Switzerland “Should Become the Crypto-Nation” Says Minister
trustnodes.com
trustnodes.com
FYI, Tezos (self-amending ledger, one of the largest commercial application of OCaml) has raised ~250 million dollars in July. The funds were supposed to go toward funding the ecosystem, development, and so on.
Unfortunately, the founders of the project made a terrible call early on and selected a bad apple (JOHANN GEVERS) to become chairman of the foundation holding the fundraiser/ICO proceedings. After some digging, frustrated community members found out that this guy has a long track record of failed ventures and what some would call very sketchy behavior. He's the self-appointed "visionary" kind if you want know what I mean (not kidding that's from his website).
The project is developed by an independent company owned by the founders so it is still under development (https://gitlab.com/tezos/tezos/activity) despite that foundation issue.
The Tezos Foundation hasn't communicated in months. They are sitting on close to a billion dollars of donations and broke their fiduciary duty to spend the money on development.
Research this, it is completely nuts.
Some links to start:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tezos/comments/7kzbm9/the_story_and...
https://www.reddit.com/r/tezos/comments/7qt548/the_true_hist...
Tezos is a new decentralized blockchain that governs itself by establishing a true digital commonwealth.
Especially one that, according to your links at least, has been defrauded by its radical libertarian and Ayn Rand acolyte leader. Is this not the free market merely deciding that the people who donated have poor judgement?
That is hysterical.
Libertarians are absolutely in favor of using court systems to sue people for fraud.
The belief in contract enforcement, and stopping fraud is a defining feature of libertarians.
I'd agree that contract enforcement (including to combat fraud) along with the non-aggression principle, are the primary defining principles of libertarianism, regardless of the particular school or wing of libertarianism in discussion.
Gevers is fake libertarian, he is con-man who just made fake organizations to make visibility of high reputation. There is absolutely nothing from libertarianism or Ayn Rand philosophy in his actions. In fact, Ayn Rand is Atlas Shrugged specifically mention about fraudulent people.
I see your sarcasm about:
> Tezos is a new decentralized blockchain that governs itself by establishing a true digital commonwealth.
They didn't launch project yet. Once they launch project, it will be exactly like that and it doesn't matter what's happen with foundation. But for now, the foundation cut off any funding of the project in critical development stage.
Yes, contributors are responsible to do their due diligence.
About asking government to intervene in order to remove Gevers. In some sense, it's government (more precisely the swiss law) who protect Gevers position.
No, parent only assumes that libertarians/Ayn Rand supporters shouldn't go to the government to cry.
>Gevers is fake libertarian, he is con-man who just made fake organizations to make visibility of high reputation. There is absolutely nothing from libertarianism or Ayn Rand philosophy in his actions.
Seems to me like a good case of a self-made man who saw an opportunity and took it, lesser mortals and common good be damned. What's more Ayn Randish?
If he is a con-man who said he is going to do something then took the money and ran without putting in a serious effort, he isn't an example of her philosophy.
Rand accepted people being selfish because in practice selfishness has been proven no barrier to creating prosperity for everyone. She didn't accept dishonesty.
100% postdictive. 0% predictive.
If you use cold hard logic and take Ayn Rand at her word, then someone can totally screw others over as long as they were sure wouldn't personally get in trouble for it.
After all, the "as befits a rational being" is the only qualifier and that's so vague as to be a "no true scotsman" argument making her whole praise of selfishness moot. If selfishness is an amazing thing except when she doesn't like it, then her whole philosophy isn't objectivism at all, but back to the "subjective whims" and pronouncements of "mystics" she so derides.
You can't have it both ways. If altruism is criticized and selfishness is praised, then it can be perfectly rational for a person to screw others over as long as they know they won't personally get in trouble. I never got a good response from Objectivists about this.
I recall a case in Australia where someone mailed seniors saying 'you own shares valued at $X. I will buy them off you for half that. Please respond' and made a substantial profit from the scheme. Objectivism accepts that as a moral situation.
I can't see any elements of the No True Scotsman fallacy here however hard I look - the philosophy is that when someone is truthful and follows through with what they say they will do then they are being moral. There isn't even an objection to people being altruistic; the only objection is forced altruism.
