That is a truly simplistic way of looking at things. Don’t. I am as left as you can possibly be and yet I absolutely hope that bitcoin and blockchain tech would take off.
When I say blockchain tech, I don’t mean shiity scam coins, I mean “election data on an immutable public ledger” type of tech…
You don’t want elections anything mixed with computers until computer architectures are more robust and verifiable. Not to mention that to mess with elections takes much fewer resources when they’re digital than when you have to corrupt thousands of vote counters.
Exactly. I used to want digital election, and then I thought about it for half a second a realized how stupid that is.
I’m 100% in the camp of universal mail voting. We can use machines to count votes, statistics and manual counting as a check against bad machines, and individuals can check if their ballot was counted properly. Blockchain can potentially be a part of that, but it should never be the core part.
I don’t trust voting machines at all, paper ballots all the way. Maybe eventually we can do public key crypto, but not now.
There is whole bodies of data for progressive uses of crypto. Donating to NGOs is the very first one that comes to mind, but there are definitely others.
Anybody can use them for anything*, but isn’t it so convenient how easy it is to launder money with crypto? And isn’t it convenient how they’re happy to spend taxpayer money to set up this fund?
We’re not talking about systems like VPNs, where you could argue they hide criminals in addition to human rights activists. That levels the playing field and protects people’s right to privacy.
What rights is crypto protecting? We’re talking about a vehicle where entire governments can pump up the value and reap the inflated price. We’re talking about foreign billionaires who can covertly and easily “invest” in their favorite candidates without taking the roundabout way of using dark-money PACs.
Crypto is just another empty, ultra-capitalist “American Dream” promise shrouded in tech.
isn’t it so convenient how easy it is to launder money with crypto?
Depends on the coin, but the most popular ones have 100% transparent transactions, so it’s actually not great for money laundering. There are a lot of obfuscations techniques, but those exist w/ digital fiat transfers as well. The most popular crypto exchanges are KYC, meaning they require a paper trail for any exchanges. There are options to move money between cryptocurrencies w/o using a KYC exchange, but doing anything w/ fiat is a lot more difficult without going through a KYC exchange.
If you want to launder money, it’s a lot easier to just deal in cash.
There are cryptocurrencies designed to hide/obfuscate transactions (e.g. Monero or Bitcoin Lightning network), but you still have to interact w/ a KYC exchange at some point, which gives your local tax authority enough details to catch you when you try to cheat on your taxes.
What rights is crypto protecting?
That’s the wrong way to look at it IMO.
To me, it provides a check against national monetary policy and the major payment networks. If you live in a country with rapid inflation, your options are basically buy a different store of value (gold, cryptocurrencies, another nation’s currency) or get screwed. Likewise, the major payment networks tend to charge 3% for all transactions, perhaps higher for international transactions, whereas cryptocurrencies give you an alternative method of payment.
Cryptocurrencies don’t protect rights per se, but using them is an expression of your right to transact with others however you want.
We’re talking about a vehicle where entire governments can pump up the value and reap the inflated price.
That describes fiat a lot more than cryptocurrencies, but in the opposite direction. You’re at the mercy of your central bank w/ most fiat currencies, whereas your local government doesn’t have any control over cryptocurrencies, they can merely interact like any other market participant can. Yes, they have a lot of money at their disposal, but governments also tend to need to do things transparently, so there are already checks against governments intentionally manipulating values through massive transactions.
Crypto is just another empty, ultra-capitalist “American Dream” promise shrouded in tech.
If you look at the crypto scams that exist, sure. But also remember that any new thing gets jumped on by people looking to make a quick buck. Look at all of those “stock tips” channels on YouTube (or any form of collectible, for that matter), those tend to just be pump-and-dump schemes. The fault here doesn’t lie with cryptocurrencies, it’s merely that it’s very liquid so it’s easy for someone to cash out.
That said, it actually has very little to do with capitalism or economics at all, it’s more of an anti-government initiative, similar to the whole idea behind the fediverse (can’t shut us all down).
