Let me get this straight: the world's largest Bitcoin exchange just announced that they will no longer allow retail customers to withdraw cash, and you're telling us, with a straight face, that this is good for Bitcoin?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34472790.
It's true that the comment you were replying to was generic and therefore not good, but yours was repetitive generic flamebait and therefore much worse. Please don't post like that here. We want curious conversation.
OTOH sha256 proof of work mining is a billion dollar industry and the Bitcoin mining hashrate just hit an all time high after a long protracted bear market.
Miners are in the black, price will follow
Edit: a word
I don't believe in crypto. But I know plenty of religious zealots to sell it to. So I'm happy to own it. My bet is it isn't a dying religion.
1) Divine creator whose existence is impossible to prove
2) A holy book: (whitepaper) that's taken as absolute truth and therefore doesn't require any revisions or updates. Proposed changes to core beliefs create split factions (BTC v BCH, Old v New Testament, or the Shia-Sunni split in Islam).
3) Monotheism: Belief in the primacy of Bitcoin blockchain over all other competing chains, and warning of divine punishment for apostates (NGMI).
Is it perfect? No.
Is it ages ahead of Bitcoin? Yes
Stopped by bank: this could indicate there are more regulation to come in near future Stopped by Biance: is there a problem with the platform
Blur your eyes enough and any "thing" in an economic system is (at least) one of: Consumable, Utilitarian, Currency, or an Asset. The fun thing about economics is: which category some Thing lands in depends as much on its Design as its Perception; cars are generally Utilitarian, somewhat Consumable, but rare ones could be classified as Assets. Houses are, generally, Utilitarian Assets in the United States; but in many countries they're Utilitarian Consumables. Perception matters.
Critical characteristics of an asset: it has a dynamic market-priced value denominated in a currency; that market has a meaningful level of liquidity to support its actors; and its actors, to varying degrees, Perceive the value of this asset as priced to that currency to increase over time.
There are obviously a ton of different, diverse voices in every community, but a big problem the "crypto is money" crowd has had is that, traditionally, crypto has been perceived as an Asset, not a Currency; even though its functionally good at being one. The vast majority of actors in the crypto economic system perpetuate this; we talk about Ethereum as it is priced to USD, we talk about Bitcoin going down 20%, etc.
There's an argument to be made, though I don't totally believe it, that forcing crypto to become more divorced from traditional currencies could, especially outside of the developed US-led western world, force it into a place where it starts looking less like an asset and more like a currency. The recent scandals, schemes, and restrictions concerning traditional-to-crypto bridge systems are all doing a fairly good job of perpetuating this; but this ultimately comes down to what you mean by "good for Bitcoin". None of what has happened to crypto over the past two years will be good for its USD-denominated market price. But; its utility as a currency hasn't changed, and would actually become more stable as perception on its purpose changes and its exit liquidity reduces.
To spin a metaphor: Britain formed the US as a colony, and in the early years the US was tremendously reliant on trade and resources from Britain. With that reliance came a natural cap on the US's ability to grow; and the conditions of that reliance (e.g. taxes) eventually made the relationship unsustainable. Severing that relationship was bloody and ugly; but now, the US is far more powerful. In this metaphor, that relationship is the traditional-to-crypto bridge; and severing it is a reduction of traditional-to-crypto market liquidity.
To be clear, I'm not arguing this will be good for crypto no matter the camp you're in. Just that, this would be the argument if you are in the crypto-is-money camp. My opinion is: crypto-as-money is still far, far too nascent; the world's assetization of crypto over the past decade has mostly destroyed any hope of it becoming money without some kind of civilization-level shock to existing money systems (which would be just as likely to impact the vast network of computer systems necessary to keep crypto running). And even if it did happen, at any level of significance, there are no existing crypto systems I'm aware of which would actually make Healthy Money at a country/regional/global macroeconomic scale (not remotely high-scale enough & too much deflation).