CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies | Hacker News Reader

CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

netherlandsnewslive.com

55 pointsBreathHiker204 comments

Everyone needs to ban Bitcoin... and likely other cryptocurrencies. Not only are they by far the biggest enablers of ransomware (which we're supposedly taking seriously now), but Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. [1] Bitcoin already consumes 0.55% of energy produced globally. [2]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

[2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...

We need to ban all proof-of-work and generally all resource intensive cryptocurrencies.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe we should in general ban things that are a certain amount less energy efficient (say, 5x more wasteful) than the best technology we've achieved for a similar purpose so far. And progressively tax anything that's moderately more wasteful (say, 2x-5x). It's bad enough that we have cars on roads that are twice as wasteful as they could be, let alone a transaction processing mechanism that is literally a million times more wasteful than our existing technology.

Clears throat... [0]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report...

...and the US military effectively backs the dollar, which makes this the energy footprint of the dollar.

meanwhile, gold stripmines the soil in poor countries, where children die in mines, while the loot is carried off to the west, AND it uses much more energy than bitcoin.

and bitcoin is technology to replace, at least partially, those two things. And like a car versus a bike, it does so with more utility: better to store, better to transport, better to divide into units.

and it can use energy anywhere, whereas banks and gold mining have to use it where there is gold and people to use banks, which means that energy for these uses is actually newly made for this purpose. Bitcoin often and increasingly uses energy that was made, but not used: 1/3 of all global energy production is produced and then just seeps into the metaphorical ground, which is necessary as a network safety measure. Bitcoin miners put their ASICs there and take it, meaning no additional energy was produced and the opposite of waste occured: it prevented waste. Not to speak of the fact that bitcoin incentivizes green energy, because solar and wind are problematic for everyday use (bc you're so highly dependent on the whims of nature). Bitcoin is not your dryer; it can run whenenever it happens to be there, thereby increasing the efficiency of renewables massively.

This whole argument suffers from a lot of ignorance about what's actually going on here.

This makes no sense. Are you suggesting that e.g. the US military wouldn't exist if the US used bitcoin rather than dollars? And similarly for other currency+military combos? That strikes me as really implausible.

I think the best representation of the argument is that if governments couldn’t print fiat they wouldn’t be able to fund huge militaries and we’d have less destructive wars.

It seems fairly utopian to me, given that wars existed on the gold standard too, and if they were less destructive it was for want of technology. But maybe if I held Bitcoin I’d be more inclined to believe it was the solution to world peace.

FDR confiscated all gold to thwart the Great Depression and fund the war effort, and froze bank accounts for a handful of days, a Bank Holiday. For better or worse, it would be much more difficult to do this with btc.

Let's hope we never get to test this hypothetical, because it might even be easier to confiscate BTC - certainly to merely destroy BTC, and thus raise the value of your own. When a physical force comes knocking, it's going to be tricky to resist sharing a key - and unlike physical stores of value, digital trails of ownership might make it quite a lot trickier to deny ownership; it really depends on how much information that occupying force has.

Also, it's trivial to freeze BTC accounts too; that just means controlling the network - which in the even of a physical occupation is going to be obvious anyhow.

Then there's the fact that occupiers may be able to engage in a 50% attack (assuming occupation is large scale and impacts many miners) - and may well force usage of their fork of the chain, even in absence of a global 50% control, making the whole thing rather tricky to predict.

Let's hope it never comes to that, but I'm certainly not convinced BTC would be immune from a physically occupying force's influence. I bet it depends hugely on the details of that occupation.

I think the argument is that the dollar would not be the worlds reserve currency if it was not for the US military. The value of the dollar is in part attributable to the US military. We know the dollar wont collapse and be worthless overnight because e.g Russia invaded the USA. This wont happen because of the US military, not because the dollar is inherently special.

I'm not saying you're wrong but of course it's not that easy. Using your argument we could ban all cars because there are bicycles and they are vastly more efficient.

Or we ban heating in houses because you can just wear warmer clothes instead.

No, you're just turning what I said into a strawman. A bike is far more limited in what it can achieve than a car. And home heating heats a lot more than just the people inside.

Note that I didn't claim it's easy to come up with a good way to do this. You might have to settle for some partial progress. But that doesn't mean I'm putting up a strawman either.

> we could ban all cars because there are bicycles

I would actually support this for urban areas. I wish more people would see that this would significantly benefit everyone.

No, please don't tax something because it is wasteful or not, but tax something based on how much resources it uses. In fact, tax the resource usage not the activity.

Even an extremely efficient car uses a ton of energy to move around. New cars often have engines in the multiple hundred kW range, which is insane compared to any other appliance you own.

If fossil fuels were taxed properly, that would discourage using/wasting fossil fuels. But please don't tax based on what you feel is acceptable usage was wasteful usage, cause the atmosphere does not care if the CO2 came from kerosene on a plane bringing tourists to vacation, or if it was used to power the ambulance that brings you to the hospital.

But when we tax all fossil fuel uses equally and heavily, I'm sure the ambulances will still drive around cause they save lives, but weekend trips to the other side of the Atlantic will be a thing of the past.

> No, please don't tax something because it is wasteful or not, but tax something based on how much resources it uses.

"Wasteful" = "using more resources than it genuinely needs". We're saying very, very similar things here. I don't find the difference between them significant enough to be worth arguing about honestly. I'm just suggesting an alternative that I think might be more viable, but if we go with your proposal, that's enough progress to make me happy.

> "using more resources than it genuinely needs"

Are you going to create a commission which decides what a "genuine resource usage" is?

> Are you going to create a commission which decides what a "genuine resource usage" is?

Uhm... if it's necessary, sure? I already suggested a starting point: the current state-of-the-art provides a baseline to compare against. If we need a commission to gauge this, then sure, how about have an agency like the EPA or DoE figure it out. We can even give a good name to products that meet high energy-efficiency standards... like, I don't know, maybe "Energy Star"?

Right, so do we ban cars because bicycles are more efficient?

It's semantics, but in this case, semantics do matter. There's a real difference in result between taxing gasoline per gallon and taxing the ownership of a fuel-inefficient vehicle.

The latter is roughly equivalent to the US's CAFE standards and leads to gaming the system by manufacturers.

The former is much harder to game - either you use the gasoline (and paid the tax at purchase) or you don't. Doesn't matter (to the tax authority) what car you drive - only how much gasoline you burn.

The problem with bitcoin mining is that it is really easy to move the servers to a different country that does not have this tax.

A million? Can you back this up somehow? Did you take in account the infrastructure and offices of our existing "technology"?

> Equivalent to the carbon footprint of 1,659,173 VISA transactions or 124,768 hours of watching Youtube.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

And YouTube streams 1 billion hours of video a day, what's the carbon footprint of that? Is watching despacito or gangnam style really better for the world than a bitcoin transaction? Is it worse? Who is the arbiter if these decisions?

You can make a rough estimate of e.g. the CO2 emissions due to youtube and bitcoin, and thus get an idea of how the two relate.

E.g. a quick google finds this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22256-3 or this https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952 - so let's say bitcoin uses 150 TWh in 2021. Here's another one: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

By contrast, various sources list global datacenter power usage as "just" ~200TWh (e.g. https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-str... or https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-d...) and it's likely the average datacenter isn't as reliant on coal power plants in china as bitcoin is, so I'd say it's at least plausible that bitcoin by itself emits as much if not more CO2 than all the worlds datacenters combined. Let alone just teeny singular sites like youtube.

Of course, if you're going to include client power consumption, that's a different story... Then again, a youtube video is an actual desirable product in and of itself, whereas a bitcoin transaction is not; it's just a way to (perhaps in the future) acquire something desirable.

