Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies: Burn It with Fire [video]

There is a contradiction when saying that cryptocurrencies are great for criminal endeavors but useless in the real world - because, clearly, the black market is part of the real world. Illegal things are not necessarily immoral things - sometimes the reverse is true.

We should at no point compare unstable, 1st generation bubbly tokens with fiat cash at it exists today. We are fast entering an era of the cashless society: every transaction, every purchase ever done stored for the duration of your lifetime and up for grabs for the tax-man, law enforcement, any interested agency and any future repressive regime. Financial privacy is quickly becoming illegal and synonymous with money laundry.

Crypto is certainly a nice thing I would hope to exist in this brave new world.

There are a lot of arguments in here, but I think the main one goes something like this:

* Government control over and monitoring of financial transactions, currencies, and financial services is a good thing. It exists for many reasons and serves many important purposes. Many regulations respond to historical experiences of problems which critics might not be familiar with.

* Cryptocurrencies have been created and adopted by people who actively dislike such regulation, disagree with particular policy aspects of it, want to experiment with alternatives to it, or benefit from avoiding it. I (Weaver) don't sympathize with these people, don't appreciate their creation of parallel monetary and financial mechanisms partly or wholly outside of regulatory frameworks, and would be happy if they got in trouble or had these capabilities taken away.

* Cryptocurrencies are an unreasonably expensive, impractical, and risky alternative to existing financial institutions, instruments, and technologies for the overwhelming majority of purposes except for the antiregulatory ones. If people are willing to bear these costs and risks, they probably don't understand them, or else they willingly accept them for antiregulatory purposes. I (Weaver) wish they would understand these costs and risks better and decide that they aren't worth it, or be prevented from pursuing antiregulatory goals.

My attitude is quite different from Weaver's, but I think it's good to be aware of this argument.