What the chairman is talking about are publicly traded companies suddenly turning to claiming blockchain-based pivots without substantial evidence to believe that they are being sincere and truthful.
This is almost a pump-and-dump scheme in just slightly different clothing.
> All of this has gone too far!!!!! It was fine when you paranoid dorks were out there scamming each other, please leave the normies alone!!!!!!!!!!!
I also copied this all into https://pastebin.com/e8vXE5Vi
This is what the SEC is saying too with different words.
People don't get a say on which race or gender (edit: sex) they're born as. That's partly why race and gender are protected classes. "People who own Bitcoin" isn't a protected class.
Sure, it might feel upsetting. But is it true?
It seems true. And that has merit.
But so does your side of it. So it's a balance.
I'm not sure why "don't be an asshole to whole groups of people" is so controversial, though.
Edit: My comment was tongue in cheek. It’s kind of funny that not only genders are like the twin towers, but even saying that sex is determined at birth can be a sensitive issue.
The basis of protected class is more visibility and history of non-germane discrimination than innateness, which is why religion is a protected class.
Was it also deliberately deceptive to interpret Trump's famous statement about Mexicans as a slur on the whole group? I don't think so.
I observe people of all sorts making ambiguous statements deliberately in order to express bigoted opinions while not engaging with those who may be offended.
None of this implies I think defending "nerds" as a class is important - but I don't think being offended is necessarily "deliberately deceptive".
So it is a lazy, elitist snob rant that asserts that she has no plans to explain it to us unwashed morons and we should just take her word for it. My general opinion of such attitudes is Fuck you, which is part of why I walked away from a National Merit Scholarship and dropped out of college in my youth.
I already said I would be interested in her explanation. But I am not holding my breath. Her rant suggests she can't be bothered to explain fuck all. She is too busy stroking her ego on twitter.
As I said, I would be interested in her actual explanation of blockchain. Her comments suggest she has no plans to give that.
Most of Twitter rants I post don't include the complete background of what I'm talking about. I assume the readers who are interested have some context. I'd like to think that at least some of them are useful nonetheless.
Remember a basic issue with things quoted on HN: they usually weren't written specifically to be discussed on HN. That's clearly the case here. Maybe you could direct any other concerns you have to the comment introducing Jeong's Twitter thread, rather than attacking Jeong herself.
Had she said "Those who are interested in understanding it can start with this white paper" and linked to it, I would probably be reading the white paper right now. But I don't actually know what white paper she means.
Last I checked, you aren't a moderator on HN. So how about you refrain from trying to police my behavior here?
I'm really not sure I understand how you get from snark about people showing up in her TL to cryptosplain Bitcoin to her despite her having read the white paper 5 years ago to feeling like probably you shouldn't have to read the white paper.
You've now heard it from two sources, me and Sarah Jeong: if you want to understand the background of what she's talking about, just read the bitcoin white paper.
Edit in response to your unmarked edit: Please kindly provide me the link to said white paper instead of continuing to lecture me and I will have a go at trying to read it.
I'm not in tech. I have terrible eyesight. Google customizes search results. What if they give me different results?
I would trust it coming from you. Not so much from Google.
Thank you.
Edit: Or anyone else here who knows which paper this is.
"Internet money with the usability of PGP and the stability of BART service."
As for BART, I only took the train a few times in my life so I can't really elaborate on that.
paranoid dorks are eating the world. Typical for a paradigm shift situation, the old world can only produce gasps of exclamation.
You assume consumers don't have needs and are immune to incentives, and also that people running the coins are perfectly honest, and it would never cross their mind to architect incentives in such a way, as to predictably exploit those consumers.
Also, what 'dmd wrote.
The issue isn't consumers meddling in blockchain currency. It's about consumers being dragged into blockchain speculation without their knowledge.
Grandma puts her retirement savings into some big, safe company. The suddenly the company goes from being an electric utility to being a blockchain speculator and goes bankrupt, wiping out her savings without her even having a chance to get out.
I have seriously wondered whether I should consider avoiding them. Not just because blockchain=bad, but because I was thinking about how their commitment to minimizing costs could backfire someday, if not immediately.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vanguard-group-blockchain...
People say this as if laws and rules didn’t work in the days of cash transactions.
I don't know why I have to keep explaining this, but cryptocurrencies can and will be regulated using exactly the same mechanism that basically everything else is.
The government makes some rules, asks you politely but firmly to follow them, observes carefully to see if and when you break them, and then beats you with a (usually, but not always, metaphorical) rubber hose until you choose to comply. Nothing about crypto interferes with this process, even theoretically.
Sorry, what? ICOs and other scammy behaviors _are entirely public_. A company visible to the public comes along and starts selling "coins"/"securities". How exactly is it that this can't be regulated? Just because it's crypto doesn't make it unregulatable, these are people in the real world doing bad things--not some opaque UUID in a digital ledger somewhere.
And let's suppose someone came up with a way of selling these coins anonymously online in a secure way. Guess what! Nobody would buy them, because why would you buy securities from an anonymous online source that could just as easily be a 13 year old writing the modern remake of the 1994 hit film _Blank Check_?
That's inherently the issue here. It's not a matter of sending money/value/currency/whatever anonymously. These are companies that are coming out in front of the public in the real world, talking a big crypto game, then disappearing into the void with millions of real dollars. Or perhaps not disappearing, and providing no value to the people that bought into the scheme (contrary to the advertising they used). Or any number of other things that the SEC would have something to say about.
Just because it's "crypto" doesn't mean that its intersection with the real world is free from scrutiny and the rules of the governments of our real world.
There are all sorts of industries that would be ecstatic if avoiding regulation was as simple as opting out.
And perhaps companies shouldn't look like they are defrauding investors when there are big risk factors involved.
If you are under American jurisdiction, you signed up for SEC regulation. Private American companies, offshore companies selling securities to Americans and perhaps even foreign overseas individuals transacting for securities in U.S. dollars are each, to varying degrees, under U.S. jurisdiction.