It shouldn’t be forced on anyone, but if you appreciate a cryptographically way to own your money securely (USDC or otherwise), decentralized monetary networks give you ways to do that.
I work fulltime in the industry and the racket that is the traditional finance system is the one that resembles a ponzi/fraud/scam more than crypto in my mind.
Exactly. The core of the problem is the finance industry itself, they’d be scumbags regardless of the medium of exchange. Cryptocurrencies merely give you alternative method for transactions.
For every scam someone shows me about cryptocurrencies, I could probably show 10 with fiat currency.
The main “problem” with cryptocurrency is also its main selling point: crazy swings in value. That’s not great for regular savings, but it’s basically proof that there’s no central org messing with the currency and that value is determined purely based on supply and demand, just like gold and, to a lesser extent, stocks (stocks often pay dividends and provide voting privileges). And since it’s transparent, you can see any attempts to mess with valuations, which is less true for central banks.
When was the last time YOU have “laundered money with crypto”?
Why don’t you do it and tell us how it goes?
You have to do serious KYC everywhere before you can even think of withdrawing cash (any serious amount). I know, i had to do few of these in past 18 months just to retain access to few largest exchanges. Bitcoin is not anonymous. On the contrary.
And if you think loundering is converting from BTC to XMR and buying drugs with it, well let’s just say that crypto has a very, very long way to go before it comes even remotely close to Dollar.
According to what I understand of what’s being proposed here, no taxpayer money would go to purchase any Bitcoin whatsoever. It would all be people paying their taxes in Bitcoin and such. Not actually the purchase of Bitcoin by the state. I do think that we have totally different views on crypto, though, because the right I see it protecting is our right to capital that cannot be seized and controlled by the government. Yes, that enables some bad things. But on a whole, I believe it helps society. If you need to leave an oppressive situation, you can. If your government causes inflation to ruin the value of your money, you can protect your wealth with crypto because they have no control over it. I totally agree that most crypto is indeed a scam. There’s no argument for me on that. My argument is that there are legitimate projects doing legitimate things and those should not be thrown out with the bathwater like the baby.
I like your measured view of crypto. I still am not convinced by your argument, mainly because I do not believe in capital as something to be protected, but I do think that regular people having the means to act apart from government oversight is good.
My issue is still that it doesn’t level the playing field. The benefits of privacy and decentralization for the wealthy outclass what benefits the rest of us get from the same thing. It’s just another way for the rich to get richer, while the poor stay poor.
While good things are done with it, my opinion is that it’s still a net negative.
Either way, have a lovely day. Hopefully I didn’t come off too harsh.
I never said I was a progressive and not all crypto uses a ton of power. Look at Ethereum, for example. That uses very little power because of being proof of stake. Or look at Monero, for example, because even though it’s proof of work, it’s specifically CPU based. On regular computers, which means that it uses no more power than your computer would be using anyway. Since it is CPU based, it is also not worth it to build large mining farms in big warehouses. However, even if you look at Bitcoin specifically, mining needs cheap power, and a lot of cheap power, according to everything I understand, is solar and hydro, which are renewable, and are used a lot. Bitcoin mining also puts off a lot of heat as a byproduct, which could be used to do things like dry clothes, heat pools, heat municipal city buildings, etc. Plus, you’re not taking into account the emissions of the banking sector in and of itself. How much stone is mined to build bank buildings? How much gasoline is burned to transport employees to and from work? How much gasoline is burned to use armored cars to transport cash, etc. If you are going to compare the environmental costs, at least make it an objective measure.
If you needed more proof that crypto is a giant fraud scheme: Republicans love it.
yeah! cr*pto is the world’s 1st decentralized ponzi scheme
Bitcoin operates just like the talibangeilcals. Full of grifters, thieves, and belivers who get screwed by the former.
Republicans love $ too. So, a fraud scheme, yeah?
That is a truly simplistic way of looking at things. Don’t. I am as left as you can possibly be and yet I absolutely hope that bitcoin and blockchain tech would take off.
When I say blockchain tech, I don’t mean shiity scam coins, I mean “election data on an immutable public ledger” type of tech…
One can dream.
