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Comment by ballenf | Hacker News Reader

> who have provided less than zero benefit or service to our society

Was following your argument up to that point. Making such a value judgment requires, in my opinion, a lot more data and deep analysis. Cryptocurrencies have the potential of loosening the grasp of oppressive regimes over their people. And it takes those other investors for the process to function.

But, the reality and therefore data is needed to judge whether these new currencies can deliver on that promise.

Edit: Want to clarify that I'm talking about *coin buyers/sellers. Not scam ICO backers. Agree that those folks are scum with negative value to society. If the parent was mainly talking about ICO scams, then please ignore my response and apologies for the misinterpretation.

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I see the argument that cryptos reduce the grasp of oppressive regimes on here pretty frequently but the truth is that a) the null hypothesis (no effect) has yet to be rejected with any data and b) oppressive regimes are very good at eliminating or severely restricting internet access when it suits them.

A slight tangent -- you can't just take two options and say we don't have any data so we can't judge. We have a prior: most things do not have an effect in this case.

I think a better way to say it is that it helps to prevent turns of current regimes (that already have Internet infrastructure built and used) into oppressive regimes.

How do you reconcile that with the idea that North Korea, perhaps the poster child for oppressive regimes, is being propped up by Bitcoin?

I don't know how is that relevant to what I'm saying at all. I never said it can't be used for evil. Also, North Korea doesn't fulfill the condition of being internet-developed area before the turn to an oppressive regime happened.

Do you honestly believe that would-be oppressive regimes with existing internet infrastructure will not turn oppressive because crypto? In the most optimistic scenario this argument deals with b but still suffers from a.

No, but I think it helps more than it hurts. It's still in the beginning.

The burden of proof is on the new product, not the current society. I don't think he needs "data and deep analysis", that work needs to be done by the people trying to convince you cryptocurrencies are the future.

When the status quo is disrupted, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that it's a passing fad or won't work out. A product or asset, especially a radical step like cryptocurrencies, succeeding and being valuable is the exception, not the rule.

There's a reason accredited investors exist, because they're expected to know better.

Society shouldn't ban everything that hasn't proven to be socially beneficial.

Exchanges of the types prohibited by existing securities laws are not prohibited merely because they haven't proven to be socially beneficial, but because they have proven to be massively harmful.

The idea that cryptocurrency as a subject of trading changes that in any way is a claim which requires some substantial basis before it would warrant an exception to the general rules written into law.

There is absolutely no proof that it's "massively harmful". It's impossible to quantify all of the positive and negative effects of any type of exchange, let alone to "prove" the effects are net harmful.

>>the general rules written into law.

I'm arguing against the principle that we should ban anything not proven to be socially beneficial.

Not to mention the authorities have a dearth of existing legislation under which to already prosecute bad actors in the crypto space. Ponzi schemes, fake ICO's and outright theft and extortion are already thoroughly addressed by existing legislation / property law. Summarily banning the thing you fine inconvenient to investigate is just lazy regulation, at best.

The burden of proof is on the new product, not the current society

Why do you think that's how it works? Society is not a formal debate, and its members should be able to question any aspect of it at any time for any reason, whether or not they think they have a better idea. The entire concept of "burden of proof" is out the window here since many of its mores do not exist for rational reasons!

I fail to see how crypto-speculators making large sums of USD has anything to do with oppressive regimes.

Though perhaps contrary to your parent commenter's point, the North Korean regime appears to be using Bitcoin speculation to circumvent international sanctions, making as much as $200 million last year ( which would be about 1.5% of its GDP, or 10% of its military budget): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/05/north-korea-may-...

There's also Venezuela, a rare example of the hyperinflationary failed state cryptolibertarians insist their project is designed to combat, launching its own sort of cryptocurrency project as a way to get more dollars from foreign suckers so it can continue to import the stuff its leadership wants.

Regardless, the null position which assumes the least is not "crypto currencies run by folks seeking to exit into USD provide real value" but rather "do not provide value".

The claim that someone would prove, of course, would be that they provide value.

So that shouldn't offend you that the null position (and the position which satisfies occams razor) is the default stated position.

Instead of criticizing it, you could actually do the work of proving your claim that crypto has real measurable value to a society. Until that's proven, though...

Lots of people in venezuela are using it right now for the purpose of escaping their extremely inflationary currency.

It is trivial to prove the value, as people are using right now for this purpose.

> Cryptocurrencies have the potential of loosening the grasp of oppressive regimes over their people.

