I was wrong, we need crypto
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These protests caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage. There is a $300M lawsuit against the occupiers in Ottawa, similar ones will happen against the occupiers of the Ambassador bridge.
The bank accounts have been frozen via two different mechanisms -- by the use of the Emergency Measures Act, and by a preliminary ruling in the civil court.
The freezing via the EMA would thaw after the EMA expires in a few days. The freezing by the civil court will not, and will likely result in the loss of those bank accounts.
The second option is civil, which are lawsuits against the protesters to recoup losses by businesses.
And then if crypto is a possibility, one could say you have to seize the assets now before they can be laundered, in other words, you're pre-empting the potential of illegal behavior.
The PM is on the record admitting he is considering extending the Emergency Measures Act, potentially for months.
His Minister of Finance has already declared she now plans to make some of the financial controls permanent.
Whether or not you believe these measures to be appropriate, it is incorrect to claim they will expire in the next few days.
Question: "Hello from the CBC, the truckers could come back in 2 months, 3 months, so does that mean we would have to keep it for another 2, 3 months?"
Trudeau: "Indeed. This is something we are thinking about, of course."
It’s not unreasonable to expect power to not easily be relinquished.
If you're worried about the groups using crypto to launder their money due to fines/lawsuits, then freezing accounts seems reasonable as well.
Laundering money is a great way in the US to get your account frozen without being arrested/tried/convicted. Because if you waited for the conviction, the money would be long gone.
Is this real damage or "opportunity cost"?
Thousands of people had to move out of their homes because they couldn't sleep with the continuous honking. One idiot even brought a train horn.
And that was just Ottawa. The ambassador bridge shutdown was much worse. For instance, Ford shut down an Ohio plant employing 1600 due to lack of parts made in Canada.
The border protests were certainly more economically disruptive, and it's remarkable that it took days to clear out a handful of vehicles.
So spare me your pity on their sleeplessness.
Its hardly comparable.
And it's amazing what gets the sympathy based on nothing more than what political wing finds that pity advantageous as opposed to inconvenient
Moreover, American political movements against vaccination have to my mind without much doubt led to many, many avoidable deaths in the past few years, even if direct causality is harder to establish. So it is not so puzzling or amazing to observe where people's sympathies align at this point of the pandemic.
And yet, you're the one making the comparison?
These protests can be incredibly intrusive and damaging to real people in real Canadian cities. That has nothing to do with the (largely) US BLM protests.
Did someone say otherwise?
Crypto is an attempt to fulfill a broad yearning for financial freedom. The problem is, as it currently exists --- it just doesn't deliver.
Crypto doesn't displace trust, it misplaces it.
Instead of trusting government and regulated banks, you end up trusting the unregulated gatekeepers to the block chain --- the exchanges.
Who is making sure these gatekeepers are not self serving scammers and con artists? Why no one really.
In other words, block chain automates the accounting but it does nothing to eliminate *trust* as a central aspect of the monetary system. So the question simply becomes, who are you going to trust?
If government suddenly ceased to exist, the first thing people would do is re-invent it. Because left to their own devices, people are not trustworthy.
how exactly are exchanges gatekeepers? blockchains would function completely fine without exchanges. In fact, on chain exchanges like uniswap and 0x require zero trust whatsoever.
Who determines how much your crypto is worth?
Does uniswap do this? No, not on their own. They can't --- their daily trading volume is too small. They are literally forced to follow the "marketplace".
The 800lb gorillas that make up the crypto "marketplace" are the centralized exchanges --- Binance and others. They set the price using whatever method they choose. And they can easily influence the price by buying and selling themselves. Binance has access to unlimited funds to do so --- by simply minting more Tethers --- which they have done repeatedly --- and the price remains pegged at $1USD (wink, wink, nod, nod).
With unlimited funds, effective control over the pricing mechanism and no regulation --- the centralized exchanges have all the ingredients for the ultimate form of insider trading fraud.
If you trade crypto as it exists today, you are *trusting* the centralized exchanges who have overwhelming influence over the "marketplace". You have no other option.
Sure, pick any exchange you want and I'll bet you a BTC that the price of USDT is effectively $1 USD.
USDT remains pegged at $1 USD regardless of how many new Tethers are minted. Have you ever thought about why or how this happens? Once you do, your *trust* in the crypto exchanges/marketplace will start to unravel.
Would I hold funds in USDT myself? No, I learned my lesson after losing 50k with Liberty Reserve.
And you know this how? Trust?
Be honest. If the people running things used all the funds to buy a private island in the South Pacific, you wouldn't have any way to know.
This is like saying, who gives a shit if the NYSE is minting and selling stocks? Anyone with an IRA or a 401K should.
Who gives a shit if Liberty Reserve was a money laundering operation? Maybe you should have.
More than half of all crypto trades involve tether. The market prices of most crypto is being influenced by it whether you use it personally or not. If/when the price of Tether crumbles, most crypto will have no choice but to follow.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2019/03/14/tethe...
The operating model of a centralized exchange is that they get paid to both provide and consume liquidity, so much of the volume is their own. On Uniswap, there is no privileged entity, so everybody pays to consume liquidity. This is a huge damper on volumes.
Note that there are MEV forks that also massively increase the Uniswap volume too, but they have to pay at least the trade fee on both sides of a sandwich.
The uniswap "algorithm" has no other choice but to follow the "market". Otherwise, it would do no trades.
Binance's trading volume is 40-50 times that of uniswap. What Binance does affects the price on uniswap --- way more than the other way around.
If Binance mints USDT and uses it to buy lots of BTC, what happens to the price of BTC on uniswap? Once the price on uniswap and other exchanges starts going up, others see it and jump in to avoid getting left behind --- driving it even higher. What happens when Binance then sells BTC?
This is a classic "pump and dump". It happens all the time because there is nothing to stop it. Binance is the one controlling "the market". Uniswap with their "algorithm " just plays along.
Algorithm or not, they are just a little fish that can't possibly do very much to alter the direction of a marketplace whale they don't control.
The only way for this concept to have any real overall significance is if they establish their own separate crypto and be the only "market maker" for it. But then this is "centralization" all over again.
As with other things - the people who want or don't want to buy it.
What happens if they also also get to see your order before it is executed and have every opportunity to insert their own in front of yours just to drive up the price that you pay (aka "front running")?
That's the situation we are in with fiat currency. That's what central banks do.
The question remains, who are you gonna trust?
That's what central banks do, and a lot of cryptocurrencies. It's very very hard to do though with Bitcoin.
Yes, so crypto is just like fiat but without regulations or safe guards or insurance.
It's very very hard to do though with Bitcoin.
It's hard to manipulate the quantity of bitcoin --- not so hard to manipulate the price of bitcoin.
That's why I'm not a fan of crypto in general, only of Bitcoin
> It's hard to manipulate the quantity of bitcoin --- not so hard to manipulate the price of bitcoin.
True, but I guess it's easy to do that with every small market. I'd imagine the bigger the market capitalization, number of participants the harder it would be to manipulate the price.
It's pretty easy when you can mint Tethers and keep the price pegged at $1 USD no matter how many you print and use them to buy/inflate the price of bitcoin.
Yes and anyone can easily make money just like Bitcoin --- just clone it.
How many Bitcoin clones and forks are being used in the crypto-market right now?
Too many to easily keep inventory in your head.
I must be misunderstanding, but don't blockchains track references, through sequences of indirection (i.e., encrypted on the chain), to what is ultimately fiat currency?
I will say otherwise. We do not need crypto.
Furthermore, its been shown governments can track all transactions. Without warrants (since it isn't money). Even for privacy focused funds. I doubt it would be hard for them to freeze account withdrawal and seriously hurt people trying to circumvent the law with crypto.
The desire and *idea* behind crypto is reasonable. It's just that the implementation falls way short of the idea.
