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I think your comment raises some very interesting points, but that you go too far.

There are costs (in the wider not just monetary sense) and benefits to various approaches. The reason you had to resort to crypto-currency first of all seems to me to be the problems in the countries you lived in. If they had working institutions, if you had lived in a Western country and had had access to the banking there, would you have come to the same conclusions?

Also, there is a reason why Western banks and Asian ones too, it seems, prefer losing business over dealing with customers from some countries, and I doubt the reason is spite.

Having completely anonymous money sure benefits some small businesses (mostly those living in places with bad institutions), but it also enables a lot of very questionable businesses and people. I would suspect that as far as volume goes the latter might actually be far bigger than the former. As always those who have most to gain are those who have a lot of money to move (same with the question about who benefits from government more - the rich or the poor? The rich! Any "redistribution" is dwarfed by the amounts of money people get to make and to keep under the protections of strong government institutions). Anonymity, not just for money, always works for those who have their eyes closed to all the horrible things humans do when nobody is looking - and that is not a negligibly small amount. Of course, the extremely wealthy already have "anonymous money", tracing who owns what is very hard even for the government, but I doubt giving everybody access to anonymity would be a net positive.

> Having completely anonymous money sure benefits some small businesses (mostly those living in places with bad institutions), but it also enables a lot of very questionable businesses and people.

I'm not in favor of this argument at all. The internet has incredible benefits, but enables a lot of bad actors. Encryption has incredible benefits but enables a lot of bad actors. Lots of good things also enable bad things, that doesn't mean we shouldn't allow them.

Outside of third world or financially repressive countries, cryptocurrencies are great for "global citizens." I have done contract work while living in a different country, for clients in other countries, both parties have found it much easier to pay each other using cryptocurrencies as opposed to fiat.

The problem is that when it comes to governments and bad actors.

The difference, at times, is murky. Even in the west.

“but it also enables a lot of very questionable businesses and people.“

So basically like cash.

Which banks are desperately trying to get rid of.

Which they haven't yet.

But certainly not for lack of trying.

In Sweden, it’s fast becoming nigh impossible to pay for things with cash, particularly in places like restaurants, cafés and bars. If you have a business that deals in cash, banks make it almost farcically difficult to deposit said cash into your business account.

For example, in one town the largest bank will only accept cash through a deposit machine, outdoors, for one hour during the middle of the day. Oh and you can only deposit something like $1500 per day. Your only other option is to order pickups from a security company, which will cost quite a bit more than you’ll pay for card transactions most likely.

Granted, this example is from a smaller town (aprox. 12000 inhabitants, but LOTS of tourists from abroad that tend to carry cash) but even in a place like the capital Stockholm, you’ll have very particular cash handling restrictions. Some because regulation, but most because banks don’t like to deal with cash. It’s a very real security risk and requires manual labor – both of which are costly and like any business banks like to keep costs down. Most smaller (and local) branches these days don’t deal with cash at all, or deals in very limited amounts.

If you run a small shop that deals in cash, there’s a very real possibility that you’ll have to face the question of whether to pay a lot of money for secure cash handling, or just getting a safe and hope you don’t get robbed.

Sweden is an outlier (same things also happening in Denmark, where I am originally from)

But contrary to cash, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin can be traced fairly easily in fact, it's one of the most transparent currencies that's ever existed.

As color coins show it will be possible to trace the history of a coin and thus trace what's it's been used for.

This will potentially allow NGO's to recieve funding and track how they are used and make sure they can't be used for approved expenses all autimatic.

Cryptocoins are exactly what governments would want if they really thought it trough. The control they loose in creating the currency is gained in controlling the history of them.

That's another problem cryptocurrencies solve. You'd think that when people say governments and banks provide currencies, that they'd provide very basic services related to that, such as the ability to get currency into an account.

As any business owner can tell you, they don't provide these services. Which of course means that someone could step in, provide these services, and actually has a chance of success.

It sounds so incredibly absurd, but it's actually true: governments do not provide the ability to transact in currency. Only banks do, and only for hefty fees. Hell, the aborted attempt by Varoufakis to issue a tax-backed currency by the Greek IRS would have been the first time I've heard any state providing such a service.

One might think, in reaction, governments would be a little worried and then 2 reactions are possible:

a) governments could make sure these services are provided. Basic banking services, after all, are a complete necessity in todays world. In trade they'd get insight, maybe even a little control, and would make a LOT of people very happy, because the government is omnipresent, and a lot of people feel that banks exploit things (e.g. cashing checks in the US).

b) governments could punish everyone involved, AND threaten everyone until insight is, grudgingly and only after every option to obfuscate things is utilized to the maximum extent, provided.