How exactly would that work?!

by allowing u to transact wealth without the control and oversight of the oppressive regime.

Is this the same oppressive regime that surveils, firewalls and filters the internet and other forms of communication that this idea depends on?

Except it doesn't depend on any particular means of communication. You can print out Bitcoin on paper and physically trade it. You can embed it in an image and trade that. You can physically scan QR codes on each others phones to transmit it. Bitcoin and other cryptos can be transferred via sat phone. The Internet and exchanges are just conveniences.

There are also numerous projects to work around Internet censorship in the crypto space. Such as the Substratum Network (https://substratum.net) and Mysterium Network (https://mysterium.network).

I see you are trying to be clever, but that comment doesn't really bring anything to the table. Sure, you can try to filter/block crypto transactions but that will be A LOT harder than blocking dissident blogs. One of the biggest selling points of many decentralized systems is to be censorship resistant.

I am not even remotely trying to be clever.

Blocking these transactions is trivial to do. Employers detect and block them constantly.

The purported censorship resistance of these coins has nothing to do with the shape of the traffic.

thats only true in theory really, because there are many ways to go around the same blocks. eg , by simply storing ur wallet node remotely. nobody said that there is something special about the traffic, just that the system is set up in a way that does makes it impossible for governments to effectively stop you from enjoying ur rights to freely transact.

All you have done is restate what you wrote.

There is empirical evidence that this traffic can and does get blocked. Furthermore, many cloud providers stop this traffic.

It's not that hard to do that now with gold, unless the amount you're talking about is truly huge.

$65,000 worth of gold is the size of an iPhone X.

And how would their people acquire this “wealth” in the first place?

Working?

And get paid in BTC?

Are you implying that because someone lives in an oppressive country that they have no money to transact? I really dont understand your question.

Oppressive regimes tend to control money flow in/out of the country. So if you, for example, have an aunt somewhere outside that wants to send you money -> you just might not be able to receive it, or would need to give some official a slice of the pie. Bitcoin obviously can help as u can just move the money without government oversight.

Crypto is only effective in that regard if you're able to opt-in. The problem is, you eventually need to interface with the fiat currencies for your "wealth" to be useful. The first step an oppressive regime would do is to just ban exchanges.

Acquiring this "wealth" of crypto would be impossible in an oppressive regime in the first place.

you dont really need to go to an exchange to get crypto. Lots of OTC sellers, miners, etc.

There were actually a few news articles about people in 3rd world countries that survived thanks to btc, though I can't find any at the moment.

Then don't use an exchange?

Lots of people do person to person transactions.

If you look though the code and math behind Bitcoin and other cryptocoin projects it's quite evident that there is malice and a manipulative design with even Bitcoin.

OP was making a point about how easy it is to produce cryptocoins (in terms of both launching the software, and in terms of measurable capital cost to mine coins).

Coupled with the history of Bitcoin and what has predominately been the demographic attracted to an quasi-anonymous digital token for trading has been anarcho-capitalists who bought drugs and child pornography on TOR and silk road etc.

This comic sums up the point:

https://i.imgur.com/3VbttYh.png

Good point. HODL to the moon, grandma!

For the record, the SEC won't ban cryptocurrency. They want technology (in general) to stay here and potentially evolve into something that can be useful and provide jobs and value someday, so you can still free oppressed nations, but you will need to cooperate with the American government if it's being done on our soil.

The technology cannot discern the intentions of the nation attempting to regulate it. Tyrannical oppression and reasonable regulation both use the same punishment stick to beat those who step out of line.

Anything that can free people from tyranny must necessarily also be able to free them from the burden of obeying laws. The reasonable standards of conduct have to actually be built into the system in order for it to have a limit on what amount of external control is allowed.

Systems with smart contracts would be able to specify that a government actor could interfere--even retroactively--with any transactions that explicitly opted in to that jurisdiction. So you could sue someone over their Ethereum scam, and a judge could rule in your favor, and then a clerk forwards the order to the technical magicians for the digital circuit court, so that you get as much of your money back as is technically possible to recover.

If you don't opt in, you are in the land of caveat emptor, and the court tosses your case because it can't help you, even if you deserved it. Or people could opt in to private arbitration. But if someone wants their mathmoney to be outside the reach of government enforcement, it is necessarily also out of the reach of government protection. If you won't follow someone else's rules, you can't expect that your untrusted counterparty will follow them, either.

The first state to create a solid opt-in jurisdiction for network-based civil complaints will clean up, just as Delaware has for corporations.

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