If someone tried to use Bitcoin to evade the PRC I'd say they had a death wish.
Remember, you're not leveraging crypto promises against current deanonymization software, you're using it against all future deanonymization software. That's such a bad idea I can't even.
The only reason it's at all worked in Western democracies is because the anarchocapitalists are "pushing back" against a government that either tolerates or supports them. Worse, when they use the technology against Western democracies their actions are anti-Democratic. They're hoping the minority can overturn the lawful actions of the majority instead of using the courts or electoral processes.
[edit] The folks who truly advocate crypto as a tool to push back against a totalitarian government are the kind of people who read 75% of 1984, closed the book, and assume Winston went home to have a sip of Victory Gin and lived happily ever after.
If you don't want to be part of our modern society, then please go find a way to do so away from all of us who do. Until and unless you separate yourselves from us entirely—including no longer taking advantage of our government-supported infrastructure, our government-supported education, our government-supported enforcement of property rights, and our government-supported military—you don't get to claim a right to evade either our laws and regulations around economic activity, or our taxes.
And crypto mostly fails in this regard. Blockchain maintains a permanent record of everything that goes on for anyone to see.
The "Wild West" of crypto is a historical aberration that will absolutely not last.
Government should start by auditing "stable coins".
What do you think would happen to the crypto market if they did this?
Mine your own coins, and buy stuff with crypto. I don't see why you need to pass through gatekeepers.
And when you can buy things with crypto, there is also another end that sells things for crypto.
Ok, maybe it's a minority, but it serves the niche pretty well.
For all this, they go to the gatekeepers.
And likewise, you need to decide if the price you're about to pay is reasonable and fair. And for this, you go to the gatekeepers --- because there is no reasonable alternative.
Crypto can't escape the influence of the exchanges in the same way fiat can't escape the influence of government.
https://coingeek.com/terra-ust-is-now-the-biggest-decentrali...
It is a different thing whether or not the Canadian government should lose the ability to seize funds, in general, from its citizens.
This article conflates the two.
What's going on in Canada right now is a disgrace that perfectly exemplifies why the legacy financial system is morally - and quite literally - bankrupt.
It's immensely problematic when violating someone's individual rights is not costly, and you can seize the money of tens of thousands of people with the stroke of a pen and the push of a button.
The same argument applies to surveillance. If the FBI has reason to suspect a person of a crime, then they have the right to set up some surveillance apparatus to gather evidence against that person. But this is a costly endeavor and requires many manhours of work. But, if you can automatically surveil every person in the country, and run it all through machine learning to constantly monitor every single person, then that becomes an extremely dangerous slippery slope into an inescapable authoritarian state.
Already done: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/02/17/citizens-grou...
Canada has never been about ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’, bar a small minority. In many areas it is closer to the EU than the U.S.
In fact these rants are self-defeating as they convince ever more voting Canadians that the whole fiasco was boosted to an unnatural degree by self-interested U.S. based groups, and thus further legitimizing the crackdown.
It's someone telling you, with great passion and confidence, that the Linux kernel needs to be rewritten in Visual Basic because the current PHP code isn't maintainable. Throughout these comments, and in hot takes like DHH's, there are just profoundly ignorant errors that betray that the speaker doesn't have the slightest clue what they're talking about. It instantly reveals their rhetoric to be noisy garbage.
And by the way no, sorry but that's absurd. There's a huge line between being a freedom gun loving American and being against enacting emergency measures that do away with due process because of a protest. To think canadians support this just to... own the Americans online? Is so ridiculous that it might border on satire.
Remember, trudeau is still in a minority government and lost popular vote twice in a row to the conservative party. The conservative party has voted against enacting emergency measures. So you might be living in a bubble where everyone actually supports this, but it's not representative of the electorate.
Trudeau is completely, completely losing it and that's coming from someone who has met him a few times when he was my MP. I also volunteered for his campaign back in 2015 and 2019. Yet to me he seems completely unhinged at this point.
The two parties supporting this measure got 8,862,977 votes. Every other party together got 8,287,006. And the best part still is that the Conservatives and BQ get to vote against this measure specifically because they know it will pass. It's a free vote where they get to claim overreach while also not suffering by defeating the measure and the ensuing problems end up being placed in their laps. That's how adversarial parliaments function.
So your claim about the electorate was simply wrong, even if we ignore that it is fundamentally ignorant in the way Canadian government even functions.
The comment I was replying to was assuming some sort of mass Canadian consensus/unity w.r.t to the situation which is obviously not the case, because as the figures you cited yourself show, trudeau doesn't have a very strong democratic mandate. I'm not saying the majority thinks this or that way, I'm saying the GP cannot assume a consensus.
Also if you are actually saying that the conservative party is just voting against because they know that it will pass, you probably missed the parliament debates of the past 2 weeks. Because they have been very very vocally opposed to what trudeau is doing. Much more so than at any other point during the pandemic.
If anyone is playing politics it's the NDP since they basically condemned trudeau while still voting in support, since they can't afford an election right now.
I don't know why you'd think that there's no opposition to such a radical measure (you are basically saying that even the CPC is not actually opposing this?!). I guess it's in line with the trend I've been seeing online of canadians ramping up the rhetoric against the protests
No, I didn't. You pointed out the number of votes between two parties to demonstrate mandate. Only the actual numbers betray a completely different situation. You don't get to casually claim that one whole set don't matter because it makes your story work better.
"NDP since they basically condemned trudeau"
Again you're speaking like you don't know how politics work in Canada. How else do you think they will frame it? They know that if it is not passed, armies of trucks (parked just outside the city in a set of farmer fields) will return back to Ottawa, and yes they would be blamed for that, and there would be consequences. So they support it while (perhaps rightly) pointing out that it is only necessary because of bungling by Trudeau. That's what they do.
Do you think 100% of Liberals and NDP support this? I have no doubt you'll say no, that you actually think most of them are against it. Now here's a better question - do you think 100% of Conservatives and BQ are against this? The notion is simply absurd, and both parties have leaned heavily on extraordinary powers historically. There are countless examples of Conservatives in particular demanding extreme responses to, for instance, aboriginal blockades. Historically the Conservatives have been a very law and order party.
And the emergency action should never have been necessary. My province, Ontario, has a literal army of officers, heavy equipment, and penalties and measures to squash this occupation at the outset. There was a bit of negligence, territorial behaviour, and perhaps intentional blindness, that led to it becoming such a problem.
Although it is a bit rich that the #1 reason given for opposition to the motion is that the motion was successfully used to clear Ottawa. Basically that now that the problem is superficially resolved, now it isn't necessary. Not that it was never necessary.
Okay yes the CPC has been historically a law and order party so what? Trudeau has been very pro consensus/liberalism etc in the past too so what's your point? Just look at how he dealt with protests that he agreed with. And when has the CPC ever enacted the emergency measures act?
Not that it has anything to do with my original point anyways, which was that the original commenter was weirdly defensive about "attacking Canadian values" and that whole canadians don't necessarily agree with the American vision of freedom there is a huge line between that and agreeing wholesale with suspending the charter because of a protest.
You are also coming up with tons of ad-hoc explanations for everyone: the conservatives secretly support because of they are the party of law and order this but voted against, the ndp secretly supported this but attacked trudeau, the bloc secretly supported this but didn't. I guess that's your opinion (and not a fact) and yeah there is a lot of theater in parliamentary politics but even if we assume it's all just bs pandering they are still representing an electorate. The conservatives have had no problem voting for pandemic measures earlier when their voters supported it.
The CPC and PPC had a total of 40% of the votes, which is still a huge chunk of the population (yes not all of them are opposed to the measures but the only reliable figure we have is still the votes), which makes the GP's argument moot. That's it, it has nothing to do with what happens in parliement.
Your entire post was predicated on an assumption about the level of support.
