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Comment by fredfoobar | Hacker News Reader

Did you read the article?

"In India, despite government threats of a ban, transaction volumes are swelling and 8 million investors now hold 100 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) in crypto-investments, according to industry estimates."

All they will end up doing is push crypto into the dark markets. They simply do not have the capacity (or are sophisticated enough) to go after the crypto holders.

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Without a fiat off ramp trading crypto becomes less attractive as a speculative investment.

People have always been able to trade illicit products. The biggest example is drug trafficking. Would you like to become a drug trafficker? Similarly, you may be able to buy cryptocurrency, but if the government doesn't want it you'll be a law breaker.

I will not, but some one will and they'll sell it for a premium [1].

1: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/bitcoin-is-trading-at-a-46-p...

One key difference is drugs are physical products, you can be "caught" with it, whereas cryptocurrency is completely virtual. Unless you're caught at exchange time, you could be walking around with millions of dollars worth of crypto around and no one would know.

You could use the same argument for digital piracy. There’s countless examples of people who have been caught and penalized for piracy.

PC you use to transact is physical too. Your Internet can also be traced. In China, accessing wiki gets you prison time even though the users use VPN. Graphics cards for mining can be taxed very high. Kiddy porn is a better example here instead of drugs. You could be walking around with trillions usd in the form of diamonds. And yet if you're in a desert you are likely not able to use it and die of thirst. In everyday live you need liquidity. Governments ensure liquidity legally. Crypto can't. At best it is like rare baseball cards collections that you need to specifically find buyers that willing to pay for it through specialized locations (which governments can control). Pro cypto arguments are out of touch with realities. They basically banging on government will accept it. It is basically like hoping Myanmar will back off after seeing protestor. In general direct firing to kill should be expected and proven to work. Expecting government to give the ability to print money is very naive.

You could always run your transactions from a VPS in another country. Sure that won't work in China but India hasn't quite reached that level of totalitarianism.

Yeah and the bottom really dropped out on the drug market when the US criminalized it... oh wait, no the opposite happened.

That can't be compared. Drugs are addictive, which makes the decision to stop hard.

Legislation has been shown to work in nations which outlawed weapons for example.

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