Bitcoin is generated would not reflect well on the ecosystem, because of the amount of outright corruption involved, as well as theft, that goes back a decade. A couple years ago an operation was uncovered in Thailand where something on the order of 100 million dollars worth of mining equipment had been found burning stolen electricity from government enterprises, IIRC primarily public schools, and one of the investigators involved speculated that this was likely less than 10% of the illegal mining that was happening in their country, let alone the recognized legal stuff.
Consider that similar things are happening all over the world, not just Thailand, and even entire countries (DPRK) participating due to total systemic corruption crossed with no questiins asked access to natural resources and national treasuries, to be spent in any way they choose, and an investment in destabilizing the world economy - or at least evading financial controls - is well worth the cost of subsidizing mining both within their borders and beyond. You've also got quasi crackpots in charge of places like the government of El Salvador who are also helping to support this ecosystem.
Miners, I will conjecture without offering any support on the bet that eventually this will be found out and publicized, have been sitting on a warchest of nearly free coins mined long ago, when almost nobody was looking for corruption or theft of resources, and when block rewards were multiples higher to boot. The argument that miners have barely made a profit because of the adjustable difficulty level has always been an open lie due to a willingness to completely disregard the mining done using off market access to electricity and facilities, which was rampant in the early days and is still a significant chunk of the hash rate even today.
Miners can continue to slow sell their coin bases because they have effectively paid for them for over a decade at a massive discount to "market," and since the only major source of downward price pressure are the miners themselves, they can prop the price up for as long as they like by simply selling fewer coins into the market whenever there is an adverse social signal that they need to counter with a " honey badger of money doesn't care" price signal.
Serious scrutiny of how exactly the hash rate in Bitcoin is generated would not reflect well on the ecosystem, because of the amount of outright corruption involved, as well as theft, that goes back a decade. A couple years ago an operation was uncovered in Thailand where something on the order of 100 million dollars worth of mining equipment had been found burning stolen electricity from government enterprises, IIRC primarily public schools, and one of the investigators involved speculated that this was likely less than 10% of the illegal mining that was happening in their country, let alone the recognized legal stuff.
Consider that similar things are happening all over the world, not just Thailand, and even entire countries (DPRK) participating due to total systemic corruption crossed with no questiins asked access to natural resources and national treasuries, to be spent in any way they choose, and an investment in destabilizing the world economy - or at least evading financial controls - is well worth the cost of subsidizing mining both within their borders and beyond. You've also got quasi crackpots in charge of places like the government of El Salvador who are also helping to support this ecosystem.
Miners, I will conjecture without offering any support on the bet that eventually this will be found out and publicized, have been sitting on a warchest of nearly free coins mined long ago, when almost nobody was looking for corruption or theft of resources, and when block rewards were multiples higher to boot. The argument that miners have barely made a profit because of the adjustable difficulty level has always been an open lie due to a willingness to completely disregard the mining done using off market access to electricity and facilities, which was rampant in the early days and is still a significant chunk of the hash rate even today.
Miners can continue to slow sell their coin bases because they have effectively paid for them for over a decade at a massive discount to "market," and since the only major source of downward price pressure are the miners themselves, they can prop the price up for as long as they like by simply selling fewer coins into the market whenever there is an adverse social signal that they need to counter with a " honey badger of money doesn't care" price signal.
You are inflating the amounts considerably (and unverifiably with bald assertions) and then generalizing the rest of the industry based on anecdotal individual reports.
The amount of bad participation is negligible compared to the whole; the benefits are well-catalogued in places where it works under a legal regime. Your commentary about the attempt to destabilize the world economy has no legs and no justification aside from bald assertions, and in any event is directly contradictory to literally every academic estimation of the size of Bitcoin's black market going back to literally its first participant, being Silk Road v1, which even at the very beginning of Bitcoin represented only a tiny, tiny fraction of the otherwise legitimate economy.
Your assertion about the nature of miner profitability even internal to the assertion itself is a completely contradictory lie, since it can only be true if both miners are somehow ultra-profitable due to theft, but also not profitable at all and is thus a lie.
The mining conglomerates and larger operators and their profit in your assertions are clownish strawmen that have nothing to do with reality, and you are ignoring high-quality analyses of majority hashrate, their location, their energy use and source of energy, and ignoring the fact that literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide find positive value in Bitcoin's existence, and smacks of an oppressive first-world privileged hypocrisy and failure in value judgement.
The amount of bad participation is negligible compared to the whole; the benefits are well-catalogued in places where it works under a legal regime. Your commentary about the attempt to destabilize the world economy has no legs and no justification aside from bald assertions, and in any event is directly contradictory to literally every academic estimation of the size of Bitcoin's black market going back to literally its first participant, being Silk Road v1, which even at the very beginning of Bitcoin represented only a tiny, tiny fraction of the otherwise legitimate economy.
Your assertion about the nature of miner profitability even internal to the assertion itself is a completely contradictory lie, since it can only be true if both miners are somehow ultra-profitable due to theft, but also not profitable at all and is thus a lie.
The mining conglomerates and larger operators and their profit in your assertions are clownish strawmen that have nothing to do with reality, and you are ignoring high-quality analyses of majority hashrate, their location, their energy use and source of energy, and ignoring the fact that literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide find positive value in Bitcoin's existence, and smacks of an oppressive first-world privileged hypocrisy and failure in value judgement.
Stolen electricity is just part of it. Miners in Texas (and probably other places) have negotiated shockingly corrupt deals where they get electricity at low rates and then are paid to shut down when the grid needs more power. They're getting paid like a grid scale storage provider when in reality they're just a sink.
This is .. pretty much just a total whole-fabric lie.
wrong.
I don't recall the keywords to find the bust I was talking about from a couple years ago (2019 or so) which was explicitly targeting Bitcoin mining, (not eth or some other altcoin) but it turns out I didn't have to because in the past 2 years alone there have been two _more_ busts of electricity stealing crypto gangs, in thailand alone, collectively of a similar scale to the one I was referring to. By the evidence tables they appear to have been using slightly older antminers, what looks like a mix of s9, s17 (distinctive plug/fan layout), maybe s19 vintages, so although they don't say so in the articles this was almost certainly Bitcoin (or just as bad, BCH) being mined.
2022: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2455120/thousan...
2023: (much smaller scale than above but still stealing over USD $150000 a year in electricity)
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2569745/crypto-...
This time around the authorities estimate that they've only found 1%, not 10% as they had before, of the illegal mining done in their country. Perhaps the mining bans in Vietnam and China have triggered an influx of even more illegal activity into neighvoring states. This is the dirtiest secret in Bitcoin, bar none, and the conveniently suspicion-deflecting narrative that miners barely make profit is a straight up lie. This is just one of the many reasons its earning the name klepto-currency.
Sure, some upstart miners, the ones who foolishly attempt to operate completely above board may be in that position but they are not the handful of quiet established operations that have been around for 5, or even 10 years, and who have longstanding ties both to one another and to pool operators who help conceal the illegal portions of the hash rate they control. Thus is substantially the reason that miners can survive downward price pressure, since they themselves are the main source of it. But you're perhaps one of these hopeless cases who actually believes all or even a majority of the volume on exchanges is real as well.
I don't recall the keywords to find the bust I was talking about from a couple years ago (2019 or so) which was explicitly targeting Bitcoin mining, (not eth or some other altcoin) but it turns out I didn't have to because in the past 2 years alone there have been two _more_ busts of electricity stealing crypto gangs, in thailand alone, collectively of a similar scale to the one I was referring to. By the evidence tables they appear to have been using slightly older antminers, what looks like a mix of s9, s17 (distinctive plug/fan layout), maybe s19 vintages, so although they don't say so in the articles this was almost certainly Bitcoin (or just as bad, BCH) being mined.
2022: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2455120/thousan...
2023: (much smaller scale than above but still stealing over USD $150000 a year in electricity)
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2569745/crypto-...
This time around the authorities estimate that they've only found 1%, not 10% as they had before, of the illegal mining done in their country. Perhaps the mining bans in Vietnam and China have triggered an influx of even more illegal activity into neighvoring states. This is the dirtiest secret in Bitcoin, bar none, and the conveniently suspicion-deflecting narrative that miners barely make profit is a straight up lie. This is just one of the many reasons its earning the name klepto-currency.
Sure, some upstart miners, the ones who foolishly attempt to operate completely above board may be in that position but they are not the handful of quiet established operations that have been around for 5, or even 10 years, and who have longstanding ties both to one another and to pool operators who help conceal the illegal portions of the hash rate they control. Thus is substantially the reason that miners can survive downward price pressure, since they themselves are the main source of it. But you're perhaps one of these hopeless cases who actually believes all or even a majority of the volume on exchanges is real as well.
>421 EH/s
Still 4 transactions per second?
Still 4 transactions per second?
Yes, thank you for your comment. Altcoins are terrible, NFTs are terrible, it was all a trend and I'm glad it's gone now. Bitcoin is different, always has been, always will be. Bitcoin is the digital gold. In my opinion it's not a currency and will not function like a currency but rather like gold. You don't buy your latte with gold, but you own gold stocks. Same thing with Bitcoin.
It's the safest, oldest, most tested blockchain out there. You can't beat that.
It's the safest, oldest, most tested blockchain out there. You can't beat that.
I personally see Bitcoin itself falling apart because it lacks the critical ecash property of untraceability, meaning it is the original non-fungible token. Regardless of how many honest verifiers are following the protocol, it's always possible to build a parallel system that judges which transactions/flows are legitimate or not according to completely different criteria - eg AML. This is happening slowly from both the bottom and the top - from the cryptocurrency industry with "blockchain analysis" and from the incumbent financial system with slowly creeping KYC rules. Right now you can still squint, use a mixer, and perhaps a less regulated exchange - just as ten years ago many people blissfully thought the whole thing was "anonymous". But the writing is on the wall. As soon as the more regulated exchanges start routinely rejecting transactions based on the source wallets' provenance, anything that's touched those wallets will become less desirable. Everyone will be drawn to the attractor of heeding the augmented rulesets to make sure they're not receiving tainted coins, and the currency will essentially fork.
Even Etherium? I was impressed they seemed to manage the transition to proof of stake and not blow up the whole thing.
(not a stakeholder myself, so this is only an outside view opinion)
(not a stakeholder myself, so this is only an outside view opinion)
One problem I see with the store of value idea, in the long run, is that I don't know if BTC's double spend prevention will survive its design.
The point of mining is to prevent double spend attacks. It does this in a rather brute-force way: the network as a whole always maintains a higher hashrate than any attacker. The network always out-spends the attacker to maintain security. As described in my prior comment the funding for this massive hashrate comes from newly generated BTC.
But Bitcoin is designed to wean itself off of emitting new coins as a mining reward. This is done by halving the block reward arbitrarily every 4 years. This is necessary to fulfill the promise that there will only ever be 21M coins, which has been a huge selling point to anti-inflation investors.
Ultimately the mining is supposed to be funded entirely by fees. But there is no market mechanism to ensure that fees "make up for" the lost emissions of new coins. The only reason to pay a high transaction fee is if there is high transaction volume, causing blocks to fill up, so you are competing for space with other people trying to make transactions. If transaction volume is fairly low, fees remain low. You can see fees only become a meaningful part of the reward at times of unusually high volume[0].
So, it seems plausible to me that if Bitcoin mining was funded entirely on transaction fees, the total mining reward would not be high enough to sustain enough hashrate to be impervious to 51% by a powerful attacker. That's especially true if most users are holding onto BTC as a store of value not attempting to transact in it. As far as I know, there is no successful cryptocurrency that functions using fees alone. Bitcoin is in a very slow march towards being the first to do that.
Basically the network is currently funded with a "tax" on holders of BTC -- newly generated coins dilute the value of held coins. This to me makes a lot of sense for a store-of-value. But the coin is trying to transition to funding security with a "tax" on users of BTC. Nobody really knows whether this will work. In fact nobody knows how much is the "correct" amount for the network to spend on mining at all. All we know is that with the current level of spending we haven't had a 51% attack yet. Are we spending 2x more than needed? 10x? 100x? It's impossible to say but the design of BTC seems like a slowwwww experiment to find the level at which it fails.
[0]https://charts.bitbo.io/fees-percent-of-reward/
The point of mining is to prevent double spend attacks. It does this in a rather brute-force way: the network as a whole always maintains a higher hashrate than any attacker. The network always out-spends the attacker to maintain security. As described in my prior comment the funding for this massive hashrate comes from newly generated BTC.
But Bitcoin is designed to wean itself off of emitting new coins as a mining reward. This is done by halving the block reward arbitrarily every 4 years. This is necessary to fulfill the promise that there will only ever be 21M coins, which has been a huge selling point to anti-inflation investors.
Ultimately the mining is supposed to be funded entirely by fees. But there is no market mechanism to ensure that fees "make up for" the lost emissions of new coins. The only reason to pay a high transaction fee is if there is high transaction volume, causing blocks to fill up, so you are competing for space with other people trying to make transactions. If transaction volume is fairly low, fees remain low. You can see fees only become a meaningful part of the reward at times of unusually high volume[0].
So, it seems plausible to me that if Bitcoin mining was funded entirely on transaction fees, the total mining reward would not be high enough to sustain enough hashrate to be impervious to 51% by a powerful attacker. That's especially true if most users are holding onto BTC as a store of value not attempting to transact in it. As far as I know, there is no successful cryptocurrency that functions using fees alone. Bitcoin is in a very slow march towards being the first to do that.
Basically the network is currently funded with a "tax" on holders of BTC -- newly generated coins dilute the value of held coins. This to me makes a lot of sense for a store-of-value. But the coin is trying to transition to funding security with a "tax" on users of BTC. Nobody really knows whether this will work. In fact nobody knows how much is the "correct" amount for the network to spend on mining at all. All we know is that with the current level of spending we haven't had a 51% attack yet. Are we spending 2x more than needed? 10x? 100x? It's impossible to say but the design of BTC seems like a slowwwww experiment to find the level at which it fails.
[0]https://charts.bitbo.io/fees-percent-of-reward/
An obvious argument against this: so far we haven't seen a problem at all with halvings. The network's hashrate continues to rise.
BUT - that is only due to the increase in purchasing power of BTC. At the last halving in May 2020, BTC was trading at 8-9K, so at its current value of 28K "half" the BTC is still worth MORE. In real terms the block reward has gone up, not down. And so has the hashrate.
A BTC maximalist might say that the price increases because of the halving and this will continue for all future halvings, making the real-world value of the block reward approximately consistent over the next few decades. I doubt it, because each halving should have less and less impact on the price. There are millions of BTC already mined and actively trading so is the price really going to double when we go from making 900 new ones per day to 450 new ones per day? And down the road, from 450 new ones to 225? And so on? Eventually the newly mined BTC are such a drop in the bucket compared to the already-mined ones being traded, that a reduction in emission cannot have much impact on price. I don't believe the theory that the halving was responsible for the last pump either. I think it's more the market conditions during the pandemic that encouraged speculation.
But just for fun let's pretend that this does happen. The price doubles (give or take) after each halving to maintain the real world value of the block reward. In that case it could theoretically work all the way up until the very last halving takes the reward to 0. Because the fees people are willing to pay are still going to be on the level of "a piece of candy" for a transaction. Whatever that translates to in BTC. Scaling up the real-world value of BTC works for magnifying the block reward which is denominated in a fixed amount of BTC, but not for magnifying the fees which are just a bidding war and not fixed value.
And really, it would fail a bit before then because long before the final halving, you already have ultra-low rewards denominated in Satoshi. You couldn't scale Bitcoin's real world value enough to make those one or two digit SAT rewards mean anything, without also making it totally unusable for ordinary transactions!
BUT - that is only due to the increase in purchasing power of BTC. At the last halving in May 2020, BTC was trading at 8-9K, so at its current value of 28K "half" the BTC is still worth MORE. In real terms the block reward has gone up, not down. And so has the hashrate.
A BTC maximalist might say that the price increases because of the halving and this will continue for all future halvings, making the real-world value of the block reward approximately consistent over the next few decades. I doubt it, because each halving should have less and less impact on the price. There are millions of BTC already mined and actively trading so is the price really going to double when we go from making 900 new ones per day to 450 new ones per day? And down the road, from 450 new ones to 225? And so on? Eventually the newly mined BTC are such a drop in the bucket compared to the already-mined ones being traded, that a reduction in emission cannot have much impact on price. I don't believe the theory that the halving was responsible for the last pump either. I think it's more the market conditions during the pandemic that encouraged speculation.
But just for fun let's pretend that this does happen. The price doubles (give or take) after each halving to maintain the real world value of the block reward. In that case it could theoretically work all the way up until the very last halving takes the reward to 0. Because the fees people are willing to pay are still going to be on the level of "a piece of candy" for a transaction. Whatever that translates to in BTC. Scaling up the real-world value of BTC works for magnifying the block reward which is denominated in a fixed amount of BTC, but not for magnifying the fees which are just a bidding war and not fixed value.
And really, it would fail a bit before then because long before the final halving, you already have ultra-low rewards denominated in Satoshi. You couldn't scale Bitcoin's real world value enough to make those one or two digit SAT rewards mean anything, without also making it totally unusable for ordinary transactions!
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Exchanges and whales manipulate Bitcoin's price regularly through spoofing and wash trading to build up illusions of optimism/"bullishness" and then sell off suddenly to profit off the rubes who bought into the hype.
Also - how much actual real-world money backs a USDT? When Tether comes undone and people realize there is only a suitcase of IOUs, there is going to be a run for the exits and BTC will sell at a huge discount.
Real world commodities don't have that problem.
Also - how much actual real-world money backs a USDT? When Tether comes undone and people realize there is only a suitcase of IOUs, there is going to be a run for the exits and BTC will sell at a huge discount.
Real world commodities don't have that problem.
I'm not convinced that crypto is much worse than the rest of tech. Your average VC tech company is run as a pump and dump scheme. They take a crazy idea, get a ton of funding for it, go public and sell the shares to uninformed investors who are left holding the bag when it all comes crashing down.
I know you're exaggerating for effect but I'm having trouble threading the needle here. The "average VC tech company" gets nowhere near public market investors and, if indeed it is run "as a pump and dump scheme" would have a narrow impact on the LPs of the venture funds. Gotta imagine most LPs are sophisticated investors? Pension funds, that sort of thing.
Crypto, on the other hand, seems to be predicated on retail investors and consumers. So they do seem manifestly different as you have expressed them (maybe my issue is with the notion of the "average" VC-backed company?).
