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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me that the article focuses on the limitations of actually using Bitcoin and its features, not the second-order effects on society at large.

If we consider second-order effects we can come up with a bunch more, including allowing drug sales, human trafficking, allows people to hide their assets and more. But again, seems focused on the limitations of the protocol and clients using it, not second-order effects.

Edit: I'm not saying Bitcoin are in fact causing all those things and I'm myself bullish on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. I'm only trying to reason why the environment impact was not brought up in the article itself.

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Thanks for the feedback. Definitely this would be an interesting topic to write about. Some people might reply: what about physical cash and gold? All the crimes you mentioned surely existed before Bitcoin was invented. Hiding assets is still possible without Bitcoin.

In fact, hiding assets is nearly impossible with Bitcoin. It’s pseudonymous, not anonymous, and once a wallet is depseudonymized (just nymized?), all past transactions to the beginning of Bitcoin are also known.

What is impossible with Bitcoin, though, is jurisdiction over transfers. Bank/guardian will obey the court, cops can blast your safe to get your gold - but without your wallet key, they can’t do anything.

Which is a big problem because authorities should have the possibilty to seize illegally obtained assets from convicted criminal individuals/organizations.

Well, they can at the “real world” interface. They can prevent it from being used, but they cannot confiscate it.

Whether this is a problem or advantage depends on your point of view; The people of Cyprus, who woke up one morning to discover that any deposits they have above 200KEur were unilaterally borrowed by the government until further notice, or the Americans whose gold was confiscated in the 1930s just before the USD devaluation, might have a different opinion than yours.

Personally, I think it’s a good idea for government to have such a power if and only if a proper system of checks and balances is in place ; and the ones currently available are less than stellar.

For the US, for example, I would rather have confiscation power require 50 state AG mulitisig (or at least, say, 40 of them) - the fiat system, as is, effectively allows one person to drive confiscation.

Also, yours is an argument against any bearer instrument. Consider gold or well hidden cash - if you don’t know where I put it or what the serial numbers are, you can’t confiscate it.

Human trafficking is a second order effect of bitcoin. Honestly... Why don't you find yourself a real villain... I hear oxygen is the great enabler of all sorts of evil.

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