Ideally we'd price carbon conservatively (i.e. higher than necessary), and then this would all be a moot point. However, by the time we get all the relevant countries on board with that, and get democrats and republicans to sufficiently cooperate (even harder), the universe's heat death is likely nigh, so perhaps in the interim it's reasonable to just outright ban exceptionally pointless wasteful activities such as bitcoin mining.

Look just be honest with yourself, you were in a prime position to buy bitcoin early (you are on HN so you likely heard about it before, let's say 2013). And you didn't, so your vested interest is in it failing. The environmental considerations just give you the flag to rally around. Your comment history has plenty of negative mentions of cryptocurrency/BTC but I cannot find anything related to environmental concern that is not cryptocurrency related. I also have never seen a comment where you want to ban something, does that mean that bitcoin is the only " exceptionally pointless wasteful activity" that you know of? If so, even that should tell you something about your true motives, if not where do you protest about these other activities?

I don't protest the obvious. There's little discussion about the harms of global warming in general; this is a generally accepted fact, at least to most people I engage with. The same can not be said about cryptocurrencies and their harms; this is an argument worth having, precisely because people have not yet fully acknowledged the problems. Also: it's remarkable that you've so fully analyzed my personality in 5 minutes.

In any case, to reiterate my counterpoint (which you have not disputed, but given your ad hominem I assume you don't agree with): estimating at least an order of magnitude impact of bitcoin isn't that hard, so your suggestion that it's hopeless to compare somebody streaming gangnam style with a bitcoin transaction is unfounded. One can compare bitcoins environmental impacts with other environmental impacts.

> And you didn't, so your vested interest is in it failing.

Why does he have a "vested interest" in Bitcoin failing? Are you sure you know what "vested" means? :-)

Do you mean to say that he wants Bitcoin to fail because he's bitter?

We will see if Bitcoin is relevant in 5-10 years from now. My guess: it will be a niche thing with a very narrow set of uses.

If anything, you sound a bit like a Bitcoin supporter (maybe an investor?), so you sound more like someone who has a <<vested>> interest in it succeeding.

I know what vested means, there can be a financial element to it but that is not a requirement:

definition: 'a personal reason for involvement in an undertaking or situation'

The personal reason here may well be bitterness, but that was your word not mine.

If, in 2011, we were discussing what bitcoin succeeding looks like, I would have said that if it was worth 5 figures (and I would have meant low 5 figures, so $10,000) it had succeeded. If, alongside the value, my parents knew what it was (not through me) then it would have succeeded.

In truth I would also have expected it to take closer to 20 years to reach that point. So in my mind it has succeeded. It is still around over a decade later, it surpassed the dollar value I would have assigned success even without this latest runup. There are few people in the world, who have internet acccess, who have not heard of it.

So I disagree with you, because on metrics I would have measured it with in 2011 it has met and exceeded them. Therefore it has succeeded already. I have skin in the game, so perhaps I have a vested interest, but only in as much as it would make me more money than it already has. And I dont need more money. If it went to zero tomorrow my life would not change.

Do you take in to account the infrastructure and offices of new technology? Do you take in to account how many people does the new technology serve compared to existing? Do you take in to account how many services does the new technology provide compared to the existing?

So all websites which are slow will be taxed? Yes please!

> literally a million times more wasteful than our existing technology

This is not a fair comparison. Did you count all the banking services and data centers? Also, cryptocurrencies provide features which banks can't provide, e.g., independence on a third party.

But a cryptocurrency-backed exchange does not provide independence of a third party; so a in the pretty implausible hypothetical that you'd ban systems so gratuitously inefficient, you could make the argument that peer-to-peer transactions are OK, but that case is harder to make for exchanges.

I mean, not that this kind of ban is likely to happen; it's probably not even a good idea (unless we can be much more specific about what counts as wasteful, and what counts as comparable existing technology, and have a way to make that simple, please no patent prior art search 2.0 nonsense).

Even if cryptocurrencies had unique features that some people demand, the fact remains that these cryptocurrencies could provide the same exact features without wasting enormous amounts of energy (e.g. by using a "proof of stake" mechanism). Therefore the wastefulness can't be justified on these grounds.

While I feel like the words you used caused some debate, if I’m understanding the premise correctly I think you’re on to something:

If a technology is objectively more wasteful than it could be it should be penalized, and as we move forward with newer/better/more efficient technologies the standards bar should raise with them.

For anyone who has further concerns: let’s imagine that we have a magic calculator that tells us the total and complete cost of anything, from the true local socioeconomic impact of extracting materials to the CO2 emitted in production to the cumulative future cost of disposing of it. And that we could use that as the measuring stick.

One energy-efficient approach is the one used by the Pi network: - https://minepi.com/

The whitepaper is pretty detailed about how they avoid the proof of work and the energy waste associated: - https://minepi.com/white-paper

If cryptos really make it in their ideological goal of a truly free capitalistic society, something like Pi which can be mined by everyone will have to win out over Bitcoin which can be "produced" only by already rich.

Based on some quick reading, Pi is a scam. There is no blockchain or 'mining' happening, they instead get you to watch ads on your phone every so often.

There are real, blockchain-based cryptocurrencies which are much more energy efficient than proof of work. Cardano currently being the biggest one by market cap. It's still a relatively 'new' space, but I hate seeing it crowded by so many scam products.

I have little faith in a coin that claims in its whitepaper "Pi creates a fixed supply of Pi for each person that joins the network up to the first 100 Million participants" without so much as mentioning Sybil attacks.

Global warming above 2°C will happen just by the nature of n-th order effects. Trees burning, methane stored in tundra getting released can have decades of CO2 equivalent emissions compared to 1 human civilization year.

Bitcoin has a small effect compared to everything else we do and everything else that will happen.

Human civilization isn't exactly living as optimal as possible and I do not see why Bitcoin needs to be the thing we optimize.

There's Las Vegas, having AC 24/7, cooling the streets from open casino doors. There's individuals feasting on steaks every single day, every single meal.

Looking through the eyes of a frugal optimizer, should we ban that too?

Maybe?

Although, which one do you think is easier to ban?

If cryptocurrencies were to disappear tomorrow, would the everyday life change? And if we ban meat? Which one do you think will encounter the most resistance? So which one is the most feasible? And then, which one do you think has the best return on investment?

Best return on investment is most definitely finding new ways to produce energy and new ways to sequester greenhouse gases.

Anything else is a minor dampener to an exponential process.

Getting rid of Bitcoin is absolutely nothing compared to our exponentially increasing energy needs.

Lowering greenhouse emissions to 0 today would still result in dire consequences when the temperature increase comes, just from the massive n-th order effects.

I have no idea how the opinion of Bitcoin being so detrimental to climate came to fruition and how it's considered plausible at all.

Whether we develop new clean energies without reducing our energy consumption, or we reduce our consumption while doing the development, can make the difference between catastrophic failure and hope.

This is why I think it is important.

It came to fruition because it’s creating vast new wealth in a fashion that is directly competitive to old wealth. It’s also easy because climate change is a real, pressing existential crisis. Take this with the caveat that most people won’t think past the headline, so lots of people don’t get to the obvious conclusion of “the way we generate power is the root problem”

Lowering to zero doesn’t solve the problem, but it would help give us a longer runway.

But should we focus our efforts banning things that won’t change the way people have to live? That seems like an easy way to fail.

Further, Bitcoin is not the main issue. BTC being clean or dirty is based on the underlying issue of dirty power generation. How about we ban dirty power generation instead? Attack the actual, underlying problem.

Good luck banning internet access.