Crypto, on the other hand, seems to be predicated on retail investors and consumers. So they do seem manifestly different as you have expressed them (maybe my issue is with the notion of the "average" VC-backed company?).
In the principle of charity, I would assume that the GP meant average tech companies that reach public markets via IPOs or SPACs. Just look at the performance of those in the last few years. They have crashed much harder than S&P.
VC is the search for unicorns. Fund 50 companies and 1 will make back the costs of the other 49 and then some.
By design the average VC tech company (the 49) is a flaming failure. That doesn't mean they can't be packaged up and sold.
By design the average VC tech company (the 49) is a flaming failure. That doesn't mean they can't be packaged up and sold.
Totally get the dynamics of venture capital, but there seems to be a very big gap between funding 50 companies with 1 returning the entire fund and what OP described which is the "average" VC-backed company eventually being used to attempt to defraud unsophisticated consumer and public market investors.
There are success stories in tech at least.
Crypto only has "Bitcoin has above market returns" in terms of success.
There was some neat smart contract stuff but some of that technically breaks trading rules (aka is questionable legality) and others are a coin flip as to whether a vulnerability will let someone drain the entire fund.
Crypto only has "Bitcoin has above market returns" in terms of success.
There was some neat smart contract stuff but some of that technically breaks trading rules (aka is questionable legality) and others are a coin flip as to whether a vulnerability will let someone drain the entire fund.
The S&P 500 pays out half a trillion in dividends each year, and performs another half a trillion worth of stock buybacks, funded by the profits from the economic activities of the traded companies.
It's not all "number goes up"/a zero sum game of early investors selling to later investors.
It's not all "number goes up"/a zero sum game of early investors selling to later investors.
> Crypto only has "Bitcoin has above market returns" in terms of success.
Ethereum is equally successful.
Ethereum is equally successful.
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Couldn't agree more on the VC front.
To take it even further, what provides more value? Instagram or OpenSea (NFT marketplace)?
When you stop and think about it, it's the Spiderman meme. They are both pretty useless and are most likely a net negative to society.
To take it even further, what provides more value? Instagram or OpenSea (NFT marketplace)?
When you stop and think about it, it's the Spiderman meme. They are both pretty useless and are most likely a net negative to society.
Both may be a net negative to society, but the major social media companies collect quite a lot in advertising revenue, and are thus profitable to the shareholders.
OpenSea was only profitable while there were still suckers available. Not at all the same.
Instagram is more like Exxon or something. A very profitable enterprise whose social harms may not be adequately internalized, and would require legislation to fix.
OpenSea was only profitable while there were still suckers available. Not at all the same.
Instagram is more like Exxon or something. A very profitable enterprise whose social harms may not be adequately internalized, and would require legislation to fix.
profitable != providing value
There's a ton of cool tech that provides a ton of value and makes little to no money.
There's a ton of cool tech that provides a ton of value and makes little to no money.
Your conclusion is pretty funny. In general, when reality doesn't match up with my sources of information, I assume that my sources of information are biased or wrong, not that reality itself is. I was genuinely expecting your last sentence to be something like: "The fact that it still holds is the best demonstration of how biased the tech echo chamber is."
The price of BTC reflects one incredibly narrow band of reality. BTC can quadruple tomorrow and the broad reality still is that crypto has not achieved any of the promises, and is less relevant today than it was 10 years ago. But BTC is "traded" in a largely unregulated market, has poor liquidity, and there is every indication that it is being held afloat by manipulation. BTC has close to zero barrier to entry, can be replaced in a second, and technically is just a giant bag of dogshit, so even if somehow crypto had actual value, it wouldn't be BTC.
A few years ago, virtually all of professional sports were sponsored by crypto companies. Since almost all of them have folded, usually under massive fraud, and have been replaced by gambling firms. So I guess nothing has changed.
A few years ago, virtually all of professional sports were sponsored by crypto companies. Since almost all of them have folded, usually under massive fraud, and have been replaced by gambling firms. So I guess nothing has changed.
Bitcoin has achieved its promise: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
There is no credible evidence that Bitcoin is being "held afloat by manipulation", that's just wishful thinking. It is also a very liquid market: billions of dollars in daily volume.
> BTC has close to zero barrier to entry
That's wrong. Mining power is a big one. Some other barriers: developer mind share, network effect, branding, perceived fairness of initial distribution, software ecosystem, etc. If it was easy to "replace in a second", it wouldn't still be the top cryptocurrency.
Like I said, you might want to reconsider your sources of information.
There is no credible evidence that Bitcoin is being "held afloat by manipulation", that's just wishful thinking. It is also a very liquid market: billions of dollars in daily volume.
> BTC has close to zero barrier to entry
That's wrong. Mining power is a big one. Some other barriers: developer mind share, network effect, branding, perceived fairness of initial distribution, software ecosystem, etc. If it was easy to "replace in a second", it wouldn't still be the top cryptocurrency.
Like I said, you might want to reconsider your sources of information.
BTC =/= crypto at large.
Despite all the bad press, shady exchanges, bubbles and busts, a large amount of BTC owners don't sell, and that alone will drive it's price up. Other cryptos, I can't speak for.
Despite all the bad press, shady exchanges, bubbles and busts, a large amount of BTC owners don't sell, and that alone will drive it's price up. Other cryptos, I can't speak for.
It's not the asking price that determines market rates, nor is it the price that people who aren't currently selling believe their assets are worth. It's the price at which active buyers are willing to buy.
One of the challenges with price discovery in the BTC market, though, is that there's not really an effective mechanism to prevent wash trades in place. That means that all you need to do to create a bunch of fraudulent liquidity at a higher price is create a sock puppet account and start trading with yourself. Anyone sitting on a hoard of BTC is highly incentivized to do this to try and prevent their on-paper losses in the hope that it will mitigate their becoming real losses. And that can concievably become the bulk of BTC trading volume if there isn't a steady supply of new people who are willing to buy in to Bitcoin at any price.
One of the challenges with price discovery in the BTC market, though, is that there's not really an effective mechanism to prevent wash trades in place. That means that all you need to do to create a bunch of fraudulent liquidity at a higher price is create a sock puppet account and start trading with yourself. Anyone sitting on a hoard of BTC is highly incentivized to do this to try and prevent their on-paper losses in the hope that it will mitigate their becoming real losses. And that can concievably become the bulk of BTC trading volume if there isn't a steady supply of new people who are willing to buy in to Bitcoin at any price.
if you trade with yourself you still have to pay transaction fees to the cluster. Every transaction would incur a loss.
>And that can concievably become the bulk of BTC trading volume if there isn't a steady supply of new people who are willing to buy in to Bitcoin at any price.
that would end up just slowly transferring all of the BTC to miners as transaction fees... what a scam!
I uh, guess that creates liquidity though?
>And that can concievably become the bulk of BTC trading volume if there isn't a steady supply of new people who are willing to buy in to Bitcoin at any price.
that would end up just slowly transferring all of the BTC to miners as transaction fees... what a scam!
I uh, guess that creates liquidity though?
> that alone will drive it's price up
Wrong; you need people buying the roughly $25M worth of daily new bitcoins just to maintain the current price.
Wrong; you need people buying the roughly $25M worth of daily new bitcoins just to maintain the current price.
What's the $ in your remark?
Hint: Its not USD. For an exchange like Binance, its USDT, or Tethers. Its not so hard for them to print USDT and pretend that they're dollars.
Hint: Its not USD. For an exchange like Binance, its USDT, or Tethers. Its not so hard for them to print USDT and pretend that they're dollars.
USDT / Tether came out recently with the proof of reserves. Even US regulators looked into that and found nothing - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/23/tether-bitfinex-reach-settle...
Rising interest rates certainly helped them and USDC/USDT are a money making machine now for their owners.
Rising interest rates certainly helped them and USDC/USDT are a money making machine now for their owners.
>Even US regulators looked into that and found nothing - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/23/tether-bitfinex-reach-settle...
This feels extremely dishonest. They paid a fine/settlement, and are literally no longer allowed to do business in NY lol. Same as trump's businesses. I wouldn't call that finding nothing. You don't pay a 20m fine to regulators and get banned from doing business in the state, if they found nothing lol.
> USDT / Tether came out recently with the proof of reserves.
Do you have a link for this? All I could find is an "attestation" of reserves from a few months ago but could not find any evidence of an audit by a third party that might constitute "proof".
Do you have a link for this? All I could find is an "attestation" of reserves from a few months ago but could not find any evidence of an audit by a third party that might constitute "proof".
https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports
Latest report from an independent auditor: https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/63oJePOHqIvrcnXWMP...
Key stats: "Cash & Cash Equivalent & Other Short-Term Deposits" are $73,567,577,334 (out of total assets of $86,499,251,218). Remaining assets are precious metals ($3,270,216,824), bitcoin ($1,676,229,360), corporate bonds ($115,496,758) etc.
It is no rocket science to see why USDT is in black now - with 83B USDT, they have that much cash available to park in T-bills and earn 5+% interest just like that. Even if they were in a hole a few years back, they would have recovered over the last 12-18 months when interest rates started rising.
Latest report from an independent auditor: https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/63oJePOHqIvrcnXWMP...
Key stats: "Cash & Cash Equivalent & Other Short-Term Deposits" are $73,567,577,334 (out of total assets of $86,499,251,218). Remaining assets are precious metals ($3,270,216,824), bitcoin ($1,676,229,360), corporate bonds ($115,496,758) etc.
It is no rocket science to see why USDT is in black now - with 83B USDT, they have that much cash available to park in T-bills and earn 5+% interest just like that. Even if they were in a hole a few years back, they would have recovered over the last 12-18 months when interest rates started rising.
It's whatever currency the miners use to pay for their power. That's almost certainly not USDT or Tethers, or any other cryptocurrency.
BTC went from like 3-4k covid lows to 69k. BTC is a symptom of clown world economics money printing.
investing in BTC is a bet that people in power of money will continue to act in their own selfish interest. it's a bet on clown world continuity. i love that.
i think it has utility but is there good reason for it to be $30k and not $1k outside of money printing...i doubt it.
investing in BTC is a bet that people in power of money will continue to act in their own selfish interest. it's a bet on clown world continuity. i love that.
i think it has utility but is there good reason for it to be $30k and not $1k outside of money printing...i doubt it.
You can kind of calculate the value as (number of people invested)x(amount they hold in us$)/(number of bitcoins)
For the present price that is approx 48 mil x $10k / 16 mil = $30k
Early 2017 would have been 1.6 mil x $10k / 16 mil = $1k
It's rough and ready but kind of how things play out. Most of the growth in price over the years has come from more people buying in. Not sure where it ends. We might get another 10x and 500 million people at some point?
For the present price that is approx 48 mil x $10k / 16 mil = $30k
Early 2017 would have been 1.6 mil x $10k / 16 mil = $1k
It's rough and ready but kind of how things play out. Most of the growth in price over the years has come from more people buying in. Not sure where it ends. We might get another 10x and 500 million people at some point?
I know enough people now that have lost significant money through crypto scams that it's tainted its appeal to me.
As for the price of BTC - it's deflationary and its holders only have incentive to buy and hold as long as they can while they hype it to the world - it'll never go down in price until the majority of holders have to sell.
As for the price of BTC - it's deflationary and its holders only have incentive to buy and hold as long as they can while they hype it to the world - it'll never go down in price until the majority of holders have to sell.
What's the mystery? Bitcoin doesn't need actual dollars to prop up the price. Unaudited virtual dollar IOUs like USDT that can be issued out of thin air will be sufficient.
At some point the crypto ecosystem hits the real economy and miners need to pay for power and datacenter space with real currency.
A lot of the people employed in the crypto space are also out there buying houses, cars, taking vacations, and buying the odd pizza. That all requires real currency.
A lot of the people employed in the crypto space are also out there buying houses, cars, taking vacations, and buying the odd pizza. That all requires real currency.
It does until mining rewards go to zero right? unless there is a closed ecosystem whereby miners can pay their electricity bills and other expenses with crypto. Eventually actual money has to enter? Just sort of thinking out loud maybe missing something
Most of HN users live in US, where they have legalised weed, are banked and don't have to transfer large sums of money from one country to another — therefore, don't have any real reasons to use crypto and only see it as a sham.
Many other people around the world have no other choice but to use crypto when their local currency is spiralling down with inflation, when banks refuse to work with them, when they immigrate and have to transfer their life savings, or work for remotely with people from other countries, or simply when they want to buy a few grams of marijuana.
The fact that you don't see any personally don't have any legitimate uses for a product doesn't mean that there are none.
Many other people around the world have no other choice but to use crypto when their local currency is spiralling down with inflation, when banks refuse to work with them, when they immigrate and have to transfer their life savings, or work for remotely with people from other countries, or simply when they want to buy a few grams of marijuana.
The fact that you don't see any personally don't have any legitimate uses for a product doesn't mean that there are none.
BTC was around $65,000 a couple years back, no? I wonder how much of the current price of $28,000 is propped up by lost thumb drives , or wallets seized by authorities - limited supply rather than continued speculation.
BTC isn't a stock, and the network continues to have significant transactional volume. Whatever the merits of the technical, its found a niche that continues to provide value.
It is illogical, but so are many, many things.
It is illogical, but so are many, many things.
I don’t get the reasoning behind saying that if the market would be real, the market cap would be a fraction of what it is now. Like, how do you determine that?
True value is zero, so the closer to that the more real.
I don’t know why it’s surprising. Cryptocurrency’s killer app was always crime, and crime is big business.
Cash, diamonds, etc are actually better for crime than cryptocurrency because they're less traceable.
It depends on use case. Physical valuables are less traceable because there's no global ledger for transactions, but they're more "traceable" if your threat model includes law enforcement raiding your house and office, while crypto is basically a bunch of numbers in your head.
You often have to declare more than $10K of cash when traveling so cash makes it hard to flee your crimes.
Hard to do ransomware though.
If cryptocurrency wasn't so volatile it would be better than worthless government paper because 1) cryptocurrency doesn't lose its value at rate of 2-13% per year 2) nobody will ban your cryptocurrency account if you use it for business 3) nobody will require to provide documentation and proof for every transaction that happened in last 6 months in your account.
> 3) nobody will require to provide documentation and proof for every transaction that happened in last 6 months in your account.
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Except for the government when they, very easily, match your public blockchain activity to your personal identity.
Except for the government when they, very easily, match your public blockchain activity to your personal identity.
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Keep in mind that some things you do regularly may be considered crimes by other governments, and perhaps your own government at some point in time.
Don't forget speculation/gambling which is probably a larger business than even crime.
you mean, stock market?
I guess the stock market is maybe 30% speculation, 70% actually investing in companies? Crypto is maybe 90% speculation, property 20% speculation? You can't really separate the two very cleanly but a lot of speculating goes on.
Money laundering, gambling, flight capital from Russia and China, and scams are all very active niches that could be responsible for a lot of that liquidity.
And yet the longest and most passionate threads on HN are on crypto topics. Even Rust doesn't come close.
Maybe people outside of HN have a different perspective on this.
Wait, WHAT?
Your argument is: because a ton of people have put a ton of money into it, that proves that it's a scam?
So the stock market, which has a much bigger market cap is therefore MORE of a scam? What are you trying to do here?
Your argument is: because a ton of people have put a ton of money into it, that proves that it's a scam?
So the stock market, which has a much bigger market cap is therefore MORE of a scam? What are you trying to do here?
What a bizarre bit of strawmanning. The crypto brigade has arrived so this has all gone very desperately defensive.
No, that isn't what I said. I said that clearly crypto in any rational sense has failed. Not just failed, overwhelmingly, catastrophically failed. It has zero relevance to the broader market. It has retreated from even where it was five years ago, that being a massively failed experiment.
BTC has held value because most of the people who hold it didn't "put a ton of money into it". BTC is the very definition of HODL behaviour, with negligible daily liquidity. It is a house of cards.
No, that isn't what I said. I said that clearly crypto in any rational sense has failed. Not just failed, overwhelmingly, catastrophically failed. It has zero relevance to the broader market. It has retreated from even where it was five years ago, that being a massively failed experiment.
BTC has held value because most of the people who hold it didn't "put a ton of money into it". BTC is the very definition of HODL behaviour, with negligible daily liquidity. It is a house of cards.
Here's effectively what you said, edited for information:
> Every bit of evidence is that the crypto boom has crashed to Earth ...
> Yet somehow BTC is still trading at close to historic highs.
> ... if it were remotely a functioning market or were at all "real", it would be trading at a tiny fraction of that amount. The fact that it still holds is the best demonstration of how illusory the whole sham is.
Which, as others have interpreted, is to say that the valuation (second sentence) is at odds with your perceived reality (first sentence). Therefore (third sentence) it's a "demonstration of how illusory the whole sham is".
Those are your words. You can't just alter reality to make them out to mean something else.
> Every bit of evidence is that the crypto boom has crashed to Earth ...
> Yet somehow BTC is still trading at close to historic highs.
> ... if it were remotely a functioning market or were at all "real", it would be trading at a tiny fraction of that amount. The fact that it still holds is the best demonstration of how illusory the whole sham is.
Which, as others have interpreted, is to say that the valuation (second sentence) is at odds with your perceived reality (first sentence). Therefore (third sentence) it's a "demonstration of how illusory the whole sham is".
Those are your words. You can't just alter reality to make them out to mean something else.
What reality did I alter? Bitcoin's current value is *completely* irrational and absolutely unjustified. When it had some prospective future, sure some tenuous argument could be made, but now it's basically NFTs -- people collecting worthless things, with so little real (not wash) trading that for a while the illusion holds on. That's the sham. In the same way that GameStop or BedBathandBeyond didn't become retail powerhouses because a bunch of WallStreetBets sorts aped it.
You seem to be under delusions that a given niche market is demonstrative of much at all. Crypto was the future. Now it's, for all intents and purposes, dead outside of crime, but as long as there are HODL sorts it can keep up the pretend value.
You seem to be under delusions that a given niche market is demonstrative of much at all. Crypto was the future. Now it's, for all intents and purposes, dead outside of crime, but as long as there are HODL sorts it can keep up the pretend value.
A lot of "real" companies are investing in it; which by definition makes it no better or worse than ANY OTHER SPECULATIVE THING.
Basically "that's, just like, your opinion, man."
Basically "that's, just like, your opinion, man."
What real companies? Tesla did at the spurring of Musk, and then quietly dumped all of it. A few other "investment" companies occasionally make some statement that amounts to a pump and dump.