"weirdly defensive"
It is neither defensive or weird. A lot of Americans in particular are grossly misinformed about {broadly gestures at almost everything related to this}, but they have very deep opinions. It's actually telling that you tried to portray the inverse (e.g. Canadians talking about America), when that simply isn't true: We are overwhelmed with American news and political happenings for time eternal, in media, news, social media, etc, where most Americans have a very superficial understanding of Canada for obvious, practical reasons. DHH's post panders to an alt-right crypto crowd, but to every Canadian it looks like ignorant clowning.
"You are also coming up with tons of ad-hoc explanations for everyone"
You're injecting a ridiculous number of strawmen. I argued against your statement that political positions on a vote = actual reasoned opinion. That has never, ever been the case in Canadian politics. No rational person expects it to be the case.
"agreeing wholesale with suspending the charter"
And with this statement, everything you've said on this entire topic has been completely discounted. The emergency act does not upset a single charter right. Not one. As with DHH ridiculous claims about martial law, it betrays that the speaker's hysterical take can be ignored as baseless rhetoric.
Further, the root post nowhere claimed "all Canadians support this". They noted that our base values are different and that many Americans aren't fully informed, and that is 100% true. As you've done with my posts, you're bizarrely spinning that out into something completely unsaid.
OR
Hey we need bitcoin because a convoy of large trucks led by a bunch of white supremacist anarchists ( https://mrsbrittanybested.com/2022/02/03/rotten-to-the-core/) whose MOU was to literally overthrow the democratically elected government, who chose to block the core of the capital and disturb other citizens' peace by honking constantly, harass masked first line workers and cause businesses to shut down for 3 weeks, block major land borders causing billions in economic damages, who were asked repeatedly by order of court to leave, when the very public data leak showed an overwhelming amount of so-called donations to a government-toppling movement came from outside of Canada, and when all levels of law enforcement from municipal to provincial were inadequate in dealing with this that forced the federal government to step in (an action supported by 66% of Canadians) in order to actually restore peace in the city of Ottawa, a motion that has to be supported by a majority in the parliament every 30 days to be renewed....
Sure, that sounds like a compelling argument for Bitcoin. Lets funnel bitmonies to every "peaceful movements" around the world to destabilize nations, overthrow governments and cause anarchy.
I also agree with the idea that teleportation and faster-than-light travel would be extremely beneficial if not necessary for the long term success of the human species, but that does not mean that any proposal or attempt to accomplish those should be immediately hailed as a success. Cryptocurrency is definitely a failure at being what it was supposed to be, there's very little doubt regarding that I'm afraid.
The reason why there are lots of experts criticizing the current implementations and crypto concepts is because it's vastly easier to realize the flaws in one's idea than coming up with a new proposal. Yes, PoW works but it does not make sense, it's just a very interesting gimmick that makes cryptocurrency doable. That does not mean it actually makes sense or that it represents a stable foundation for a digital currency in practice.
You say that PoW works and makes cryptocurrency doable, yet you conclude that it is a failure. But you don't define what the goal of it is. What specific goal would you want crypto to achieve to falsify your belief that it is a failure?
Can you say the same for cryptocurrency? Where does the value of a cryptocurrency come from? The answer is "from its scarcity", but scarcity itself doesn't make something valuable. What makes Bitcoin valuable is its tradeability with real world currencies, such as the Euro and the Dollar, and the fact that people want to spend them to get Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a real currency, is just a very complicated bank with extra steps, based on an asset whose value basically depends by the biggest Ponzi scheme ever known to man.
There are two notions of scarcity: Scarcity of bitcoin themselves (21 million), and scarcity around being able to create different cryptocurrency. Clearly the only weakness is in the later. Two points on this: Bitcoin commands a majority of proof of work energy. This does tie the digital scarcity of bitcoin to something in the physical world. You can't create another bitcoin without spending a similar amount on PoW. It's not that the scarcity of energy consumed translates to value in bitcoin directly, but rather it gives a high cost for creating an alternative to bitcoin. This is not unlike state issue fiats-- the Yen has value because Japan is a large state. I wouldn't trust a fiat from a state that was just created and had no citizens. So the scarcity of powerful states translates into a scarcity of fiat. Second, Bitcoin was the original invention of true digital scarcity. This makes it a natural place for a focal point. This by itself does not mean bitcoin has value, but it should be better at becoming valuable than other cryptocurrencies.
But bitcoin is also used for transactions and payments. It has growing links to the real economy just like other fiat currencies. The trend here is growing. If the trend continues-- meaning more and more businesses and workers take bitcoin as payment, surely you must conclude at some point bitcoin would then have real value, just like the Yen example?
> Bitcoin is not a real currency, is just a very complicated bank with extra steps, based on an asset whose value basically depends by the biggest Ponzi scheme ever known to man.
I think this is disingenuous-- A ponzi means that through intentional and planned deception invested funds are stolen. Sure, bitcoin is volatile and might crash again. But there is no structured fraud here, it is a free market, nothing like a Ponzi.
You still didn't define a falsifiable goal-- What would have to happen for you to consider cryptocurrencies to be successful, what is the end of the tunnel? It feels to me like you are assuming it will fail (it is a ponzi!), and then working backwards from that assumption to find how to justify it.
The idea that anyone can create money out of electrons is really no better than the idea that anyone can create money out of paper. There is no real reason to believe the first will be any more successful than the second.
There are close to 10,000 different cryptocurrencies currently in use. And the number is increasing all the time. You don't have to be really smart to see that over time, these are all likely to tend toward the same value. The essential elements that will seal their fate --- trust and consensus --- or the lack thereof.
The part of the idea that does have some merit is "digital" currency. The Fed is working on it. And when it arrives, crypto will likely vanish back into the electronic ether from whence it sprang.
If too many people can easily make the product, the market quickly becomes saturated and the value starts to tend toward zero and people losing interest in it.
Also, in this particular case the product is defective. It doesn't actually function as stated --- as a currency that is widely accepted to buy a huge variety of things both large and small with minimal fees, high transaction volume and low wait times?
These are basically just instruments for speculation and fraud. History shows that such schemes can't and won't be sustained over time.
You just restated your previous claim, you still didn't give any reason why the value must go to zero-- By the same logic, the market for websites is also saturated, therefore the value of the internet is going to zero.
You don't have 10,000 companies all producing the same type of product. If you did, the value of most of them would go to zero really fast.
Also, you can't easily clone most listed companies at no cost. There are significant barriers to entry in the stock market --- which explains why you don't have 10,000 companies all doing the same thing.
You can't clone bitcoin at no cost. To clone bitcoin you would have to invest the same amount of energy that has been expended thus far to proof of work.
You're misinterpreting my original statement and ignoring my explanation.
If too many people can easily make the product, the
market quickly becomes saturated ...
You are basically saying that there can't ever be consensus because there isn't yet a consensus. That's a possible and maybe even likely outcome, but it doesn't obviously follow.
Could it happen? Sure. In the same way that a monkey with a keyboard could produce a best seller. But there is absolutely zero reason to expect or believe it will happen any time soon.
But invest now to get in on the ground floor --- just in case.
You are also ignoring network effects entirely. Number of users of Bitcoin have increased year after year.
The cloner would have to exert the same energy to mining that Satoshi Nakamoto did/does --- zero. Others will do this for you.
But thanks for pointing out the absurdity/weakness of Bitcoin and one of the reasons why it fails as a currency. You do know there are other options for cloning.
I generally agree with you though that cloning a PoS blockchain is easy in this regard, those ones also are protected by network effects.
It's more true in 2022, no time travel required.
Unlike 2008, the awareness and the operations needed to mine a bitcoin clone are already in place, fully setup and operational, running 24/7. Just offer rewards like bitcoin did back in 2008 and the existing miners will be all over it like white on rice.
There is very little additional expense to mining a clone alongside bitcoin. The equipment will be running either way.
