If there were no benefits to cryptocurrency people would not voluntarily use it. It really is that simple. And yes, I know there are dangers. "Think of the children!"
If the regulated financial infrastructure was a better alternative, there would be no need to create decentralized cryptocurrency platforms.
There was a time when the hacker motto was "information wants to be free". Today HN largely cries, "There outta be a law".
SV is a cesspool of would be gatekeepers or current gatekeepers. Didn't like the print and broadcast media? Try the blogosphere. Even better, try social media. We'll keep you safe from dangerous disinformation.
The emerging frontier of cryptocurrency is another opportunity for disruption, reconstitution and capture.
Drugs, other illegal things, huge gigantic speculation opportunity.
The things primarily responsible for the 'success' of crypto.
As soon as the countries start to catch up and create laws,.crypto will look like any other currency.
I personally used crypto for drugs. I personally don't have and haven't had any other use case than that and I'm not aware of any other real use case which is solved better with crypto than with what we have.
I'm actually more negative affected by crypto due to GPU prices and additional CO2 consumption.
Paying for things that benefit you at the expense of others is not the hallmark of a great deed.
Crypto, after a decade of promises, remains nearly exclusively a fraud and pollution ring. Proceeds from misdeeds are not magically redeeming.
What if sex slavers donated their proceeds to sci-hub? If extortionists donated to sci-hub? If assassins donated their proceeds to sci-hub? Suddenly we should call them beneficial? "Oh, I'd love to end child sex trafficking, but did you know about the free access to journal articles?"
Fund sci-hub by mailing them rare pokemon cards instead.
The "beneficial" property you're referring to is "can be easily used to fund criminal behavior", which is typically not a desirable feature in a payment system.
Many people believe LibGen/Sci-Hub are good forms of breaking the law - but if that is the case the solution is "make the things they do legal" rather than "make it easier to send criminals money over the internet".
>which is typically not a desirable feature in a payment system.
I think it would be desirable. Some people will get into specifics of which laws they like to break and which laws they want enforced, but my experience has been most people like the ability for some laws to be broken and it is a good thing in regards to some laws being unjust. It is hard to get a standard because we would basically be asking which laws are moral/ethical and which aren't, which is its own messy discussion, but in general I find most people want some freedom to break away from and to weaken the legal system in some cases.
Sure, it might be a bandaid to a larger problem, but a bandaid is preferable to no bandaid even if the wound needs a long term resolution.
This is incoherent. Some laws are unjust so I can choose what laws I want to follow and that's good because .... (implication that breaking laws causes them to become more just as opposed to more enforceable)
> Some laws are unjust so I can choose what laws I want to follow
It depends on your sense of justice, but ultimately, you have to follow your personal conscience also. Some are driven more by upholding the law and others more by their personal conscience.
Justice is even above the gods.
Human attempts to codify it is only as good as it gets.
>The "beneficial" property you're referring to is "can be easily used to fund criminal behavior", which is typically not a desirable feature in a payment system.
It typically is. The alternative is a system where a central authority has absolute control over all monetary transactions, which is definitely not desirable.
Not the solution, a solution. Another seems to be bitcoin
The state's legitimacy is questionable. Who wants papers to have a copyright of 70+ years? Certainly less than 10% of the stakeholder population. And still they do.
Who wants movies to have 70+ years in copyright?
A state that does that might be too compromised. Not immediately amenable to reform. So illegal but moral actions sometimes can (and should) be taken.
> The state's legitimacy is questionable. Who wants papers to have a copyright of 70+ years? Certainly less than 10% of the stakeholder population. And still they do.
Maybe you live in a dictatorship, and I'm sorry if you do, but the majority of the world lives in democracies. The reality is that you're either wrong, or people just don't care enough about this issue to vote based on it.
There are entire political parties built around this issue (look up "pirate party") and they don't get a lot of votes.
A government is just a group of people. They aren't your parents. Sometimes they are right and sometimes wrong. Why do they deserve a privileged position above all other groups of people?
A perhaps more interesting (and less controversial) variation on this question is "could blockchain usage catalyze financially sustainable and scalable Open Publishing models".
People have been taught since childhood in state funded schools who to obey and listen to. Of course they are not going to support basic freedoms if those freedoms are in conflict with their master’s desires. That’s not to say crypto has lived up to its promise as the state and its owners have proven far more adaptable than cypherpunk thinkers expected.
I don't think you're wrong. Purchasing things that are illegal but probably shouldn't be, such as anabolic steroids, modafinil, sci-hub, within-family remittances to economically-sanctioned countries, is a benefit. It's just that if that's the only thing we can come up with, it's hard to make that the basis of widespread adoption and law enforcement and legislatures all over the world are going to try and stop you.
Also, if the speculation use case disappears and illegal transactions is really the only thing left, then buying or owning crypto at all is going to put you under suspicion automatically, which reduces the usefulness.
It's interesting to look at the "non-blockable" payment system from the point of view of "management error" theory.
