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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

This is a great point: even above speculation, a core part of cryptocurrency's "stickiness" is that it's effectively unregulated gambling with extremely large upsides.

I think that points to the best recourse we have, after the next crash: it needs to be regulated into the dirt.

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Luckily for the world, regulators tend to step in right after collapses. Crypto is finally large enough to have the eye of regulators, and if a real collapse materializes this time - they may pounce.

I suspect they'll aggressively take out stablecoins. They are the only real source of liquidity in crypto. Price action follows liquidity, so hopefully, any future swings will be much much smaller.

Regulate a useful technology into the dirt because you have incorrect assumptions, and are generally ignorant about it?

I can assure you that, to my vague displeasure, I am somewhat of the opposite of "generally ignorant" of cryptocurrencies. And I haven't stated any assumptions, other than the relatively bland claim that "people gamble with it."

More to the point, consumer protection in the form of regulation is what makes a currency and banking system real. There's far too much risk for the average person to consider using cryptocurrency the way they currently use EUR or USD without such a regime.

It seems rash to wish for regulation to be weaponized to the effect of banning something, rather the actual meaning of regulation to define and enforce orderly, fair, predictable functioning of something.

Much like a puppy-kicking machine, the "orderly, fair, predictable" functioning of cryptocurrencies is something much closer to "nonexistence" than to the current state of affairs.

Less facetiously: there is nothing orderly about our current schemes. There is nothing particularly fair about them either, unless your definition of fairness is something closer to Thucydides' than a modern one. And predictable? Cryptocurrencies handily defeat our stock market in unpredictability. Not a great set of qualifications.

If you believe those things, you should be asking for crypto to be outlawed, not disingenuously regulated for the underhanded purpos of outlawing it.

You do understand that banning something is a form of regulation, correct? I don't know how much more explicit I can be with a phrase like "regulate into the dirt."

> I don't know how much more explicit I can be with a phrase like "regulate into the dirt."

"regulate it into the dirt" is commonly understood to mean the very real practice of placing so many restrictions/conditions on something that it becomes impractical to operate within the industry of whatever "it" is while explicitly not actually banning it outright.

I tend to agree that there's no reason it should exist, but I'm open to the idea that maybe there's a worthy purpose out there that I'm missing.

Normally if the policy outcome you wish for is for X to be non-existent, then it would be more precise and explicit to say "we should ban X". The word regulate implies to some degree that we want X to exist, just in a way that is more constrained for better outcomes. Think about the mechanical meaning of the word regulate. To try to ban something under the guise of regulation makes it seem like you are wishing for a bad-faith effort to use regulation to make something fail rather than function.

I think I've been very precise. But if it isn't to your liking, here's another formulation: I believe that cryptocurrencies should be banned.

But then again, what if what I mean by ban is a "partial ban." Opportunities for misinterpretation abound!

It is not misinterpretation, and the precision matters. For example, discourse on abortion that is favorable to abortion rights would not talk about the opposition "regulating" abortion, but only in terms of banning it. With crypto, it is clearly not politically favorable to have a complete ban, so to get an effective ban under the guise of regulation is basically hoping for authority to act in bad faith.

Replace crypto with dumping toxic waste into the local river and re-read your sentence.

I think it would be more standard to replace "regulate" with "outlaw" as well, does that make sense?

You can’t just replace nouns and keep the same meaning, cos language doesn’t work that way.

It does if the analogy holds. Both have no positive attributes, only negative attributes.

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