> I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth... So, I think I should say modestly that the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interest of civilization.
I find it strange to criticize an asset for how it gets used in extremis. I feel like the same criticism could be levied against the dollar.
Not saying that it's true, necessarily. Just that the current balance isn't the end game and it's not totally fair to criticize a brand new tech/tool/whatever against well-established and well-optimized status quo.
I think it would be difficult to argue that it's useful primarily for buying your groceries.
I don't think Bitcoin advocates like following this train of thought any further than "USD is also used for crime".
My point is that this conversation is unfair:
Person A: I've just invented a new currency! I think it has better intrinsic properties than USD.
Person B: Well, I can't buy groceries with it right now, so it sucks.
Similar vein:
Person A: I've invented a new thing called the lightbulb. I think it will revolutionize lighting.
Person B: It's more expensive than oil lamps and electrifying buildings would be a massive undertaking. Lightbulbs suck.
As it was, they were primarily used for lighting rooms from the getgo.
I imagine some historian could probably dig up some sort of analog from 100+ years ago (possibly on tech that never did take off) but this isn't it.
I would like to buy groceries with it, but I don't want to hold much BTC for very long.
The things that make cash useful for money laundering and black market purchases also make it easy for me to quickly, and without unnecessary ceremony, drop a few dollars in a tip jar, give some money to a panhandler, split the bill at a restaurant, chip in to an office gift pool, pay my kids an allowance, envelope budget, buy ice cream from an ice cream truck, etc. etc. etc.
Bitcoin in particular fails miserably at these sorts of use cases because nobody wants to sit around waiting 10 minutes for a transaction to confirm over a $2 soft serve.
Crypto in general fail because they're complicated and fiddly to work with. This creates way, way too much friction these sorts of casual transactions, and effectively shuts out people who aren't technically sophisticated enough to feel comfortable messing around with this stuff.
That isn't to say that crypto doesn't work as a store of wealth. But, as a circulating, everyday currency, it seems to be stuck in the same situation that Linux on the Desktop has been for the past couple decades: for a variety of reasons, some of them very good and no real fault of its own, per se, the community just doesn't seem to be capable of sorting out the UX.
If you're trying to ban cash because you can buy illegal things with it, then you have a logic problem.
The same thing holds for BTC and illicit transactions.
All the negative stuff was going to happen anyway - including energy waste. Humans waste a lot of energy. Wikileaks on the other hand would have folded like an origami in any pre-cryptocurrency era.
This is the sort of press freedom that humanity has been longing for since ... I don't know. The birth of the press. It is really hard to financially abuse the truth out of conversation now. Which is part of why the blowback is so panicked.
Edit for spite: "contrary to the interest of civilisation" is the sound of a wealthy man who is friends with wealthy men who are terrified of what an organisation like Wikileaks could uncover.
If anything the last 2 years has shown me how fragile freedom is, and how much people are willing to give up freedom for safety and security. Sadly people like you and me that see Government as something that should be controlled and feared are in the minority as most people view government as the solution to all their problems, and as their moral compass.
How are bitcoin transactions slow? Bank transfers and credit card payments take forever to settle.
Of course, you could say all the same things about e2e encryption, which society seems to have decided - grudgingly, and with much pushback - is ultimately a good thing. But perhaps free speech and financial exchange are different animals, McCutcheon vs. the Federal Election Commission notwithstanding.
No one consulted me wrt the existence of other nations (outside my own) and their laws either, I'm not sure democracy needs to extend globally for all things.
To some degree, I think the "more/less democratic" argument is a little "whataboutism: individual freedoms are the goal of democracy, not the other way around, and btc/e2e are a form of power and civil disobedience that might help get them.
> undermining our organized institutions
Many of those institutions are private banks - they are not "mine", even though they get bailed out by tax money on occasion. Is it antisocial to be antisocial towards antisocial institutions?
> you could say all the same things about e2e encryption
You could, and the reason is a terrible record globally wrt privacy rights. I don't consider it a matter of free speech - free speech (to me) is primarily about what you can say/promote in public, privacy (to me) is about what you can keep private.
This is speculation with very little connection to reality. If you actually go on crime forums you will see that privacy coins are not as widely used as you might think.
If we're talking bigger fish it's speculation that they prefer cryptocurrency over traditional assets or cash in the first place. Follow the money and it often leads you to illegal activity. Banks like HSBC know all about laundering drug money and enabling scams.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-...
This is not true. A few big markets have switched, not “all”.
Besides drug markets, all the conventional cybercrime markets and forums still run on bitcoin.
Can you name a few of those "conventional" crime markets? I'm curious to know.
Fraud shops like unicc, ferum, slilpp move more money than darknet drug markets and primarily use BTC or LTC (I don’t think any accept XMR)
Hydra, the biggest darknet drug market still doesn’t accept monero.
Of course it would make sense for all of these people to be using monero, just like the efficient market hypothesis makes sense.
Hard to say what's the biggest shadow market of course but afaik WHM is the largest one for drugs and they only accept Monero. You're right, Bitcoin is still popular in the Russian forums, but that's at least partly because it's easier to cash it out anonymously over there. Lots of services that let you exchange your BTC for cash and my guess is the remaining coins just go through tumblers until they're clean.
https://news.bitcoin.com/darknet-giant-white-house-market-dr...
Bitcoin has many of the traceability problems as cash, while also being easier to transact. While I personally think it's a good thing that companies banned from traditional banking / merchant services are using Bitcoin to fund their operations, there is a reason for them using it.
Also, is it "in extremis"? It seems like the vast majority of transactions of crypto are for ransomware, contraband (guns, drugs, humans), or exchange between speculators.