Of course in the case of b), insight would be a punishment inflicted on businesses and people, and make it very clear to everyone involved that citizens and the government are each other's enemy, and therefore naturally everyone would be trying to make that insight as useless as possible.

Needless to say, every government on the planet has chosen only a single avenue, namely b).

Can I just say: may God help governments as soon as someone realizes a way to provide a cryptocurrency that can't be easily blocked over radio or ... because it will turn into an utter disaster for them very quickly.

Or perhaps I should say: the first government to issue a tax-backed currency with a government provided ability to transact, banks, the entire financial sector, and all other governments are in extreme trouble.

Not like cash at all. You can't pay with cash unless you are right there. Also, paying with large amounts of cash is hard or suspicious or even impossible.

So crimes arent possible with cash?

Fewer crimes are possible with cash than with cryptocurrencies. It’s not boolean.

Yet more crimes are being done with cash than cryptocurrencies.

How many crimes occurred on or by means of the Silk Road and it’s clones?

Compared to cash? An infinitesimal amount.

It’s just occurred to me I have been ambiguous. I am talking about sets and classes, but you are responding as if I meant individual crimes (for which the 300,000 transactions per day limit provides a plausible upper ceiling, iff they only used bitcoin).

Let me rephrase: how many categories of crime occurred on Silk Road et al, and how many are not — based on current law enforcement — plausible to get away with when involving cash?

Do you seriously compare the total amounts of something HUGE and something tiny? The size of the cash universe still is orders of magnitude larger than Silkroad ever was - and you compare the totals? Seriously?

No I am comparing the utility of cash with the utility of crypto.

The claim was made that crypto is bad because it can be used for crime to which i responded like cash.

You claimed it's not at all like cash but you haven't actually provided any argument for how it's not. Instead you have looked at a few obvious differences which doesn't take anything away from the original claim that cash and crypto can be used for the same things and in fact are being used for the same thing.

I don't know how to make it much more clear.

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/09/19/22-billion-dollars-...

How you can even claim that with a straight face is beyond me. Here is just one person's cash usage.

First, by writing “just one person’s cash”, it is automatic to infer you consider this representative. I assert that it is not, and furthermore that if it were even close then the criminal economy would vastly exceed the non-criminal one.

Second, look at the date on that and tell me, with a straight face, that they didn’t use any cryptocurrencies. If they really did have $22bn, perhaps even if they only had $22m, I expected they used a dozen forms of currency they couldn’t even name.

I am not the one claiming one is worse than the other. You are.

I am not saying “worse”, I am saying “superset”. On the basis that all crimes that can occur with cash have an equivalent that can happen with cryptocurrencies but not vice versa — you cannot force someon else’s computer to forge coins for you, and high-value transactions have rules against cash in places that don’t have rules against cryptocurrencies.

I do not understand how you consider you response to be relevant, however.

I do not understand your question.

Cash and crypto can be used for more or less the same number of crimes. That was my original point.

Furthermore cash is defacto being used for more crimes every day as most criminals are using cash not crypto.

I don't understand what your question has to do with anything I wrote. Unless your intention is not an actual honest discussion, but to mislead - but surely that cannot be true.

My intention was to show you that there is in fact similarities between cash and bitcoin and that your claim that there isnt at all is wrong.

They are both used for crime and cash is used way more for crime than bitcoin is.

So your claim is simply wrong.

> that your claim that there isnt at all is wrong.

Well, it isn't, as I already pointed out. Is the main strength of your argument how often you repeat it?

> So your claim is simply wrong.

Ah, yes, as I suspected. A strong conviction in place of arguments, reasoning and considering other people's arguments.

You haven't provided any argument in how they are different and in fact you haven't provided any argument in how cryptocurrencies are worse than cash.

I am not holding my breath that you will of course, but just so that we are clear.

> You haven't provided any argument in how they are different

You are quite the joker. Or maybe you have some real problems reading English?

Try again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16197689

Of course, it's been quite obvious for a while that you are just trolling.

> I doubt giving everybody access to anonymity would be a net positive.

I would think that freedom from surveillance is a negative right, but you are framing it as a positive right. Why?

>I think the only people who hate cryptocurrencies are those bloody conformists, big brother lovers who never experienced first hand how shitty traditional financial system is.

For me personally, I don't hate Bitcoin, I just don't see the value in it. Maybe that's because I'm not from a shithole counry and I can actually rely on my government and financial institutions.

