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Comment by ushakov | Hacker News Reader

would you also support banning words?

it's apparent, that money launderers, drug buyers, criminals communicate using words

What kind of strawman is that? I didn't say I want to get rid of all forms of digital payments, I'm perfectly fine with any form of digital payment system if it is able to comply with basic due diligence required by the law. Anonymous payments stand out in that their only distinguishing advantage is that they make that impossible.

I don't want to ban words and I don't want to ban money. But society very well can demand that there is no shadow financial system that avoids obligations everyone else has to comply with.

society and the EU are welcome to demand whatever they want! :)

the ugly truth is that they have no power over the bitcoin network and their ideas will not reach consensus from miners

that's why they're to attacking the middlemen instead

Bitcoin has no power in the real world. For digital transactions is has some leverage as pure data is much harder to control. Unless people are spending their Bitcoin gainz on Second Life property and not real world assets then regulation targeting the "middle men" is simply common sense.

Crypto is trivial for a functioning government to regulate, until we all live in the Matrix.

Of course they will attack the problem at the weakest point. No one cares about the Bitcoin network itself. I care about my authorities being able to trace large financial transactions at the minimum impact to privacy. If given the terrible choice between no privacy and no transparency for any transactions - I’d vote for no privacy.

I'm not understanding your argument. You are against anonymous money? You realize what the alternative is? Credit cards. Ie you can only transact with visas permission, also they skim some cents off each transaction inflating all prices for all consumers. Have you heard about interest rates before? Because credit cards have the worst interest rate of any financial product. This is what centralized money gets us. The same problems exist in debit cards and fed digital coins as well fyi. Also skimming off the top and controlling how much your savings are worth via monetary policy. But at least little Billy cantbbuy drugs right? Also he has no spare change for the homeless either.

credit and debit cards are rate regulated in the EU to a 0.2% maximum fee and moving money between users these days is usually free completely with almost any payment service or bank account. Cryptocurrency fees are significantly more expensive, and process a fraction of the transactions.

The ability to have a monetary policy is a bonus and it's the reason centralized money is price stable. If you were paid your salary in bitcoin on May 1st this year you would've lost 50% of that at the end of the month, good luck paying your rent

In addition to the original crime and legibility discussion as a practical means of transaction crypto is volatile, expensive and slow.

>Cryptocurrency fees are significantly more expensive

That statement makes no sense. Crypto transfer fees are not a percentage of the transferred amount.

For bitcoin at the moment you have to move around $1300 before the fee is less than 0.2%

And around $2400 for etherium. Which means that in the common use as a payment it will be more expensive. On top of that you get into questionable situations if the shop owner wants to charge differently because of the fee as that is already disallowed for plastic cards.

I use a debit card, I pay zero interest because I hold a positive balance at all times.

Have you looked at fees on crypto "currencies" lately?

I can settle up to about 500k USD in stable coins on Solana for a fraction of a cent with minimal slippage on Orca.so or Saber.so.

The best price my friends could get sending fiat from country a to country b recently was 10 euros (with Wise) other options were 30+ euros. Keep in mind, this was for a few thousand. The fee would go up the higher the amount was.

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