I believe you are wrong. Bitcoin is a decentralized network which is difficult to stop, but not impossible. Semi centralized networks like Kazaa and Napster are great examples. If you want another example of a completely decentralized network then applications that use gnutella are great examples, like bearshare.
In all cases, the legal arm of a few entities straight up discouraged the use of all these networks forever through extreme legal action and mass marketing. Remember the stories of people getting crazy fines for downloading a few songs? They didn't do that to punish that person. They did that to intimidate everyone else and it worked. As recent as 2010, people has been attempting to develop clients for gnutella. None successful at rebooting the network. To assume bitcoin is somehow immune to this is lunacy.
to play devils advocate, they've also been trying to kill torrents for almost 20 years now, with very little to actually show for their efforts.
The most impactful thing that I've seen was the rise of netflix and the ease of getting legally paid for content making torrents not worth the effort. With the splintering of streaming content into many different services, I'm drifting back to torrents and finding it as reliable as it ever was.
It's kind of funny that when a discussion about multiple players in an industry comes up, HN is often the bastion of competition. But when we talk about an industry like streaming content, too many people despise the fragmentation.
As someone on a Bitcoin forum once said: When has the government banning something ever led to that thing becoming cheaper?
You're right, though, that money is probably a special case, because it is designed to have limited supply (or at least sound money like Bitcoin is), and its value is related to its velocity.
The government banning something that people want to use hasn't made it cheaper, but you can't use bitcoin, you can only speculate on its trading. If the government makes it difficult to trade bitcoin (for fiat), less people will buy it, and less money going in will also result in more money going out. It'll crash the price which will further dampen its demand.
You're an idiot, you can use bitcoin for anything. Again, please educate yourself before speaking. If I use bitcoin to pay for a sadwich, do I not have that sandwich by your logic since I cannot do anything with bitcoin? What about paying for a big mac in el salvador? That doesn't exist either?
When people say something like this, what do they think? You can exchange manually, you can exchange via offshore accounts and you can simply life in a country that does not hate everything they can't regulate. For a big portion of crypto users not much would change.
You're thinking about this from a technology point of view, but not from a practical point of view.
All you need to do is make it illegal to convert bitcoin to fiat and vice versa. Bitcoin is used for speculation, and not as a currency. Having bitcoin without being able to use it is pointless, and the only way to use it right now is to convert it into a usable currency. Yes, people can use some shady offshore exchange, and risk major KYC issues with moving that fiat. The key point here is that very few people would do so. The price of bitcoin would crash, and that alone would stop being from wanting to buy it.
You don't know what you are talking about. Bitcoin can be exchanged for anything on for example El Salvador which makes it a currency, period. Therefore the rest of your rambling stands in error. Please educate yourself.
Despite this being absolutely impossible (they can pry my node from my cold dead hands), even if it was it would not achieve what you think it will.
Ok lets say you banned BTC. What about: BitcoinCash/BSV, Litecoin, Ether, Monero, Zcash.... and lets say you ban all classes of software that mint coins using Proof of Work (because Proof of stake is much easier to subvert), SuperSecretUntracableCoin will take its place.
Basically, any fool that is saying dumb stuff like "Ban Bitcoin" is living in an authoritarian dream. It is not possible. It should not be possible. Bitcoin was precisely invented to prevent such authoritarians from getting their way. Get out of here!
No point, because these companies really really want to pay these ransoms they won’t have any trouble delivering millions of usd in cash to someone in Russia.
this is the result of a 50 year policy of teaching blind consumerism of technology in schools, and rote obedience to the law of DMCA. its 50 years of policy that mercilessly sent hackers to prison for curiosity, and warned school kids that any interest in science was to be branded the scarlet letter of nerd.
You do not just turn the page on 50 years of anti-STEM with a mandatory code.org class in highschool or mandatory laptops.
I agree with this, but not for your reasons. We've sacrificed competent engineering for the sake of cutting costs. Much of the problem with ransomware can be combatted by building resilient systems and maintaining them, but that means spending money on system administrators and similar roles.