This really shouldn't be surprising to anyone familiar with the growth of the web. Just like cloning a crypo, it'd be trivial to make a new Twitter, but extremely difficult to gain the same level of network effect.
If Elon Musk wanted to make "MuskCoin", he could and instantly have a huge number of people jump on board. He has already proven this just by meddling in the current crypto market for his own amusement.
Lots of other companies/individuals with clout and name recognition could easily do the same.
The only reason they don't --- they recognize the ultimate futility of it. Musk has even poked fun at the absurdity of it all.
It's just one example of how your "network effect" could be overcome very quickly.
Any individual or company with market presence and name recognition could do this if they were so inclined. You could easily have ChaseCoin, FordCoin, FidelityCoin, NFLCoin and 10,000 more if they thought it was practical and profitable and would be successful over the long term.
But allowing anyone to "mint" their own money is really an argument *against* the basic concept of a "currency". The world has already been there, seen that and done that. And most "smart people" (and companies) recognize that this is not in the best long term interests of themselves or the overall economy.
How you symbolize that agreement is actually irrelevant.
There is no limit to the agreements that humans can make so the idea of limiting them by decree is absurd.
The most problematic part is that holding onto money is a onesided arrangement that requires no consent or agreement. You can literally leave the other party hanging.
It is kinda like doing homework in a group and waiting on the results of the second guy so you can work on your part. You will eventually stop waiting and just borrow the homework from another group so you can finally get started with your damn part of the homework.
No one is limiting the number of cryptocurrencies. If you and your friends want to make your own "CryptoNickel" currency, go for it. No one is stopping you.
No one is stopping others from doing the same too --- and therein lies the problem --- the exercise is self defeating outside your unique circle of friends. Just a wild guess but you probably won't be using "CryptoNickel" to pay rent or buy groceries. Why is this?
Because as I noted above, "CryptoNickel" is missing essential elements of a truly functional currency --- trust and consensus --- not just among your friends but society at large. And a distributed electronic accounting system is no substitute for these missing elements.
They are smarter than me - they focus on what matters. Small things, that they can control. God forbid the world does fly apart at the seams, and maybe some of these epistemological economic thoughts will have been worth thinking - I sure hope it doesn't happen and the smartest people can continue living in tiny boxes. It means a better world, a more stable world. And we do need smart people studying a set of ligaments their whole lives.
I find it no surprise that those of us who grew up in extremely chaotic situations tend to think 'bigger' and have a harder time thinking 'smaller'. I do not know the world will remain stable enough to support my career - but all the doctors I know are sure of it.
You'll get replies from very well employed, very smart people, who can probably write you an excellent simulation of our discussion, but who will refuse to conceptualize an abstract theory of value, or a world were currency creation happens in a slightly different way. Why would they? It's of no practical value unless the world ends - and you don't want the world to end, do you?
People who fought for monarchy because the alternative is chaos were probably smart people. People who fought for heliocentricism were probably very smart, but didn't feel like uprooting the foundation of their world view. Being dumb enough to think thoughts like "well, but what if", in the face of replies like "but it hasn't in a long time!" is only useful if only a tiny subset of us do it. The right strategy for most humans is to ignore that kind of talk. So be it.
For example, gold is a store of value so firing an employee lets you avoid associated with that employee and you can still hire that employee as long as the gold exists, right?? Right?? Everyone knows that gold stops aging and fired peoplee don't need food or shelter.
Honestly we have way too much of this going on in our society. Management with delusional ideas about how to run a company is often spouting more or less this exact same line. Not everything you can dream of is possible in reality.
No, he didn’t.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10535361/Canadian-M...
[edit] I would be just as glib about someone who donated $50 to Hezbollah and got their accounts shut down.
[edit2] Trudeau has a minority government, and minority governments both require another party to prop them up - and have an average tenure of 1 year and 140 days. It's been 154 days already. There will be an election in less than a year, on average. We have courts, we have ballot boxes. Use them.
[edit3] I say this as someone who did not vote for the Liberals, and is open to revisiting restrictions.
When the truckers start lobbing rockets into population zones, this comparison might be reasonable. The increasingly common habit of comparing everyone with Wrong Political Opinions to terrorists does not sit well with me.
Besides how can a peaceful protest be unlawful? I hear that in China when protests are "unlawful" when they disagree with the great leader
This isn't a protest, it's an unlawful occupation. Canada has a long history of peaceful protest. If they'd picketed on the streets in front of Parliament Hill as hundreds of thousands have done over the last century nobody would have batted an eyelash. In fact the government gave them three full weeks of outright occupation before they began to ask them to leave - then eventually told them to in no uncertain terms.
After all there have been tens of other anti-vaxx protests in Canada over the last two years. None were treated this way.
Indeed, but the protests made national news basically each time. There's a lot of folks from outside Canada suddenly paying attention when they were not, at all, paying attention to Canada over the last few months, years or even decades. Context matters and a lot of folks. I don't know if you're Canadian or not, but most commenters have none - but still insist on raising their pitchforks over something they either do not understand or do not have any context on.
Really? A protest deemed illegal because some company is loosing money? That's one of the points of peaceful protest, making non violent pressure where possible. If there was no more food and they were blocking it I could understand, but this is just keeps getting more ridiculous. Please call in the emergency act used only 3 times in the past, 2 of them world wars
BLM protests caused billions in damages, fire, looting, vandalism... And Trudeau supported it
And peaceful protesters were harassed by police in other locations
It's not that they were protesting, it's how.
> BLM protests caused billions in damages, fire, looting, vandalism... And Trudeau supported it
This feels a lot like whataboutism.
I didn't vote for Trudeau last election and I do not plan to vote for Trudeau this election. That doesn't change my opinion of the lawfulness or correctness of the actions taken here. Only 1/3 of Canadians voted for Trudeau last election but 2/3 of Canadians support this decision. So clearly it can't just be LPC voters or "Trudeauphiles."
I don't think I can get 2/3 of my coworkers to agree on a dinner spot for an offset. It's only slightly less than the percentage of dentists who think Oral B makes your teeth fall out. Politically speaking that's a heck of a support base.
> And peaceful protesters were harassed by police in other locations
Obviously I do not support this behavior. I believe in broad-based police and prison reform.
I don't wish any harm on the protestors. I think they're misguided, but I do believe they want for what they think is best. I do however wish them a speedy GTFO the capital and border crossings.
I hope that once things are cleared out and order is restored that they return to parliament, without trucks - but instead, with their signs. They deserve to be heard.
The MP either lied, or got played by someone who knew he was a gullible tool.
Every level of government has asked the MP to give details, because clearly it isn't true. He hasn't because the person does not exist.
Ultimately he should resign. Either he was trolled and played, or he simply has so little respect for the public that he invented a tale to play on (largely foreign) beliefs.
Remember, it's not about the individuals, it's about the precedent it sets. If the government can do it to those you disagree with, they can (and will) do it to you.
> The ability for a government to unilaterally lock people out of their bank accounts without a court order or any form of recourse is virtually unprecedented in Western society.
No, it isn't. The US uses SARs[1] on a daily basis, and has since the passing of the Bank Secrecy Act in the 1970s. There is virtually no recourse to a SAR levied against your account: virtually every bank in the US will simply close your account and refuse to disclose any further information.
"But the US discards due process, too!"
There isn't even remotely a due process concern here, in the US constitutional sense (which isn't the Canadian sense!) of the phrase. When someone receives a SAR, their bank account is frozen and they are given steps to liquidate the account. No deprivation of property, the necessary condition for due process, occurs.
Link? I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report but this describes a process where a bank makes a report to the feds, not a process where the feds make a report to the bank. And account closure is not mentioned.
Again, do you have a source on this? It would seem to be at odds with the requirement that a bank keeps the filing of SARs secret from the accountholder. Skimming the BSA, there seem to be a lot of liability carveouts for banks that file SARs. I can't find anything that would increase bank liability in a situation where a SAR is filed.