It isn't a friendly philosophy but it is quite clear as far as moralities go. Nothing escapes from shades of grey.
But what part of her philosophy says you must be honest in everything? Selfishness may entail lying, especially in sales (if you don't at the least creatively omit things, someone else who does will eat your lunch).
In addition, if you didn't promise anything, you can go ahead an just steal or screw everyone as long as you don't get caught. Check out example #1 and #2 and tell me where Ayn Rand's theory says you can't do that:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%20Got%20Mi...
> in order to make a profit the shares must have been worth more than $2X in reality so the person lied and they didn't check the lie.
No, you misunderstand, he told them the market price then offered them half the market price. He basically straight up told them they could sell them on the market for twice what he was offering.
I don't know the details of why they accepted, I think they didn't understand how to sell stock. They guy was scrupulously honest, he just offered them a jaw-droppingly bad and unfair deal.
> Okay cool. So no matter who the mark is (an elderly person, or a child)
I see an implicit question there. Yes, the elderly and children have no special protection under Objectivism. The objectivist treatment of how that could be acceptable is:
* For children, their parents have rational incentive to protect and nurture them (otherwise why have them? They cost a fortune). If something happens to the parents, there are individuals who will rationally adopt to (or maybe just want to).
* For the elderly, they have to make provisions for their ageing while they are younger. Much like what self-funded retirees try to do.
The objectivist argument is that children and the elderly aren’t protected very well by other standards of morality, which have not proven robust when tested. Stories of child suffering and taking advantage of the aged are not rare. Even extremely moral institutions (such as churches [1]) have committed atrocities. Objectivism doesn’t promise better outcomes for the weak, but objectivists don’t expect the situation to get worse for them.
> tell me where Ayn Rand's theory says you can't do that
#2 seems straightforward, workers have a supervisor who is paid to make sure they don’t do that. He sacks them if they are uncooperative.
The worker isn't particularly immoral, just stupid. He will be out of work.
#1 is really a question of how enforcing property rights fit into an objectivist society. My understanding is that:
1) People agree rationally that they need an enforcement entity to protect property rights and personal freedoms.
2) This is either organised collectively through a government or individually through some sort of insurance-like mechanism.
3) Theft is dealt with.
There are some interesting subtleties here:
- Yes, if old mate unionist can get away with it then in a sense maybe he gets away with it on the moral scale too. To some degree, it falls to property owners to enforce property rights.
- Objectivists can actually work collectively if everyone is contributing voluntarily. The idea would be that anyone who doesn’t contribute to the policing service wouldn’t get protection but also wouldn’t be prejudiced against.
- Yes, in practice I can’t see this working in a philosophically pure way. This isn’t actually a problem for an objectivist any more than for anyone else who notices that their government doesn’t always represent their own moral preference. If the world were run by objectivists, you’d get a very basic service where it is easier to see that people are receiving assistance in proportion to their contributions. Americans, for example, believe in a fairly radical freedom of speech but still prohibit some very specific restrictions.
- Objectivists can indeed form armies. Old-school Athenian Greek democracy is probably a template for how they would like o see that sort of thing run.
[1] https://theconversation.com/royal-commission-recommends-swee...
Well, he had a commitments to himself and he followed through. What he promised to others was just BS, and since being selfish is OK, I don't see what's non-Randish about it.
And in a libertarian Utopia, it is truly Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware! Personal responsibility, no nanny governments!
Not getting access to 500 millions (at today's market caps actually) is a reason they can't manage to write some code on time? Doubt so.
They can't change their minds later and cry about it when Breitman wants to try to implement a takeover.
The couple now accuses Gevers, who also invested in the ICO, of helping himself to an outsize bonus from the proceeds. Gevers remains the foundation head, and is poised to emerge from the conflict as the unexpected winner, as finews.com reported last week.
So politicians look to either Fintechs (which are as weak as our startup culture in general) or the hype around the ‚Crypto Valley‘ in Zug which wasn’t homegrown and is primarely driven by a scam-friendly environment provided by government & regulator in combination with path-dependency.
Unfortunately, this will likely end even worse reputationally than being the token (ha!) money hiding place. See the Tezos debacle which is only a glimpse into what will happen when the cryptocurrency house of cards falls apart. Id rather have them be a bit more cautious now as is Swiss tradition and be ready for the more serious ‚rebirth’ afterwards.
