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Comment by rantwasp | Hacker News Reader

Okay. Let’s play the: X is causing more harm to society than good.

X=guns Are guns causing more harm than good? Should we ban guns?

X=religion. Is religion causing more harm than good? Should we ban any form of religion?

X=social media. Is social media causing more harm than good? I heard Facebook consumes more power than the entire state of Argentina! Should we ban Facebook?

X=USD the dollar. 95% of criminal activity uses USD. 95%! It’s clear to me that if no dollar we could prevent a lot of criminal activity. Should we ban the USD?

X=VPNs Used to circumvent local laws!!! Are the causing more harm than good? Ban VPNs you say?

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> Are guns causing more harm than good?

Guns have a propensity to do a lot of good, if they were sanely regulated they could easily do more good than harm.

>Is religion causing more harm than good?

Hard to say, religion does a lot of good. Keeping people scared of god is an incredibly strong motivator for many, and most of what religion prescribes is good. I wouldn't mind taxing religion, but it's unconstitutional.

>Is social media causing more harm than good?

I think the answer here is clearly no. Yes, social media causes harm, but it causes much more joy.

>The Dollar

I understand that you're joking here but the amount of good the dollar does so clearly surpasses the harm its illicit use cause that I don't find this very funny.

Anyway, no one is trying to ban cryptocurrency.

>I understand that you're joking here but the amount of good the dollar does so clearly surpasses the harm

This is the problem with your view of crypto, you fail to see the good

Crypto is not an effective currency. Currencies need 3 things to be effective: store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange. Crypto fails at storing value and being a medium of exchange. It's value is completely unpredictable and transferring it is slow, costly, and annoying. Many of these problems could conceivably be solved, but without government backing crypto will never be a good store of value, as macro economic policy is required to keep currencies stable.

You’re being selective.

Crypto transfers are slow? jesus, did tou ever do a wire? have you seen moving something take days? compared to that minutes is instant.

You’re gonna tell me about CC processing next. Hate to break it to you but when you’re paying with a CC you’re not actually paying. An auth happens but the real payment happens when the transaction is settled (days later). So: days vs minutes in BTC case. wow, crypto sooo slow.

Macro economic policy? Oh yeah. That is working really really well. The government working to protect you.

Crypto is more than currency at this stage, you argument solely applies to bitcoin.

Guns do a lot of good? I’m sorry we’re probably living in different universes. In my, I see school shootings after school shooting with lots of thoughts and prayers sprinkled in between. It’s the best guns+religion==winning!

> no one is trying to ban crypto no one is trying to ban it yet. I’m giving it 5 years until it’s outright banned.

Also, if you cripple something to the point where it’s unusable it’s virtually the same as banning it.

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