If you have a SAR filed against your account, your bank will not tell you. They'll tell you that they've closed your account for internal policy or compliance reasons. And they won't be lying: the BSA doesn't require them to close the account.
The liabilities in question are both regulatory and financial.
On the regulatory side: bank employees are instructed never to tell a customer about the presence of a SAR, but mistakes can happen (and thus open the bank up to regulatory scrutiny or punishment). Similarly, the FDIC and Fed track SAR patterns, and may increase their scrutiny of a bank if customers who have historically received SARs at other banks successfully maintain accounts with a different bank.
On the financial side: SARs are filed for all kinds of crimes, including crimes against financial institutions themselves. It's a financial risk to keep those accounts around, because their rotating value might not reflect their actual "ultimate" settled value.
As for sources: here is a FAQ on SARs from the NCUA[1]. I don't have a pre-existing source for banks immediately closing accounts on SARs. Here's one I randomly found that states that a little over 1/4th of all SARs lead to account closure[2].
[1]: https://www.ncua.gov/newsroom/press-release/2021/ncua-federa...
[2]: https://bpi.com/the-truth-about-suspicious-activity-reports/
From what I saw, the language specifically allows them to continue using their account for regular daily purchases (food, etc).
Technically you are right, but for me the bail-in in Cyprus in 2013 was scary enough to diversify into physical gold and Bitcoin (I stopped the gold part since then), as I realized that I'm just a ,,creditor'' to a bank, I don't own the money that exists in my bank account, and this can happen inside the EU.
We can all understand what this really is in spirit, though, and I don't think anyone is claiming literally that the military is in charge.
A majority of Canadians agree with a lifting of mandates, but this was true before this protest, and if anything the protest set it back. Support for the protest was extremely low.
https://media.ccc.de/v/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolutio...
I cited the banking blockade by Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal used against Wikileaks/Assange as evidence that, at the very least, publishers need to be able to send and receive payments that the state does not wish them to be able to send or receive.
Last week, I wrote about how we as a society need to be prepared specifically for user-friendly, widespread unstoppable payments, as the technology now exists for actually private, uncensorable payments to reach a wide audience.
https://sneak.berlin/20220213/unstoppable-payments-are-comin...
[1] https://fcpablog.com/2021/06/21/canadian-courts-assist-crypt... [2] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/16/canada-sanctions-...
They can classify it all they want, but it is completely outside of the control of their legacy systems.
the ultimate goal is to never convert back
I'm aware this is a wildly radical set of statements, and I'm not a bitcoin-carrying-anarchist, but you can't really deny that this is the real application of "internet money", and thus the original point of the article stands.
You aren't helping liberate the poor and desperate. You're helping oligarchs hide their money from domestic or international seizure after the dictator falls, and a new government steps in.
If the average person, wealthy or affiliated or not, has a way of avoiding the mandated use of a fiat currency, and that pressure creates an upper and lower bound for how badly the leaders of their country can manipulate the currency supply, yes I believe that helps the poor and desperate. If part of liberty is ownership, then yes, it even helps liberate them too.
Bitcoin is a currency that is hard to stop. That makes it a tool to antagonize authoritarians with.
This is a warmup/trial to implement the same policies in the USA.
The US has has a long history with warrantless asset seizure, the most recent being the laws passed in the 1980s and still used today with the stated intention of curbing the illicit drug trade. In short, officers can size cash, valuables, vehicles, and property they believe might be used in a crime. Simply traveling with a few hundred dollars or more can be considered suspicious. Hundreds of millions of dollars are sized every year by police this way.
The US government can also freeze bank accounts of people they believe to be involved in crimes.
In all these cases, victims can go to court to reclaim what was taken from them and to get their accounts unfrozen. The same is true with what happened in Canada. There is very little difference with what is already the reality in the US.
The question is not is crypto valuable because of this one protest. The question is, what happens when you DO agree with a protest against the state. In that case, wouldn't you want a censorship resistant currency as a way of fueling peaceful revolution?
Crypto is no about dismantling the state. It's about the recognition that the state is no infallible, and on a long enough timeline will make decisions that are harmful to citizens. Crypto is an insurance policy against corruption and power, which can happen anywhere.
To rewrite my common quote on this, using your phrase:
"Crypto is not about dismantling the state. It's about decoupling from the state".
Love it, I think I'll be using this saying from now on.
People are so preoccupied with the audacity of x doing y that dominates the news cycle, but nobody seems to actually care why x is doing y. They just slap some shallow explanation like they are white supremacists, or they are mad George Floyd was killed because of police brutality and consider that level of understanding to be satisfactory while simultaneously being concerned about how increasingly divided, populist and radicalized western society is becoming.
Kotkin is non-partisan, and we should all take notice of what he says. video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul1gsIdlJFs transcripts: https://www.hoover.org/research/5-questions-stephen-kotkin-1
The post also begs the question: does DHH really think that people in Canada are performing everyday transactions in cryptocurrencies? Donations in those forms would almost certainly be liquidated immediately, into ordinary banking accounts.
Not necessarily, p2p and cash.
You're also US biased with your opinion.
There’s nothing illegal about P2P crypto transfers, assuming that you’re not (1) circumventing currency transaction laws, and (2) paying the appropriate taxes. Since the people who might do P2P transfers in this scenario want to avoid the scrutiny of the law entirely, I think it’s safe to say that this does indeed fall under “doing two crimes at once.”
Store cash under the mattress if you don’t like it. Just understand that the people who in it aren’t stupid or in a Ponzi scheme.
Personally, living without insurance in case centralized financial instruments lock me out out is an insane risk to take.
What makes Bitcoin a ponzi scheme is its economics and the way that it is promoted. That you find some use in the token is almost incidental
From the article:
> And that it was the Canadians who brought this on? You might as well have told me that it was really the Care Bears who ran Abu Ghraib.
> Especially since I had some sympathy with fears projected by the US progressive left who spent four years fretting Trump might pull stunts like these. Then it turns out that the worries of an authoritarian overreach would be fulfilled by Trudeau to the North instead? Who's writing this script? M. Night Shyamalan?
> Meanwhile, plenty of American commentators are cheering this on. Those terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad truckers got what they deserved! To protest for a repeal of pandemic restrictions, so as to live the life enjoyed in Denmark by a population less vaccinated than the Canadians? That's clearly beyond the pale!
We need more economic freedom; "cryptocurrencies" are not suddenly a panacea to that end. They're still the scam riddled "but this is stupid at its very base" pyramid schemes they were all along.
See the precedent set by Emperor Norton; community currencies and other alternates can work too. What's needed is a government that admits limits to its powers to interfere with its citizens ability to transact. There's no technical means to make a government live up to that promise... Short of explosives.
Sure, but the entire point is that they can't.
If you manage your own private keys, it is significantly harder for the canadian government to seize your assets compared to the gov telling your bank to freeze your account.
Crypto people need to work on UX though, so that you don't need to be technically savvy to do so.
>> If you manage your own private keys, it is significantly harder for the canadian government to seize your assets compared to the gov telling your bank to freeze your account.
If they want your keys badly enough, they will get them:
We are 13 years on from bitcoins inception, and we are on a tech board, how this is still not clear to people boggles me.
There is literally a meme about this my man. It’s called I lost my wallet in a boating accident lol.
Also, that’s why Bitcoin is different than “crypto”. The first thing you hear when you buy Bitcoin, “not your keys, not your coins”.
The point is not to eradicate the law, the point is to make it difficult to freeze 1000 people accounts than pushing a button. It will make people think about other solutions than stealing people money.
People mostly don't bother with any of this right now because it hasn't been a real threat.
Due to the nature of resentment, you can never extinguish it by more ruthless measures. Small periodic eruptions is what keeps a volcano from having a bigger bang. When you close every vent, you just create a lot more pressure inside. My prediction would be civil war in both countries in coming decades if the current schism between the left and right doesn't get filled soon. Media and politicians started this fire for their own gains and its raging in every heart without anyone in control.
