Hacker News Reader

Comment by mortdeus | Hacker News Reader

What about state level actors, say the NSA, that consider bitcoin supplanting the US dollar as the standard medium of international currency exchange a huge threat to the world economy? (or at least their ability to control it)

I think people need to be concerned that Governments, at any point of time, with their incomprehensibly huge computation power, can use it to crush bitcoin. Not only that but they can pass laws that allow them to forcibly seize the fattest wallets. Which ultimately ensure's that the Government can, behind the scenes, kick the scaffolding out from beneath us. All I see right now is state level actors experimenting in this regard, because seriously who single handedly has the computation power to take control of these cryptocurrency's if its not the government or a company like Google?

View on HN

> bitcoin supplanting the US dollar

To the extent there is a legitimate threat to dollar supremacy, it is in the Chinese renminbi. The U.S. dollar is ascendant because of the huge base of American consumers, who buy stuff with dollars others then need to find investment for. Plain and simple network effects.

The RMB is not even fully convertible, it is the opposite of liquid.

The US dollar is useful to countries like china is because the US government acts as a debtor of last resort, allowing them to park surpluses in treasuries.

> The US dollar is useful to countries like china is because the US government acts as a debtor of last resort

Which ultimately derives from our mammoth consumption. If Chinese consumption eclipses America's and their economy rebalances, they will have lots of Chinese consumers buying goods with renmimbi, leaving sellers offshore with boatloads of the currency to find investments for. (I consider this to be a moderate risk, and not one which would supplant the U.S. dollar but instead cause it to share the world stage.)

TL; DR Bitcoin is not a serious threat to the U.S. dollar. It promises huge profits to banks, which is why they're salivating over it.

Parking money in cash isn’t feasible, which is why much of the USD’s worth is in treasuries, the dollar is just incredibly liquid and easy to borrow/lend.

The Chinese government is not interested in filling this same role, even if now anemic Chinese consumption somehow picks up, they will probably still want to maintain absolute control over the exchange rate.

I agree that the renminbi is not presently a threat. Just that it has the potential of becoming one. That potential flows from the potential of China's consumers. A native base of consumers Bitcoin lacks. My point is that if the renminbi is a long shot for challenging the dollar's hegemony, Bitcoin is out past Pluto.

Our mammoth consumption helps, but the USD is also baked in as the unit used by the World Bank.

https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/11...

How is the government going to forcibly size a wallet? Are you suggesting they can break the crypto, or that they will compel people to divulge their keys?

"Today in an emergency bill, Congress made it an act of treason to move funds from bitcoin address 1BLABLABLAh555"

There are probably simpler methods, but if the United States really wanted to, they could probably buy/seize enough computers to pull a 51% attack.

That doesn't let them seize all the wallets.

You are not wrong to argue that state level actors are a serious threat.

But fortunately, these state actors seem to have no interest in attacking crypto.

It seems like the governments that matters IE the 1st world, are perfectly happy to allow people to have access to a censorship resistant method of financial transactions.

This makes a certain amount of sense. The governments of the 1st world claim to care a lot about freedom. And it seems that they are getting us have it.

Or you know, they love the idea of an immutable record that’s far from anonymous. Cash is hard to trace, a Bitcoin is easy to trace for something like the NSA. It’s a giant digital paper trail by design! Besides, Bitcoin is as likely to become a dominant currency as shells or promises. No one outside or BTC fanatics honestly entertain that idea, and only a few who do espouse it do so because they really think it’s likely. For obvious reasons hyping the currency translates directly into profit, so it’s hype all the way down.

Well, a couple of the cryptocirrencies out there have privacy baked in, such Monero.

I don't see any of these privacy coins being banned yet, so.....

But anyways that is besides the point.

The argument that the OP was making was that governments are areal threat to crypto. And MY point was that these governments are NOT actually attacking cryoptocurrencies so I guess things are going to work out fine for cryptocurrencies.

And MY point is that extrapolating too much from minimal data is unwise. If you’d like it put in historical terms, “...Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend...”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com