Even if you ban crypto exchanges and money transfers to them, you cannot ban a single entity called Bitcoin Co, nor you can ban individuals from possessing it.

You could potentially ban crypto miners from using the electrical energy, but that doesn't ban Bitcoin either.

Any other ideas? :)

If you can't exchange your crypto currency against fiat it will become worthless.

I have a bridge to sell you. I mean, a big chunk of the market transactions are favors and unwritten agreements. Someone helps to close an important deal and gets some bitcoins later on an off the books wallet.

Exactly right. Money that can't be spent is worthless and without exchanges that's exactly what cryptocurrencies would become.

I can exchange it with the guy down the street like I currently do, how are you going to stop this? LOL

That sounds rather combersome. What is the guy down the street going to do with it?

Same thing any one does with money.

The point is that bitcoin exited before there where institutions built around it, you can ban those institutions you can ban coal power plants you can ban whatever you want people will still continue to use it the way they currently do.

Mine bitcoin on renewable energy not connected to the grid and transact with each other not large institutions, if you want to ban bitcoin you need to prevent the core value of bitcoin not just show off your fud.

> Same thing any one does with money.

Let's see.. i earn my wage with money. I pay my taxes with money. I pay everything with money. I can pay almost nothing with bitcoin and it's getting worse.

> people will still continue to use it [bitcoin] the way they currently do

They are using it for speculation and for ransomware. Seems like both of these uses will be hindered by outlawing all official exchanges.

> Any other ideas? :)

Yeah, make it illegal.

What you think banning means

Merely banning exchanges or mining != making Bitcoin usage illegal in general (including buying/selling/transfer/etc.)

And how exactly do you make it illegal? Arrest people that own Bitcoin? Or ban them from the internet.

Good luck with that :)

Yes, some people will ignore the law and it's impossible for law enforcement to catch all law breaker. Great insight.

I guess we might just as well make murder legal as well, since it's some people will still kill each other no whether it's illegal or not.

There is a big difference between things that are directly harming to other people and things that the gov bans because they think they know better :)

It is basically saying: You are forced to participate in our inflationary financial system or we will arrest you.

Bitcoins are directly harming people!

Climate change will probably kill millions and Bitcoin is creating an economical incetive to accelerate it.

This way I can also reason that you are also directly harming people because you breath in Oxygen and breath out CO2.

By shopping for food you are also creating an economical incentive for companies to produce which accelerates climate change.

Please, lets be serious and reasonable.

Bitcoin probably creates more incentives for renewable energy (because it enables to "store" it) than any other initiative.

Cut off its access to the global banking and finance system. That will curb its usage real quick.

How?

Making laws that prohibit purchasing, selling or holding bitcoin, with penalties.

Laws already exist requiring gatekeepers of the financial system (e.g. Banks and payment processors) to monitor transactions on illegalities, e.g. money laundering. Bitcoin would just be added to the list. Banks are required to set-up their own systems for this. It'd be trivial for banks to find out which bank accounts are owned by exchanges or bitcoin companies like Coinbase, and close those bank accounts, as well as freeze any transactions to these bank accounts. New companies can't open new accounts. If you try to make transactions you get your money frozen/seized. And even if you hold bitcoin, to use your profits (e.g. to buy a house, a car, pay rent) you'd need to go back to dollars through a bank, or launder tons of cash, or find a counterparty to your transaction willing to illegally accept bitcoin e.g. when selling his house, all things extremely unlikely to happen at any scale by regular joes.

At that point the amount of capital flowing to bitcoin will massively decline and bitcoin plummets. Nobody is investing in an asset class speculatively if the only way to buy it is to go to a street corner and meet up with an Internet Guy with a bunch of cash. That's fine for buying drugs, it's not going to drive a trillion dollar market cap (like today) illegal virtual coin that's otherwise useless.

As everyone else is saying: ban the points of contact. It's basically going to look like the War On Drugs (ironic, for NL). And likewise, it won't be 100% effective.

All of the following are entirely feasible measures for "banning bitcoin" that are already applied to other things:

- directly ban sales or receipts through normal financial intermediaries (banks etc). Try to wire money to Coinbase and get prosecuted.

- directly ban advertising of cryptocurrency products (problem here is you hit the celebrities, good luck prosecuting Musk in NL)

- directly ban holding or making cryptocurrency transactions. Not very effective, but provides an additional charge that can be made against people who've been prosecuted and had their computers seized for other reasons (e.g. drugs, CP). Incidentally criminalizes paying ransoms!

- use all the anti-CP measures against Bitcoin related sites; put the exchanges and known network nodes on the IWF blocklist.

- put bitcoin related software on AV alert lists (I think this has already happened with miner software because it keeps getting installed by malware)

- add it to the list of things checked in border phone sweeps. I don't think NL does a lot of these, but you occasionally hear about the US doing them. Some countries have also started doing device searches as part of other police searches, e.g. https://www.scotland.police.uk/spa-media/zqxibu3s/cyber-kios... ; combine with the ban on crypto tech and this can be used to prosecute people for having cryptocurrency apps on their phones.

Does anyone else remember the "crypto is a munition" era? It used to be illegal to export actually secure crypto from the US, which meant in practice it was illegal to host it on US-based websites. I'm not sure it's possible to go back to that era, but it's possible to imagine github banning crypto-related apps due to international pressure.

The majority of bitcoin is mined directly on renewable energy because of the cost savings, they don't use the grid I dunno how the government would shut that down unless they just banned renewable energy LOL. The amount of fud around crypto is silly.

Yes this is the current mainstream media propaganda against cryptos, thanks for that.

Ban knifes! The biggest enabler of stabbings!

Because the cost/benefit ratio of Bitcoin is even on the same planet as that of knives?

Yeah, but they are talking about crypto not bitcoin. It's like banning knives because one type use to stab

Replace Bitcoin with cryptocurrencies in my comment.

You do it. You can edit your comments.

No I can't.

https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/poundland/poundland-writes-to-po...

Another option is to also regulate it into oblivion.

Bitcoin is the biggest enabler of cheap renewable energy, gtfo with the list about bitcoin causing global warming. It is getting ridiculous.

Pollution causes fucking global warming, ships, cars industry concrete. This idiotic scapegoat of BTC is killing the planet is akin to the crying Indian campaign.

Its a misdirection to avoid talking about real causes and solutions to global warming.

Thats bs. Everything that requires energy advances global warming. Bitcoin is a disaster compared to any other value or money transfer. Everybody mining bitcoin is using the cheapest energy source available which currently is coal. Get your facts right, stop destroying the world of our children!

>Everybody mining bitcoin...

This is just demonstrably false.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-m...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-27/bitcoin-m...

https://www.waterpowermagazine.com/news/newsbitcoin-mining-p...

I could go on, but I won't, I just wanted to show how hysterical and full of BS you and people like you are.

How nice that all energy magically appears out of nowhere to generate the power needed by bitcoin. As if the power to heat your meal and home is suddently not needed anymore when you have your nice valuable bitcoins.

The world is already struggling to keep up with the rising power requirements from all the sectors, from production, households and transportation. One of the large problems moving to renewable power sources is, that it's hard to replace current power sources and keep up with the rising power demand. By increasing power demand, older power plants that are worse for the environment must be kept running for a longer time.

the comment I replied to said all bitcoin mining is done exclusively with coal. I never made claims, I merely pointed out the original statement was incorrect and offered evidence to support it.

So what is your point in relation to that? Am I wrong? Is my evidence not sufficient? Do you also believe all bitcoin mining is powered by coal?