>it no better or worse than ANY OTHER SPECULATIVE THING
Bunching everything together as "speculative" doesn't somehow make them equal. Buying land is not the same as buying an NFT. Buying shares in a bank is not the same as buying Bitcoin.
Bitcoin's entire history has been crime and fraud. It temporarily duped the mainstream, but having conned main street it has returned to its crime roots.
>it no better or worse than ANY OTHER SPECULATIVE THING
Bunching everything together as "speculative" doesn't somehow make them equal. Buying land is not the same as buying an NFT. Buying shares in a bank is not the same as buying Bitcoin.
Bitcoin's entire history has been crime and fraud. It temporarily duped the mainstream, but having conned main street it has returned to its crime roots.
Again, I don't see how you're strongly distinguishing failure from extreme volatility? What makes an investment vehicle successful?
And perhaps, more do the point -- why is BTC maintaining a pretty high price?
Your point on liquidity only stands if you presume what I think a lot of people incorrectly presume: which is, crypto as an alternative to day-to-day currency (edit: or perhaps other generally designed-to-be-liquid thing). Which, I agree with most, it will almost certainly NEVER be.
But that doesn't exclude the possibility of crypto as long-term investment/hedge against inflation.
I wouldn't necessarily argue that "crypto in the future will definitely be a big and useful thing," but I think it's wildly premature to call it dead.
And perhaps, more do the point -- why is BTC maintaining a pretty high price?
Your point on liquidity only stands if you presume what I think a lot of people incorrectly presume: which is, crypto as an alternative to day-to-day currency (edit: or perhaps other generally designed-to-be-liquid thing). Which, I agree with most, it will almost certainly NEVER be.
But that doesn't exclude the possibility of crypto as long-term investment/hedge against inflation.
I wouldn't necessarily argue that "crypto in the future will definitely be a big and useful thing," but I think it's wildly premature to call it dead.
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Daily spot liquidity is ~usd 3 bn. Not sure that's negligible?
~$800M of SPY traded in the closing 1 minute candle today, ~$40B in total. That’s a single ETF.
$3B is peanuts compared to real equity and bond markets.
$3B is peanuts compared to real equity and bond markets.
That's a straw-man (or True Scotsman?) argument. You're putting up BTC against the most traded ETF in the world, and claiming that BTC has no liquidity because the volume is just 7% of that?
There's nowhere in the world where $3B daily volume can be called "negligible".
There's nowhere in the world where $3B daily volume can be called "negligible".
There's still plenty of crimes to be done.
codedokode(3)
Cryptocurrency was (and still is to an extent) a really interesting idea that has a ton of real world utility, especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon. It's a shame that the "get rich quick" grifters and speculators took ahold of it and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment.
Nearly 14 years in, where exactly is this “ton of real world utility”?
Surely someone somewhere would have a product providing this utility, even amidst the sea of fraud and grift. I still don’t see it.
Some utility? Okay, sure. A ton? Not even close. Consider that the web launched in 1993. By 2007 (14 years later), virtually the entire planet had changed dramatically as a result. That is a technology with a ton of real world utility.
Surely someone somewhere would have a product providing this utility, even amidst the sea of fraud and grift. I still don’t see it.
Some utility? Okay, sure. A ton? Not even close. Consider that the web launched in 1993. By 2007 (14 years later), virtually the entire planet had changed dramatically as a result. That is a technology with a ton of real world utility.
Thanks to Ethereum (and specially now that there are L2s which have cheaper tx costs) I can distribute revenue from my business between different types of collaborators, without incurring in paying 120% in taxes for having "employees".
In Argentina if someone works for you more than 15/20 hours in a given month you are legally obliged to hire them for, at least, 3 months. The legislation doesn't fit in tons of cases, and led the country to over 35% of working people outside the legal framework.
Crypto gives people living in dysfunctional democracies a chance to participate in the global economy, something that people living in Europe or North America cannot comprehend.
And don't even get me started on why ownership of your money is important but if you are willing to read take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito
In Argentina if someone works for you more than 15/20 hours in a given month you are legally obliged to hire them for, at least, 3 months. The legislation doesn't fit in tons of cases, and led the country to over 35% of working people outside the legal framework.
Crypto gives people living in dysfunctional democracies a chance to participate in the global economy, something that people living in Europe or North America cannot comprehend.
And don't even get me started on why ownership of your money is important but if you are willing to read take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito
This really is the key thing. Crypto allows for the evasion of laws. That's its key contribution. In authoritarian states this is probably a net good. In the rest of the world this is a harm.
"The killer app for this technology is crime."
"The killer app for this technology is crime."
> In authoritarian states this is probably a net good
Crypto doesn't fix the problem with authoritarian states (or the drug war, or backwards prostitution laws), though, it's just another workaround. There's no shortcut around actual social change.
And the idealistic notion that crypto could allow mass civil disobedience didn't really pan out; these days, "civil disobedience" is usually too marketable and monetizable for it to not get co-opted by scamvangelists and corporations (which reminds me of the Black Mirror episode where they monetize the guy's suicidal protest against everything being monetized).
Crypto doesn't fix the problem with authoritarian states (or the drug war, or backwards prostitution laws), though, it's just another workaround. There's no shortcut around actual social change.
And the idealistic notion that crypto could allow mass civil disobedience didn't really pan out; these days, "civil disobedience" is usually too marketable and monetizable for it to not get co-opted by scamvangelists and corporations (which reminds me of the Black Mirror episode where they monetize the guy's suicidal protest against everything being monetized).
I'm not condoning crime, but do you recognize that changing laws in an authoritarian state is next to impossible right?
Lives lost in Venezuela doing a serious attempt at changing. Do you prefer blood shed on streets?
Lives lost in Venezuela doing a serious attempt at changing. Do you prefer blood shed on streets?
I think that allowing people to protect themselves from authoritarian governments is often a good thing. I also think it is important to understand that if this is the killer app then we need to be honest about what it is and how that affects people in states that are more just. The benefits to those suffering in Venezuela cannot be separated from the harms done to people in non-authoritarian states.
Tax evasion is not its killer app, but I reckon cryptocurrencies can be misused that way.
Tax evasion is possible with or without mechanism. Real world example in Argentina: the way most landlords evade taxes is by charging tenants in cash. They expect you to go to their place with an envelope full of 1000's ARS banknotes.
So far I've not seen rents paid in cryptocurrency, but by extension, would you say cash's killer app is tax evasion indeed?
Tax evasion is possible with or without mechanism. Real world example in Argentina: the way most landlords evade taxes is by charging tenants in cash. They expect you to go to their place with an envelope full of 1000's ARS banknotes.
So far I've not seen rents paid in cryptocurrency, but by extension, would you say cash's killer app is tax evasion indeed?
Yes, cash's killer app is crime, too, which is probably why governments like China don't want it.
People making the argument that payments are hard to trace with crypto & that's the reason it should be banned or ignored are 1) ignorant because crypto transactions are easier to trace than cash and 2) making a dangerous argument against cash for which authoritarians will be thrilled to have support
People making the argument that payments are hard to trace with crypto & that's the reason it should be banned or ignored are 1) ignorant because crypto transactions are easier to trace than cash and 2) making a dangerous argument against cash for which authoritarians will be thrilled to have support
I'd say crypto is not very good for tax evasion. The immutable record on a blockchain thing may be a pain compared to cash in hand.
Nobody "prefers" it (psychopaths need not apply), but against a regime where literally their prevention method to getting replaced is "bloodshed", what is your suggestion?
To starve the government financially, through mechanisms of tax evasion.
As a very last resource, because again, I do not condone crimes, but: When tyrants rule, it's our human right to disobey.
Would you accept to be subservient to a power structure that doesn't work for you? For the "We The People"? Vote them away yes, given voting is not a deceptive theatrical show like it is in Venezuela. So, what are the other alternatives? Ruling out violence of course.
As a very last resource, because again, I do not condone crimes, but: When tyrants rule, it's our human right to disobey.
Would you accept to be subservient to a power structure that doesn't work for you? For the "We The People"? Vote them away yes, given voting is not a deceptive theatrical show like it is in Venezuela. So, what are the other alternatives? Ruling out violence of course.
> To starve the government financially, through mechanisms of tax evasion.
I'm curious if this has ever worked before.
I accept that next time might be different, but previous examples would add to your argument.
I'm curious if this has ever worked before.
I accept that next time might be different, but previous examples would add to your argument.
Some folks in the US have been attempting to starve the beast for approaching half a century now. The only thing they have succeeded in doing is passing on trillions of dollars of debt to their children and grandchildren. They keep trying though.
I think tax evasion won't ever work as mechanism to fight tyrannical governments because it's your neighbor who suffer the lack of funds, not the ruling class.
>in the rest of the world is a harm
Have you ever considered what might happen if that distant, authoritarian state suddenly appeared within your country? It has happened many times before, and I don't see why we should think it won't happen again.
Things turn around faster and faster as technology progresses, at least from my perspective
Have you ever considered what might happen if that distant, authoritarian state suddenly appeared within your country? It has happened many times before, and I don't see why we should think it won't happen again.
Things turn around faster and faster as technology progresses, at least from my perspective
[US specific] Without evasion of laws, women wouldn't be allowed to vote, black folks would be slaves, interracial marriage would be a crime...I can go on and on. The ability to disobey unjust laws is absolutely essential to the health of a society.
Women didn't get the vote by illegally voting, slavery was outlawed in the end not just circumvented - the ability to change unjust laws is what matters in the end for the health of a society.
Just some sort of disobedience technology without plans for change and active work on that (including majority building and policy proposals) is not going to cut it.
You want functioning societies not some dystopia with a tech underground.
Just some sort of disobedience technology without plans for change and active work on that (including majority building and policy proposals) is not going to cut it.
You want functioning societies not some dystopia with a tech underground.
Wow you.. really shot your argument in the foot. All those unjust laws were, you know, changed. They weren’t evaded. And there are mechanisms to challenge laws you don’t like that don’t involve simply deciding you’re not going to obey them. But those mechanisms involve real costs that tend to blow away the moralising of most crypto bros.
If those unjust laws were changed what makes you think that regressive tax laws that keep coming up year after year won't be changed in the future?
>And there are mechanisms to challenge laws you don’t like that don’t involve simply deciding you’re not going to obey them.
I'm curious about those mechanism to challenge laws.
>And there are mechanisms to challenge laws you don’t like that don’t involve simply deciding you’re not going to obey them.
I'm curious about those mechanism to challenge laws.
And what unjust laws in the US is crypto letting people circumvent?
paying for marijuana?
If that's the best it can do, meh. It's already legal in what, 40 of the 50 states? Sure, not at the federal level, but that'll happen sooner or later.
Plus, I think the vast majority of people pay for it without cypto as is, no issue.
Plus, I think the vast majority of people pay for it without cypto as is, no issue.
"If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear."
I'd say the ability to avoid penalties from "victimless" laws is beneficial, irrespective of the governing state.
I'd say the ability to avoid penalties from "victimless" laws is beneficial, irrespective of the governing state.
Tax evasion is not a victimless crime.
It is, under any remotely common usage of the term. A victimless crime is one where the directly involved parties all consented to the action.
If you consider the government itself as a "directly-involved party" then you would consider no crime to be victimless, since it's always the government who prosecutes a crime.
If you invoke something like "society at large" as the victim, then again you can exclude any action from being a victimless crime if you happen to think society is worse off if that action happens (e.g. certain sexual acts between consenting adults, certain types of drug use, etc.).
Tax evasion, along with similar crimes like smuggling and insider trading, are widely listed as examples of victimless crimes.
If you consider the government itself as a "directly-involved party" then you would consider no crime to be victimless, since it's always the government who prosecutes a crime.
If you invoke something like "society at large" as the victim, then again you can exclude any action from being a victimless crime if you happen to think society is worse off if that action happens (e.g. certain sexual acts between consenting adults, certain types of drug use, etc.).
Tax evasion, along with similar crimes like smuggling and insider trading, are widely listed as examples of victimless crimes.
It's actually easier to perform tax evasion with cash, as it doesn't leave a transaction history.
There's nothing to debate. Everyone living in society benefits from taxes paid - food inspected, fire service and toll-free roads provided, and so much more. Evading taxes is theft of service from everyone.
There's so much value in roads. You'd think that they could be funded on a pay as you go voluntary model rather than expropriation under penalty of imprisonment. Not to mention the opportunity costs of misallocated resources. If there were nothing more to say here, centrally planned economies would deliver the utopia their proponents promise. Somehow history hasn't played out that way.
I'll allow that pragmatism has an important role in tempering the extremes. Claiming that there is "nothing to debate" is a leap into absolutism.
I'll allow that pragmatism has an important role in tempering the extremes. Claiming that there is "nothing to debate" is a leap into absolutism.
Taxation is not a victimless crime.
Taxation is the price you pay to live in civilization. You can always give that up. Most people prefer the benefits they get from it though.
I literally cannot give that up. The US government demands taxes on all of my global income, will not allow me to renounce my citizenship without another citizenship, and the state department refuses to grant me a passport or disclose the reason why they won't grant me one, even with FOIA requests.
I'd gladly pay $100k for the privilege of renouncing my citizenship and legally becoming stateless. I'd actually have more rights as a noncitizen than I do as a citizen these days inside the US, especially when it comes to KYC and AML rules.
I'd gladly pay $100k for the privilege of renouncing my citizenship and legally becoming stateless. I'd actually have more rights as a noncitizen than I do as a citizen these days inside the US, especially when it comes to KYC and AML rules.
The federal government is going to print the needed funds regardless of how much tax income they receive
Is this true?
I mean, let’s buy in on the idea that it is good to enable tax evasion in dysfunctional countries, just for the sake of argument.
Isn’t the bitcoin ledger publicly visible? It seems to me that bitcoin isn’t providing a good way to perform tax evasion. It is creating a totally immutable record of tax evasion, that local authorities just aren’t looking at yet. This is, like, the last place I’d store records of my crimes. If anything it seems more like a (maybe) unintentional honeypot.
Of course, it is possible to obfuscate your identity through various means when using bitcoins, but it doesn’t happen automatically. And the US government basically beat Tornado cash, right? If you want to be anonymous on the ledger you have some pretty scary enemies I think…
I mean, let’s buy in on the idea that it is good to enable tax evasion in dysfunctional countries, just for the sake of argument.
Isn’t the bitcoin ledger publicly visible? It seems to me that bitcoin isn’t providing a good way to perform tax evasion. It is creating a totally immutable record of tax evasion, that local authorities just aren’t looking at yet. This is, like, the last place I’d store records of my crimes. If anything it seems more like a (maybe) unintentional honeypot.
Of course, it is possible to obfuscate your identity through various means when using bitcoins, but it doesn’t happen automatically. And the US government basically beat Tornado cash, right? If you want to be anonymous on the ledger you have some pretty scary enemies I think…
> In authoritarian states this is probably a net good. In the rest of the world this is a harm.
Most of the world is authoritarian and that's if you consider that the Western world is not.
Most of the world is authoritarian and that's if you consider that the Western world is not.
Wasn't the same thing said about a lot of encryption techniques which are now widely used for non-criminal activity?
Not by thinking people
I bet the people making the argument at that time were convinced they were "thinking people."
I think more specifically it enables the evasion of current unlawful activity prevention controls, however evasion overall is a questionable assertion with the inherent traceability of public ledgers.
> Crypto allows for the evasion of laws.
Uber allowed anyone to drive without a taxi medallion.
AirBnB allowed anyone to turn a home into a hotel.
Amazon allowed anyone to buy a book online, without having to go to a book store.
Not everything is about evasion of laws.
Uber allowed anyone to drive without a taxi medallion.
AirBnB allowed anyone to turn a home into a hotel.
Amazon allowed anyone to buy a book online, without having to go to a book store.
Not everything is about evasion of laws.
Great examples. Heavily subsidized under-employment scheme, profiteering squeezing residential space out of communities where young people are paying upwards of half their income in rent and giant logistics sweatshops laying waste to local commerce.
"how it started / how it is going" analysis of what happened to some, not all, markets.
Uber was absolutely about the evasion of laws. They went out of their way to break the law and to avoid detection of their lawbreaking. It's the main reason why I will never use Uber.
By extension of the argument, does this mean you also won't use USD? Plenty of people and even governments use it to break laws too.
LOL. Uber literally had systems that would detect suspected LE usage and actively lie about rides.
AirBnB openly listed properties that it knew (NYC) were illegal and had been told so.
AirBnB openly listed properties that it knew (NYC) were illegal and had been told so.
Your first two examples were predicated on the evasion of laws, and the taxi example literally states what law it was evading.
Tax medallion's were created by the Taxi industry to regulate "cabs" and keep the grift going.
Using your own car as a way to give people rides, and get paid for it, fell into a grey zone because nobody had actually thought to do that before.
Let's also not forget that this is a global business with different "laws" all over the place.
Using your own car as a way to give people rides, and get paid for it, fell into a grey zone because nobody had actually thought to do that before.
Let's also not forget that this is a global business with different "laws" all over the place.
Exactly, or to state the inverse: When a decent legal system can be leveraged by the actors, competing approaches all pull ahead.
Crypto allows evasion of banks for a direct money transfer, this is key thing. The laws are funny in that area.
net harm in other parts of the world?
Illegality is not directly corelated with harm, sadly.
I mostly agree - but would argue its a lot more gray than black & white.
Illegality is not directly corelated with harm, sadly.
I mostly agree - but would argue its a lot more gray than black & white.
> I can distribute revenue from my business between different types of collaborators, without incurring in paying 120% in taxes for having "employees".
I'm always fascinated when people come right out and say that the primary use case of crypto is evading laws and taxes.
The strangest part is that using crypto doesn't actually exempt them from the law any more than using a bank account to wire money around. There's just something about crypto that makes some people think it's a safe haven from legal oversight.
I'm always fascinated when people come right out and say that the primary use case of crypto is evading laws and taxes.
The strangest part is that using crypto doesn't actually exempt them from the law any more than using a bank account to wire money around. There's just something about crypto that makes some people think it's a safe haven from legal oversight.
There's just something about the "techiness" of cryptocurrencies that makes people think current financial laws don't apply to them.
You're engaging in tax evasion by misclassifying employees as IC's. Call it whatever you want, the essence doesn't change.
Tax evasion for a business that makes less than 5k usd a year in reveneu?
If you think that's a crime you are delusional about the uses of money.