Bank accounts are being frozen because currently it is an efficient way to instill fear into anyone thinking of supporting a similar protest in the future. If you eliminate the banking angle, there will be always others. In Russia, they can void your parental rights and send your kids to an orphanage where you won't ever see them. Back in the 80s USSR they could declare dissidents legally insane, forcing them to undergo "experimental treatment". Further back in the 30s, they would just send an unmarked operative car to your apartment and take you for questioning at 3am, after which you won't ever return.
These are all the symptoms. The real problem is the centralization of power. Russia was formed by centrally managed conquests, while many Western countries emerged as a compromise between equally powerful entities as early as 800+ years ago [0]. There's no trick to it - people only respect law if their opponents respect it as well, both knowing that the alternative (mutual destruction or an exhausting fight) is more expensive.
In the peaceful times, power is mostly an economical thing. You wield power when you own/control products that others depend upon. In a small closed community with a couple of farmers, a few local groceries, small banks, local factories, breweries, etc. the power is distributed. If Alice decides to not sell corn to Bob, he can always go buy it from Carol. This got disrupted by information technology, where Alice and Carol got outcompeted by Mike owning a grocery chain, employing minimum wage employees that decide nothing, and using the leverage to negotiate better prices with the suppliers. It also had a side effect of transferring the power from both Alice and Carol into Mike's hands. As the lower interest rates fueled more mergers, the power became consolidated in fewer and fewer hands.
So currently there is a shareholder class getting their income from the capital gains, and the rank-and-file class, working the corporate jobs. There is also a dwindling small business owner class that finds it harder and harder to compete in a market where selling goods below cost fueled by endless capital is just fine. The shareholder class holds most of the power, owns most media companies, and is using it to facilitate further transfer of wealth from the employee class (e.g. the move from owning suburban houses to renting corporate-owned condos). The rank-and-file class and small business class appear to be fighting each other over invented identity issues, pushed by the corporate media, and fail to recognize how they are both being robbed by the corporate class.
I don't think using distributed ledgers to hold your savings/pay for your expenses will solve the underlying problem.
Here's the link: https://tunein.com/podcasts/Technology-Podcasts/Law-Bytes-A-...
Having just listened to it, I will say the restrictions on Canadians using the banking system to donate to the truckers sound sweeping.
If people think Bitcoin and all of the other junk (sh*tcoins) are the same thing, you're just walking into the same trap as what precipitated the nightmare in Canada.
The thing to watch for is the push for CBDCs which are state-controlled cryptocurrencies which will give authoritarians perpetual hard-on levels of control. You think freezing a bank account is bad? Wait until they can make your money expire or prevent you from transacting with anyone they deem "bad actors."
Recommended: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Standard-Decentralized-Altern...
But Monero is objectively better than Bitcoin if you just want to pay for things.
Bitcoin has all of the necessary pieces to get the immediate problem of government overreach and currency manipulation fixed.
This makes it much more vulnerable to nation state 51% attack since they can just temporarily redirect fleets of CPUs (maybe even deputize AWS, Azure, GCP, etc) to attack the network. This kind of rapid response attack isn't feasible on bitcoin because SHA256 ASIC miners are incredibly hard to come by and the electricity required to pull it off would be enormously expensive.
I like that crypto is resistant to government control, but just because its decentralized doesn't mean it can't be manipulated and used against me.
Whether you love or hate the CIA, the CIA will project power this way, and probably already has. And there are a lot of people who hate the CIA.
But it wouldn't be that hard to expect to see black market arms deals be done over crypto. Or payment to terrorists (and their families) as well.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/truck-convoy-downtown-...
Pretty egomaniac
> Especially since I had some sympathy with fears projected by the US progressive left who spent four years fretting Trump might pull stunts like these. Then it turns out that the worries of an authoritarian overreach would be fulfilled by Trudeu to the North instead? Who's writing this script? M. Night Shyamalan?
The kumbaya "we're all in this together" thing only works until one of the other apes becomes self-aware and remembers we're still living in the jungle.
More often than not in history, the person pushing that message knows exactly what they're doing and has designs on doing exactly what Trudeau has done.
None of this is a surprise.
You care about your goddamned Bored Apes and other ways of doing end runs around financial controls.
The convoy is anti-democratic. It is not a protest in the conventional sense. They are not petitioning for concerns to be heard; they are asking to be treated as if they were the real government. Many of them have bizarre legal theories and even started to swear each other in as peace officers to justify resisting with deadly force. The end goal of their actions were to get the government to declare itself illegitimate. Hey, I am often skeptical of the state too, but given the convoyers’ aims I would not expect the government to even talk to them.
Be real. This was no protest, and it wasn’t even analogous to an Occupy Wall Street action. A bunch of gullible people who had their brains hollowed out by Q, Facebook and Fox, led by opportunistic white supremacists and at least one literal Nazi, descended on the capital and crucial economic chokepoints to cause mayhem. There were a shocking number of US and Trump flags. In my city, these shitheads scheduled a convoy to pass by every major hospital and disrupt access. The organizers seem to believe doctors and nurses are in on the conspiracy. The hospital workers were advised not to wear scrubs in public lest they be harassed or attacked. I’m happy that Vancouver bicyclists stepped in to block them. But they wandered aimlessly around my neighborhood, and I have friends who’ve been harassed on the street for wearing masks.
It’s very tempting to let the state fuck these assholes up.
But I’ve been involved in a lot of protests and I expect these emergency powers to be used against more admirable causes next.
If you actually care about limiting the powers of the state, the answer is not to clutch your fucking crypto even harder. As already noted, the government can act against financial institutions and laundered coins and assets will be tracked.
Do something useful like donate to civil liberties associations, such as the CCLA, which has taken a stance against abuses of emergency powers and will bring a suit against the Canadian government.
https://ccla.org/press-release/ccla-calls-for-revocation-of-...
Aside from a billion dollars+ in trade blocked when the protest -- having achieved nothing terrorizing the residents of Ottawa and blasting horns/setting off fireworks around the clock -- branched out to trying to block international borders, they harassed schools, healthcare workers, anyone wearing a mask, and attacked reporters from venues they don't like. The vast majority of businesses in the affected zone shut down entirely because the lawless, selfish crowd at this rally proved such a massive liability that simply closing was a better option.
But they set up a bouncy castle and brought children as shields (stated tactical plan of the group), so I guess that is okay.
They fawned over a Fox News reporter, and then spit on and slurred an MSNBC reporter. You might notice a correlation with another group South of the border, and that isn't accidental. Just as it shouldn't surprise that the main "stage" of this operation's daily speeches were chock full of QAnon gibberish (utterly indisputable -- the crowd cheers as conspiracies about the WEF, the Rothschilds, Bill Gates, 5G, and so on were given the daily reading). Appearances by "Canada First" flags, Red Ensign flags (an old Canadian flag repurposed by white supremacist), and more unfortunate correlations. This isn't accidental. Livestreams and discussions with many of the protestors betrayed just a cosmically misinformed, ignorant group, and it's a perilous demonstration of the future we all face as groups fracture off, conveniently declare anything but a few grifting sources "fake news", and then feed off of each other.
To call this an anti-mandate protest is to seriously miss the plot. If it was -- if it hadn't constructed noise-terrorism devices that saw people measuring 100db+ in their apartment -- and actually saved the "Fuck Trudeau" signs and QAnon conspiracies, or that whole seditious "we're not leaving until the government resigns and the Governor General declares us the new government" bit of nonsense, they could have inspired sympathy. Instead it was simply political terrorism, and is grotesquely anti-democratic. 93% of Canadians wanted this shut down weeks ago.