I dont assume that bitcoin is only powered by coal. Some website mentioned 85%. With its 150 TWh it uses thats a 130TWh in from coal power plants. Thats about 24 Coal power plants that could be shut down, if bitcoin would disappear today (usa has 241 coal power plants with approximately 1300 THw produced). I do think that will make a difference, especially because the power demand of bitcoin is getting worse.

You stated exactly that:

>Everybody mining bitcoin is using the cheapest energy source available which currently is coal.

'Some website said...' some other website said vaccines will make my arm magnetic. Doesn't make it true. Don't spout nonsense just because you agree with it, check the veracity of the statement first.

>Thats about 24 Coal power plants that could be shut down, if bitcoin would disappear today

No they wouldn't. They existed before bitcoin, they will exist even if bitcoin is outlawed and shut down. The demand would come from elsewhere, but if you understand power generation you would also know that gas and coal power stations are used to keep a base level of power on the grid, solar doesn't generate at night and wind doesn't always blow. Hydro power cannot be transported everywhere it is needed. So coal, gas and nuclear make up the rest. Until we get better storage they will continue to be used and required.

Honestly this comment of yours has just highlighted how little you know about the subject. You don't even mention which website but I can guess it's digiconomist, which has been debunked before. That site relies on showing extreme figures to get page views.

>How nice that all energy magically appears out of nowhere to generate the power needed by bitcoin.

How nice that all energy magically appears out of nowhere to generate the power needed by youtube cat videos.

Netflix

Porn

insert anything that uses electricity.

> Bitcoin is a disaster compared to any other value or money transfer.

You mean to facilitate money transfer between banks it only take a bit of electricity. But you dont consider the needs of whole organisation called bank to work. Staff commuting, maintenance, running bills etc. All of that produces pollution. So your simple analogy suddenly is not that simple (as any simple explanation to complicated problem).

> stop destroying the world of our children!

Gtfo, what is this republican rally?? 'Think of the childed, oh no, oh woes!'

How about we stop fossil fuel lobbies attacking green initiatives, how about we stop cruse ship industry and mindless consumption from a cheap plastic crap to new electronics iterations every 1/2 a year. Wasteful packaging, imports of non-seasonal foods, rocket lunches of useless crap into orbit akin to star link at el. American army was running country wide program of air-conn desert camps for it troops for what 20 years. A fucking 24/7 AC of a desert not to mention about of carbon wasted shooting/bombing/occupying Afghanistan to literally zero effect. What about those ''none issues'' ?? But no, the evil BTC is the only thing to fight to save the world for the children.

> You mean to facilitate money transfer between banks it only take a bit of electricity....

So nice to see that bitcoin is giving out loans. Is available to my grandmother. Can be used to pay at every corner in the city. Or does it?

> Gtfo, what is this republican rally??

I am always amused by the limited world view. Its not about democrats or republicans, in this world (you know, that thing outside the us?). There are more political views than their agendas.

> How about we stop fossil fuel lobbies attacking green initiatives, ...

It's nice that you know so many other things that should be addressed as well. But it's no reason not to stop bitcoin from wasting all that power.

> I am always amused by the limited world view

Its funny that you say that and then present a 1 dimensional view of the world.

Haven't really addressed my point just running around the issues trying desperately to shift the goalpost. Address my actual point or don't waste my time.

I suppose by this you mean Bitcoin incentivizes investment in ever-cheaper electricity generation, but does this actually result in cheaper electricity for other purposes, or would the Bitcoin demand simply expand to consume all of that cheap electricity?

Cheap plastic disposable goods shipped from China on polluting cargo ships are a huge source of environmental damage. This is a direct result of consumerism. Where is the plan to deal with that? Bitcoin energy use is just a stick used to beat it, it is not a genuine concern. Why? Because most people who raise the issue are not green environmentalists, they are just bitcoin detractors. They don't highlight the issues with energy use in other sectors, they don't worry about the emissions from concrete production and building etc. Why? Because complaining about them does not further their goal.

> Because most people who raise the issue are not green environmentalists, they are just bitcoin detractors.

Why would someone be a Bitcoin detractor if not for environmental reasons?

I agree, literally the only negative is it's current energy use, but even that has been blown out of proportion and has not been fairly compared with the energy use of other sectors and technologies.

Aside from the environmental issue, I think Bitcoin is a poorly designed currency that ignores economic history/principles.

I have a really low expectation of it being able to provide price stability.

Bad whataboutism is bad.

> Cheap plastic disposable goods shipped from China on polluting cargo ships are a huge source of environmental damage

New regulations are here about polluting ships. Single use plastics are (progressively) being banned - in the EU they're heavily taxed and will be absolutely banned since ~2022.

The use and release of CFCs was banned worldwide in 2000.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/ozone-layer-recov...

You think China will care? they will keep producing whatever makes money until they are caught, and not just Chinese companies, plenty in the developing world will circumvent legislation. And in the US they just don't bother with regulations to disregard. The Mississippi River carries an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of nitrogen pollution into the Gulf of Mexico each year, creating a “dead zone” in the Gulf each summer about the size of New Jersey.

This happens because there are no regulations to prevent the dumping of untreated waste into the Mississippi

Well, a country can't _really_ ban bitcoin and other crypto currency because of its decentralised nature. As longs as there is usefulness to it, there will always be people vying to make it a thing. The governments can collectively make it unusable - prevent all financial institutions from recognising it, and never exchange their currency to these crypto coins. This way, sure bitcoins will continue to exist, and there will always be someone stealing power to mine them, but it becomes worthless without the ability to convert to usable currencies you can buy stuff with. If BTC -> USD/EUR/etc becomes too difficult, bitcoin becomes like Monopoly money right?

Sure they can. Ban all legal exchanges, continue auditing income as usual usual. Bitcoin will still exist for illegal purposes, but that's fine.

Bitcoin is a public ledger. I dont understand how a zero-privacy blockchain would be the biggest enabler of ransomware? Isnt TCP/IP a bigger enabler?

SHA-256 came out of the NSA. Didnt the FBI retrieve the Bitcoin from the pipeline ransomware attack? They have lots of tradecraft at their disposal that we cannot know of.

The main argument against crypto is actually an argument against the way we generate power. If our power generation wasn’t so dirty, this argument against crypto goes away.

Banning crypto isn’t going to fix the root cause.

So maybe we should ban crypto until the world reaches net zero emissions?

Why not ban electricity since its the culprit?

These claims have both been debunked. The majority of energy used by bitcoin is renewable [1]. Ransomware was enabled by credit cards before bitcoin was a thing. The increase in ransomware is because of the increase in the value of that data not the ability to extort.

[1] https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/36672/renewable-energy-...

Blanket statements like these come from privilege. That a supposedly vanishingly small amount of people use crypto to transact and safeguard the fruits of their labor is irrelevant because, well, I know I exist.

To me, the value Bitcoin brings to the table is much, much greater than the one from countries that enforce unjust embargoes and overthrow governments only to replace them with even worse dictators... and also pollute the planet.

Also, specifically on the second article you linked: it references the first and even mentions why such runaway growth necessitated by that argument wouldn't happen.

EDIT: Before some tries to gotcha me with the same old tired memes or accuses me of building up the typical "oh, but X uses more power than the entire crypto system" strawman argument, what I'm trying to say is: value is relative. If you have a comfortable life and live in a reasonably free country, Bitcoin is very likely to have negative value to you, as its cons outweigh its pros. But that's not going to be the same for the rest of the world, and blanket bans on things are reductionist and hardly ever get anywhere good, especially when you should be looking at why such thing exists.

The HN headline is a bit alarmist. The headline I see is "CPB director: The Netherlands must ban bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies".

This is the opinion of the CPB director in a letter, so it's not binding in any way.

