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Comment by thedufer | Hacker News Reader

You could more concisely say that it is useful for completing transactions that are illegal, which encompasses nearly your entire list but I guess doesn't sound as nice.

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It’s so weird to see this argument on HN. It rings eerily similar to the “I got nothing to hide” argument in the discussion about surveillance.

I'm very curious how you got there. I certainly don't hold that belief. I do however hold the apparently very controversial view that we should have laws, and that they are pointless if they aren't enforceable. I think the only thing that really pins down about me is that I'm not an anarchist.

Any technology can be used to facilitate illegal activities. Vehicles, weapons, phones, computers... Nothing new here. Cryptocurrency is no different.

Crypto-currency’s _only_ use case today, other than speculation, is illegal payments. For almost everything else the traditional banking system is faster, cheaper, and safer.

It’s Saturday now in many places in the world. Can you move a few thousand USD between your two primary accounts at different traditional banks before Monday?

... yes? Faster Payments for my GBP balances and Prompt Pay for my THB ones tend to take a few seconds and be free?

Added bonus: both will confirm the recipient name, and if I truly, actually fuck up the payment, I can get the money back again rather than it disappearing into the ether.

Finally: the money I have transferred is now available to actually spend on things straight away, without needing to then reconvert it to real people money with a sizeable cost.

Don’t know, I’ve never had any need to do that. But I can pay a merchant $50 by credit card without spending $30 in transaction fees or waiting 30-60 minutes for confirmations.

Bitcoin Cash is the original and confirms in the next block for pennies.

«[Problem x] with cryptocurrency will be fixed by [new alt-coin] that’s just around the corner!»

Just because the US has (comparatively) bad banking infrastructure doesn't mean most places do, most of Europe can do this and has been able to for years (though probably in EUR). This includes some cross-border payments.

Instant payments should be coming to the US in 2023. See https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_faq.htm

And when you say "for years", it's really decades that this has been the norm for. In my experience it is the same in the more developed Asian countries, or really any high HDI country that is not the US.

Ok, but you're not denying the fact that it's a use case. Why should I have to suffer because the US financial infrastructure is stuck in the 1930s?

All technology becomes outdated at some point, if cryptocurrency is useful to me right now to perform basic financial operations how is that not a use case?

But you’re not moving spendable USD between your own accounts when you’re transferring Bitcoin, so it’s hard to see how this is related to your use case?

It's trivial to do that in Australia. Is this still a significant challenge in the US?

Our two major bank-to-bank payment rails are the Automated Clearing House (ACH) and Wire Transfer. Both are "closed" on weekends for some reason. One could probably use something with debit cards like Venmo or purchase and hand off a cashier's check.

Yes: Many banks, at least in the US, are now open for limited times on Saturdays & Sundays. I can walk into one bank, get a cashiers check, and bring it to another bank, all with zero transaction costs. And possibly faster than Bitcoin, depending on the transaction fee I was willing to pay.

To help people in the US: Zelle can do this I think? PayPal probably too.

The nice thing is that if your account is closed on the weekend, the thing you need to buy probably is too.

Here in Australia I can transfer up to $10,000 between traditional banks faster than I can with bitcoin, any day of the week.

Yes, and it’s also illegal to spend over $10k in cash in Australia. And there ain’t no government that can stop a person from sending infinity via bitcoin any day of the week. Even the ones that believes that the laws of math don’t apply there.

Update; this was cancelled in Dec 2020. Got very close, a jurisdiction banning cash tx’s. And that is why Cryptocurrency, non state money is important.

Nowhere did I disagree with what you've said, except for your final sentence. The interesting thing about cryptocurrency is not that it facilitates illegal activities, but that it does very little else - and that is in fact quite different from the rest of your list.

> The interesting thing about cryptocurrency is not that it facilitates illegal activities, but that it does very little else - and that is in fact quite different from the rest of your list.

How can the same people who make this argument turn around and in the same breath decry Bitcoin for being nothing more than a speculative store of value? You can’t have it both ways.

No one buys Bitcoin to spend it. This much is abundantly clear. And Bitcoin, as an inflation-proof global currency of fixed supply controlled by computer algorithms, never had to do anything other than sit there as an idle speculation to fulfill its primary role as safest safe haven asset. That’s what makes it such a powerful idea.

Do you support all Chinese government laws? How about all US laws? Do you support all laws of all governments?

Many here are fairly libertarian, at least regarding drugs. Do you agree with every classification of every drug in US law and that all punishment for them is perfectly appropriate?

In the past you’d be denied banking for the color of your skin or treated differently based on genitalia.

Illegal is only defined by imperfect governments. So yes, it allows for illegal things, that’s a great thing.

It also means you won’t have an account closed for thoughtcrime, or cheering the wrong political party. It means an authoritarian government can’t keep you locked there. And it means you can avoid myriad kafka-esque dystopic mishaps of “the system”, nightmarish AI flagging slip ups that close your account or prevent you from sending money to a relative in need in another county because it’s Sunday or you forgot to renew you drivers license.

Not to mention you can now use code to manipulate your money, give early users real equity in your company and design fully digital co-ops, avoid some of the burden of blatant classist laws like accredited investors, and design incentive mechanisms for your startup that are guaranteed in code.

There’s a technology out that you might like as a libertarian. The tech is untraceable, doesn’t have a built in chain of ownership logged on the internet, and everyone measures the value of their latest blockchain based off of it. It’s called cash.

Not a libertarian just a guy who doesn’t agree with every law everywhere.

Monero and other privacy coins don’t have a traceable ledger.

Now clear this up for me... how do you send a ton of cash anywhere in the world in minutes without risk? Is it easy to smuggle out of an authoritarian gov? Can you manipulate it with code?

Cash is a great way to pick up bitcoin anonymously though, you make a good point.

Maybe if someone can't remember to renew a license that asserts their competency in operating lethally dangerous machinery then they should also not be trusted with financial transactions until they resolve that situation.

Interesting that all of the pro-cryptocurrency folks read this as an attack. I quite carefully did not place value, positive or negative, on it. Perhaps the fact that you read it that way reveals your true thoughts on the matter.

No, I don't support all laws in pretty much any regime. But I do believe that the ability to enforce laws is important. The only thing that consistently works more poorly than having rules is not having any rules at all.

You are of course welcome to move to a lawless state if this is really what you want, but I suspect you would not find it to be the utopia you dream of.

> I guess doesn't sound as nice.

How is this anything but dismissive? Your whole post was insinuating it’s only utility is for illegal things, in context implying that’s what makes it non-valuable. If you weren’t making that claim, then there’s no point to your post. Don’t hide from your own claim and act coy now. It was obviously dismissive, and now just looks like you’re backsliding. Not to mention the straw man turning “some laws are bad and you should be able to resist them” into “live in a lawless state”. Or that you ignore the litany of non-illegal uses I added.

In fact, I’m skeptical of 99% of the field, I believe without PoS it should fail and isn’t worth the cost, and I was a harder skeptic until recently and changed my mind because I honestly believe I’ve seen some truly interesting uses now outside of being a freer currency.

Get outside of “pro” or “anti” box and think in terms of utilities and specifics, and if you reply reply to my specific claims.

So every contract can become backdoored and confirmations happen by chinese miners for 65%.

Thanks, but no thanks.

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