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Comment by DangitBobby | Hacker News Reader

It would be much easier if crypto could just die out.

Why? I saw a good use for this week when journalists used it to purchase a car in war torn Ukraine.

Thats wonderful. Im sure a handful of victories can be listed. I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though.

Anyway, I need not remind you of how big a boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists. I think it should be pretty clear to anyone on this site why someone would be against them, just like it's clear to me why someone would be for them.

> I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though

There was no cash. ATMs we’re dry.

> boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists

It is probably overstated.

Orders of magnitude more criminal activity would be going through cash and even orgs that are meant to KYC, such as Western Union or even iTunes gift certificates. How many grannies are sending crypto vs providing logins to their bank accounts?

I’m not a crypto-apologist, I just haven’t heard any solid arguments against it that can’t also be said about cash or the traditional banking system.

> There was no cash. ATMs we’re dry.

paypal, venmo, cashapp etc would have worked the same. for all of them and for crypto you need to be in the ecosystem (need wallets, accounts, apps etc) and internet access.

All very US centric apps (with the exception of Paypal), but PayPal would gouge them on fees.

I guess what I want to get across is I’m not evangelising crypto, I just don’t necessarily want the space to die. I want them to keep iterating on the concept and see what other benefits can be generated.

I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though.

Exactly this. I'm guessing if they needed food they'd be out of luck.

You’re probably not wrong.

If war broke out in my country I’d be glad I could take my money across the border by memorizing some words rather than dragging silver or possibly now worthless currency.

Got a link to that? Cryptocurrencies seem to me to be a poor choice in a situation where there might be issues with infrastructure like the electrical grid or internet connectivity.

> Got a link

  Got a car today. Bought it with #bitcoin  as all ATM's are almost cleared out and the credit card terminals are down. Hopefully, it will allow us to report a little from #Donbass while also keeping us safe and granting us an escape if things starts heating up here. [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/efmikkelsen/status/1497283116028686336?s...

They did end up both getting shot in the leg(s), but are now safe

Afaik, you send bitcoin by radio waves from a transmitter.

To run that transmitter, you will need electricity. The electricity can be made in such situations via a generator/inverter by burning diesel.

Was that single car worth the energy waste equivalent of a small country?

Detonating a nuclear bomb to kill one person isn't exactly a praise for its effectiveness, either.

A single transaction does not use the energy equivalent of a small country. Last estimation I've seen said they used around 1719.51kWh. That's still a whole damn lot (around 60 days of energy use of an average US household), but you won't power a country with it.

> Was that single car worth the energy waste equivalent of a small country?

What if this energy waste enabled the purchase of 1,000 cars for people in desperate need? Would it then be worth it?

What if it were a million cars, or a billion?

It won't, and it's a very important technology since it's the only way for humans to store digital property without relying on some government or corporation.

Also, it ever gets attacked, much more will be at stake, including your freedom for choosing what software can be run on your computer.

> It won't, and it's a very important technology since it's the only way for humans to store digital property without relying on some government or corporation.

Proof of work is the thing people have a problem with. There's lots of cryptographic techniques that you can use without proof of work.

And the only thing the likes of bitcoin need proof-of-work for is to avoid double-spending attacks.

Not quite sure what you mean by digital property. I can store valuable files just fine without proof-of-work. And we can copy them and give them to everyone in the world, too, at almost no cost.

Cryptocurrencies (and similar) allow you to keep a digital ledger. But the meaning of that ledger is still something we construct socially.

As a silly example: people agree to treat bitcoins as fungible. But they are perfectly traceable, so people could also agree to reject some specific bitcoin (and any descendent bitcoin that can be traced back to the banned ones; so if you mix them in a transaction, you just spread the taint).

For a slightly more real world example: I can imagine if Satoshi rose from the grave and held an auction to sell off the first bitcoin ever mined, he would get more than whatever bitcoin is currently trading for.

Cryptocurrencies, not cryptography. My software freedom is not dependent on the existence of cryptocurrencies. My hardware freedom is currently significantly hampered by them.

> Be on the side that empowers people with technology, not the side that wants to take it away.

I'm not really advocating for taking it away. I'm happy with a natural death or a market induced death. I'd definitely advocate for hardware that's terrible at mining because I'm not really being given a lot of options. You can't really say "freedom to use your hardware as you will" out of one side of your mouth while saying "you can't want hardware with restrictions" out of the other. It's a paradox. We both want the hardware that works for us, don't we? If NVidia can make cards that suck at mining, it's my economic freedom and right to choose to support that, and I would, just like it's your economic right and freedom to buy all hardware in existence to waste energy.

I can tell you 100% that cryptocurrencies are the opposite of empowering for me and those around me in my current life.

And that is where the contradiction exists — let’s say you get your way, and governments start arresting people doing arbitrary computation on their graphics card — let’s say hashing. That would very bad for everyone’s freedoms, software and hardware. The same anticryptocurrency playbook is what was used against cryptography in the 90s. Technology that challenges the powerful is dangerous!

It’s ok to not like cryptocurrency and not use it. Others can, and will. Be on the side that empowers people with technology, not the side that wants to take it away.

If we just arrest people for selling them for money instead, 99% of the problem would go away overnight. People can trade them as stamps or even barter them if they're so inclined, nobody has to be arrested for performing hash collisions on strings.

freedom for me, but not anyone else. Genius.

That reply probably sounded pretty smart in your head. Maybe you think I'm suggesting that we should outlaw or criminalize them? That makes sense based on your previous comment. But I said no such thing. Wishing it ill is not the same as taking away your freedom.

How on earth does it stop reliance on a government? Or specifically, prevent reliance on some entity monopolising force? This crypto wet dream, like all libertarian wet dreams, ultimately relies on there being a benevolent entity that prevents someone with a bigger gun than you from marching in and taking whatever they want.

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