> A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable, he says. That is why the Netherlands must intervene.

Should the government be banning any speculative investment that appears to be in a bubble?

Well, pyramid games are routinely banned. There are good arguments to be made that Bitcoin is a pyramid game much more than a "asset class in a bubble".

I'm only talking about Pieter Hasekamp's arguments, which don't seem to be good ones.

If he wants to argue that Bitcoin is a pyramid game, that's a different argument, but I can't see many people taking him seriously.

Pieter's arguments are along the lines of a "Think of the Children"[1] style argument, or an appeal to consequences[2].

"We must ban cryptocurrency because if we don't, people might lose their money!"

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences

Well if they ban it we know for sure people will loose money.

Isn't he just trying to call it a pyramid game without actually calling it a pyramid game? (or ponzi scheme, etc etc same same). I don't know the nuances of his position but maybe him calling it what it is (ie a scam) can get them into all kinds of legal trouble if they don't have hard proof. And because the fraudsters are as distributed as the ledger, it's hard to come by hard proof.

I mean, I think that Jack Dorsey is banking hard on bitcoin because he knows he's near the top of the pyramid and he wants as many fools as possible beneath him, but there's absolutely no way to prove that he's not just a soft idiot.

Just guessing though, all I mean is "if we don't, people might lose their money!" would have applied to Bernie Madoff too.

It's hard to know what his true intentions are, perhaps it's altruistic or perhaps he has his own reasons for being bearish. If he has hard evidence, he should present it, if he doesn't, perhaps he could instead use his position to call for an investigation or inquiry.

What is this bubble? I’ve been having and using (ordered some RPi’s and sushi mainly) since 2014. And I makes some money here and there. I can’t really feel sorry for people who go all in now and lose later. It’s a casino people!

He does not say that though: he acts like he wants to protect the 'dumb people' (dumb is mine: but what else fits?) by banning stuff (which NL seems to want to do more and more) (I am Dutch). Does not explain why he would not want to ban stock markets as assets like MSFT are massively overvalued as well and will crash badly next crisis. Sure cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value and energy waste etc etc but banning something because it might crash... is somewhat weird. Especially as you screw over all people who currently are in it. So you protected far too late. And actually hurt a lot of people.

Make the ponzi/pyramid scheme case from top to bottom and educate people if you cannot make a case for illegal practice.

I think it’s tough to assign value like this. People argued that the internet had no real value for basically all of the late 90s.

People keep repeating this but bitcoin is well over a decade old now. And it still has no value other than, well, "value". That first day you got internet in, say, 1997, you were in touch with people far away and could look all kinds of shit up and make webpages and pull godwins on usenet and download winzip from tucows and it was amazing.

I think your only argument holds, slightly, if by "real value" you mean "money".

My accountant was saying in 1998 he never bought stock but this eternal new money machine he could not miss out on. I made a shitload those days because I invest but am a huge stoploss fan; I did not advise him anything but he lost a few 100k and only recently recovered. The internet was a good idea though (he sold the shares though at about the lowest point so recovered is not from shares). As were tulip bulbs were but just not at that price. So who knows this will stabilize at $2/btc in 20 years and it will be normal. In the meanwhile, I buy and set stoploss and invest long sure bets, like msft in, well msft and such. But those have stoploss as well as this will all crash. The real question is: which assets will crash to $0 and which don't. As the latter you can just hold and you get your money back eventually. I had oracle (forgive me) and msft as cases of the latter in the 2000 crash and Borland/inprise as cases of the former. I had stoploss high on inprise and low on the others and made bizarre profits on inprise and higher but more long term profits on the others. If you ask me, these 'look over periods of 20-30 years' are smart with some assets and basically, imho, insane with others and I believe inprise and btc belong in the latter category. Stoploss (and you just adjust it UP over time) will save your hide. Noone listens though as it is not 'what real traders do'. Good luck with that.

That's right, edited the headline.

> 'A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable'

Here I will write a second article for you for free

Housing market crash is inevitable - The Netherlands must ban housing market and other housing initiatives.

Housing market crash is not inevitable. The market crashed in 08 because banks gave loans to unqualified people who could not afford their mortgage(s) otherwise.

The current housing “bubble” is driven by-and-large by private equity groups who see the real estate market (more so the single family home) as the safest place to park their money.

Thing is, these people can afford them.

More of an "entire society" crash then as actual working people fail to acquire homes.

I agree. Once Wall St becomes your landlord, something is irreparably broken.

Nah, not based on this piece. This is the opinion of a director of one of many government agencies. CPB is the economic planning agency, so he is supposed to say things like this. But he is only one of many stakeholders in this subject. Once national bank, politics and public sentiment start making statements like this, it would get more weight.

There's no way The Netherlands is going to lead the pack so publically on banning cryptocurrencies. That would be too politically unwise.

I am not saying he is wrong. Just unlikely that The Netherlands is going to be the first to ban.

Crypto is already banned in many countries, in my country Tunisia [1] you risk a big sentence if you get caught selling or buying crypto in the black market (Facebook/telegram groups)

[1]https://www.businessnews.com.tn/Arrestation-d%EF%BF%BDun-jeu...

The Central Planning Bureau takes issue with decentralization? I am shocked!

"A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable", he says, as if its a certainty. I hate energy wasting crypto's and delusional moonboys, shitcoins and NFT's just about as much as anyone else, but saying things like this is just dumb...

We've head many cryptocurrency crashes already so chances are pretty good that he is right ;-)

A stock market crash is inevitable, let's ban the stock market!

A commodity crash is inevitable, let's ban trading commodities!

A housing market crash is inevitable, let's ban real estate purchasing!

I really see no problem with all the above.

The problem I have with this story is that Bitcoin with all its specific issues regarding CO2 emmisions etc. is thrown on the same heap as other cryptocurrencies or blockchain developments which serve other goals, have less of an environmental impact and do actually solve a problem. (e.g. Quant solving the interoperability problem between blockchains which are also in use by banks etc. as well as practical uses of ETH/FLOW/ADA etc.)

"Central Planning Bureau (CPB)" - this is fine...

While it might sound like they're in charge of centrally drafting up communist-style policies, what it actually is is an institution that researches the effects of governments policies so the government has more data to plan their policies around.

This also means that this is in no way a sign that the Netherlands is anywhere near actually executing on this.

> “After all, the product itself has no intrinsic value and derives its appeal only from acceptance by others.”

Ok, what's the intrinsic value of a $ or € bill then?

Ask yourself this: Assume that you have little or no knowledge in foreign countries, but you want to purchase some of their currencies - how would you go on and classify these currencies as "good" or "bad", when viewing them as potential investments. Besides simply looking up their historical exchange rates.

It's obviously a complex problem, as we're dealing with parities here - but war/conflicts, poor economies, extreme inflation, and similar factors will drive the currency down. On the other hand, peace, strong economy / industries, etc. will drive them up.

One might associate the intrinsic value of a currency with the overall economic health of its country, along with things like geopolitical stability, internal policies, and what not. It's a good mix of micro, macro, and politics.

With cryptocurrencies, it's a bit harder to measure things that like. It's a stateless currency, with no industries or workers behind it. There are no wars or conflicts either. No policies made by politicians that can affect its value (in the abstract notion).

Essentially, you only have supply and demand to go after - when trying to predict its future value.

Not arguing that what you said isn't true, however, if we just take the statement of the article like it's been written - it just doesn't make a difference if we're talking about the intrinsic value of either - BTC/$/€

Bitcoin is a stream of 1s and 0s, $ and € bills are pieces of paper (not talking about the raw material value of coins rn..).