When something is made "illegal" it's generally assumed that the process of generating the rules (laws) is creating mostly good rules. But this idea doesn't stand the test of time. Women voting? Nope... it's illegal. Different sexual orientation - illegal - must chop something off from you.
To have the ability to do something illegal is beneficial when rules are bad. A distributed system for settling a transaction between two agents are beneficial in ways we can't see now. But freedom to experiment is better than rules prohibiting everythig.
Another analogy is having root on your computer/server and phone. It's "illegal" to jailbrake your iphone, but you've paid for it and it's yours.
By limiting what's permissable and concentrating on "terrorism", "child pornography" who knows what can be missed.
Read about patent laws in 19th and beginning of 20th century how it helped US with technology transfer from Great Britain... it's the same process.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 75.6 ms ] threadIf the regulated financial infrastructure was a better alternative, there would be no need to create decentralized cryptocurrency platforms.
There was a time when the hacker motto was "information wants to be free". Today HN largely cries, "There outta be a law".
SV is a cesspool of would be gatekeepers or current gatekeepers. Didn't like the print and broadcast media? Try the blogosphere. Even better, try social media. We'll keep you safe from dangerous disinformation.
The emerging frontier of cryptocurrency is another opportunity for disruption, reconstitution and capture.
The things primarily responsible for the 'success' of crypto.
As soon as the countries start to catch up and create laws,.crypto will look like any other currency.
I personally used crypto for drugs. I personally don't have and haven't had any other use case than that and I'm not aware of any other real use case which is solved better with crypto than with what we have.
I'm actually more negative affected by crypto due to GPU prices and additional CO2 consumption.
This should be FTX's epitaph.
However, right now crypto:
- is not scalable at all
- is not private at all
- doesn’t have KYC, so it’s possible to be global
- doesn’t follow lows or AML, so you can fund /technically/ illegal things like SciHub
- UI/UX is so bad that even experts accidentally lose everything
- 99% of volume and value is speculation and wash trading
Crypto, after a decade of promises, remains nearly exclusively a fraud and pollution ring. Proceeds from misdeeds are not magically redeeming.
What if sex slavers donated their proceeds to sci-hub? If extortionists donated to sci-hub? If assassins donated their proceeds to sci-hub? Suddenly we should call them beneficial? "Oh, I'd love to end child sex trafficking, but did you know about the free access to journal articles?"
Fund sci-hub by mailing them rare pokemon cards instead.
Many people believe LibGen/Sci-Hub are good forms of breaking the law - but if that is the case the solution is "make the things they do legal" rather than "make it easier to send criminals money over the internet".
I think it would be desirable. Some people will get into specifics of which laws they like to break and which laws they want enforced, but my experience has been most people like the ability for some laws to be broken and it is a good thing in regards to some laws being unjust. It is hard to get a standard because we would basically be asking which laws are moral/ethical and which aren't, which is its own messy discussion, but in general I find most people want some freedom to break away from and to weaken the legal system in some cases.
Sure, it might be a bandaid to a larger problem, but a bandaid is preferable to no bandaid even if the wound needs a long term resolution.
It depends on your sense of justice, but ultimately, you have to follow your personal conscience also. Some are driven more by upholding the law and others more by their personal conscience.
Justice is even above the gods.
Human attempts to codify it is only as good as it gets.
It typically is. The alternative is a system where a central authority has absolute control over all monetary transactions, which is definitely not desirable.
Just because criminals send money online, it does not mean that sending money online is criminal.
The state's legitimacy is questionable. Who wants papers to have a copyright of 70+ years? Certainly less than 10% of the stakeholder population. And still they do.
Who wants movies to have 70+ years in copyright?
A state that does that might be too compromised. Not immediately amenable to reform. So illegal but moral actions sometimes can (and should) be taken.
Maybe you live in a dictatorship, and I'm sorry if you do, but the majority of the world lives in democracies. The reality is that you're either wrong, or people just don't care enough about this issue to vote based on it.
There are entire political parties built around this issue (look up "pirate party") and they don't get a lot of votes.
> Also, I'm not even sure I agree with the "a tool can be used for evil so therefore taking features away is good".
Also, if the speculation use case disappears and illegal transactions is really the only thing left, then buying or owning crypto at all is going to put you under suspicion automatically, which reduces the usefulness.
When something is made "illegal" it's generally assumed that the process of generating the rules (laws) is creating mostly good rules. But this idea doesn't stand the test of time. Women voting? Nope... it's illegal. Different sexual orientation - illegal - must chop something off from you.
To have the ability to do something illegal is beneficial when rules are bad. A distributed system for settling a transaction between two agents are beneficial in ways we can't see now. But freedom to experiment is better than rules prohibiting everythig.
Another analogy is having root on your computer/server and phone. It's "illegal" to jailbrake your iphone, but you've paid for it and it's yours.
By limiting what's permissable and concentrating on "terrorism", "child pornography" who knows what can be missed.
Read about patent laws in 19th and beginning of 20th century how it helped US with technology transfer from Great Britain... it's the same process.