Crypto allow me to create a structure where people can work in an animal health control for rural parts of the Patagonia (which is around 2000000 squared kilometers, five times the size of Germany and has 1/80 its population) and provide this kind of services for free in many cases.
I can now quit/leave/die and anyone can take my place to coordinate it in the same immutable structure.
And the best part? The state can track all the transactions if they really want it. But I'm sure no one is going to work to find out how six veterinarians got 125 USDC in their digital wallets in July 2023.
If you think that's a crime you are delusional about the uses of money.
Crypto allow me to create a structure where people can work in an animal health control for rural parts of the Patagonia (which is around 2000000 squared kilometers, five times the size of Germany and has 1/80 its population) and provide this kind of services for free in many cases.
I can now quit/leave/die and anyone can take my place to coordinate it in the same immutable structure.
And the best part? The state can track all the transactions if they really want it. But I'm sure no one is going to work to find out how six veterinarians got 125 USDC in their digital wallets in July 2023.
> If you think that's a crime you are delusional about the uses of money.
If it wasn't a crime, why do you have to use cryptocurrency for it?
Or is your definition of "crime" more abstract, not a literal interpretation of the law?
If it wasn't a crime, why do you have to use cryptocurrency for it?
Or is your definition of "crime" more abstract, not a literal interpretation of the law?
Because to hand over the money I'd need to travel 1000 KMs [1].
And if you want to know "why you don't simply transfer through a bank?" I encourage you to read the Corralito wiki.
Just before the Corralito ended, there was an asymmetric pesification of bank deposits. This meant that if you had 100k USD in your account on Monday, by Friday it would be converted to 100k ARS at a rate of 4 ARS = 1 USD, effectively leaving you with just 25k USD.
This event left a general feeling of discomfort regarding leaving real money (in terms of store of value) in the bank.
1. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Viedma,+R%C3%ADo+Negro+Provi...
And if you want to know "why you don't simply transfer through a bank?" I encourage you to read the Corralito wiki.
Just before the Corralito ended, there was an asymmetric pesification of bank deposits. This meant that if you had 100k USD in your account on Monday, by Friday it would be converted to 100k ARS at a rate of 4 ARS = 1 USD, effectively leaving you with just 25k USD.
This event left a general feeling of discomfort regarding leaving real money (in terms of store of value) in the bank.
1. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Viedma,+R%C3%ADo+Negro+Provi...
> If you think that's a crime you are delusional about the uses of money
Tax evasion is against the law and therefore is objectively a crime. Whether or not the law is good is a different discussion entirely.
Tax evasion is against the law and therefore is objectively a crime. Whether or not the law is good is a different discussion entirely.
Maybe you have a heavy US centric point of view?
I don't condone tax evasion, but if I can't work because the State wants to go broke before I can even start running my business sorry but no one will do it.
I don't condone tax evasion, but if I can't work because the State wants to go broke before I can even start running my business sorry but no one will do it.
I suspect that you misunderstood my point. My point is that if you are doing something that is against the law, then it's against the law by definition. It's just logic, not cultural bias.
I'm not commenting on whether this particular case of lawbreaking is morally supportable or not. Even if it's 100% morally justified, it's still lawbreaking.
I'm not commenting on whether this particular case of lawbreaking is morally supportable or not. Even if it's 100% morally justified, it's still lawbreaking.
Ahh, now I got you.
Perhaps it's against the written law, but I think in most countries I am aware of, laws are subject to the judges' interpretation.
Perhaps it's against the written law, but I think in most countries I am aware of, laws are subject to the judges' interpretation.
If you want to start a business you need capital. No access to capital does not give you carte blanche to break the law.
It's not the magnitude, it's the mens rea (motive and intent).
Even if the laws are stupid, the killer feature you are describing is called crime.
Yes and we need tools to route around stupidity to keep checks and balances on stupidity. Otherwise locked-in stupidity can get even more stupid and that’s how suffering occur at scale.
If you don't like the law, lobby politicians to change it.
You don't get to decide that speed limits are stupid and go 100. You don't get to decide that taxes are stupid and not pay them. You don't get to decide that rules against murder are stupid and ignore them.
You don't get to decide that speed limits are stupid and go 100. You don't get to decide that taxes are stupid and not pay them. You don't get to decide that rules against murder are stupid and ignore them.
Wait, why didn't you use these examples:
> You don't get to decide what to put into your body and smoke weed. You don't get to make a choice about your pregnancy and have an abortion. You don't get to not be a chattel slave in 1840.
> You don't get to decide what to put into your body and smoke weed. You don't get to make a choice about your pregnancy and have an abortion. You don't get to not be a chattel slave in 1840.
[deleted]
> If you don't like the law, lobby politicians to change it.
Some laws are unjust and it's your duty as a human being with free will to disobey them.
Some laws are unjust and it's your duty as a human being with free will to disobey them.
Drop the persecution complex. You're being asked to pay taxes, not commit genocide.
If I pay taxes I can't pay wages.
If you can't afford to:
* pay a living wage
* pay your taxes
* comply with health, safety, and employment regulations
* comply with all the other laws (this is a crypto thread, so that includes weapons laws, securities laws, international sanctions, and so many more)
Then you don't have a valid business. You have no inherent right to run whatever business you think you want to.
Also, to your immediate claim, I do not believe you.
* pay a living wage
* pay your taxes
* comply with health, safety, and employment regulations
* comply with all the other laws (this is a crypto thread, so that includes weapons laws, securities laws, international sanctions, and so many more)
Then you don't have a valid business. You have no inherent right to run whatever business you think you want to.
Also, to your immediate claim, I do not believe you.
What I can't afford is to deal with a regressive tax legislation [], while trying to get US currency in the black market [2] to save and pay for imported goods and without a line of credit because the rate is ~190% and inflation ~130% [3].
I do pay my taxes, also think high worth individuals should be subject of taxation, but your rigid framework leaves out many people that use crypto as their only way to get paid and/or save money because traditional banking system is broken in their countries.
1.
2. https://brazilian.report/liveblog/latam/2023/10/10/dollar-10...
3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-12/argentina...
I do pay my taxes, also think high worth individuals should be subject of taxation, but your rigid framework leaves out many people that use crypto as their only way to get paid and/or save money because traditional banking system is broken in their countries.
1.
2. https://brazilian.report/liveblog/latam/2023/10/10/dollar-10...
3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-12/argentina...
"amassing currency to purchase imported goods without a line of credit" is not a human right.
I'm sad that tariffs mean I can't bring in dirt cheap liquor from the Caribbean to sell for massive profits but that's not an excuse to not pay my taxes.
I'm sad that tariffs mean I can't bring in dirt cheap liquor from the Caribbean to sell for massive profits but that's not an excuse to not pay my taxes.
You're evading taxes and worker protection laws. Congrats I guess? If your business model is dependent on flouting the law, then maybe it's time to rethink the business model.
???
The workers are the ones who can't get a job because of the "worker protection laws" you evoke, so you clearly don't understand the problems of Latin America.
This structure only gives them an incentive to travel hundreds of kilometers to a ranch where a bovine died for unknown reasons, for amounts that a western european would spend in a single take-out dinner.
The workers are the ones who can't get a job because of the "worker protection laws" you evoke, so you clearly don't understand the problems of Latin America.
This structure only gives them an incentive to travel hundreds of kilometers to a ranch where a bovine died for unknown reasons, for amounts that a western european would spend in a single take-out dinner.
> If your business model is dependent on flouting the law, then maybe it's time to rethink the business model.
Or maybe it's time to rethink the law...
Or maybe it's time to rethink the law...
>I can distribute revenue from my business between different types of collaborators, without incurring in paying 120% in taxes for having "employees"
Paying in ethereum, gift cards, gold, etc doesn’t change if they are employees or reduce how much tax you owe
Paying in ethereum, gift cards, gold, etc doesn’t change if they are employees or reduce how much tax you owe
>Crypto gives people living in dysfunctional democracies a chance to participate in the global economy, something that people living in Europe or North America cannot comprehend.
Corruption (which tax evasion is a facet of) is how you end up with dysfunctional governments. Endemic corruption breeds corruption breeds corruption. Crypto facilitates corruption and crime, which is antagonistic if your goal is a healthy society or good governance.
Corruption (which tax evasion is a facet of) is how you end up with dysfunctional governments. Endemic corruption breeds corruption breeds corruption. Crypto facilitates corruption and crime, which is antagonistic if your goal is a healthy society or good governance.
>Thanks to Ethereum (and specially now that there are L2s which have cheaper tx costs) I can distribute revenue from my business between different types of collaborators, without incurring in paying 120% in taxes for having "employees".
That's not a technical feature, that's just tax fraud
That's not a technical feature, that's just tax fraud
[deleted]
Really, thats your selling point?
"Shitcoin allows easy fraud, destruction of employment, and subversion of laws we dont like at scale, because it's not a fiat currency"
Seriously, if that's your selling point, kill it with fire and bury it in the desert. (shitcoin, not you).
"Shitcoin allows easy fraud, destruction of employment, and subversion of laws we dont like at scale, because it's not a fiat currency"
Seriously, if that's your selling point, kill it with fire and bury it in the desert. (shitcoin, not you).
Are you admitting a crime (tax evasion)?
Yea same. Really still unclear what utility it provides that fiat currencies do not. Not theoretical utility, like real world utility.
I think crypto will go down in history as an amazing example of the importance of institutional knowledge and regulation. Like how did nobody see fraud coming in an unregulated financial instrument? Did folks genuinely think that "decentralization" was going to sidestep all of the typical problems that we've been using regulation to solve for the past several hundred years?
I think crypto will go down in history as an amazing example of the importance of institutional knowledge and regulation. Like how did nobody see fraud coming in an unregulated financial instrument? Did folks genuinely think that "decentralization" was going to sidestep all of the typical problems that we've been using regulation to solve for the past several hundred years?
It is perfect for laundering large amounts of value, transacting in business that might not be legal but is between consenting adults (sex work and all the shades of that, pharma/recreational drugs), or for storing your value somewhere that can't be confiscated or inflated away by your local government. You might be willing to tolerate some loss if these are your threat models or use cases (versus being wholly unable to transact).
Everyone else is better served by instant payments with utility pricing provided by a neutral party, such as a central bank or their delegate responsible for implementation and ongoing operations of the system.
Everyone else is better served by instant payments with utility pricing provided by a neutral party, such as a central bank or their delegate responsible for implementation and ongoing operations of the system.
You have no idea what you're talking about, right? https://www.axios.com/2023/05/11/stripes-crypto-strategy
"Accepting money is one thing, but paying out money to the rest of the world — especially long-tail countries with poor banking rails is another thing," he said. "It works better than fiat payments in a lot of cases," he added."
"Accepting money is one thing, but paying out money to the rest of the world — especially long-tail countries with poor banking rails is another thing," he said. "It works better than fiat payments in a lot of cases," he added."
Okay ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If you want to bet $10k on the success of this, outline the success criteria and deadline for evaluation of the bet and we'll spin up a Long Bet [1].
Stripe talks a lot, while TranferWise (among others) gets shit done wrt cross border payments on real rails. Crypto is slowly dying while central banks raise rates globally, making the casino attempt at yield unpalatable (most crypto trading was gambling). Africa, for example, is going digital payments faster than some developed countries [2] [3].
Stripe's problem (along with Visa and Mastercard for that matter) is that developing countries are leapfrogging developed world financial infra, and owning it themselves to prevent "light colonization" of this critical financial infra. This compresses the global TAM for the for profit folks who are skimming off rails volume.
[1] https://longbets.org/
[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-i...
[3] https://papss.com/
Stripe talks a lot, while TranferWise (among others) gets shit done wrt cross border payments on real rails. Crypto is slowly dying while central banks raise rates globally, making the casino attempt at yield unpalatable (most crypto trading was gambling). Africa, for example, is going digital payments faster than some developed countries [2] [3].
Stripe's problem (along with Visa and Mastercard for that matter) is that developing countries are leapfrogging developed world financial infra, and owning it themselves to prevent "light colonization" of this critical financial infra. This compresses the global TAM for the for profit folks who are skimming off rails volume.
[1] https://longbets.org/
[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-i...
[3] https://papss.com/
Of course, moving the goal-posts are we?
> "Stripe talks a lot, while TranferWise (among others) gets shit done wrt cross border payments on real rails."
Stripe has also shipped theirs though and it is available and is in use. [0] So have Moneygram [1], Visa [2], Checkout.com [3], PayPal [4] and beyond payments, Walmart Canada is using one right now. [5]
The fact is, they are using blockchains and they are not going away (or dying) anytime soon, like it or not.
[0] https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto
[1] https://stellar.org/products-and-tools/moneygram
[2] https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
[3] https://www.checkout.com/solutions/crypto
[4] https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/manage-money/crypto...
[5] https://hbr.org/2022/01/how-walmart-canada-uses-blockchain-t...
> "Stripe talks a lot, while TranferWise (among others) gets shit done wrt cross border payments on real rails."
Stripe has also shipped theirs though and it is available and is in use. [0] So have Moneygram [1], Visa [2], Checkout.com [3], PayPal [4] and beyond payments, Walmart Canada is using one right now. [5]
The fact is, they are using blockchains and they are not going away (or dying) anytime soon, like it or not.
[0] https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto
[1] https://stellar.org/products-and-tools/moneygram
[2] https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
[3] https://www.checkout.com/solutions/crypto
[4] https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/manage-money/crypto...
[5] https://hbr.org/2022/01/how-walmart-canada-uses-blockchain-t...
I don't believe crypto is the future of payments, domestic or international. That's my thesis, and I'm fairly confident in it. If I'm wrong, after evaluating all available data, such is the peril of attempting to predict the future. I will eat crow and say I was wrong if that is the future we arrive at.
PIX in Brazil and UPI in India are evidence of what instant payment systems do to incumbent instant (credit card) rails. Central banks are coming for cross border payments next. For profit firms need profit and investors. Central banks (or other nation state monetary policy orgs with similar functions) simply need mandates. Congress told the Fed to build FedNow (to prevent private/for profit instant rails from gating access), and they did, because they were told to.
Visa, Paypal, and others in the space have an existential crisis, no different than Intuit with the IRS preparing to offer filing for free. A Paypal stablecoin? Are you kidding me? Why would you use that versus an FDIC insured deposit account or a money market fund?
https://archive.ph/vh3Dh | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-23/brazilian...
https://www.livemint.com/economy/indians-pick-upi-over-debit...
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp2693~8d4e5804...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37920633
https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/cryptocurrencies-tnc?loca...
https://paxos.com/stablecoin-terms-conditions/
PIX in Brazil and UPI in India are evidence of what instant payment systems do to incumbent instant (credit card) rails. Central banks are coming for cross border payments next. For profit firms need profit and investors. Central banks (or other nation state monetary policy orgs with similar functions) simply need mandates. Congress told the Fed to build FedNow (to prevent private/for profit instant rails from gating access), and they did, because they were told to.
Visa, Paypal, and others in the space have an existential crisis, no different than Intuit with the IRS preparing to offer filing for free. A Paypal stablecoin? Are you kidding me? Why would you use that versus an FDIC insured deposit account or a money market fund?
https://archive.ph/vh3Dh | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-23/brazilian...
https://www.livemint.com/economy/indians-pick-upi-over-debit...
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp2693~8d4e5804...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37920633
https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/cryptocurrencies-tnc?loca...
https://paxos.com/stablecoin-terms-conditions/
None of the examples you mentioned are even world-wide, given that you can't use UPI in Japan, or FedNow can't be used outside of the US or PIX outside of Brazil so are totally useless for users outside of those countries.
These 'rails' are just meant for the introduction of a CBDC in their respective countries which will just have the same issues that Nigeria's eNaira 'CBDC' had which once that was tried, it was a complete failure. [0] [1] which UPI and PIX will have the same problems and will be no different.
[0] https://business.cornell.edu/hub/2023/04/28/nigerias-enaira-...
[1] https://www.pymnts.com/cbdc/2022/nigeria-cuts-atm-cash-withd...
These 'rails' are just meant for the introduction of a CBDC in their respective countries which will just have the same issues that Nigeria's eNaira 'CBDC' had which once that was tried, it was a complete failure. [0] [1] which UPI and PIX will have the same problems and will be no different.
[0] https://business.cornell.edu/hub/2023/04/28/nigerias-enaira-...
[1] https://www.pymnts.com/cbdc/2022/nigeria-cuts-atm-cash-withd...
You seem to be very pro crypto, so I don't believe we're going to find middle ground. Appreciate the debate regardless!
anon1199022(1)
How else can you do private digital transactions other than with something like monero? Given that cash is dying, and mass surveillance on all transactions is incredibly dystopian for reasons I hope are obvious, it fascinates me that HN doesn't see the importance and utility there. What is one meant to do in a few decades if they want to pay for an abortion, buy a copy of 1984, or some weed, receive onlyfans money, or whatever the society doesnt accept in x years?
Imagine you're in a different thread about social credit scores, or mastercard selling user data, or Canadian protestors having their bank accounts frozen...
Imagine you're in a different thread about social credit scores, or mastercard selling user data, or Canadian protestors having their bank accounts frozen...
>Given that cash is dying
And famously, humans did ZERO transacting before the US invented paper currency, right? Or maybe a market exists externally to the financial instruments that can operate in it? Crypto isn't needed for barter. Crypto isn't needed for secret barter. Hell, swap buy sell guides were a thing in my childhood, before anyone paid for anything on the internet.
And famously, humans did ZERO transacting before the US invented paper currency, right? Or maybe a market exists externally to the financial instruments that can operate in it? Crypto isn't needed for barter. Crypto isn't needed for secret barter. Hell, swap buy sell guides were a thing in my childhood, before anyone paid for anything on the internet.
China invented paper currency, in 7th century AD.
the things you're talking about are the selling point, not the problem. the foundational idea of cryptocurrency is that it is unregulated and therefore allows for fraud, crime, privacy, secrecy whatever. if you don't want to expose yourself to that, don't engage with crypto. much like with TOR, they're a necessary evil to provide online freedom
the problems as I see them are too much private regulation of the market—centralised exchanges that have too much power—and public regulation—KYC—which has largely removed the intended benefits in the first place
the problems as I see them are too much private regulation of the market—centralised exchanges that have too much power—and public regulation—KYC—which has largely removed the intended benefits in the first place
> Really still unclear what utility it provides that fiat currencies do not. Not theoretical utility, like real world utility.
Because it gets you away from the fiat aspect of it.