The value of $ and € (and ultimately any currency / fiat) is that has its appeal only from acceptance by others - which is part of the sentence i've copied from the article.

Neither do have any intrinsic value.

As far as I know, the USD doesn't have any intrinsic value after they went away from the gold standard - but again, people use all sort of measures as proxies for intrinsic value.

Guggenheim and Elon Musk were heavily pushing the environmental disaster articles to move Bitcoin price down to buy (they just filed an SEC report about holding Bitcoin futures 2 days ago). As Bitcoin's not a security, they can legally push any news that they want to manipulate the price.

Why should others decide if I can run useless hashing functions on my computer? Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible.

Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. The real enablers of ransomware are the countries that shelter the R10 groups, raking in millions.

There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian language keyboard, and it's not because they know Russians never pay ransom...

> There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian language keyboard, and it's not because they know Russians never pay ransom...

Why then?

Because some countries turn a blind eye to ransomware operators in their territory, and are not targeted in return.

The theory (conspiracy or otherwise) that I've heard is that the Russian state looks the other way as long as ransomware makers don't affect Russian systems. So they exclude systems with Russian language keyboard to avoid impacting Russian systems (which might cause the Russian govt to take action against them)

Because they run their operations from there, and don't mess around where they live. Part of their profits pays for protection. Extracting value, and crippling western companies aligns with the strategic goals of these countries. And ransomware is literally a 10B USD business.

>Price the electricity accordingly

So I should pay significantly more on my bills, just because you want to play with some virtual coins?

You should pay more because we have to take into account CO2 problem, which is the same problem for you and for miners.

I don't think that's the point. They could just increase price on higher usage. So everyone pays the same, but those who use more pay more²

Wouldn't a graduated pricing scheme be circumvented by additional hookups?

I think they mean it's more efficient to tax/price energy as heavily as needed to reduce emissions across the board. Playing with virtual coins then becomes much, much less appealing to the average user, but we won't need to accumulate edge cases to ban.

> doesn't run when your system has a Russian language keyboard, and it's not because they know Russians never pay ransom

Yes, maybe because Russia wouldn't deal with that issue with "thoughts and prayers". On a completely unrelated subject nobody wants to wake up in a duffel bag.

> Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies.

This meme really needs to die. It's driving me more and more insane every time I read it. Ransomware may have existed previously but it was nowhere nearly as prevalent before cryptocurrencies came around. It is not a mere coincidence of the cosmos that almost every single darn time (I think literally 98% of the time, as of 2019) ransomware infects someone's machine, it demands payment in Bitcoin. There is a clear relationship there for a very good reason. I cannot fathom how otherwise logical people can see these with their own eyes and yet somehow blind themselves to the obvious connection.

And if you need this from an authoritative mouth because it isn't already clear as daylight... "Cryptocurrency is one of the single enabling factors that allows cybercriminals to deploy a massive amount of ransomware across state and local agencies", said Christopher Krebs. [1]

[1] https://www.rsaconference.com/library/blog/how-cryptocurrenc...

I've been in security for ages, ransomware was there but has evolved since then.

Two other reasons can explain the increase in ransomware, that merely correlate with the rise of cryptocurrencies:

1) The innovation of encrypting files hadn't occurred to ransomware operators yet.

2) The value of computer systems, and data, itself increased. Massively increasing the likelihood of victims paying the ransom.

Before crypto currencies 'FBI scareware', which held your computer ransom by disabling your standard UI, simply asked you fork over the cash via Western Union.

This increases the friction for consumers, but if the colonial pipeline was ransomed in the same way, and the ransom only payable over WU, then they would have done that instead.

The law enforcement would be able to trace the payment trough Western Union. Especially a million and more transactions. The money laundering regulations apply to money transfers.

> and the ransom only payable over WU, then they would have done that instead.

As if WU and crypto don't have very different KYC requirements (as in - none for crypto)

Did you know that before Bitcoin you couldn't buy drugs and crime couldn't operate? Only if bitcoin never existed.

There was and always will be a crime, and criminal will find a way to make money and scale it if they can.

> Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible.

The problem is that other productive things are priced out before "mining".

The environmental cost will be born either way, but mining is by definition not productive. It has been profitable to some people, but it is destructive to civilisation altogether.

Mining is absolutely productive, as a secondary effect of course. The process creates potential money that is impossible to counterfeit. This simply did not exist before, maintaining that is of enormous value.

Of course, if this can be done without ongoing expenditure that would be better.

Cryptocurrency is absolutely an enabler of ransomware. Is there any ransomware that extorts money in a form other than cryptocurrency?

And yes, who would have thought that running useless hash functions on your computer could have enormous global externalities?

Compute what you like on your own computer, but sending the results is intentionally participating in a worldwide crimewave and environmental disaster.

Cryptocurrency is a tool that is useful to ransomware perpetrators. That's not the same as being an enabler, unless you want to classify computers and digital data storage as enablers of ransomware.

> Why should others decide if I can run useless hashing functions on my computer? Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible.

Cultural model. I don't feel like increasing the electricity price for everyone is a better solution.

> Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. The real enablers of ransomware are the countries that shelter the R10 groups, raking in millions.

Cryptocurrency are a good catalyst. The first does not exclude the last. The "real enabler" is that fast growing systems are juicy and fragile.

> There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian language keyboard, and it's not because they know Russians never pay ransom...

Many nations have active "digital warfare" programs, which may or may not take the form of ransomware. I would not be surprised if some would masquerade themselves as Russians masquerading as Israelis masquerading as Frenchs to poke on China, if all it takes is to carefully check and act on keyboard mapping. Don't you dare touching the colemak users.

I agree with you here. I don't love PoW but I also see issues with PoS.

I am a single computer miner but I only ever turn on my miner if I am net exporting back to the grid (solar).

Main reason here is that the money I get from the grid is ~25% what I pay on the way down and through mining its anywhere from 500-1200% for the amount of energy I am using.

If my energy company paid me more or there was infrastructure for me to sell my excess to my neighbours (such things exists in the world) then that would be appealing to me.

A bit unrelated, but this submission was top 3 on HN and suddenly seems removed from the /news page?

This isn't the first time I've seen negative articles about cryptocurrencies suddenly drop down the rankings on this site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27215572

To bad, would love to see more discussions on this.

Because HN is a centralized platform and its owner has a big stack in crypto. So such "regulation" is logical.

Ironically, isn't it?

The real irony is that each "crypto bad" thread on HN is clearly someone's paid shill. Because every time it reiterates the same extremely primitive misconceptions about crypto. Surely there are some real useful woke idiots on HN but I refuse believe that they constitute a voting majority.

I hope if a ban comes it will focus on PoW cryptocurrencies that are harmful for the environment.

I agree with him, but more on philosophical grounds. The idea of crypto is to make taxation impossible and government irrelevant. If democracy is to be preserved, this obviously cannot happen. Therefore government has to fight back.

I'm curious what's going to be left when the dust settles, probably in about 5 years.

After all, since we're talking about the Netherlands, tulip bulbs are still around but most people don't care about them anymore.

They are in the top 20 countries in terms of GDP...

I think that when the op said “most people don’t care about them” they meant the tulip bulbs, not the Netherlands.

I'm not sure if you're being facetious but flowers are a massive business and account for something like 10% of their agricultural exports. Saying "most people don't care about them anymore" makes it sound like it's a niche industry, which I think undersells it quite a bit.

Ummm... how many people care about tulip <<bulbs>>?

Tulip bulbs are a niche topic, for sure.

A lot of people care about tulips, but for all they care tulips could be birthed live by other tulip plants, that's how much they care about tulip bulbs :-)

Tulip mania was wildly exaggerated by Calvinists who wanted to create a precautionary tale against consumerism.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-...