If you need to vent some anger, maybe direct it at the "bloody conformists" and "big brother lovers" in Russia that keep people like Putin in power. Oh wait, maybe these people are also just victims of the system and you should be more careful slinging your insults around.

> I think the only people who hate cryptocurrencies are those bloody conformists, big brother lovers who never experienced first hand how shitty traditional financial system is.

And the people who profit from the traditional system. Don't underestimate that group.

And in some regards the group you talk about and the group I talk about are overlapping. In first world countries you are really rarely screwed by your bank (when it comes to international transactions at least). But that these countries populace is allowed to live so freely might be the reason of the banks being able to screw people from shithole countries even more than them. So a change for first world country citizens might very well go the negative way and it's reasonable for them not wanting to change as it is.

So you "solved" the transferring money bit, but does it help at all to buy US stocks?

I'm confused by this. It might work for you individually, but if large numbers of people in Uzbekistan or Russia want to bypass capital controls and sanctions, and they all buy bitcoins using their сўм's/Roubles, then they're doing a sort of foreign exchange which will eventually lead to сўм's/Roubles becoming worthless, and you'll need more and more сўм's/Roubles to buy each bitcoin.

Or another way to look at is that bitcoins in Uzbekistan are only produced by mining (ie buying expensive foreign-produced ASICs) or by exchanging something of value from Uzbekistan for US$ some other way. So when buying bitcoins there, illegal foreign exchange of fiat currencies is still happening somewhere in the system (maybe you don't see it).

TIL: The currency of Uzbekistan is the So'm / сўм.

In order for So'm or Ruble not being worthless in case free capital flows is allowed, these governments have to establish investor's trust. In order to establish investor's trust, clan system have to be dismantled, rule of law for all established, property rights strengthened. But elites in these countries aren't willing to gave up their lucrative rent seeking. Therefore, in order to keep their currency not totally worthless, they established strict currency control which patriots buy it without looking deeper.

Do you think that once/if crypto currencies become mainstreams, they won't be regulated just as much by shite governments ?

To believe that the most fundamental social human issues can be solved by technology is a bit of an utopia imho. Greed, lust for power, envy, etc. Those are part of human nature, i don't think they will disappear thanks to some elaborated algorithm. Unless you want algorithms to take control of social interactions (which is another kind of shite society).

At least for now his side is winning the arms race so he can benefit from it until that day potentially comes.

Although I still think it's going to be a very long way off if western government's can't work out how to make unauthorized use of crypto illegal.

I agree that human nature is corrupt at its core, but the blockchain is not. Placing cryptocurrency's aside and realizing that distributed entities will allow us an attempt at curtailing the effect of these negative human qualities is what I value the most. The blockchain is a perfect example of a publicly accessible ledger that is resistant to manipulation after the fact, inherently making it a source of truth. Blockchain technology will not change the entirety of society (in our life time) but it has definitely become a catalyst for social change.

Statements like this sound so religious.

The blockchain is a human construct, entirely dependent on human inputs, outputs, and interpretation to have any meaning at all. As long as that's the case (and if it isn't, then it's not useful to society), it has the exact same weaknesses.

It's entirely possible if not probable given enough time and enough tries at it, someone is going to find a really useful application for it. But it's hard to take statements like "catalyst for social change" seriously when its sole contribution to this point has been a new form of gambling. There's a big disconnect between what the technology is supposed to do and what's actually happening.

The governments can only slowdown cryptocurrency revolution but they can't stop it.

BTC, LTC are traceable, so you can still track down owner (although it may be extremely difficult in some cases).

But with technologies like zero-knowledge proof in ZCash, you have untraceable money.

So at some point, when cryptocurrencies hit mainstream, you may see the situation when people start exchange goods and services directly in ZCash or Monero. I just don't see how government can shutdown this.

I don't see how governments can crackdown cryptocurrencies completely. So in long term, impact of cryptocurrencies on global economy is inevitable.

The same way they investigate individuals or businesses they suspect of lying on their tax returns. Look for suspicious patterns, investigate records, reward guilty ones with fines or jail time.

That’s an argument for better government, not forgoing government altogether, and reverting to anarchy.

I’m one of those “bloody conformists”. And because my country is full of then, and we elect sensible politicians, I am welcome at any bank in the world.

Oh, so, half of the world is shit because it's not US (and I guess you haven't even lived in US but you're 100% sure it's the best possible country in the world).

But how exactly does cryptocurrency solve your problem?

Is it possible to legalize crypto you earned? Nope.

Is it easy to accept payments in cryptocurrency? Nope.

I don't see any advantage over "shitty" old banks.