"Martial law"? After three weeks, weeks past being declared an illegal occupation, they were sent home in the gentlest way possible. After weeks of warnings, then days of warning of an action, the police did their job. The only thing above and beyond normal policing they did was that the Emergency Act allowed other regions to add to the police force without the whole normal process. Calling this Martial Law is *gross* and makes DHH look like a clown, though the entire piece manages that so it's consistent. It should offend anyone with any functioning reason.
"First the Ottawa police department got GoFundMe to confiscate donations with the intention of redirecting them to other causes"
GFM was made aware the cause was being used to fund literal crime breaking (indisputable), so they cancelled it. Good for them. And if someone crowdfunded to have crimes committed against DHH or his property, I hope they would be even quicker (but hey, at least his detractors will have crypto, right?). What GFM decided to do then was entirely on GFM's side.
Now the government wants crowdfunding with targets or sources in Canada to report large or suspicious transactions to FINTRAC, given that currently it is a gap in the financial system. There is nothing surprising or bizarre in that.
And before someone cites BLM or "ANTIFA" thinking that's some sort of "haha got you leftist" retort, a lot of us -- those of us who don't frame everything as "right" or "left", and have remotely consistent values -- are against unlawful blockades and occupations fullstop. "CHOP" areas -- terrible, shut them down. Railway blockades -- terrible, shut them down. Bridge blockade -- terrible, shut them down. City blockade and criminal harassment for three weeks -- terrible, shut it down. Trying to undermine or usurp a democracy through criminal action -- terrible, shut it down.
I am embarrassed for DHH. Another hot take bit of nonsense filled with clear lies, all so he could claim that crypto could be the answer? And this trash will see upvotes by crypto enthusiasts who don't realize it's yet another American giving their unwanted, unneeded, ignorant hot takes about a situation about which they are grossly misinformed (or they're just a liar and don't care, because again they know they're talking to an audience that will eat it up).
As one aside, he tries to shame someone who called for them to lose their commercial license, commercial insurance, etc. Imagine if you will that a pilot at JFK airport didn't like....who cares, something, anything...so they taxied their A360 out to an active runway and then shut it down and locked the doors. Until they were satisfied with whatever their cause was, they weren't moving. Now tell me what you think the chances are that this person would maintain their pilot license, employment, or would ever fly a plane again?
Then arrest the specific people doing this and charge them with a crime.
So we agree, law breakers should have been charged. Police action should have been constant and aggressive.
But it was an occupation. Police barely operated in their lawless zone at all. That's the whole point, and was the intention of the group. It was a bully group, and their rhetoric and claims were often that they would die before they left. There are connotations to that.
That's a point you are making, and it's a point I completely agree with.
But don't dismiss the unrelated point that DHH is raising, which is a concern over the power to freeze anyone's assets without due process, and the power of crypto to prevent that from happening.
Even if DHH is categorically wrong that it's a "peaceful" protest or whatever, his core point still stands.
But sure, he brings up classic arguments for crypto. There is nothing new in them. "Avoid government control - use crypto". Sounds great when it's for a cause you support, and DHH supports chaos and lawlessness in foreign cities he has no interests in, so why not. Kind of falls apart when that same mechanism is used for causes you're against.
For two decades the US has frozen and seized accounts in the hundreds of thousands -- billions of dollars in assets -- often with little oversight or checks. Civil forfeiture is rampant. Whole political groups have been declared "terrorist affiliated" and any correlation at all can lead to extremely unpleasant outcomes. No fly lists are flippant and casual.
And you think Canada using financial tools, primarily motivated by large external contributions to illegal activities, is the example?
It's maybe an example, sure. A weak one to me, but sure. It's certainly no precedent. To use this as the kick off point for some crypto advocacy seems...pernicious.
The difference here is its blank check authority against a reasonable protest objective as a response to certain bad actors within that broader objective and movement. Not everyone involved is creating criminal levels of noise pollution, trying to burn down apartment buildings, or blocking trade routes. Many of them just want good faith protest. If we could just arrest the bad faith actors quickly, and allow the good faith actors to continue protesting, we can simultaneously protect the right to valid protest while protecting the community within which the protest is happening. When you start freezing accounts without due process, that all flies out the window. This is what is importantly different about this particular action by Canada. It is uniquely chilling to the right to political protest in a way that unduly seizing the assets of suspected drug dealers isn't (although I am very much against that too).
The BLM protest movement can be used as an analogy. Would it be reasonable for all BLM support to be effectively criminalized by carte blanche freezing of accounts of people "involved"? No, of course not. The reasonable thing is to arrest those people who are looting or setting up CHOP or whatever, and to allow the real protestors to keep protesting.
There were people who could only afford to pay a lawyer to get back their money taken away from them by civil forfeiture because they had some Bitcoin as well in their portfolio. They got all their money back, as they were innocent, but they would have had to ask lots of money from their friends just to be able to afford a lawsuit. So no, this is not the first time having some Bitcoin is advised against civil forfeiture.
Anyone paying attention has some btc just in case.
Me? I found the railway blockades intolerable lawlessness. Trudeau took well-earned criticism for the soft-handed approach to them, and it cost him a majority government. It had far less of a negative impact on Canada (and touched on a very sensitive aboriginal issue), but those of us with actual value-based positions -- instead of just tribalistically flexing our positions to justify whatever we think "our" group are doing, as seen by DHH here -- are pretty consistent on this.
But can you point out any other protest in Canada that set up hot tubs on city streets, abused commercial vehicles and commercial privileges, terrorized residents, squatted on city parking lots as command and control systems, and operated a lawless zone? Pointing to some CHOP in the US (also GROSSLY unacceptable) isn't an example. Pointing at BLM isn't a counterpoint.
"expect them all to behave like their some sort of hive mind"
Among any group there will be bad actors. The constant citing of a Nazi flag appearance was just boring nonsense...at least until I repeatedly saw Canada First and Red Ensign flags (which are a subtler way of saying the same thing). QAnon nuttery would be just some fringe...if it wasn't the majority of content on their main stage and repeated by the main organizers constantly. The guy saying the flurry of incredibly ignorant misinformation would be just some nut, if it wasn't the same thing that came out of almost every participant's mouth.
"I also think your news sources are a little biased."
Sure. I mean, my news sources don't involved many QAnon blogs, but during the protest I had a video window playing most days featuring one of the sympathetic live streamers who constantly walked up and down the protest, interviewing participants. ZOD, the travel fun guy, some machine guy, etc. It is the words of the participant, and hearing their rhetoric at their stage, that gives me my opinion of this group.
I don't think, it is entirely fair to blame it all on one side. What the government could have done is meet with the protestors and solve the problem diplomatically. Agree on a reasonable compromise, like suspending some restrictions conditional to hospital utilization. The protestors with reasonable demands [0] would have then condemned the complete nut jobs, most general public from both political camps would have supported the peaceful resolution and Trudeau would have been known as a good diplomat. After all, it's his direct job - negotiate terms on behalf of people he represents.
Instead, he decided to basically threw a tantrum and declared that it's below his royal highness to go negotiate with some pesky trucker plebs, quickly passing emergency regulation barring public assembly on the Parliament Hill and near "official residences" [1]. This is the most divisive and nonconstructive way of handling the situation, and I do think this is done on purpose.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8tzXazvyHQ&t=44s
[1] https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/s...
No, Trudeau should never have met with them. I'm no Trudeau fan, but there was zero value in ever meeting with this group. They should have been swept up the moment they broke the first law.
"like suspending some restrictions conditional to hospital utilization"
Like almost everyone who has takes on this here (including DHH), you seem to know perilously little about the actual situation, yet you've got a lot of takes. The vast majority of mandates are provincial, for instance, not federal, just as health systems are managed at the provincial level. Ontario (the province that Ottawa is in), actually has a conservative leader, but the so-called "truckers" didn't target him at all, and their minimal foray into Toronto was immediately squashed by a much more capable police force. Nor did they do much about any other premier. Because it had little to do with mandates. These people simply don't accept democracy. They don't like Trudeau, therefore he's got to go. I mean, they literally said it over and over again. That's cool, but we just had an election so they can take their mini insurrection and go home again.