I'm not talking about the arguments over monetary economics and whether we should just trust central banks not to print too much money; I'm talking about the other type of fiat. If you contribute money to the wrong protesters, "liberal" "democratic" Western governments can and will freeze your bank account. If you live in the wrong country, Visa and Mastercard will cut off your access to your own money as collective punishment for the actions of a government you didn't even freely elect. If you want to trade in goods the government doesn't like, they have ways of making that difficult for you.
Crypto got sold to finance bros as some sort of respectable financial instrument, which it clearly is not. If you're a respectable normal person in a Western country, crypto probably just isn't for you.
Because it gets you away from the fiat aspect of it.
I'm not talking about the arguments over monetary economics and whether we should just trust central banks not to print too much money; I'm talking about the other type of fiat. If you contribute money to the wrong protesters, "liberal" "democratic" Western governments can and will freeze your bank account. If you live in the wrong country, Visa and Mastercard will cut off your access to your own money as collective punishment for the actions of a government you didn't even freely elect. If you want to trade in goods the government doesn't like, they have ways of making that difficult for you.
Crypto got sold to finance bros as some sort of respectable financial instrument, which it clearly is not. If you're a respectable normal person in a Western country, crypto probably just isn't for you.
Okay, but why is it valueable or useful for us to boost up a financial system whose entire purpose is to bypass any form of non-violent geopolitics. Do you know what happens when you make things like sanctions less effective? You remove one of the only tools for countries to work through the serious disputes that doesn't involve literally shooting each other.
The sanctions were already ineffective, but that’s neither here nor there because none of my examples involve actual, official sanctions. Most of my examples involved people working around their own domestic governments. Even when it comes to Visa and MasterCard locking out Russians, that was, officially at least, purely on the initiative of those two companies rather than any formal economic sanction.
> what utility it provides that fiat currencies do not
Forex (for travelers) perhaps? Technically, fiat itself does not provide exchange. you always need a broker or a counterparty. crypto provides liquidity that can replace a paid service (yes I know crypto also has fees).
I have never owned crypto but I think it's a great idea as a currency that should have been able to compete with paypal/credit cards, but somehow didn't. I think that's its greatest failure: the fact that 12 years later I can't buy a sandwich with it.
Forex (for travelers) perhaps? Technically, fiat itself does not provide exchange. you always need a broker or a counterparty. crypto provides liquidity that can replace a paid service (yes I know crypto also has fees).
I have never owned crypto but I think it's a great idea as a currency that should have been able to compete with paypal/credit cards, but somehow didn't. I think that's its greatest failure: the fact that 12 years later I can't buy a sandwich with it.
Maybe rather than seeing it as _a_ currency we could see it a special purpose currency for money exchange? A transport medium?
If you are trying to keep your coin over a longer period of time you suffer the high volatility and are at the whims of gamblers. But if it is only used to perform a money transaction which otherwise would not be possible/too expensive/too dangerous, only to be exchanged against a fiat currency immediately after, that could be its role.
If you are trying to keep your coin over a longer period of time you suffer the high volatility and are at the whims of gamblers. But if it is only used to perform a money transaction which otherwise would not be possible/too expensive/too dangerous, only to be exchanged against a fiat currency immediately after, that could be its role.
> Forex (for travelers) perhaps?
Again, we're talking real world. Have you ever travelled abroad and used BTC to buy something? Has anyone you know ever done that?
Again, we're talking real world. Have you ever travelled abroad and used BTC to buy something? Has anyone you know ever done that?
I did. Used to refill my eqyptian sim card at bitrefill.io. Much cheaper and easier than go search for refill card at merchants all looking to rob a touristo.
so the goalposts just moved from "having utility" to "myself-or-someone-I-personally-know got utility from it"?
> travelled abroad and used BTC to buy something
not the scenario I described. Forex is short for foreign exchange. as in, exchanging to local fiat.
> travelled abroad and used BTC to buy something
not the scenario I described. Forex is short for foreign exchange. as in, exchanging to local fiat.
What, no. The goalpost were always “real world utility”. Real world.
If all you're buying is sandwiches, you don't need crypto. Crypto is for when you buy things that are a lot more interesting than sandwiches :)
If I'm selling sandwiches, I could make a lot more if I accept an alternative payment with the same convenience as credit but lower tx fees. Privacy conscious buyers may prefer crypto than a bank that sells their purchases to advertisers.
Blockchain tech isn't 14 years old, it's 30 years old, or even 40 if you want to go back to the '82 paper. Still no world-changing tech has come from it, aside from monopoly money.
The blockchain as described in 1982 is a perfectly good niche data structure. Maybe it's not "world-changing," but it's useful enough for our team to use it at work.
Private blockchain implementations exist--including fairly large ones. But it's fair to say that it hasn't had the impact a lot of people thought it would.
Blockchain the data structure is what Git is based on. However, it’s hashing function is optimized for speed/min collisions.
Sounds like the wrong monopoly's Monopoly money.
I find it ironic that challenges to the state's monopoly on currency issuance are described as "Monopoly money". Also funny to observe that Binance is reacting to the regulatory moats created to preserve the state's monopoly.
Say what you will about the grift and VC backed pump 'n dump schemes. There's no disputing that. The controversy will be around central banks, the legitimacy thereof and Cantillon effects which result in much of the same via similar means.
I find it ironic that challenges to the state's monopoly on currency issuance are described as "Monopoly money". Also funny to observe that Binance is reacting to the regulatory moats created to preserve the state's monopoly.
Say what you will about the grift and VC backed pump 'n dump schemes. There's no disputing that. The controversy will be around central banks, the legitimacy thereof and Cantillon effects which result in much of the same via similar means.
> Blockchain tech isn't 14 years old, it's 30 years old, or even 40 if you want to go back to the '82 paper. Still no world-changing tech has come from it, aside from monopoly money.
that's like saying that submarines were invented when Jules Verne wrote about them (i.e. you're wrong)
blockchain technology requires the internet, hence it cannot be older than the internet
that's like saying that submarines were invented when Jules Verne wrote about them (i.e. you're wrong)
blockchain technology requires the internet, hence it cannot be older than the internet
What? No it doesn't. I can download the text from each comment here to put it offline and in a blockchain. All blockchain is is a datastructure, nothing more.
No, blockchain is a protocol allowing to insert data into that data structure in a decentralized and secure way. Do you know what "block" in blockchain is for? It is there solely for more efficient application of proof of work algorithm. If you appended each transaction to the chain individually, there would be a lot of reorganizations, unneeded network traffic and wasted energy, hence the "block" that clamps thousands of transactions together.
The internet existed in the 80s. How old are you?
The internet started in the 60s. Even if blockchain needed the internet (it doesn't) the internet was absolutely around in 1982. Even TCP/IP was being used in 1982, becoming the standard across the entire net Jan 1, 1983.
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>Nearly 14 years in, where exactly is this “ton of real world utility”?
People usually qualify this with "moral" or "legal" uses -- crypto currencies are absolutely useful for tax evasion and moving money across borders illegally -- it's why many people use them. It's these exact qualities that draw in the 'scammers' and 'get rich guys' as well. So it absolutely has real world uses just ones you don't like. The next question naturally then is why don't we shut them down? Now you can see how powerful they actually are because they're aren't fragile either and very persistent.
People usually qualify this with "moral" or "legal" uses -- crypto currencies are absolutely useful for tax evasion and moving money across borders illegally -- it's why many people use them. It's these exact qualities that draw in the 'scammers' and 'get rich guys' as well. So it absolutely has real world uses just ones you don't like. The next question naturally then is why don't we shut them down? Now you can see how powerful they actually are because they're aren't fragile either and very persistent.
>The next question naturally then is why don't we shut them down?
TBH I think one of the larger reasons why authorities haven't taken more aggressive action against cryptocurrency blockchains is the "prosecution futures" aspect. The capabilities of the system attract illegal use, and truly staying unidentified requires really tight opsec. This gets even harder if you want to be able to pull some value back into traditional currency anywhere in the process.
It is effectively a distributed honeypot the authorities don't even have to run themselves.
TBH I think one of the larger reasons why authorities haven't taken more aggressive action against cryptocurrency blockchains is the "prosecution futures" aspect. The capabilities of the system attract illegal use, and truly staying unidentified requires really tight opsec. This gets even harder if you want to be able to pull some value back into traditional currency anywhere in the process.
It is effectively a distributed honeypot the authorities don't even have to run themselves.
Sending money to other countries? You don't need to hold the coins long. Just buy some stable coins, send it, and other person sells them through a broker.
From what I understand sending money across counties is very expensive. Not to mention "bad countries"
Do people use it for this in real life?
From what I understand sending money across counties is very expensive. Not to mention "bad countries"
Do people use it for this in real life?
Yes, I do. I'm originally from a bad country (Russia) but right now live in a good country (Poland). I still do some work in the bad country and USDT is basically the only inexpensive, easy, and fast way to transfer money from the bad country to the good country.
So the big use case of crypto is evading and violating international sanctions?
Well they use it to avoid international sanctions but International Remittance is extremely common.
The fees of which are estimated to be over 5% [1]; I mean imagine losing 5% of your paycheck just because of currency problems!
The current Etherum TX fee is 0.0004 which at 1 ETH / 1,573.09 USD comes out to 62 cents.
Would your rather pay 5% of your transfer to send money home to your family or 62 cents?
[1]: https://fbf.eui.eu/what-explains-international-remittance-fe...
The fees of which are estimated to be over 5% [1]; I mean imagine losing 5% of your paycheck just because of currency problems!
The current Etherum TX fee is 0.0004 which at 1 ETH / 1,573.09 USD comes out to 62 cents.
Would your rather pay 5% of your transfer to send money home to your family or 62 cents?
[1]: https://fbf.eui.eu/what-explains-international-remittance-fe...
I would gladly pay 5% to support enforcement denying funds transfer to war criminals.
Do you realize the OP's use case involves funds transfer FROM war criminals?
An average European, however, filling her car by gas imported from Russia (by way of Indian refineries), is transferring funds TO war criminals.
Are you paying your 5% dues? And why aren't you?
Talk is dirt cheap.
Talk is dirt cheap.
I don't violate any sanctions by sending my personal income from Russia to Poland. And it's still possible to send Swift from Russian bank to Polish bank. But it takes a lot of time to arrive and commissions are ridiculous.
Arpanet started at 1969 and it was not immediately labed with certain groups as a scam, like here for years. That literally blocks the perception. So 2007-1969 is 38 years and not 14.
Are you claiming that in 1983 - it was mainstream even in the investment world that the only usage of the Internet was fraud and crime?
Are you claiming the investment world believes that about bitcoin today? Maybe dig a little deeper. Not everyone gets their info from mad money.
https://www.fidelitydigitalassets.com/sites/default/files/do...
https://www.fidelitydigitalassets.com/sites/default/files/do...
People were very hesitant to enter their credit card numbers into any website. This is a financial technology, it will bring more risks and justified hesitancy until the right projects iterate past the tests of time.
We’re in the MVP stage as an industry with plenty of problems. Unfortunately those problems can impact lives in much more negative ways than a communication tech like the internet could during its “MVP era”.
We’re in the MVP stage as an industry with plenty of problems. Unfortunately those problems can impact lives in much more negative ways than a communication tech like the internet could during its “MVP era”.
And people started putting credit cards into websites where there were standards and government approval for it. So that fraudulent websites can be procescuted and the credit card companies will refund your money. ie the user is not at risk.,
When will there be this backing for bitcoin?
When will there be this backing for bitcoin?
It was pretty useful for sending money to people. If you regularly need to send money to friends in other countries, the current apps and bank account transfers are a pain.
As someone who has been regularly transferring money between the US and UK for nearly a decade, using standard banking means has always been faster and cheaper for me than any of the crypto solutions that I've been presented.
It's only cheaper if you and your friend are inside the system. The two eco-system are separated and this makes friction and cost high (if you are onboarding/offboarding liquidity).
Do you believe your own personal experience with those two English-speaking countries can be extrapolated to every other country in the world?
No, I've worked in enough countries to know that my experience cannot be extrapolated to the remainder. I'd love to hear your experience and how this did work out for you.
It still requires getting people's IBAN numbers, which they usually don't remember.
Inside each country you can usually send money with just an email account, like Venmo or Zelle, but internationally it's just cumbersome.
It may be useful for transferring money, but not because the technology is inherently better for that.
In technical terms, it costs more for a bank to send an email in between branches than to transfer money in between branches. If, using current tech, some U.S. bank would offer transfers anywhere in the world for $0.20 a transfer, they would still make money, and you would feel much more confident that the money will be available for withdrawal.
Now, I realize that due to various factors, it is not legal to transfer money to all nations, and there are some nations that dont have the infrastructure to reliably get you cash - but those are not advantages of the tech, they are advantages of the lack of laws.
You could build a equivalent, illegal, "bank" with headquarters in, I dunno, Russia? Transfer money worldwide for $5/transfer, and figure out how to avoid the feds. No blockchain, and you have acheived the same.
In technical terms, it costs more for a bank to send an email in between branches than to transfer money in between branches. If, using current tech, some U.S. bank would offer transfers anywhere in the world for $0.20 a transfer, they would still make money, and you would feel much more confident that the money will be available for withdrawal.
Now, I realize that due to various factors, it is not legal to transfer money to all nations, and there are some nations that dont have the infrastructure to reliably get you cash - but those are not advantages of the tech, they are advantages of the lack of laws.
You could build a equivalent, illegal, "bank" with headquarters in, I dunno, Russia? Transfer money worldwide for $5/transfer, and figure out how to avoid the feds. No blockchain, and you have acheived the same.
Strongly depends on where you are and where your friends are.
Or look at much newer LLMs, or even Gaussian Splatting. Clear use cases, rapid innovation, certain impact.
Cryptocurrency has two main applications: illegal transactions, and speculation. It's high time to stop pretending it got popular for any other reason.
Cryptocurrency has two main applications: illegal transactions, and speculation. It's high time to stop pretending it got popular for any other reason.
The people still into crypto are the epitome of sunk cost fallacy
>Cryptocurrency has two main applications: illegal transactions, and speculation.
So, two of the most valuable applications possible?
So, two of the most valuable applications possible?
The utility is distributing the money – if you don't see it, then you are alright with the bank system, having a credit card and a bank account. You are probably lucky enough to be born in a country which is not hated by the whole world, so it is integrated in the global economics. So as national of such well-regulated and established country, for you letting money to flow free always sounds like fraud and grift, but to some it is a matter of buying food and clothes, and it is an only mean of international money transfer left because well they are in a different situation and the current world can not provide you with even basic economic rights without discriminating
The utility is on the name: cryptoCURRENCY. Before it became a speculative asset, crypto faced the issue of adoption, now that it is one, it faces the issue of not being useful as a way to facilitate transactions.
Do you think it is possible that—despite the name having the word “currency” in it—the technology might just be poorly matched to what most people expect and need from a currency?
That might explain its almost complete lack of real world use as a currency outside of a few scenarios of economic collapse.
That might explain its almost complete lack of real world use as a currency outside of a few scenarios of economic collapse.
But cryptocurrencies were designed to be deflationary which makes them shitty currencies. There's no point in spending a cryptocoin today when its value will be higher tomorrow.
Most cryptocurrencies were designed that way, but some have a so-called tail emission making them disinflationary. One even has a completely linear emission of 1 coin per second forever since launch.
That doesn't help because inflation needs to be in tune with the economy, so somebody has to be able to adjust the amount. If the tail emission is too small then it's still deflationary. If it's too big, then there's too much inflation.
To adjust properly there has to be somebody who decides what "in tune" is. We're either back to centralization, or it's some sort of popularity vote which is unlikely to produce the right result.
To adjust properly there has to be somebody who decides what "in tune" is. We're either back to centralization, or it's some sort of popularity vote which is unlikely to produce the right result.
It might be possible to have it self-tune to transaction volume, no?
It's not about the volume, but about the economy though. If somebody keeps sending coins back and forth between their own wallets, that's not economical activity.
Assuming there is a charge for transfers, that sets a minimum bound on the expected global utility of a given transfer, the sum of which, would intuitively be correlated with the size of the economy.
But fiat currencies were designed to be inflationary which makes them shitty store of value. There is no point in saving in fiat today when it’s value will be lower tomorrow.
Exactly, working as intended.
You want people to hold real assets, not imaginary ones like a currency, because you want people to be invested in your economy. The only intrinsic value a currency have is taxation.
You want people to hold real assets, not imaginary ones like a currency, because you want people to be invested in your economy. The only intrinsic value a currency have is taxation.
We don't want people just stuffing dollars in a mattress. That doesn't help either themselves or anyone else. So we encourage putting dollars/currency into interest bearing vehicles or real assets.
We don't want dollars to sit in hoards. We want them to circulate. If I can be without access to dollars for a while I can loan them to you for some enterprise. Then you pay me back more than I loaned you (and more than inflation we hope) because your enterprise created additional value.
If my excess money circulates I benefit from access to the things that money is used to build in addition to the interest I receive. Since I'm not a medieval landed noble my economic value isn't measured by the productivity of the serfs on my land holdings.
We don't want dollars to sit in hoards. We want them to circulate. If I can be without access to dollars for a while I can loan them to you for some enterprise. Then you pay me back more than I loaned you (and more than inflation we hope) because your enterprise created additional value.
If my excess money circulates I benefit from access to the things that money is used to build in addition to the interest I receive. Since I'm not a medieval landed noble my economic value isn't measured by the productivity of the serfs on my land holdings.
Currencies aren't supposed to be a good store of value, just a predictable store of value. Investments are supposed to be good stores of value. The government very much does not want people hoarding currency.
It doesn't help that the most popular cryptocurrency is intentionally deflationary. Deflationary currencies are terrible units of exchange.
Gresham's Law: Bad money drives out good. If cryptocurrency is deflating, it's becoming more valuable with time. The dollar is inflating - it's becoming less valuable with time. So given the choice, I would pay with dollars and hold crypto. That's just normal human behavior. But while that may make crypto a good investment, it makes it a terrible unit of exchange, as you say (or at least a unit of exchange that will only be used as a last resort).
This is one of those Richard Feynman moments where perhaps it's more useful to consider the properties of the bird than its name. The technology doesn't have a soul, it's up to us to decide when and where to use it regardless of taxonomy.
I can call my fists "cancer-eradicating super-machines". Does that mean my fists are good at killing cancer?