The race to the bottom-line causes things like this. It's starting to show up in things like our electric grid and water/sewer systems now. Money that should be spent on maintaining and improving infrastructure, both physical and technological, has been reallocated to new and sexier projects.
It's easy for politicians and business leaders to build shiny new things. Politicians get voter approval, business leaders get board approval. Everyone is happy. The ongoing maintenance of these things? Nobody wants to get involved in that - up and down the ranks. Politicians and business leaders don't get the accolades they seek, the rank and file don't get the CV enhancements they seek. So everything slowly falls apart until things get so bad we get to destroy the old and build shiny new. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. This is the origin of the old adage "things have to get worse before they'll get better."
Can you help understand how you jump from anti-STEM (if true that is) education to companies and government agencies not following security protocols and investing in it? This is such an absurd leap of reasoning.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 74.7 ms ] threadI believe you are wrong. Bitcoin is a decentralized network which is difficult to stop, but not impossible. Semi centralized networks like Kazaa and Napster are great examples. If you want another example of a completely decentralized network then applications that use gnutella are great examples, like bearshare.
In all cases, the legal arm of a few entities straight up discouraged the use of all these networks forever through extreme legal action and mass marketing. Remember the stories of people getting crazy fines for downloading a few songs? They didn't do that to punish that person. They did that to intimidate everyone else and it worked. As recent as 2010, people has been attempting to develop clients for gnutella. None successful at rebooting the network. To assume bitcoin is somehow immune to this is lunacy.
The most impactful thing that I've seen was the rise of netflix and the ease of getting legally paid for content making torrents not worth the effort. With the splintering of streaming content into many different services, I'm drifting back to torrents and finding it as reliable as it ever was.
You're right, though, that money is probably a special case, because it is designed to have limited supply (or at least sound money like Bitcoin is), and its value is related to its velocity.
All you need to do is make it illegal to convert bitcoin to fiat and vice versa. Bitcoin is used for speculation, and not as a currency. Having bitcoin without being able to use it is pointless, and the only way to use it right now is to convert it into a usable currency. Yes, people can use some shady offshore exchange, and risk major KYC issues with moving that fiat. The key point here is that very few people would do so. The price of bitcoin would crash, and that alone would stop being from wanting to buy it.
Ok lets say you banned BTC. What about: BitcoinCash/BSV, Litecoin, Ether, Monero, Zcash.... and lets say you ban all classes of software that mint coins using Proof of Work (because Proof of stake is much easier to subvert), SuperSecretUntracableCoin will take its place.
Basically, any fool that is saying dumb stuff like "Ban Bitcoin" is living in an authoritarian dream. It is not possible. It should not be possible. Bitcoin was precisely invented to prevent such authoritarians from getting their way. Get out of here!
Ransomware does not need cryptocurrency.
this is the result of a 50 year policy of teaching blind consumerism of technology in schools, and rote obedience to the law of DMCA. its 50 years of policy that mercilessly sent hackers to prison for curiosity, and warned school kids that any interest in science was to be branded the scarlet letter of nerd.
You do not just turn the page on 50 years of anti-STEM with a mandatory code.org class in highschool or mandatory laptops.
Those things are as new as all that nor did they start so abruptly and simultaneously. Just a few points:
- Teenagers as a consumer class were invented in about the early 60s, arguably maybe the 50s.
- The Cold War was about obedience to the authorities lest one be blacklisted (or imprisoned or killed).
- The DMCA was in 1998, so there has not yet been 50 years of obedience to it.
- The word "nerd" dates from the 50s, at a time when science curricula were pushed.
I agree with this, but not for your reasons. We've sacrificed competent engineering for the sake of cutting costs. Much of the problem with ransomware can be combatted by building resilient systems and maintaining them, but that means spending money on system administrators and similar roles.
The race to the bottom-line causes things like this. It's starting to show up in things like our electric grid and water/sewer systems now. Money that should be spent on maintaining and improving infrastructure, both physical and technological, has been reallocated to new and sexier projects.
They also need to hire people with the basic technical competency to make well tested, immutable, and rapidly recoverable backups.