You don’t want elections anything mixed with computers until computer architectures are more robust and verifiable. Not to mention that to mess with elections takes much fewer resources when they’re digital than when you have to corrupt thousands of vote counters.
Just gonna leave this here https://xkcd.com/2030/
Exactly. I used to want digital election, and then I thought about it for half a second a realized how stupid that is.
I’m 100% in the camp of universal mail voting. We can use machines to count votes, statistics and manual counting as a check against bad machines, and individuals can check if their ballot was counted properly. Blockchain can potentially be a part of that, but it should never be the core part.
I don’t trust voting machines at all, paper ballots all the way. Maybe eventually we can do public key crypto, but not now.
I’m with you. However, the current state of things is not what I envision when I think of decentralized currency and immutable public ledgers.
There is whole bodies of data for progressive uses of crypto. Donating to NGOs is the very first one that comes to mind, but there are definitely others.
Edit: https://www.amazon.com/Progressives-Case-Bitcoin-Equitable-Peaceful/dp/B0C1J3DC2X
Crypto is Non-partisan, just like shoes or a hammer. Anybody can use them for whatever they want.
Nonpartisan doesn’t mean it’s not a scam.
Anybody can use them for anything*, but isn’t it so convenient how easy it is to launder money with crypto? And isn’t it convenient how they’re happy to spend taxpayer money to set up this fund?
We’re not talking about systems like VPNs, where you could argue they hide criminals in addition to human rights activists. That levels the playing field and protects people’s right to privacy.
What rights is crypto protecting? We’re talking about a vehicle where entire governments can pump up the value and reap the inflated price. We’re talking about foreign billionaires who can covertly and easily “invest” in their favorite candidates without taking the roundabout way of using dark-money PACs.
Crypto is just another empty, ultra-capitalist “American Dream” promise shrouded in tech.
Depends on the coin, but the most popular ones have 100% transparent transactions, so it’s actually not great for money laundering. There are a lot of obfuscations techniques, but those exist w/ digital fiat transfers as well. The most popular crypto exchanges are KYC, meaning they require a paper trail for any exchanges. There are options to move money between cryptocurrencies w/o using a KYC exchange, but doing anything w/ fiat is a lot more difficult without going through a KYC exchange.
If you want to launder money, it’s a lot easier to just deal in cash.
There are cryptocurrencies designed to hide/obfuscate transactions (e.g. Monero or Bitcoin Lightning network), but you still have to interact w/ a KYC exchange at some point, which gives your local tax authority enough details to catch you when you try to cheat on your taxes.
That’s the wrong way to look at it IMO.
To me, it provides a check against national monetary policy and the major payment networks. If you live in a country with rapid inflation, your options are basically buy a different store of value (gold, cryptocurrencies, another nation’s currency) or get screwed. Likewise, the major payment networks tend to charge 3% for all transactions, perhaps higher for international transactions, whereas cryptocurrencies give you an alternative method of payment.
Cryptocurrencies don’t protect rights per se, but using them is an expression of your right to transact with others however you want.
That describes fiat a lot more than cryptocurrencies, but in the opposite direction. You’re at the mercy of your central bank w/ most fiat currencies, whereas your local government doesn’t have any control over cryptocurrencies, they can merely interact like any other market participant can. Yes, they have a lot of money at their disposal, but governments also tend to need to do things transparently, so there are already checks against governments intentionally manipulating values through massive transactions.
If you look at the crypto scams that exist, sure. But also remember that any new thing gets jumped on by people looking to make a quick buck. Look at all of those “stock tips” channels on YouTube (or any form of collectible, for that matter), those tend to just be pump-and-dump schemes. The fault here doesn’t lie with cryptocurrencies, it’s merely that it’s very liquid so it’s easy for someone to cash out.
That said, it actually has very little to do with capitalism or economics at all, it’s more of an anti-government initiative, similar to the whole idea behind the fediverse (can’t shut us all down).
It’s freedom of money. That simple.