[deleted]
While it may be hard to see in first world countries, imagine being in a third world country and having a place you can store value that can't be debased by your crackpot dictator. That's huge.
It can't be debased by a crackpot dictator but it can be debased by the crackpot market. If you "stored value" from 2021 in BTC, you'd only have about half of that value right now. Granted, if you "stored value" from 10 months ago, you'd have 50% more than you put in.
But, I think those big swings make it a poor instrument for most people to view it as a real way to store value.
But, I think those big swings make it a poor instrument for most people to view it as a real way to store value.
It sucks because in theory all the "smart contacts" exist to create an instrument that holds its value. But that whole space has been saturated by wannabes, grifters and imitators. With all the day traders out there, I'm sure you could find a counterparty for a 5% X-year CD (dollar pegged, let's say). And I'm sure somewhere on the cryptosphere this exists, but good luck distinguishing it from a rugpull.
>But that whole space has been saturated by wannabes, grifters and imitators.
You are missing the extremely important point that crypto is saturated by these types exactly and explicitly because of design decisions that are inherent in crypto!
The lack of transaction reversal is an explicit choice and explicitly empowers fraudulent activity over legitimate. What business or individual wants to lock up any value/cash/work they have in a system with zero recourse for fucking up?
You are missing the extremely important point that crypto is saturated by these types exactly and explicitly because of design decisions that are inherent in crypto!
The lack of transaction reversal is an explicit choice and explicitly empowers fraudulent activity over legitimate. What business or individual wants to lock up any value/cash/work they have in a system with zero recourse for fucking up?
I don't disagree with you. I think it's a strange case where the tech-smart "code is law" proponents really think, in their minds, that it's invincible "because encryption!", and every time a new heist/scam occurs they dig their heels in deeper and say "that's different, it wasn't the _crypto_ that failed..."
Even if it wasn't for elaborate rug-pulls, you could still lose everything to an evil-maid with a $5 key logger. That is just untenable.
Even if it wasn't for elaborate rug-pulls, you could still lose everything to an evil-maid with a $5 key logger. That is just untenable.
It is always the same debate in any cryptocurrency thread. People from economically free countries cannot understand cryptocurrencies because they are not meant for them and label them as scam. They cannot understand what 85% income tax is, authoritarian governments freezing (or emptying!) bank accounts for no reason, etc.
I disagree. I think people in economically free countries can and do understand this. But, as you point out, cryptocurrencies don't have a great deal of utility to people who don't have to interact with economically oppressed countries.
Why hasn't it been adopted in those places then?
Cryptocurrencies have a sort of value as a kind of collectable like art. Similarly to how people may like to buy paintings, have them appreciate in value and maybe trade them to other art collectors, other people may like to collect bitcoins or similar to likewise have them appreciate and maybe trade to other bitcoiners. You could say it's illusory but if it makes people happy does it matter? There's a lot of theoretical value there. I mean we'll all be gone in the end so if it helps you enjoy the journey.
I've conducted a handful of actual real transactions using it (over 10+ years) and I'm hardly a crypto advocate. I suspect that I'm the exception, and that even those who had the glowing eyes in their avatar and changed their username to "something.eth" rarely ever use it as an actual currency.
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if presence of crypto accelerated various central banks towards faster digitization like India's UPI or very recent US FedNow then I'd consider that a success of crypto. you cannot claim otherwise just like you have to acknowledge role of Linux in us not be completely beholden and nickle & dimed to death by the likes of MS/Apple.
to be clear I still think crypto is completely take over by grifters & charlatans & the environmental footprint of proof-of-work is abysmal but still its good to have a decentralized alternative to central bank fractional reserve paper money. its as close to gold as we are ever gonna get now. if it were not so they (not just US but all around world) would not be trying to kill it that hard.
PS: dont own crypto
to be clear I still think crypto is completely take over by grifters & charlatans & the environmental footprint of proof-of-work is abysmal but still its good to have a decentralized alternative to central bank fractional reserve paper money. its as close to gold as we are ever gonna get now. if it were not so they (not just US but all around world) would not be trying to kill it that hard.
PS: dont own crypto
> Surely someone somewhere would have a product providing this utility
like tor escrow markets? monero is a great way for us to obtain things that haven't been legalized yet. cryptocurrency has already found quite the niche for transactions that don't want or need government meddling
-vicuna
like tor escrow markets? monero is a great way for us to obtain things that haven't been legalized yet. cryptocurrency has already found quite the niche for transactions that don't want or need government meddling
-vicuna
Decentralized ledger tech is just starting to get there - blockchains are the first inefficient implementation, and newer technologies like Hedera Hashgraph can do it far more cheaply and efficiently. Services are dependent on network effects and independent contributors. As long as people are discouraged from using it we won't get solid examples of usage.
Wouldn't it be ideal if open source apps and platforms could go beyond the slow and risky traditional donation model, and not have to be entirely user-hosted or hosted by a paid company? Imagine social media platforms not susceptible to the pettiness of absolutist employees and owners, MMORPGs not debilitated by IP holders, cryptographically secured cloud software that follows the needs of its users. Perhaps like communes such projects are forever limited by the requirement of a modicum of participant interest and cost-sharing.
Wouldn't it be ideal if open source apps and platforms could go beyond the slow and risky traditional donation model, and not have to be entirely user-hosted or hosted by a paid company? Imagine social media platforms not susceptible to the pettiness of absolutist employees and owners, MMORPGs not debilitated by IP holders, cryptographically secured cloud software that follows the needs of its users. Perhaps like communes such projects are forever limited by the requirement of a modicum of participant interest and cost-sharing.
> Nearly 14 years in, where exactly is this “ton of real world utility”?
I don't think cryptocurrency has much value, but I think block chain has lots of potential for trading things that have unique ids and are owned by many people. I paid $1500 for research on a title claim and my lawyer came back with "It's looks solid, but I'd get the title insurance just in case". If property deeds were on the block chain then it'd be trivial.
Car deeds, property deeds, stocks, concert tickets, air line tickets, hotel reservations, all these would benefit from being frictionlessly traded on a block chain. That said, to be useful the entities have to be tangible and the owners don't really benefit (though hotels would benefit from the speculation since it'd even out their cash flow) or the owner is the government.
I don't think cryptocurrency has much value, but I think block chain has lots of potential for trading things that have unique ids and are owned by many people. I paid $1500 for research on a title claim and my lawyer came back with "It's looks solid, but I'd get the title insurance just in case". If property deeds were on the block chain then it'd be trivial.
Car deeds, property deeds, stocks, concert tickets, air line tickets, hotel reservations, all these would benefit from being frictionlessly traded on a block chain. That said, to be useful the entities have to be tangible and the owners don't really benefit (though hotels would benefit from the speculation since it'd even out their cash flow) or the owner is the government.
The problem is that "simply put it on the blockchain" also means "change the laws around edge cases in nontrivial ways".
For example consider title on property. Just putting it on the blockchain would run into trouble when you try to implement squatters rights https://propertyclub.nyc/article/squatters-rights-in-califor..., or the government takes the title back with eminent domain https://ij.org/issues/private-property/eminent-domain/califo..., or you fail to pay taxes https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_public_auction.html, or the bank forecloses https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-foreclosu....
Additionally what happens when the keys and person separate? Some scammer gets your key off of your computer and sells the title to themselves? Or someone loses the computer on which they had their title, and now can't sell because they can prove that they are them?
The real world is messy. And for most of the messy cases that the world has to deal with, the blockchain makes things worse. Not better.
For example consider title on property. Just putting it on the blockchain would run into trouble when you try to implement squatters rights https://propertyclub.nyc/article/squatters-rights-in-califor..., or the government takes the title back with eminent domain https://ij.org/issues/private-property/eminent-domain/califo..., or you fail to pay taxes https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_public_auction.html, or the bank forecloses https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-foreclosu....
Additionally what happens when the keys and person separate? Some scammer gets your key off of your computer and sells the title to themselves? Or someone loses the computer on which they had their title, and now can't sell because they can prove that they are them?
The real world is messy. And for most of the messy cases that the world has to deal with, the blockchain makes things worse. Not better.
Like too many people, you have confused "blockchain" with "digital signature", which doesn't require a blockchain, and typically already is used to verify things.
If you need to trust a central authority to hold up their end of the bargain, for example trusting a Hotel to actually provide the room, then a decentralised system adds absolutely no benefit over the hotel simply digitally signing a ticket themselves.
The hotel must be trusted to actually provide the room, so why not trust the hotel to also store the booking information?
If you need to trust a central authority to hold up their end of the bargain, for example trusting a Hotel to actually provide the room, then a decentralised system adds absolutely no benefit over the hotel simply digitally signing a ticket themselves.
The hotel must be trusted to actually provide the room, so why not trust the hotel to also store the booking information?
That’s the thing. Cryptocurrency and blockchains (at least thr way the Bitcoin protocol works) provides for an “easy” way to verify transactions in a low trust or even no trust environment. However most if not all transactions you engage in need some level of trust. You want to trust that the hotel has a room, the car is not a lemon, a house is not condemned. Putting these transactions onto the blockchain adds nothing to the trustworthiness of these situations and whether you get what they say you are buying and since a lot of advocates push “code is law” the finality of the blockchain will mean you have no recourse. You bought the nft of a house. The house being in ruins is not their problem. The blockchain is the sole source of truth, not reality.
Society should probably be a high trust environment and if it isn’t we should work to fix that.
Society should probably be a high trust environment and if it isn’t we should work to fix that.
> The hotel must be trusted to actually provide the room, so why not trust the hotel to also store the booking information?
Because the hotel then has to swap the reservation whenever it's traded. Let's say I want to book a hotel in the future for downtown Chicago Cubs making it to the World Series. As the season progresses it's a future whose value goes up and down depending on how they are playing. If the hotel is in the loop they could play shenanigans and charge you a fee every time you reschedule. The idea of the blockchain is that it's out of their hands.
The owner of the room at the time of the booking shows up with the private key, and swaps it for the room key.
If you involve the hotel enshittification will ensue to make sure they grind out every last cent.
Also, being on a blockchain allows for trades such as swapping rooms across chains, trading rooms for cars, etc. The blockchain unifies ownership and rights as tradeable like money did for barter. There is a common unifying method of exchange.
Because the hotel then has to swap the reservation whenever it's traded. Let's say I want to book a hotel in the future for downtown Chicago Cubs making it to the World Series. As the season progresses it's a future whose value goes up and down depending on how they are playing. If the hotel is in the loop they could play shenanigans and charge you a fee every time you reschedule. The idea of the blockchain is that it's out of their hands.
The owner of the room at the time of the booking shows up with the private key, and swaps it for the room key.
If you involve the hotel enshittification will ensue to make sure they grind out every last cent.
Also, being on a blockchain allows for trades such as swapping rooms across chains, trading rooms for cars, etc. The blockchain unifies ownership and rights as tradeable like money did for barter. There is a common unifying method of exchange.
IMHO, this is a perfect little example of why so much blockchain/crypto/NFT stuff is silly.
a) Everything you mentioned here can already be done with just a database. Trading a hotel room, rescheduling, swapping across chains, etc.
b) The hotel has no incentive to allow any of this
a) Everything you mentioned here can already be done with just a database. Trading a hotel room, rescheduling, swapping across chains, etc.
b) The hotel has no incentive to allow any of this
If the hotel ultimately owns the room then I'm pretty sure they would simply have software to look at exchanges on the chain and could charge you if you've swapped it. They could also simply not honor your booking. I think this is the point regarding "the real world" vs the idea of "digital ownership". You can have a token that says you get to stay a week in a given room and I (as the hotel) can say "no, this token is no longer valid within our system and the room has been rebooked". Crypto/blockchain can't enforce anything in the real world. The hotel though, backed by real-world laws, can say "there is an additional fee for swapping the reservation and you're outside of the refund period.". If you attempt to stay, you'll be arrested. So you see there's no actual power behind a digital representation of ownership unless governments (which crypto doesn't want involved) grant them.
> Crypto/blockchain can't enforce anything in the real world.
Exactly! At some point a real person has to choose to honor your hotel room NFT or not, just as easily as they could choose to honor your driver's license or not. There's no advantage to mucking up the entire system with crypto and blockchain.
Exactly! At some point a real person has to choose to honor your hotel room NFT or not, just as easily as they could choose to honor your driver's license or not. There's no advantage to mucking up the entire system with crypto and blockchain.
You're literally suggesting turning hotel stays into speculative financial assets. This is, fundamentally, a really dumb idea. Whilst hotels do price sometimes unfairly, your suggestion where a selection of speculative traders engage in (at best) zero sum - and it doesn't even benefit the hotel providing the service. Just faceless traders.
> it doesn't even benefit the hotel providing the service.
It does. Unused bookings are pure profit for them. It also means that they get the cash now. It means they don't have the uncertainties of unusually low or high demand so it smoothes out their finances.
* To be clear, for this to make any sense, the booking has to be prepaid, or at least a significant portion of it. Maybe just minus a room cleaning fee etc that is due on check-in.
It does. Unused bookings are pure profit for them. It also means that they get the cash now. It means they don't have the uncertainties of unusually low or high demand so it smoothes out their finances.
* To be clear, for this to make any sense, the booking has to be prepaid, or at least a significant portion of it. Maybe just minus a room cleaning fee etc that is due on check-in.
> Unused bookings are pure profit for them
They want to be fully booked, because not only does it avoid the appearance and vibe of being a "ghost town", they also make a lot of money on things like the hotel bar, minibars, laundry services, etc.
If a room stays un-used, the marginal cost to the hotel does not actually decrease much, especially not in the short term.
They still pay the same to their laundry contract, they still pay the same rent, they still pay for the front of house staff and the chefs to be there, and they still pay to heat / AC most of the hotel.
They might save very marginally on some room AC not being on as much, and eventually if the reduced bookings was noticeable might negotiate a smaller laundry contract, reduce head count, but at that point you just look like a failing hotel.
I'm confident if you looked at the accounts, it's more profitable for a guest to turn up than not, even if the guest still paid for the booking.
They want to be fully booked, because not only does it avoid the appearance and vibe of being a "ghost town", they also make a lot of money on things like the hotel bar, minibars, laundry services, etc.
If a room stays un-used, the marginal cost to the hotel does not actually decrease much, especially not in the short term.
They still pay the same to their laundry contract, they still pay the same rent, they still pay for the front of house staff and the chefs to be there, and they still pay to heat / AC most of the hotel.
They might save very marginally on some room AC not being on as much, and eventually if the reduced bookings was noticeable might negotiate a smaller laundry contract, reduce head count, but at that point you just look like a failing hotel.
I'm confident if you looked at the accounts, it's more profitable for a guest to turn up than not, even if the guest still paid for the booking.
> If property deeds were on the block chain then it'd be trivial.
True, but then a ton of other things would be much, much more difficult.
Like, what happens if Joe has the deed to a home, but then Joe dies, and nobody has the key to his wallet?
If you have some kind of way, on the blockchain, to solve this problem, and reassign the property without Joe’s private key, then what you have is a situation where human decisions take priority over cryptographic guarantees. You can’t have it both ways—either the human decisions are trusted over the cryptographic guarantees, or vice versa.
This is essentially just a reinvention of centralized real property registration systems, where the current owner of a particular piece of property must be registered either at some government office (in a registration system) or on the blockchain (hypothetically). One of the reasons you want title insurance is because some deed (a piece of paper) may be defective for various reasons, and having a centralized registry (either at a government office, or on a blockchain) makes this problem much less likely. I don’t see what advantage blockchain has here.
True, but then a ton of other things would be much, much more difficult.
Like, what happens if Joe has the deed to a home, but then Joe dies, and nobody has the key to his wallet?
If you have some kind of way, on the blockchain, to solve this problem, and reassign the property without Joe’s private key, then what you have is a situation where human decisions take priority over cryptographic guarantees. You can’t have it both ways—either the human decisions are trusted over the cryptographic guarantees, or vice versa.
This is essentially just a reinvention of centralized real property registration systems, where the current owner of a particular piece of property must be registered either at some government office (in a registration system) or on the blockchain (hypothetically). One of the reasons you want title insurance is because some deed (a piece of paper) may be defective for various reasons, and having a centralized registry (either at a government office, or on a blockchain) makes this problem much less likely. I don’t see what advantage blockchain has here.
> If you have some kind of way, on the blockchain, to solve this problem, and reassign the property without Joe’s private key, then what you have is a situation where human decisions take priority over cryptographic guarantees.
I have thought about this and it's solveable. Physical goods have to have some sort of "sanctioned violence" to enforce, so there is always a government. They have a public key that is known and publish updates. So if something gets legally confiscated, there is a message published by the government that amends the chain. "The owner of X is now Y".
> I don’t see what advantage blockchain has here.
Because it unifies ownership under a central mechanism and you don't need to wait in line at a government office. You have an API and a log. It doesn't really need to be distributed just public I guess, but having the ability to have a private copy for reference would be a benefit.
I have thought about this and it's solveable. Physical goods have to have some sort of "sanctioned violence" to enforce, so there is always a government. They have a public key that is known and publish updates. So if something gets legally confiscated, there is a message published by the government that amends the chain. "The owner of X is now Y".
> I don’t see what advantage blockchain has here.
Because it unifies ownership under a central mechanism and you don't need to wait in line at a government office. You have an API and a log. It doesn't really need to be distributed just public I guess, but having the ability to have a private copy for reference would be a benefit.
I still don’t see how blockchain is a part of this. You can have an API and a log anyway, if you want one.
If property deeds were on the block chain then it'd be trivial.
This is a gross misunderstanding of what property deeds record or how they are recorded. Property deeds record the real property owned, using geographical features and descriptors. It's irrelevant whether deeds are stored on paper or in a blockchain, because the method of storage doesn't do anything about the features/descriptors changing.
For example, if a river widens, or a tree is cut down, or plots shift because of an earthquake or ground settling, or if someone oversteps the boundaries of a plot...these are all situations covered by property insurance. The point is to make the homeowner whole for those situations where the deed as recorded (however it is recorded) no longer matches reality due to changes in the world.
This is a gross misunderstanding of what property deeds record or how they are recorded. Property deeds record the real property owned, using geographical features and descriptors. It's irrelevant whether deeds are stored on paper or in a blockchain, because the method of storage doesn't do anything about the features/descriptors changing.
For example, if a river widens, or a tree is cut down, or plots shift because of an earthquake or ground settling, or if someone oversteps the boundaries of a plot...these are all situations covered by property insurance. The point is to make the homeowner whole for those situations where the deed as recorded (however it is recorded) no longer matches reality due to changes in the world.
