Comment by x-complexity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by x-complexity | Hacker News Reader

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> EDIT: It seems Stripe and Crypto apologists have downvoted & flagged my comment since Stripe is somehow a HN / YC darling that is immune from valid criticism even if they venture into crypto scamming, with no usecase that is better than the current financial system.

> It is a massive mistake that Stripe is offering anything in the crypto space as everyone and Stripe knows it is full of fraud, money laundering, scams and it is completely unregulated.

The argument is engaging in "everything is X" talk by blanketing an entire space as only engaging in negative impacts.

It should be noted that the percentage of crypto used in illicit activity is significantly less than 1%, compared to the estimated 2-5% of global GDP that is involved in money laundering alone within traditional financial ecosystems.

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-crypto-crime-repor...

https://blog.chainalysis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/char...

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10873/3 (page 1)

Using the same argument, it could be said that cash should be banned because its private & semi-anonymous nature allows for its use in transactions for gambling, drug use, child porngraphy, assasinations, & slave trafficking.

> Using the same argument, it could be said that cash should be banned because its private & semi-anonymous nature allows for its use in transactions for gambling, drug use, child porngraphy, assasinations, & slave trafficking.

If we somehow magically had come up with a cashless system first, and cash instead was introduced now, I am quite sure that yes there would be calls to ban it for those reasons. It is however an ancient legacy system that's deeply entrenched in our societies, so we're living with it for now, although perhaps not forever.

At least cash is accepted everywhere in domestic countries, and even it's online it's card. Crypto isn't widely accepted or even used as a form of payment in the real world and has no useful legitimate usecase. We don't need more unregulated tokens that have no intrinsic value other than speculation, gambling and fraud.

Sure we have issues in the current financial system, but augmenting (and dare I say) replacing it with an entirely worse unregulated system which loses people money through scams, increases and emboldens ransomware and exposes people to huge volatility is not the way to go.

> The argument is engaging in "everything is X" talk by blanketing an entire space as only engaging in negative impacts.

The negative impacts are FAR greater than the positive impacts of crypto.

Cash is not accepted everywhere. Lots of countries are nearly cashless, with small merchants already unable to accept cash.

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