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Comment by TimPC | Hacker News Reader

We could use this a vehicle for banning all cryptocurrency transactions. Just require all transactions in all currencies meet certain industry standard financial regulations and provide injunctive relief if transactions occur that don’t.

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Hard to say if you're actually in favor of this or not, but this is exactly the endgame strategy for any protocols that provide an alternative to the Empire's approved ones.

Nobody should be in favor of these things imo.

I’m in favour of not burning more power that the country of Argentina for a coin who’s primary historical purposes have been speculation and the facilitating of illegal transactions. I also think it’s a hard problem to solve short of banning given the large numbers of rampant speculators.

You are referring to the US dollar correct?

Creating and moving cash also requires power and can be used for illegal transactions.

It’s almost like we created a system of rules for moving cash and made certain behaviours with it illegal due to some of the problems with this. Imagine that.

And who are you to decide what power should or should not be used for? Someone appointed you king of the world? It’s natural to want to impose your will by force and make everything you don’t like illegal. But consider that tomorrow, the roles might be reversed and the boot might be on your neck.

No where did I say I wanted to be king of the world. I think our democratically elected institutions can decide such things. My vote would be to do so.

I agree that democracy potentially means that things I like may be prohibited. I don’t see that as a good reason to throw out democracy.

Society makes laws to prevent individuals from enrich themselves by harming the public. Committing climate arson so that you can get rich speculating on cryptocurrency is precisely the kind of externality that environmental regulations are designed to prevent

Much more energy gets wasted by a high monetary inflation currency like USD, which pushes the economy to create additional busywork churn in the name of "growth".

> Committing climate arson so that you can get rich speculating on cryptocurrency

That's such a hyperbolic and frankly disingenuous way of putting it.

Any human activity consumes energy to an extent. You are calling it "climate arson" because you personally don't like it, so it is a waste to you. What else should "society" ban because someone thinks it is not useful and harming the environment? Gaming PCs? Meat? Cars?

NB: Gaming PCs consume a tiny fraction of the energy of crypto, meat (especially beef), or cars.

(I feel compelled to defend my lifestyle from the eco-chopping block.)

No, what's disingenuous is neglecting to consider how much energy is used by different activities. The average American's gaming, meat consuption, driving, and all other activities combined emit as much CO2 as only about a dozen Bitcoin transactions [0][1]. So yes, I'm going to go on considering cryptocurrency usage to be climate arson

[0]: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ [1]: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carb...

You might not realize it, but you are giving credibility to decentralized currencies with this comment.

IMF is doing that by making countries ban crypto currency industry for providing loan.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/05/05/argentinas-centra...

Given governments use “think of the children” rhetoric against decent cryptography in private communications, combined with the research demonstrating the presence of illegal material inside the Bitcoin blockchain[0], the only reason I’m not surprised cryptocurrency hasn’t been banned already is that legislators aren’t technologists.

[0] https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf

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