If they can store stolen gold for Nazis without running away with it or telling anybody about it, then I'm sure they can safely store money for me as well.
And worldwide reputation matter because functional finance, like networking, requires peering at some point.
Major countries have a lot of leverage they can bring when the public is on their side. Viz Swiss secrecy / tax evasion laws being forceably cracked by "terror money" pressure.
Money laundering was a stain on our country. Swiss private wealth managers have a unique heritage of experience in managing multinational fortunes. UBS and Credit Suisse are also, while not traditional Swiss private banks, international economic titans. The continued profitability of Swiss banking contradicts your view regarding secrecy and a loss Swiss banking sector.
More like giant Golems using mud-made feet for walking. As far as I know UBS was in a very difficult position around 2012-2013 (I wouldn't call it one step away from folding, but it was close to that nonetheless), and it managed only recently to re-put itself in a more stable position (thanks to a new management team). Credit Suisse has also lost most of its allure, they're not in any way swimming with the big boys anymore. So I wouldn't call these two banks "titans" anymore.
Bottom line is that you can only make big money on the international financial markets if your financial “home” market is big enough and if your “home” authorities (the Government) is ready to back you up if anything bad happens by using said home market to pump you up and keep you afloat. The Swiss financial market is just not big enough to keep either CS or UBS afloat in case either of them is about to go down like Lehman.
Also fresh startups rather open an office in Zurich other than Zug to have access to talent from ETH and an actual city to attract more people.
Since years I know the crypto community rather well and people are indeed very passionate about making the world a better place. I know people in Zurich, who are invested both with money and time in Bitcoin since it exists because they believe in it.
>"Switzerland's strong support for crypto is seemingly in direct contrast to France’s apparent distaste for this space with the French Minister stating regarding bitcoin: “I don’t like it."
This is a great example how Switzerland is different. Contrary to the rest of Europe, the Swiss choose to be pragmatic about almost all important topics: Taxes, healthcare, education system take somewhat the best parts from socialist Rest-of-Europe and more cut-troat/capitalist America and leave out the bad parts.
If you want to know more about Switzerland, here a blogpost I wrote 4 years ago and which is still valid today: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t... (disclaimer: I am a recruiter hunting for tech talent all over Europe to join Swiss companies. If you look for a tech job e-mail me at iwan@coderfit.com.)
Very interested in what is happening in Zug but I don't know how far are you going with the pragmatism. Just thinking about all the money that went there, including Nazi money.
And how exactly do they plan to do this?
I'm just trying to figure out, what you think cryptocurrencies are for, if not, for individuals to have a means of cash (and/or wealth storage) decoupled from the state.
And here I thought it was about the uses of cryptography, with possible mentions of ProtonMail (which is based in Switzerland).
Don't let this speak infest HN, please.
The word "crypto" is too important to be lost this way. Any ideas how we can get people to knock this off?
All I can come up with is to consistently interpret it as cryptography and force people to reexplain themselves if they say nonsense.
If you want "crypto" to be used for something else, you have to make that something else. Crypto communication, crypto news, etc. If "crypto currency" is the only common term to start with "crypto" that most people know about, it's going to be shortened, and represent that one thing.
Crypto currency is more top-of-mind to the population at large, than cryptography as a general category. If there are more specific implementations of useful crypto that average people use as a product (like currency, not, say, SSL), then crypto will be detached from the concepts and come to represent all of them (cryptography) again.
Not all trends and language changes are good. N-word was trending once too, to give an extreme example.
Except that encryption is rarely used explicitly. We see this greed padlock, maybe. But encryption is rarely a product. It's part of other products (web browsers, messengers…).
I doubt cryptography will become more visible through that venue. People need some level of education to even notice they're using encryption, signatures, and certificates pretty much all the time.
I'm actually starting to believe that the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies will forever seal the fate of encryption backdoors and any such ideas from politicians/law enforcement. No one will dare to make such comments 10 years from now, if 30% of the U.S. economy will be based on encryption-using cryptocurrencies.
What definition of encryption do you use that doesn't fit this process?
Bytheway definition of encryption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption
Please change the title mods
Or we talking bout private chain cryptocurrency