Yes Calvinism is still a strong influence in the Netherlands today. I really don't like this aspect of the country, I view it as a source of negativity. Things that are fun, new or nice automatically have a sidetone of 'sin', there is this mentality that there can be no enjoyment without enduring hardship and there is a strong sense of servitude and obedience. The other main religion in the Netherlands is Catholicism which is much more forgiving in this sense (you can make mistakes but can be forgiven by repenting) so it's not as strict. They have pretty wild parties around Carnival and then they're forgiven and disgressions forgotten. Letting off some steam. Calvinism doesn't believe in that, there's a saying "Just be normal, that's crazy enough".

Personally I'm from the non-religous areas and I'm very libertarian in societal views (and socialist in economic views - yes those go together :) ) so I'm pretty much diametrically opposed. There is still a strong sense of multiple groups of communities living together in one country, though it used to be a lot stronger. We used to all have our own schools, broadcasting companies, even banks. It was called 'Verzuiling' (meaning making pillars or more contemporary: silos)

But I don't really understand where the strictness comes from either, from their point of view. Calvinism believes in predestination, that our fates (going to heaven or hell) is predetermined. So I don't understand why they lead such rigid lives. Personally if I knew my fate was sealed I would just go all out on making fun since it wouldn't matter what I did anyway :)

Discussion also happening here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470955

Also, they’re threatening the Netherlands position as Europe’s own fiscal paradise in disguise. You can’t make a Dutch sandwich with a double Irish with Bitcoin.

No it doesn't and yes you can. Counting your beans in a different currency doesn't prevent you from needing to do tax accounting and from having to comply with tax laws if you sell beans in a country.

Maybe not. Monero is essential to financial freedom.

You can't ban peer to peer networks.

I don’t think this would be a ban from a technology standpoint. It’s from a legal/financial standpoint - so yes, you would still be physically able to download and run the BTC software, but nobody would be allowed to officially deal in it. It’s like how banning murder doesn’t eliminate murder - but that doesn’t mean that the ban doesn’t still dramatically reduce the incidence of it.

You can ban anything you want, but enforcing bans is where the trouble is.

Errrrr.... did they get the news that crypto already crashed?

The reason we have to go to the trouble of making cryptocurrencies is that busybodies like this guy are endlessly trying to reduce our freedom. They're not trying to look out for people; they're trying to protect their ability to print money and steal. In crypto parlance, they want to remain the VIPs that have centralized special privileged access to create tokens, and force usage thereof. But now we have the technology to enforce currency issuance by immutable programs. That's a better way, because programs are very strong exactly where humans are very weak.

Just to be clear, by "ability to print money and steal" you mean having a central bank and levying taxes? You're making a moral argument against the idea of government controlled currency in general, yes?

Can you clarify why you think controlled currencies are morally bad and how cryptocurrencies are better? I'd love to hear a less abstract argument than "more freedom".

EDIT: I assume downvotes mean there are people who like cryptocurrencies and agree with the parent. Maybe some of those could answer my question? "Freedom" is a loaded term with conflicting definitions and ideas like "taxation is theft" don't stand in isolation because they imply logical conclusions that most people prefer not to make explicit.

money printing is done by handing it to banks at zero interest and flooded on the stock exchanges. The rich get richer and the poor can buy less with the same money since wages are the last thing to raise (while the rich buy up houses and commodities with their free money). Inflation is a tax on the poor and elderly. Literally since VAT is percentage-wise levied on relatively more expensive consumer goods and if wages rise they come in higher income pay scales for taxation. Crony capitalism at it's peak where the players get bail outs and handouts and the poor get poorer and the middle class disappears.

Okay, and how do cryptocurrencies fix this?

Mining is supposed to be increasingly cost prohibitive so in an ideal world it would eventually cease to have a meaningful impact on currency supply within practical timeframes. Assuming economic growth holds, this would mean constant deflation (i.e. value of the currency continually increases as its supply remains quasi constant while the overall economy increases).

Since transfer of cryptocurrencies incurs transaction fees and the value of those currencies only ever increases, transactions would eventually become cost prohibitive for smaller values. So realistically it would seem that we'd eventually have to transition to representative money instead (i.e. you don't transfer crypto between wallets, you shift numbers in a trusted third party's database which itself holds crypto for you). This would lose most of the benefit of the blockchain for these smaller transactions and effectively create banks because these third parties would have operating expenses they would have to charge you for (either directly or by using your crypto for investments).

So in other words, this sounds a lot like returning to the gold standard with extra steps.

that "would" in your shift argument is already reality, that's the lightning network, which transmits bitcoin off-chain for pennies, but in a decentralized way, because it utilizes existing bitcoin balances on lightning nodes for it. There is still no bank, BUT there is a more centralized "arbiter", yes. So your argument does hold about the trustlessness, though not entirely the centralization.

The one thing that's central in this debate is to understand that current currencies are built to be inflationary, which causes the need for constant economic growth. Bitcoin is not. The "bitcoin fixes it" meme is hopeful utopianism, I grant you that, but bitcoin would not carry this growth mandate in its bowels that state currencies do.

> that "would" in your shift argument is already reality, that's the lightning network,

The reality today isn't lightning network but centralized exchanges. That may change in the future but it might not.

"Inflation is legalized counterfeiting and counterfeiting is criminalized inflation. "-Robert Breedlove

By printing money the government steals value from existing holders of currency.

It’s effectively an undemocratic (amount is not generally voted on) tax on people’s earnings and cash savings.

Inflation/deflation is an effect of the amount of money (or in general: any kind of material compensation for trade, work and services) available and which potential customers are able to spend and the amount of goods (and the capabilities to produce them), which are actually available. Meaning, it's a function and not necessarily a conspiracy.

Edit: In other words, if you are working really hard and are making earnings which allow you to spend more on Teslas than Musk can produce, you are creating inflation. Money or other tokens.

not OP. But the less-buzzwordy argument is this: the existence of money itself isn't the problem. The problem is that the modern monetary system is built on inflation and supermassive debt, and this combination has a bunch of highly negative outcomes: -it systematically expropriates poor people. Inflation will make sure your money is worth gradually less, so the only option to save it is though real estate and stocks, which poor people have little access to. -this goes along with the need for companies, and the economy at large, to keep growing year over year. Our modern infinite-growth mandate, the thing that is actually destroying the planet, is based on the system of money we now have, as saving loses you money: you have to make more, consume more, make more, consume more, or everyone loses the money they have. That is to stay, money is no longer a store of value, which is one of its major functions. - speaking of destroying the planet, after the end of the gold standard, the current dollar/euro system is backed, in complictaed ways, by their uses in international trade, especially oil. After the fall of their productive capacites (all outsourced), the US now basically exports dollars to finance their internal consumption and worldwide hegemony. Because all nations need USD to trade, esp oil, the US can print and print and sink that into other countries that buy it while keeping inflation mus lower (still there) than it otherwise would be. This is a circle, as it both finances global hegemony, but also needs it: it is that hegemony that enforces the use of USD as a world transactional currency, and US "regime change" operations generally hit countries that try to escape this system. -a house of cards: central banks don't print most of the money; private banks do. "fractional reserve banking" means that banks only need a fraction of the money that they lend out on reserve, which means that when it has a million, it can make many millions in loans to customers, effectively creating the rest of the money every time it makes the loan. This is margin/leveraged trading on a global and massive scale, and it is what makes banks crash every time a hiccup occurs in that system. It's a time bomb.

