Comment by 3pt14159 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 3pt14159 | Hacker News Reader

Disclosure: I sold most of my Bitcoin, and I own some Dash and Sia.

> cheaper at some point over the next 12 months is extremely high.

I agree with 85% of this post. Except two things:

1. I think people dramatically underestimate the likelihood that Bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies get completely banned. ISIL isn't ransoming civilians for Bitcoin yet. They, or someone else will. Politicians and judges aren't getting contract killed via cryptocurrencies yet. They probably will. Governments are going to give people a choice: we're regulating you (signing transaction reversal with a special US TREASURY key, say, or requiring real identities behind addresses) or we're shutting you down. This even has precedent (eGold in the 90s). I think Bitcoin has a higher chance of surviving this than Etherium because it's less complex of a change.

2. Just because you can call that there will be a Bitcoin pull back in the next twelve months, doesn't mean that it will be less than the price right now. Bitcoin has gone up a lot in the past 12 months and it can go up a lot more in the next 6. If it crashes from $25k a coin to $5k a coin you aren't really giving good advice for what to do today. Personally I hope it crashes to $1k soon so I can buy back in. Feeling kinda dumb for selling at $6k CAD, but it really could hit $50k before the pullback.

With respect to point 1. I don't see why terrorist activity would lead to a ban. Bitcoin will always be an extremely small part of terrorist revenue generation and tracking transactions can give intelligence agencies a window into their finances as a result. Seems like an entirely reasonable tradeoff.

Why would terrorists want bitcoins, or any currency that has a blockchain tracing the movements of the digital coins? USD are valuable in most places around the world, and are practically untraceable, plus you can actually buy stuff with them.

> Just because you can call that there will be a Bitcoin pull back in the next twelve months, doesn't mean that it will be less than the price right now > you aren't really giving good advice for what to do today

This. At this point anyone with half a brain knows that there is heavy speculation going on and there is a bubble happening. That doesn't automatically mean you're dumb to be investing, or that those who are still investing surely haven't lived through a speculative market bubble before, as the author suggests.

The only real problem is that many people do not understand the risks inherent to speculation and overexpose themselves to losing money they can't afford to lose. Once you buy into the lie that "the price can only ever keep going up", you're setting yourself up for a rude awakening. But if you properly understand the risks and don't overexpose yourself, you can still invest intelligently.

That dystopian/authoritarian view is fully valid if you assume globally coherent policing. It is completely in the interest of any fiat-based sovereign to regulate/criminalize crypto into the ground even before adding the terrorism flavor-text.

Fortunately, we are in a position now where the first countries to outlaw crypto will simply miss out on the explosive growth, pushing it into other countries.

If it is extremely difficult to, for instance convert USD into BTC, the USD price of bitcoin will shoot up (as we've seen in Asian markets where banks have imposed defacto currency controls). The arbitrage would then devalue USD on the world market.

  Fortunately, we are in a position now where the first 
  countries to outlaw crypto will simply miss out on the 
  explosive growth, pushing it into other countries.

Cryptocurrencies are an opt-in ecosystem, but when a country bans Cryptocurrencies they don't expose the citizens to loss due to trading their fiat for the speculative database coins.

I.E. if the majority of Bitcoins were produced for low cost in China from 2009-2014, than American citizens would be at great disadvantage by trading their fiat for Bitcoins produced at low value input.

> . I think people dramatically underestimate the likelihood that Bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies get completely banned.

I expect this will be almost as effective as the banning of narcotics, pirated media, alcohol during prohibition, etc. It's far, far too late for this to have a lasting effect (though certainly a short term reduction is price is likely)

It won't be effective at destroying bitcoin as an effective currency for illicit activity, but it absolutely would destroy the price, because you'd only be able to trade it outside of major exchanges, and without interacting with the american banking system, which would be hard.

The utility of Bitcoin for illicit activity is very much related to the fact that it can be then used in the legal economy. So, yes, an outright ban on its use and exchange would impact already-unnecessary uses.

Have you tried to move $100k in narcotics around recently? That's right. For an average person it is not worth the risk.

The average person doesn't have $100k in narcotics.

The government has more than enough power to prevent banks and investment firms from getting involved, which could significantly limit the pace of future growth in cryptoasset prices.

In the big picture, a tension between mathematics and the law has always been near the heart of the history of cryptanarchy and cryptocurrencies. Sometimes-Satoshi-candidate Nick Szabo has written extensively on this for ages [0]. I'd summarize it like this: 1) The Constitution cannot ultimately protect the legality of any crypto-related activity against a motivated governement. 2) The government cannot ultimately stop P2P crypto-architectures from functioning, although illegally, short of shutting down the Internet.

[0] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com

Reply on news.ycombinator.com