Crypto is really great if you’re a drug dealer or some other kind of criminal.
> Insiders who spoke to journalists as part of a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, have suggested that HSBC may not have appropriately shared the information with the monitoring team installed by US regulators in 2012 after HSBC allowed drug cartels in Latin America to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through its accounts.
Maybe someday all these anti-crypto activists will rail against the banks and their fiat financial system too. We gotta stop the druggies! ;)
Encryption is really great if you’re a terrorist or some kind of pervert.
Email used to do that, I guess, but now if GMail doesn't like you there may be problems.
The idea is that no one needs permission in both cases, and the message can be sent only to the intended recipient without a middleman reading its contents. BTC is the same with money.
The same FUD was ignited against encryption back in the day, and "save the children" hysteria still is ablaze if you live in the UK.
Lots of illegal activity goes on fiat too, at least I have more control over my assets on crypto.
Those are nice nouns, but have you any specific argument? Bitcoin's origins were designed to redress this very issue.
> Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non- reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party.
> What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers.
Nothing in there about corruption.
Also, designing a means of transaction that is independent of governments and banks - two of the most corrupt institutions in every society - is surely a deliberate move against them?
Finally, the genesis block of Bitcoin specifically mentions bailouts of banks. The arrival of Bitcoim amid the 2008 financial crisis is no coincidence.
I welcome anything that weakens their hold and means my money doesn't lose half its value over my lifetime.
Sorry, but this is just plain ignorant libertarian nonsense. If you want to be taken seriously you need to do at least the bare minimum of understanding an issue before making big claims.
> If you want to be taken seriously you need to do at least the bare minimum of understanding an issue before making big claims.
OK, so since this is your principle, will you retract your claim that bitcoin wasn't invented to combat corruption? Even if you don't agree with the method or ideology, there is good evidence this was their intention.
And please explain how inflation benefits me, a saver with ever rising bills to pay. I'd be very curious to hear it. Relieve me of my ignorance.
2) If you have debt, like a lot of people do, inflation means you now have less debt.
3) You have provided zero justification for why "bitcoin was invented to combat corruption", except through your unjustified claim that inflation and corruption are somehow connected.
I think my clients would show me the door if I asked them if they can pay me in some crypto...
First: Blockchain transactions are only accepted when they’re added to the blockchain, so participating in the blockchain necessarily directly enables the drug (etc.) transactions in a way which isn’t true for fiat or commodity currencies.
(I happen to have the opinion that almost all drugs should be legally available in some form for personal use, but that’s a different argument; partly but not solely because I think legalisation will help to stop criminals getting the money).
Second: inverting group membership like that is poor logic.
Consider for example, that the fruit of atropa belladonna is poisonous. The fact that most poison isn’t derived from belladonna does not change this.
Even if you believe that all drugs should be legal for informed personal use, that doesn't change the predatory and destructive nature of drug dealers and cartels in the system as it exists today. If you want to support personal, recreational use of drugs, the ethical, responsible way to do that is through campaigning for reform of our laws, not through enabling and funding violent organized crime groups that profit massively off keeping people so addicted they can't function in society.
If these are problems that don’t exist for you, consider yourself lucky and remind yourself of the opportunities for many that you’re advocating against.
And you can never delete anything from a blockchain so your second point is completely false as well. And even if you could delete something from a chain it could not "drain" your wallet unless you explicitly gave it permission to use your coins.