These are all massive systemic problems, and the -way- central banking is now organized is the problem. Could states organize this without these problems? sure; "gah states are unfreedom" is not the problem here, the capture of states by global corporate capitalism is. Will states change? no, of course not, not without a massive systemic crash or revolution. Do we need bitcoin to save this? strictly no, but bitcoiners see bitcoin as a sneaky trojan horse to destabilize this system, and -one- hope to overcome this massively cancerous state of affairs, for a host of reasons beyond mere dreaming that would double this already long comment in size. All I'm saying s: like everything, this is much, much more complicated than "bitcoin volatile" or "bitcoin energy bad".

Oh, I'm fully aware of the problems with our current economic system. I just don't see how toppling fiat currencies and returning to representative (or even commodity) currencies solves any of the problems. Especially if the process involves the full destruction of the state while maintaining our current notion of property.

Property only exists insofar as people are able to enforce their claims of it. Under the dominant economic system property rights are enforced by the state via the police and prison system. Without the state, you need to rely on the community to assist you in enforcing your claims. If you want to maintain an imbalance that they might not be willing to tolerate, you'll need a private army (i.e. share some of your property with people willing to protect you in return).

If you hold little to no property, you fully depend on others' willingness to share their property with you or you'll literally die (because even foraging would require accessing someone else's property if they have claims on the territory).

So unless those holding the most property (i.e. the extremely rich) either fail to secure their continued property claims (e.g. by having their army turn against them) or feel extremely charitable for no practical benefit to themselves, you still end up with extreme poverty and extreme wealth.

And honestly, once you have people like Jeff Bezos raising armies to assert their claims on a significant fraction of global wealth directly, you might as well call their claims states because this just feudalism without the mythology of the divine right of kings (yet).

Wealth inequality may be in part driven by fiat currency. But wealth inequality is an inevitable consequence of our understanding of property rights (i.e. enclosure and the commodification of essential life necessities up to and including access to drinkable water).

Abolishing fiat currencies and existing states may create a free market, but it will not abolish or even improve poverty. You can argue that a freer market is better (but again, this needs a better explanation than "more freedom better") but it does not logically follow that a freer market reduces poverty and wealth inequality (ironically most statistics claiming global poverty is massively decreasing do not account for inflation and thus do not demonstrate an actual increase in relative purchasing power).

you're mistaking me for a libertarian. Which is understandable, because you run into so many of those in the bitcoin space, so no hard feeling! :D They irritate me as well.

The problem with the current system is obviously not that it's not "free market" enough. I fully agree with you on property. And fiat currencies are fine with me in principle, the structural underpinnings of our current ones are the horrid part, and the power structures this underpins.

What I try to communicate is that bitcoin can also be a tech for leftist hope, because it uses the greed of the free market people to strengthen something that actually undermines the current corporatist capture of the state, and does so massively. It's decentralized and a real threat to the banking system and its wealth extortion. It's inclusive, as its permissionless nature will bank anyone with a phone. It also undermines US hegemony, as the US control over the banking system through SWIFT allows it to engage in economic warfare against everyone it doesn't like. The fact that bitcoin is an option for sanctioned countries is a medal for it in my book. And I know that's utopian and the US will try to find a way to kill it before it can actually do any f these things, but that's exactly the reason why people with critical attitudes to corporatism and US hegemony should help it along, not participate in the moral panics against it.

Okay, but at that point from a leftist perspective it's just accelerationism and hoping that the revolution comes down in our favor without laying any of the ground work to prevent a rise of fascism (to "heal" the state) or a decline into feudalism (via stateless capitalism).

There's also no reason to believe that the existing hegemons won't be the ones ultimately controlling crypto if doing so becomes necessary to their survival. Crypto may be digital and out of reach for states, but the humans owning it are physical and very susceptible to physical injury. Capitalism has recuperated anti-capitalism, it will recuperate crypto if necessary (and some may argue it's already happening).

well, I hadn't thought about it as accelerationism, and I'll have to think about it more. It's a good point.

My first reaction would be that it actually does help in steps beyond just strengthening existing structures, like I said, by banking the unbanked and freeing them from banking systems, by giving states ways out from under US sanctions, by whittling away at the hold corporatism has. Empirically, it's not the case that this is only adopted by the rich. Bitcoin use is massive in Africa, especially Nigeria and Ethiopia, among not so well-to-do people, in Central and South America, mostly for remittances and for peer to peer economies among people who have no bank accounts. And those are the first to really jump onto it, the corporate leeches are following, not leading. It's not just a toy for rich people. I'm far from rich by any metric.

But you're correct, the powers that be will absolutely try to capture it. Holders are not out of reach, though holding it can be dome quite clandestinely (as can supporting the network; you can run a bitcoin node, and nobody will know; and if you raid houses to take them, new ones will spring up.) The power of decentralization is rather persistent, as we have learned with filesharing over decades.

Bottom line, I wouldn't reject the idea that bitcoin can be reformist outright, but of course nobody can guarantee that.

I don’t think that the Netherlands is the country where wealth is routinely stolen from common folk.

The economy of every capitalist country is based on the exploitation of the working class.

Netherlands is one of the largest channels between the EU and offshore tax havens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich

Depends how you obtained that wealth.

The people love personal success stories, but dislike people who show off too much or exploited certain situations.

There is this guy that made quite some money on covid masks. A lot of people were not too happy he made a profit on that.

People aren't happy about that because he told everyone he was doing it for free. That he wasn't making a profit on the deal. Also, he used inside info to sell his trash quality face masks.

Fuck Sywert van Lienden, disgusting crisis profiteer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in... Take a look at this list and see which country has the highest wealth inequality in the world. Hint: it's the Netherlands.

Wow.

Pretty low on the income inequality though, isn’t it?

Fun fact: most of the money is issued by ordinary banks, not by the bodies presumably in control of the token/currency. (Any such control is rather remote and indirect.)

I don't think it is technically possible to ban bitcoin, only centralized exchanges.

If a country decides to ban exchanges, it could end up creating an untraceable black market since people might start exchanging crypto <-> cash in the streets.

Intelligence agencies would probably not be happy to lose such traceability capability.

Drug dealers would be taking over this black market as it creates new incomes while simultaneously helping some of their money laundering needs.

Blockchain startup ecosystem and crypto friendly entrepreneurs would leave your country. You would lose all related tax revenues and high-paying jobs.

No one is going to buy and sell crypto on the streets, this is just nonsense.

I can understand your fierce will to ban crypto for environmental impact reason.

However you cannot ban bitcoin, you just can't, that the whole purpose of its existence.

And black markets have always existed and always will.

> you just can't

Sorry, that's not an argument.

You could make it illegal by law tomorrow, it doesn't change the fact that bitcoin would still exist and be used due to its decentralized nature.

The government can severely impair its appeal as a speculation vehicle and people would stop speculating with it. This is Bitcoin's primary use case. Some people who use it as a medium of exchange because they can't use real money for a variety of reasons might continue to use it, true, as well as a minority of hard-core fanatics who are attracted to bitcoin for ideological reasons regardless of practicality.

Bitcoin should perish, and quickly, for the reasons outlined. But "other cryptocurrencies" is a generalization that is too broad. Some alternatives are faster, feeless and 1000x more energy efficient. Sure, you may argue that countries may not want some uncontrollable asset to run rampant, but guess what: it's the whole point of cryptocurrencies -- a form of means of exchange that nobody can control. May not sound relevant in countries like US / EU, but look at how other monetary policies around the world are doing, run by incompetent and/or corrupt governments (venezuela, argentina, several african countries).

Maybe "crypto" is not the answer, but a form of global money that no individual country can touch, and is more easily transferrable than physical assets like gold, will emerge.

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