If you put the property deed and your best attempt at its history in a public database, such as a blockchain, then all you've got is your best attempt at the property deed's history. You're still going to want to buy title insurance.
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> Nearly 14 years in, where exactly is this “ton of real world utility”?
You can exchange cryptocurrency for goods and services, even the ones governments and banks don't want you to buy.
You can exchange cryptocurrency for goods and services, even the ones governments and banks don't want you to buy.
It strikes me as a bit silly to set the bar at the World Wide Web, which is easily one of the most transformative fast-moving technologies in human history.
There is literally only one kind of "utility" that matters in money and money-like instruments.
ONLY ONE.
"Do people believe it will retain or increase in value?"
That's IT. This goes for the things you think are scammy, and it also goes for the things that you perhaps expect to retire on.
There is nothing there besides "what people choose to believe."
So there it is, even for crypto. If enough people believe in crypto/the stock market/social security, then it will work and do the thing. If they don't, it won't.
ONLY ONE.
"Do people believe it will retain or increase in value?"
That's IT. This goes for the things you think are scammy, and it also goes for the things that you perhaps expect to retire on.
There is nothing there besides "what people choose to believe."
So there it is, even for crypto. If enough people believe in crypto/the stock market/social security, then it will work and do the thing. If they don't, it won't.
> Nearly 14 years in, where exactly is this “ton of real world utility”?
That's not a helpful comment, and you aren't even correct. the web was around in the 80s, 70s ... no wait the 1960s.
The number of years its been around is irrelevant to its current or future usefulness.
That's not a helpful comment, and you aren't even correct. the web was around in the 80s, 70s ... no wait the 1960s.
The number of years its been around is irrelevant to its current or future usefulness.
No. The web is NOT arpanet. This is an American-centric lie, like saying apple/Steve Jobs invented the mouse. The web was invented in Zurich by an English man in 89.
Saying arpanet is the web is like saying Minitel clients are personal computers. Yes, the underlying tech is basically the same, but the design and philosophy is different.
Saying arpanet is the web is like saying Minitel clients are personal computers. Yes, the underlying tech is basically the same, but the design and philosophy is different.
you are being dishonest in your arguments. the point is the technology was around for decades before the said creation date. their argument is the tech for crypto has been around for 14 years so if it didnt take off by now, it never well. you are trying to get around my argument by nit picking over details 'what is the web and what isn't', which is a dishonest approach do discussion.
Technology is usually around for a very long time before adoption.
Technology is usually around for a very long time before adoption.
Hey, someone bought a pizza with Bitcoin one time ! /s
There's a lot of utility outside of the US, in countries without stable currencies.
It's no web, but its a lot more impactful than say self driving cars (thus far), 3D-printing, or vegan meat.
Edit: This is not to discount those technologies, rather to emphasize that crypto is used by millions worldwide for real transactions.
It's no web, but its a lot more impactful than say self driving cars (thus far), 3D-printing, or vegan meat.
Edit: This is not to discount those technologies, rather to emphasize that crypto is used by millions worldwide for real transactions.
Crypto is not more impactful than 3D printing.
3D printing has built real things, real products and has immense significance to fast prototyping.
Crypto hasn't built a single tangible item.
3D printing has built real things, real products and has immense significance to fast prototyping.
Crypto hasn't built a single tangible item.
Crypto is used everyday by millions in many countries including turkey, argentina, africa. You may be lucky to have a great financial system in the US but thats a very narrow POV.
Is that utility somehow better than just moving assets into dollars or Euros?
Dollars and euros are in areas with the strongest economic regions in the world. What about the billions of people in emerging markets such as turkey, argentina, africa etc that dont have a stable currency to transact?
And just how exactly do you propose moving those assets into dollars? Dollars are the first thing that becomes scarce.
NFTs. It's like Steam's marketplace, but without having to have one company have control to ban anyone. It lets you safely make trades without having to pass your items to sites for them to hold on to your items for you.
No. NFTs let you trade some bullshit token. The token's provenance and ownership doesn't have to be respected by anyone.
The state of any particular blockchain doesn't confer any copyrights, license, or real world ownership. It's about as valid as me writing "I own a pair of Air Jordans" on an index card.
Unless a game developer decides to honor any particular blockchain and NFTs on it those NFTs mean nothing. There's no upside to a developer honoring third party NFTs because they make no money off them but do have support and development costs.
The state of any particular blockchain doesn't confer any copyrights, license, or real world ownership. It's about as valid as me writing "I own a pair of Air Jordans" on an index card.
Unless a game developer decides to honor any particular blockchain and NFTs on it those NFTs mean nothing. There's no upside to a developer honoring third party NFTs because they make no money off them but do have support and development costs.
Correct. NFT's are the adult equivalent of the gold stickers we got on assignments in grade school.
Why can't the host of the image just delete the image? At that point, the NFT is effectively banned.
Also, something like OpenSea can block you and you're effectively banned for all practical purposes.
Also, something like OpenSea can block you and you're effectively banned for all practical purposes.
I level mentioned anything about images. If you have a LoL skin and the game shuts down it similarly becomes useless. Digital items becoming useless is nothing new. At least with NFTs they can at least be collectors items that you can keep if you want.
> Why can't the host of the image just delete the image?
If it's a blockchain, there's no single host who can do that.
If it's a blockchain, there's no single host who can do that.
> It's like Steam's marketplace, but without having to have one company have control
...and without payment processing, fraud detection, customer service, moderation tools, user reviews or a refund policy.
...and without payment processing, fraud detection, customer service, moderation tools, user reviews or a refund policy.
The network does the payment processing. The rest can be implemented at a higher level. It is like offering customer support for open source software. Technically anyone can build a company on top of the software and start providing support.
> The rest can be implemented at a higher level
Eg. the rest is optional and doesn't come with the same guarantees as the base network.
I don't hate cryptocurrency personally, but it's not hard to see how 99% of users would prefer "the rest" implemented well over a properly transparent blockchain.
Eg. the rest is optional and doesn't come with the same guarantees as the base network.
I don't hate cryptocurrency personally, but it's not hard to see how 99% of users would prefer "the rest" implemented well over a properly transparent blockchain.
You are still relying on sites to hold your item for you. Items don’t exist in a vacuum, having ownership over an NFT doesn’t suddenly mean things will just interoperate.
For example, if it’s a game item, you still rely on one or more games to honour your NFT that claims you own it, and to implement that item in the first place. If it’s an image, that image is still hosted somewhere (and even if it’s embedded into the NFT directly, those bits are given meaning externally).
An NFT is just a receipt claiming ownership, what that receipt allows you to do still relies on external services honouring that receipt.
NFTs only solve one small part of the puzzle and I’d argue it’s not even the most important one.
For example, if it’s a game item, you still rely on one or more games to honour your NFT that claims you own it, and to implement that item in the first place. If it’s an image, that image is still hosted somewhere (and even if it’s embedded into the NFT directly, those bits are given meaning externally).
An NFT is just a receipt claiming ownership, what that receipt allows you to do still relies on external services honouring that receipt.
NFTs only solve one small part of the puzzle and I’d argue it’s not even the most important one.
Can you explain in a few words how an NFT is different from a certificate stating you own a piece of land of the Moon?
An NFT could be a bond that provides 1 USDC to owner every day for the next year.
A certificate saying that you own the moon can not be a bond. NFTs are much more versatile.
A certificate saying that you own the moon can not be a bond. NFTs are much more versatile.
The NFT was issued by the creator of the artwork. It’s like a moon certificate issued by god plus we don’t have space flight.
What does it do better than a classic centrally run steam marketplace? Why hasn’t Valve switched to NFTs?
It destroys the monopoly Valve has over item ownership and gives power to the people. Valve hasn't switched because having a monopoly is good financially.
It really doesn’t. Steam or other stores still have to cooperate ro implement the items on each of their stores to make them work on their platform and then have to honour what the NFT claims. That’s still very heavily replying on the platforms and they can still ban you or pull the item out form under you (and we can trivially see this by the fact that people have been selling things they don’t even own as NFTs).
For it to truly destroy the monopoly, the items that the NFTs represent would have to stand on their own, outside of any particular platform, implemented entirely in the NFT smart contract itself, but outside of the most trivial use cases (eg displaying an image) that’s not a technology that exists as platforms would have to at a minimum agree on a standard interface and functionality of items. Right now, it’s also held back by storage and transaction costs (although some blockchains are cheaper than others).
But even then, if there was a common item standard and you could use that to somehow implement cross platform (or cross game or whatever) items, any particular platform could still decide not to honour it or to ban you or whatever they want.
For it to truly destroy the monopoly, the items that the NFTs represent would have to stand on their own, outside of any particular platform, implemented entirely in the NFT smart contract itself, but outside of the most trivial use cases (eg displaying an image) that’s not a technology that exists as platforms would have to at a minimum agree on a standard interface and functionality of items. Right now, it’s also held back by storage and transaction costs (although some blockchains are cheaper than others).
But even then, if there was a common item standard and you could use that to somehow implement cross platform (or cross game or whatever) items, any particular platform could still decide not to honour it or to ban you or whatever they want.
It does not. Whoever implements the NFT integration into whatever game you want to play is in COMPLETE control over your item. If they want to not let you use it, they can do that. If they want to turn it into a floppy penis because they think it's funny, there is zero cryptographic assurance the object wont be modified in any way between the blockchain and the GPU APIs that actually put it on screen.
NFTs "in games" is just laughable. It's a perfect microcosm of how crypto boosters NEVER know anything about what they are talking about, like even the most basic, first sentence of wikipedia things.
There is no system agnostic way to program videogame object behavior. Your NFT can pretend to have whatever functionality it wants, but it's up to the game dev to honor that. If your NFT is a jpeg that you want as a weapon skin, the game dev has to take that blockchain data and pull or parse the jpeg out of it, and there is NOTHING the blockchain can do to enforce that. There's NO cryptography protecting that jpeg after that moment.
And that's just the physical, technical implementation, completely ignoring that it won't get to that step because no game studio will ever care to build anything like that for any reason other than just to sell crypto coins on a marketplace for quick cash.
Or do you somehow actually think EA and Ubisoft and everyone put pay to win mechanics in their games because players are desperate to give them more cash?
NFTs "in games" is just laughable. It's a perfect microcosm of how crypto boosters NEVER know anything about what they are talking about, like even the most basic, first sentence of wikipedia things.
There is no system agnostic way to program videogame object behavior. Your NFT can pretend to have whatever functionality it wants, but it's up to the game dev to honor that. If your NFT is a jpeg that you want as a weapon skin, the game dev has to take that blockchain data and pull or parse the jpeg out of it, and there is NOTHING the blockchain can do to enforce that. There's NO cryptography protecting that jpeg after that moment.
And that's just the physical, technical implementation, completely ignoring that it won't get to that step because no game studio will ever care to build anything like that for any reason other than just to sell crypto coins on a marketplace for quick cash.
Or do you somehow actually think EA and Ubisoft and everyone put pay to win mechanics in their games because players are desperate to give them more cash?
It's also possible to make a browser game that uses the open protocols of the web, but target a certain user and instead of the game send them the floppy penis version of the game. In practice this doesn't happen. Game creators simply make games on top of these open platforms without the need to bully people.
>NFTs "in games" is just laughable
Microtransactions and in game economies already exist. Moving that economy to a blockchain is not laughable. If a developer doesn't want to spend development time working on features for the in game economy they can use the cryptocurrency ecosystem to accelerate their project.
>because no game studio will ever care to build anything like that for any reason other than just to sell crypto coins on a marketplace for quick cash.
If you think microtransactions are not a way for game studios to get quick cash you are misleading yourself.
>NFTs "in games" is just laughable
Microtransactions and in game economies already exist. Moving that economy to a blockchain is not laughable. If a developer doesn't want to spend development time working on features for the in game economy they can use the cryptocurrency ecosystem to accelerate their project.
>because no game studio will ever care to build anything like that for any reason other than just to sell crypto coins on a marketplace for quick cash.
If you think microtransactions are not a way for game studios to get quick cash you are misleading yourself.
But why would any company want this? You’re giving away control of your projects for… what exactly?
Why would any company make a website instead of requiring people to install a native app where they have more control?
You can buy and sell digital assets without cryptocurrency. Also, the blockchain is not authoritative over ownership of those assets. Good old fashioned contracts are what enable transfer of digital assets. Crypto is just a terrible payments system on top.
> Cryptocurrency was (and still is to an extent) a really interesting idea that has a ton of real world utility, especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon.
Cryptocurrency not only doesn't help much, but even goes backwards there. You think the government is bad? Imagine life in NFT land. Your gym ticket is a NFT. Your movie ticket is a NFT. Your house deed is a NFT.
So everyone you interact with knows where you work, how much you earn, what you own, where's your house, what you buy, what groups you belong to... and they can keep tracking you forever if you tell them who you are just once.
They can treat you preferentially or charge you more or ban you depending on your past history.
Sure, there's Monero, but nobody seems to really care about that one.
> It's a shame that the "get rich quick" grifters and speculators took ahold of it and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment.
It's built into the system. The early makers like Satoshi wanted a deflationary system. A deflationary system is inherently undesirable for usage as a currency, and makes it just the thing for HODLing and speculation.
You could have inflation, but who controls it? There are no good answers.
Cryptocurrency not only doesn't help much, but even goes backwards there. You think the government is bad? Imagine life in NFT land. Your gym ticket is a NFT. Your movie ticket is a NFT. Your house deed is a NFT.
So everyone you interact with knows where you work, how much you earn, what you own, where's your house, what you buy, what groups you belong to... and they can keep tracking you forever if you tell them who you are just once.
They can treat you preferentially or charge you more or ban you depending on your past history.
Sure, there's Monero, but nobody seems to really care about that one.
> It's a shame that the "get rich quick" grifters and speculators took ahold of it and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment.
It's built into the system. The early makers like Satoshi wanted a deflationary system. A deflationary system is inherently undesirable for usage as a currency, and makes it just the thing for HODLing and speculation.
You could have inflation, but who controls it? There are no good answers.
They can do more than just track you. "All members of the NAACP are banned from this space" becomes trivial when membership to everything is a NFT.
There is a lot of crypto usage possibility without the need for NFT proliferation. The only necessary "NFT" may be licenses granting access to decentralized cloud software platforms on a perpetual or monthly subscription basis.
Wouldn't it be ideal if open source apps and platforms could go beyond the slow and risky traditional donation model, not have to be entirely user-hosted or hosted by a paid company, and fully accessible to non-technical users? Imagine social media platforms not susceptible to the pettiness of absolutist employees and owners, MMORPGs not debilitated by IP holders, cryptographically secured cloud software that follows the needs of its users. Perhaps like communes such projects are forever limited by the requirement of a modicum of participant interest and cost-sharing.
Wouldn't it be ideal if open source apps and platforms could go beyond the slow and risky traditional donation model, not have to be entirely user-hosted or hosted by a paid company, and fully accessible to non-technical users? Imagine social media platforms not susceptible to the pettiness of absolutist employees and owners, MMORPGs not debilitated by IP holders, cryptographically secured cloud software that follows the needs of its users. Perhaps like communes such projects are forever limited by the requirement of a modicum of participant interest and cost-sharing.
> So everyone you interact with knows where you work, how much you earn, what you own, where's your house, what you buy, what groups you belong to... and they can keep tracking you forever if you tell them who you are just once.
Granted public blockchain is a lot more discoverable, but a lot of this already is public. Property ownership is public (at least in the US), credit cards sell your data, facebook knows which groups you belong to, etc.
Granted public blockchain is a lot more discoverable, but a lot of this already is public. Property ownership is public (at least in the US), credit cards sell your data, facebook knows which groups you belong to, etc.
Not nearly to the same level, and a lot of that is proprietary info. Facebook collects lots of data but doesn't like to share it.
Some of it is, but things like property ownership are completely open in some countries. I have a map overlay that lets me see ownership for parcels.
Granted you can have an LLC own property, but that's a different obfuscation mechanism.
Granted you can have an LLC own property, but that's a different obfuscation mechanism.
Blockchain is a solution in search of a problem. Conventional technologies can do the same thing with far less overhead. The issue is that they're 'conventional' and not 'new/shiny/sexy'.
New doesn't always mean better, and it's often objectively and demonstrably worse than what preceded it.
New doesn't always mean better, and it's often objectively and demonstrably worse than what preceded it.
I'm not defending blockchain, just pointing out that part of the example wasn't really a good one. Property ownership being something that's already completely public.
I have a public map overlay on my phone that gives me deed information for (AFAIK) every parcel I can see in the USA.
I have a public map overlay on my phone that gives me deed information for (AFAIK) every parcel I can see in the USA.
Normal people were never going to do well with a payment system where if you forget your password you've irretrievably lost access to your funds.
(I've heard all of the arguments about backup phrases and social recovery wallets and suchlike, and I have yet to see evidence that these will work for anyone other than the most technically sophisticated of users.)
(I've heard all of the arguments about backup phrases and social recovery wallets and suchlike, and I have yet to see evidence that these will work for anyone other than the most technically sophisticated of users.)
You also irretrievably lose access to your funds if an attacker steals your credential. Not a problem as long as you have flawless security. /s
Honestly, this is more of a problem for blockchain than it is for the old system. Let's say that an 80's movie villain gets his goons to beat you until you sign over the deed to your house (he wants to open another dojo). Today, you could go to court, present your evidence that you made the transaction under duress, and you get your house back. Even if he won't sign the deed back to you, the court can just print a new one on a laser printer, give it a fancy stamp, and the house is yours again.
In the blockchain world, there's two options. The first is the "code is law" option. Since you sent him the house, it's his and there's nothing you can do about it. The court might arrest him, but there's no way of ever recovering your house. If he's particularly spiteful, the villain might kill himself. With proper security, his private key is lost forever and that property becomes inaccessibly for eternity.
The other option is the "reasonable" option. Here, you go to court and have his token for your house officially invalidated. Additionally, a new token is minted for the property is minted and sent to your account, making you whole again. However, this only works with a modified blockchain that allows a centralised authority to invalidate and mint new tokens. Since we're already trusting this centralised authority, then we're back to the old laser printer and stamp, just with extra steps.
In the blockchain world, there's two options. The first is the "code is law" option. Since you sent him the house, it's his and there's nothing you can do about it. The court might arrest him, but there's no way of ever recovering your house. If he's particularly spiteful, the villain might kill himself. With proper security, his private key is lost forever and that property becomes inaccessibly for eternity.