1. Abolish federal vaccine mandates for border crossing.
2. Abolish ArriveCAN - the app used to track health/vaccination status during border crossings.
Both are very specific demands. Both will have close to zero effect on the actual COVID deaths. Both are within the federal government's jurisdiction. Both are extremely hard to defend in the public's eye. So what does the government and the news agencies do? Completely ignore the reasonable take, pick up much crazier demands made by a different person, that are easier to refute, and play the usual guilt by association game, implying that everyone against the mandates are supporters of the nuttiest imaginable cause.
A week earlier the organizers had quietly dropped their memorandum of understanding's insurrection demands.
"Completely ignore the reasonable take, pick up much crazier demands made by a different person"
What I described were the demands in effect by the organizers for weeks. In interviews with convoy participants, zero of them seemed to believe that removing a border vaccine requirement (completely and utterly irrelevant given that the US government has their own mandate that makes Canada's extraneous) would be enough for them to go home.
After a three week long insurrection based on profound ignorance, and thousands of instances of criminality, you think the government -- just as it was about to have the resources available to put it down -- should have shook hands and said "you win" to these people? And just to be clear, even if we though the army of QAnon aficionados would go for it, I assure you they would have expected amnesty.
No, I don't think so. It was *way* too late to suddenly try to eek a win out of this.
I think everyone has a right to protest, peacefully, and many have in Ottawa. None of them terrorized the city for 3 weeks. Before you say that it was a "peaceful" protest note that there are many types of terrorism [0] and this occupation fits into "Civil disorder – A form of collective violence interfering with the peace, security, and normal functioning of the community.".
'... Emergency Act allowed other regions to add to the police force without the whole normal process.'
Yes, outside enforcers were needed because local police were not doing it.
Trudeau is one of Schwab's young leaders and has embarrassed Canada. https://www.weforum.org/people/justin-trudeau
Ottawa is a relatively small city. They were grossly overwhelmed after letting an occupation setup base. Further, you clearly know absolutely nothing about Canada, or Ontario, or the police involved, or the politics, so your various takes are nonsensical.
"Trudeau is one of Schwab's young leaders and has embarrassed Canada."
A current QAnon conspiracy on HN, stated with a straight face. How absolutely embarrassing.
So everyone else is aware (although this ridiculous stupid essay from DHH thankfully got flagged off the front page, so this post is largely only being seen by "the faithful"), the WEF conspiracy came about because some people with incredibly poor critical skills have derived an inverted relationship between a group and its members. Basically a tail wagging a dog assumption. The world's powerful all are members of Davos / WEF basically as a networking and "say nice things", so the especially gullible conspiratorial swap that relationship and now the WEF is actually the master puppeteer pulling the strings. It's a conspiracy literally beyond parody, and I'm still caught up in Poe's Law, unsure if the above comment is sincere, or some sarcastic example of insanity.
Canada is a rule-of-law, democratic society. The so-called protestors blocked off major ports of entry leading to material harm to businesses. They also violated the rights of individuals living within the downtown core (including my family) for weeks on end. They brought weapons with them, they built shanties and filled them with kerosene and propane.
The plurality of Canadians voted for the government and the imposition of its lawful and constitutional restrictions in re: COVID. Were they unlawful or in violation of Charter rights, they could have used the courts but elected not to. Because they are lawful and in keeping with the Charter.
Two thirds of Canadians support the use of the Emergencies Act in breakup up the unlawful protests.
As the elder Trudeau said in the October Crisis re: the use of the military (which the junior Trudeau is not planning on doing):
Yeah, well there's a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed, but it's more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of a soldier's helmet.
The use of Bitcoin in this manner is anti-Democratic as it seeks to overturn the lawful, constitutional decisions of the plurality - and to overturn the last election.
We have ways of sorting this out in Canada. You vote.
If you see yourself supporting these anti-Democratic viewpoints, ask yourselves: "Are we the baddies?"
[edit] Not only did I not vote for the Liberals in the last election, I'm open to re-evaluating the COVID restrictions too. But not with a boot to the neck. The unlawful protests must end. Then we can talk.
Wow that's a really interesting fact about North Korea that has absolutely and unequivocally nothing to do with Canada.
> It doesn't help if anyone speaking against the mass propaganda is silenced.
Except they're not. So. After all, I can hear you now, Comrade Phil. Consider than rather than being silenced, people may just not agree with these fringe positions?
Except it's all the same everywhere. Maybe you habe never been out of your well so you don't know. Just so you know, free speech is protected right as per the North Korean constitution... except in practice, it's just like Canada.
> Consider than rather than being silenced, people may just not agree with these fringe positions?
What fringe position? That vaccines without long term data and questionable efficacy against the prevalent variant should not be mandated? Which other country has mandated it?
I grew up all over the world, including having lived in the US, Canada, KSA, and plenty of other places. I've also traveled to 50 countries or so. I strongly suspect I have seen more of the world than you have.
I can tell you that you are unequivocally wrong if you think that NK is anything like CA. It's a fun narrative of the uninformed.
> What fringe position? That vaccines without long term data and questionable efficacy against the prevalent variant should not be mandated? Which other country has mandated it?
Yes this is a fringe position that the science does not support.
It is clear that the hospitalization and death rates are orders of magnitude higher in the unvaccinated, and at the moment, I support policies which keep ICUs and hospital resources at or below capacity. Your positions are not in keeping with that.
I support mandatory vaccination campaigns until removing all restrictions would keep hospitals from being flooded, then lifting all restrictions.
Also real democracies have real elections and real candidates and peaceful changes of power between politicians.
The DPRK, Russia, PRC, Venezuela all claim to be democracies -- but really they use assassination and imprisonment to quash dissent.
If the truckers wanted to protest with signs and march up and down sidewalks, or strike against carrying transport, those are all legal things they can do. But they can't block commerce...
I completely agree. And fake ones have faux elections with controlled oppositions where voting doesn't matter... like in the U.S. or Canada.
Just so you know, North Korea has 4 political parties, China has 8, Russia has dozens. In faux democracies, small parties are paid for by the very same people who keep the big ones alive. Controlled opposition is very handy. People in power don't want to lose it just because half of the peasants don't like a face in an election.
If you think that they are even a tiny bit different, you are brainwashed into thinking that. There is no other explanation.
>Yes this is a fringe position that the science does not support.
"Science" supports whatever most scientists are paid to support. Lots of scientists supported the use of tobacco for a very long time.
Consider in the areas of Canada with the lowest vaccination rates and with the lowest compliance (Alberta, I'm looking at you) ICUs are full, and they're having to send patients to high-vaccination/high-compliance provinces like Ontario. Once again burdening those who comply with the selfish, capricious actions of those who do not. [1]
These are fringe views that most Canadians simply do not subscribe to. I know it's tough to hear. For those of us living in reality, though, these actions are unpleasant but necessary.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/covid-alberta-deena-...
Good point... except that the policy makers aren't paying out of their pocket. It's public money either way. They'll take whatever option helps them in the short run because if they don't, someone else is willing to take that money and bring them down in the next faux election.
You might want to look up what people who are actually putting money in it think. Hint: "pfizer stock price".
Flat out wrong. Canada is freezing accounts of people who weren't violating any law, with ex post facto laws.
They outright lost in court.
It would be such political hay if a single such case came forward. A minority government hangs in the balance, and can be ousted (insofar as a new election is called) immediately. Do you know why no verifiable case has come forward? Because the cases you heard of were lies.
I think only in the domain of history the "baddies" term make sense. Until then (historical perspective and taking the survival bias into consideration), the majority is "just" that. Not to dismiss it, of course, being a basis of democracy.