It shouldn’t be forced on anyone, but if you appreciate a cryptographically way to own your money securely (USDC or otherwise), decentralized monetary networks give you ways to do that.
I work fulltime in the industry and the racket that is the traditional finance system is the one that resembles a ponzi/fraud/scam more than crypto in my mind.
Exactly. The core of the problem is the finance industry itself, they’d be scumbags regardless of the medium of exchange. Cryptocurrencies merely give you alternative method for transactions.
For every scam someone shows me about cryptocurrencies, I could probably show 10 with fiat currency.
The main “problem” with cryptocurrency is also its main selling point: crazy swings in value. That’s not great for regular savings, but it’s basically proof that there’s no central org messing with the currency and that value is determined purely based on supply and demand, just like gold and, to a lesser extent, stocks (stocks often pay dividends and provide voting privileges). And since it’s transparent, you can see any attempts to mess with valuations, which is less true for central banks.
When was the last time YOU have “laundered money with crypto”?
Why don’t you do it and tell us how it goes?
You have to do serious KYC everywhere before you can even think of withdrawing cash (any serious amount). I know, i had to do few of these in past 18 months just to retain access to few largest exchanges. Bitcoin is not anonymous. On the contrary.
And if you think loundering is converting from BTC to XMR and buying drugs with it, well let’s just say that crypto has a very, very long way to go before it comes even remotely close to Dollar.
Nice try, fed! (/j)
According to what I understand of what’s being proposed here, no taxpayer money would go to purchase any Bitcoin whatsoever. It would all be people paying their taxes in Bitcoin and such. Not actually the purchase of Bitcoin by the state. I do think that we have totally different views on crypto, though, because the right I see it protecting is our right to capital that cannot be seized and controlled by the government. Yes, that enables some bad things. But on a whole, I believe it helps society. If you need to leave an oppressive situation, you can. If your government causes inflation to ruin the value of your money, you can protect your wealth with crypto because they have no control over it. I totally agree that most crypto is indeed a scam. There’s no argument for me on that. My argument is that there are legitimate projects doing legitimate things and those should not be thrown out with the bathwater like the baby.
I like your measured view of crypto. I still am not convinced by your argument, mainly because I do not believe in capital as something to be protected, but I do think that regular people having the means to act apart from government oversight is good.
My issue is still that it doesn’t level the playing field. The benefits of privacy and decentralization for the wealthy outclass what benefits the rest of us get from the same thing. It’s just another way for the rich to get richer, while the poor stay poor.
While good things are done with it, my opinion is that it’s still a net negative.
Either way, have a lovely day. Hopefully I didn’t come off too harsh.
Compared to some people I’ve talked to, you are quite levelheaded.
The Fediverse is only as good as we make it. Keep being excellent to people.
So you’re saying that it’s progressive to use bitcoin as … money?
They’re saying it’s neither progressive nor conservative, it’s just a tool that you can use.
I’m just mainly giving resources. I am a pretty hardcore libertarian and so some of the views are incomprehensible to me and others make sense.
if you lie crypto you’re not a progressive; crypto is poison for the environment.
I never said I was a progressive and not all crypto uses a ton of power. Look at Ethereum, for example. That uses very little power because of being proof of stake. Or look at Monero, for example, because even though it’s proof of work, it’s specifically CPU based. On regular computers, which means that it uses no more power than your computer would be using anyway. Since it is CPU based, it is also not worth it to build large mining farms in big warehouses. However, even if you look at Bitcoin specifically, mining needs cheap power, and a lot of cheap power, according to everything I understand, is solar and hydro, which are renewable, and are used a lot. Bitcoin mining also puts off a lot of heat as a byproduct, which could be used to do things like dry clothes, heat pools, heat municipal city buildings, etc. Plus, you’re not taking into account the emissions of the banking sector in and of itself. How much stone is mined to build bank buildings? How much gasoline is burned to transport employees to and from work? How much gasoline is burned to use armored cars to transport cash, etc. If you are going to compare the environmental costs, at least make it an objective measure.
all i read was nonsense words
Dyor