The other option is the "reasonable" option. Here, you go to court and have his token for your house officially invalidated. Additionally, a new token is minted for the property is minted and sent to your account, making you whole again. However, this only works with a modified blockchain that allows a centralised authority to invalidate and mint new tokens. Since we're already trusting this centralised authority, then we're back to the old laser printer and stamp, just with extra steps.
> government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon
The entire notion of crypto is that you can track a block over every transaction and that the transaction history creates the whole. Most Exchanges are forced to report who opened a wallet.
Compared to cash/gift cards or many other payment forms, Crypto is the government surveillance DREAM.
Various law enforcement agencies around the world has even publicly states how pleased they are with the tracking blockchain technology allows them, without even requiring a warrant for much of the work.
It's at a point where you could easily read the original comment as blockchain should technology should be pushed by governments to help fight crime.
For the average person crypto-currency have all of the disadvantages of credit/debit- cards, cash and Zimbabwe dollars combined while providing none of the benefits.
It's at a point where you could easily read the original comment as blockchain should technology should be pushed by governments to help fight crime.
For the average person crypto-currency have all of the disadvantages of credit/debit- cards, cash and Zimbabwe dollars combined while providing none of the benefits.
Monero exists
The blockchain is a perfect tool of government surveillance. They can track the flows of money like never before, while most users think it is completely anonymous. It is the perfect weapon of state control.
There has been hundreds of stories about how blockchain technology has been a boon to investigators trying to track drug, terrorism and illegal porn money flows.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arre...
There has been hundreds of stories about how blockchain technology has been a boon to investigators trying to track drug, terrorism and illegal porn money flows.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arre...
monero exists
And nobody uses it. It's a small network that appears to be stagnating.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.htm...
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.htm...
So does cash.
> and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment.
To be honest, it's not just the grifters that put me off using cryptocurrency as a regular form of payment. It's other considerations such as volatility, the inability to undo payments, etc.
Although it's true that the the fact the cryptocurrency tends to be used, or at least advocated, mostly by certain subcultures (not just criminals) is very off-putting to me as well.
Plus, at least for the sorts of commerce I engage in, cryptocurrency is very inconvenient and doesn't give me any benefits that justify the inconvenience.
To be honest, it's not just the grifters that put me off using cryptocurrency as a regular form of payment. It's other considerations such as volatility, the inability to undo payments, etc.
Although it's true that the the fact the cryptocurrency tends to be used, or at least advocated, mostly by certain subcultures (not just criminals) is very off-putting to me as well.
Plus, at least for the sorts of commerce I engage in, cryptocurrency is very inconvenient and doesn't give me any benefits that justify the inconvenience.
It's still being used by normal people in really bad situations. It's just hn's typical demographic bubble that fails (or refuses) to see how it helps people. Of course, you're only experience with it is scams if you have easy access to USD and a more or less stable economy. Why on earth would you use something else!!
It really makes me happy that cryptocurrecy is here to stay despite the constant groaning and moaning. One day, even folks like hn will face the same issues that forced people to rely on it and they will be glad that it exists too :)
Edit: less downvoting, more useful discussion.
It really makes me happy that cryptocurrecy is here to stay despite the constant groaning and moaning. One day, even folks like hn will face the same issues that forced people to rely on it and they will be glad that it exists too :)
Edit: less downvoting, more useful discussion.
Relying on something volatile sounds like a contradiction to me and trust is the core of all currencies.
Every crypto "currency" was dead the moment they dropped stability for personal/miners gains.
Edit: Imagine a system where nodes would gain progressively less by dicovering new blocks but would prevent a timed decay of their wallets by doing so. A naive inverted incentive structure. Would this be a more long term relyable currency?
Every crypto "currency" was dead the moment they dropped stability for personal/miners gains.
Edit: Imagine a system where nodes would gain progressively less by dicovering new blocks but would prevent a timed decay of their wallets by doing so. A naive inverted incentive structure. Would this be a more long term relyable currency?
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The blockchain is a perfect tool of government surveillance. They can track the flows of money like never before, while most users think it is completely anonymous.
There has been hundreds of stories about how blockchain technology has been a boon to investigators trying to track drug, terrorism and illegal porn money flows.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arre...
There has been hundreds of stories about how blockchain technology has been a boon to investigators trying to track drug, terrorism and illegal porn money flows.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arre...
> especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon
Pseudonymous is not anonymous. Pseudonymity is not privacy.
Cryptography is cool for certain kinds of privacy. Cryptocurrency has almost nothing to do with cryptography and does not provide privacy in the ways that counter a surveillance super-state. Pseudonymity makes transactions more traceable because unique identifiers are tied to each wallet and every single transaction with all metadata is recorded in plain view by design of the protocol. Mixers are an attempt to patch the failure of the protocol's design to actually implement any form of privacy, and even then, there are statistical tools that can plausibly tease out who's paying whom. At least enough to justify to the state, in its bureaucratic processes, more conventional forms of investigation. It's not perfect because the failures are systemic, i.e., inherent to the protocols.
I feel like a crazy person. Sometimes I feel like I'm hallucinating the life I'm living, and I'm really locked in a padded room repeating these things to myself day and night but no one will listen.
Pseudonymous is not anonymous. Pseudonymity is not privacy.
Cryptography is cool for certain kinds of privacy. Cryptocurrency has almost nothing to do with cryptography and does not provide privacy in the ways that counter a surveillance super-state. Pseudonymity makes transactions more traceable because unique identifiers are tied to each wallet and every single transaction with all metadata is recorded in plain view by design of the protocol. Mixers are an attempt to patch the failure of the protocol's design to actually implement any form of privacy, and even then, there are statistical tools that can plausibly tease out who's paying whom. At least enough to justify to the state, in its bureaucratic processes, more conventional forms of investigation. It's not perfect because the failures are systemic, i.e., inherent to the protocols.
I feel like a crazy person. Sometimes I feel like I'm hallucinating the life I'm living, and I'm really locked in a padded room repeating these things to myself day and night but no one will listen.
I'm well aware that cryptos like Bitcoin and Etherium are open ledger books that show everything. The privacy comment was more targeted at systems such as Monero.
Why would the gov’t ever allow it as a legitimate escape hatch?
All of these le sigh type retrospectives seem to completely skip over stuff like this.
All of these le sigh type retrospectives seem to completely skip over stuff like this.
It's not just government surveillance. The private sector has plenty of Peeping Toms.
I'm pretty sure cryptocurrency isn't the solution.
I'm pretty sure cryptocurrency isn't the solution.
The private sector doesn't have a monopoly on violence that it can use to imprison me.
Does that matter in practice? Large private-sector entities can employ organised criminals to assassinate you. Pragmatically, how is that any different? Dead is dead.
At least with the government, you (theoretically) have due process. True, the Constitution (or equivalent documents in other countries) is worthless if not enforced and observed, but the private sector has no such guarantees.
At least with the government, you (theoretically) have due process. True, the Constitution (or equivalent documents in other countries) is worthless if not enforced and observed, but the private sector has no such guarantees.
It doesn't have a monopoly, true, but the private sector can and does engage in violence and imprison people.
> "get rich quick" grifters and speculators took ahold of it
Every single "feature" touted as a good thing by crypto boosters is exactly WHY grifters and conmen got into it.
The system doesn't even have a concept of a "fraudulent transaction" FFS. For a system built by people who claim to know so much about cryptography and computer security, they sure seem stumped by the very simple concept of "someone tricked me and I clicked on a link" which is still the number one problem in computer security.
The lack of transaction reversal is a god-send for crooks. The lack of a justice system is a boon for them. There's a reason they don't even have to be creative with their scams, and are just dusting off old play books from the 1920s.
Crypto isn't shitty because of bad luck, crypto is shitty because the people who built it are completely ignorant of the value of regulation because they are caught in their ideology that all regulation is bad.
Every single "feature" touted as a good thing by crypto boosters is exactly WHY grifters and conmen got into it.
The system doesn't even have a concept of a "fraudulent transaction" FFS. For a system built by people who claim to know so much about cryptography and computer security, they sure seem stumped by the very simple concept of "someone tricked me and I clicked on a link" which is still the number one problem in computer security.
The lack of transaction reversal is a god-send for crooks. The lack of a justice system is a boon for them. There's a reason they don't even have to be creative with their scams, and are just dusting off old play books from the 1920s.
Crypto isn't shitty because of bad luck, crypto is shitty because the people who built it are completely ignorant of the value of regulation because they are caught in their ideology that all regulation is bad.
Maybe, but part of the problem is nearly all of that “utility” lies in circumventing the government, for better or for worse
> especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon
I thought China loved crypto because you get absolute spy power over how every penny of your citizenry is spent, and can then control someone's access to their coins if they speak out against you. Seems like the opposite of what you're describing, no?
I thought China loved crypto because you get absolute spy power over how every penny of your citizenry is spent, and can then control someone's access to their coins if they speak out against you. Seems like the opposite of what you're describing, no?
Unlikely on both counts. Realistically speaking, the problem with crypto is that you will always have to go against a nation state level entity's tax office. And that's not someone you can win a fight with unless you deal in real money.
Cryptocurrency is purpose-built for tax evasion and money laundering.
So, what's the connection to the article, or Binance, or USD withdrawals?
Oh, right, HN no longer does anything about generic soapbox comments that have nothing to do with the article.
Oh, right, HN no longer does anything about generic soapbox comments that have nothing to do with the article.
Would love to hear what this "real world utility" is aside from burning down the Amazon rainforest and enabling all new kinds of fraud and scamming
What real world utility?
when the only people using it are grifters and speculators I think that points pretty clearly to the fact that it has no real world utility :)
anon1199022(1)
When I was interested in trading a long time ago it was common to move shit around in Eth or BTC or whatever until you found your USD exchanger, typically coinbase. Why would this be news?
This (USD withdrawal) has been disabled in the app for US users for a while now. I have like $15 there (in BNB) and check it once-in-a-while just for curiosity.
I have had a little money stuck with them since they banned US customers to the original site. There has been absolutely no way to transfer the money out of my account, even to Binance US, and I eventually had to just call it a loss.
Convert to a stablecoin and transfer out?
If only I had thought of that.. Unfortunately, you were only allowed to convert to the Binance coin. That option did not work for me, I can't recall what the specific issue was now but I am guessing had something to do with KYC.
Unless the exchange has collapsed you should be able to withdraw crypto and cash it in at Kraken or wherever.
As long as you can find a peer and cash out your hashes, we are good. Banks are scam, regulators are scammers. Someone who wants to truly own his money and move it around the world without barriers can only rely on crypto today. Same people who fear criminal use neglect those in real need of crypto to survive their day. Discrimination is everywhere, for as long as it is true – crypto stays as a firm monolyth.
[deleted]
This is just more evidence that exchanges are bad for cryptocoin. What crypto needs to be healthy is direct user to user transactions, with absolutely nothing in between. That was the original vision with bitcoin. Everything layered on top and in between the transactions fundamentally results in harming adoption.
there's a difference "healthy" as per the philosophy of $coin and "healthy" as it relates to a market.
P2P Bitcoin with no exchanges or ACH-based fiat offramps will reduce the number of coin holders to probably what it was in 2011. That in turn will reduce the credibility of the currency and overall market liquidity as there are so few holders that would be willing to accept it as a medium of exchange.
This is playing out right now in Russia, which accepts INR for oil exports, in a bid to limit the dollar's influence.The problem this has created is that Russian banks are flush with Indian rupees that aren't accepted by other vendors. Everyone takes dollars and euros and yen, but the INR isn't considered as portable.
P2P Bitcoin with no exchanges or ACH-based fiat offramps will reduce the number of coin holders to probably what it was in 2011. That in turn will reduce the credibility of the currency and overall market liquidity as there are so few holders that would be willing to accept it as a medium of exchange.
This is playing out right now in Russia, which accepts INR for oil exports, in a bid to limit the dollar's influence.The problem this has created is that Russian banks are flush with Indian rupees that aren't accepted by other vendors. Everyone takes dollars and euros and yen, but the INR isn't considered as portable.
If all you have to do is convert to a stablecoin then convert to USD, isn't that the same thing? Or do you need to take your stablecoin somewhere else and convert that?
I'm not a crypto guy. (obviously)
I'm not a crypto guy. (obviously)
Yes, the latter. It’s an inconvenience in that you have to take the stablecoin to some other provider (incurring a blockchain transaction fee) and then sell/redeem it there. Which is annoying since conversion to USD is a core role of an exchange.
It would be like if you wanted to write checks on your bank account, and your bank helpfully told you that you could transfer money to an account at another bank and write checks on it there.
You still have access to the funds, you can still write checks, but … thanks for nothing.
It would be like if you wanted to write checks on your bank account, and your bank helpfully told you that you could transfer money to an account at another bank and write checks on it there.
You still have access to the funds, you can still write checks, but … thanks for nothing.
Wasn't this the case months ago? I signed on months ago to see if my $15 had vanished and they weren't allowing cash withdrawals
So how is dodgecoin doing - it is amazing how some of the peddlers of shitcoins made so much money :).
[deleted]
TL;DR they're forcing the customer to do the currency conversion instead of them doing it automatically at the time of withdrawal?
> to do the currency conversion
from what to what?
BTC to USDT to USD?
from what to what?
BTC to USDT to USD?
TL;DR You cant offboard USD with binance, but you can offboard crypto. It forces binance US users to Coinbase or kraken etc
You can withdraw USDC, USDT, etc. But you can't have Binance send you actual USD to your bank account. You will have to find somewhere else who will send you real money for your stablecoins.
uLogMicheal(4)
If a cryptocurrency becomes subject to any regulation, it stops being a good cryptocurrency.
I thought that crypto was the asset of last resort, independent from the fluctuations and manipulations of the market. Better than gold, better than oil, better than SP500...
Some projects aim to be that. This is a stablecoin backed by a centralized entity, it was not intended to be a decentralized project.
All cryptocurrencies are not the same.
All cryptocurrencies are not the same.
Seeing some "this is good for crypto, actually" comments here.
Keep holding that bag.
Keep holding that bag.
Great, Binance was fundamentally not built to service US citizens. Coinbase and maybe Gemini are basically the only ones who have gone through the legal hurdles to actually service US citizens. The intended market for Binance, and exchanges like it, is the other 95% of the human population without US citizenship, and that's fine.
Kind of a bummer that US regulations make it incompatible with the financial infrastructure that the rest of the world is moving towards, but that's just the world we live in. We (the US) have enjoyed a certain level of economic dominance in the world, and aren't excited to give that up, but at some point the unsustainability of our financial infrastructure will catch up with us.
Edit: Quick example. In the US, there is an adversarial relationship between commodities regulators, and securities regulators. They frequently fight for territory, which spills over onto us, in the form of contradictory lawsuits and regulatory uncertainty. No other country in the world is set up like this.
Kind of a bummer that US regulations make it incompatible with the financial infrastructure that the rest of the world is moving towards, but that's just the world we live in. We (the US) have enjoyed a certain level of economic dominance in the world, and aren't excited to give that up, but at some point the unsustainability of our financial infrastructure will catch up with us.
Edit: Quick example. In the US, there is an adversarial relationship between commodities regulators, and securities regulators. They frequently fight for territory, which spills over onto us, in the form of contradictory lawsuits and regulatory uncertainty. No other country in the world is set up like this.
Binance "voluntarily" retracted the license application in Germany: https://www.btc-echo.de/schlagzeilen/binance-kryptoboerse-zi...
Binance retracts license application in Austria: https://de.beincrypto.com/binance-rueckzug-aus-oesterreich-d...
Binance has been unable to get a license in the Netherlands: https://twitter.com/binance/status/1669628787267624961
Binance to discontinue services for UK customers https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/1374447
No, it's not the world moving towards crypto except for the US. Binance just doesn't comply (enough) in many countries apparently. Maybe it's a very shady company? Who knows.
Binance retracts license application in Austria: https://de.beincrypto.com/binance-rueckzug-aus-oesterreich-d...
Binance has been unable to get a license in the Netherlands: https://twitter.com/binance/status/1669628787267624961
Binance to discontinue services for UK customers https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/1374447
No, it's not the world moving towards crypto except for the US. Binance just doesn't comply (enough) in many countries apparently. Maybe it's a very shady company? Who knows.
In the past 24 hours, Binance has still had nearly 7x the volume of their nearest competitor. They don't need to operate in markets that show any hostility towards them. That has always been their strategy, and it's served them well. They are by far the largest exchange. Having to hire whole teams of overpriced lawyers to babysit each high maintenance market would just slow them down.
I'm a US citizen, so I don't really care what happens with Binance, but they started being openly hostile to US users maybe 6 or so years ago, for obvious reasons. They don't care, and they don't need to care. The weird part to me IMO is how aggressively some US citizens have still tried to use Binance, which means creating fake identity documents, using VPNs, and risking their account getting locked if they make any mistakes.
I'm a US citizen, so I don't really care what happens with Binance, but they started being openly hostile to US users maybe 6 or so years ago, for obvious reasons. They don't care, and they don't need to care. The weird part to me IMO is how aggressively some US citizens have still tried to use Binance, which means creating fake identity documents, using VPNs, and risking their account getting locked if they make any mistakes.
Don’t forget, Binance is banned in China. That’s another 18% of the world’s population.
[deleted]
What makes you think that the world is moving towards cryptocurrencies in any significant way?
This logic sounds strange to me.
When I hear about a government being "protective", I associate that with "The Brussels Effect" and EU, not with Washington.
Let's take a bad analogy in food additives; Brussels will often ban things they science points but don't have confirmation yet if they're really dangerous. Washington will often only ban things once they unequivocally confirm that is a very serious short-term poison.
On a side note, you can't use Binance from (most?) of the EU either.
When I hear about a government being "protective", I associate that with "The Brussels Effect" and EU, not with Washington.
Let's take a bad analogy in food additives; Brussels will often ban things they science points but don't have confirmation yet if they're really dangerous. Washington will often only ban things once they unequivocally confirm that is a very serious short-term poison.
On a side note, you can't use Binance from (most?) of the EU either.
So you're saying this is good for Bitcoin?
Yet somehow BTC is still trading at close to historic highs.
Now to be fair the market cap of all of BTC is 1/4 Apple, but if it were remotely a functioning market or were at all "real", it would be trading at a tiny fraction of that amount. The fact that it still holds is the best demonstration of how illusory the whole sham is.