Are transactions relevant though? A lot of BTC is just being held, presumably for the sake of future popularity. You could see BTC investment as a bet on the future of BTC as a normal/common currency.
Yes, I totally agree. The question is: what has to happen before it's a common currency?
See my other comment for my thoughts on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27104956
Much like piracy prevented the most deranged attempts of the copyright industry - cyber-currency may put limits on state seizures and overtaxing.
At least for now BTC isn't anonymous (leaves a public paper trail) so it's not so perfect for crime. And an anonymous currency will still be liable at the entry/exit points.
I very much doubt that. Its primary uses are probably porn and researching embarrassing medical conditions.
And TOR is rarely used. Journalists use apps like Signal now.
Absolutely not. Internet censorship is growing rapidly - worldwide.
A lot of "legitimate" websites like newspapers get blocked around the world and can only be accessed over Tor.
Signal does not let public fund jurnalists.
To say that stocks are about owning a company in practice is the same as saying bitcoin is just money like the dollar. It's true in theory, but it's not the practical reality of this moment in history.
However, my point is that people are not buying stocks to own OR to benefit the company. They're buying stock so that a "bigger sucker" will come around later and buy it from them and they can make a profit.
So I guess it depends on who we're talking about when we say "primary purpose", but for anyone who is purchasing stocks, the primary purpose is NOT to be an owner of a company. The primary purpose is to speculate.
Additionally the people who own shares own the company so what benefits the shareholders benefits the company and vice versa as their interests are the same.
Incorrect. That's what keeps the market for the stock liquid, and that contributes to value which the company can exploit through future stock issuing. Not to mention the indirect benefits to stakeholders within the company in terms of price and liquidity.
That is still a significant minority compared to USD as a whole. BTC as a whole is used for just that and gambling.
And it make sense that it would be so low. Let’s say you just got $1M in Bitcoin and you have to pay your suppliers $500k in cold cash. Not going to happen. Only from other criminals that take profits in cash. But there is obviously a limit to that. I think the point is that those 2% can help a lot in fighting the 25%.
The fear is that illegal commerce could be conducted without fiat conversion. That would require that regular commerce would also be done in the same currency that the criminals use. This is fiat’s game to lose.
And by the way, this is why I love crypto. It has promise as an amazing technology for choosing financial participation according to personal and private community values. Although I’ll admit we’re not there yet, and a lot of the stuff might now be owned by people we wouldn’t want to have power over us. We’re still in the phase of speculation and fear and power struggles. I just hope that fear of the old power structures doesn’t bring good people to ally with values that we would not want in a new system.
That's why people need to call BS on the current hype train. Otherwise, when a sufficient solution surfaces, people are going to distrust it just as much as the old power structures. And I'd say we're already getting close to that point.
The problem is, with equal distrust, people will tend to choose the option that doesn't require change.
I’m kind of neutral on which financial system prevails so long as it’s the best for society. I stand to gain a lot more if it’s the cypherpunk version, but, I’m not sure that the conditions that would bring that on would be good. The rule of all aspects of society by a maniacal banking elite is pretty dystopic too though.
Ultimately I think the best monetary system will emerge through competition among societies. Obsolescence more than decision. That might take a long time, and perhaps it’s too hopeful. What evidence do I have for that?
Overall how you feel about this in aggregate will depend on how comfortable you are with government power. Let’s even ignore the fact that Bitcoin today is being used to circumvent unquestionably oppressive governments (Venezuela, China, Iran). Even as a hardened libertarian, I’ll freely admit that Americans and Europeans live under a generally fair and just government. Bitcoin is still worth it as a fail safe against future totalitarianism.
It’s the same reason I support the Second Amendment. Having a bunch of people run around with guns probably doesn’t help much today, and may even have ongoing social costs. But it would make things a hell of a lot harder for any would be tyrants. Not that it’d be impossible, but small frictions can have big impacts on the course of history. That’s a civilizational insurance policy worth paying.
Yet, somehow the rest of the democratic world spins around just fine without millions of semi-automatic weapons sloshing about.
There’s only four independent democracies uninterrupted over the past century. Two have widespread civilian firearm ownership.
Are you suggesting that a few extra light weapons floating around in the 1930s would have stopped the Nazis and Soviets steam rolling across the Europe?
Are you suggesting civilian firearm ownership somehow prevented the Nazis from skipping over the Atlantic and taking over America? Why did America waste all that money on submarines and aircraft carriers, when they had such deep reserves of plucky gun enthusiasts at the ready?
I'm so confused by your comment.
No leader has unilateral control to unleash the full force of the military on their own citizenry. Imagine what would happen if POTUS tried to order a nuclear strike, or even aerial bombing, on an American city? The Joint Chiefs would almost certainly arrest him immediately. Ordering soldiers to fire on their fellow citizens drastically raises the probability of outright mutiny. This is true even in the most oppressive regimes. Even the Nazis were genuinely scared of average German citizens turning on them for perceived abuses.[3]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_revolution_of_2011 [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-go_area [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Netherlands#The_...
None of the no-go areas sound like historical examples you would want to follow unless you like anarchy. They are messy pro-longed conflicts unlike eg Euromaidan.
An intended hypothetical use, or actual use in paying for goods or services now?
In Bitcoin that use case is wealth transfer that is uninhibited by law.
That essentially makes it kind of like an index tracker for the underground economy.
I don't disagree that it's an underground economy, but that's only because it hasn't hit the mainstream. But being underground doesn't necessarily mean nefarious or illegal. Those bad actors definitely exist in the Bitcoin economy and all other economies. But without some data I'm having trouble coming around to the idea that the majority of Bitcoin is used for illegal purposes.
I find it hard to believe that anything beyond a small minority of transactions are the "good kind of underground transaction".