But the safeguards and regulations that governments put in place for money are mostly absent for crypto. It should remain this way. I want to see how far crypto can go without government regulations and protections.
We have seen enough of that: one rug-pull and scam after the other. Governments are stepping in with crypto precisely because of all the scams.
I'm still totally reeling from the XMR rug pull. Oh, wait...
Just because many are scams, doesn't mean there are no principled crypto currencies.
God forbid one should have to perform due diligence and actually think a bit about their currency.
There were other attempts at digital currency before BTC, but they were all taken down by people with guns.
That's kinda the whole point. That's why BTC uses energy. It's a means of resistance to people with guns.
That logic makes about as much sense as using crypto currencies in general.
Proof of Work is a means of preventing any one actor from controlling bitcoin. Proof of Work is energy intensive, but the currency exists in a government resistant manner without the use of guns because of Proof of Work.
No. It does not prevent majority attacks.
It has also been very effective as a mean to enforce an oligarchy of those who have the hardware and made billions, compared to those who did not and who were at the mercy of fluctuations. It makes sense from a perverse right-wing libertarian point of view, but it has nothing to do with democratisation or taking the power away from the government.
> those who have the hardware and made billions, compared to those who did not and who were at the mercy of fluctuations.
I don't know what you could even mean. Having hardware just means you can mine BTC. Miners still deal with price fluctuations, and in no way have they been able to control or print BTC.
> ...it has nothing to do with democratisation or taking the power away from the government.
If the government couldn't take limitless loans from the Fed which creates debt from nothing -- a fancy way of saying print money -- if the government couldn't print money it would have to tax for it's expenditure and would be naturally constrained in it's power.
I honestly can't understand any of your positions and can only believe you're incredibly uniformed about the reality of money, power, and the genisis of and technology behind many crypto currencies.
Good thing they weren't built to resist laws made by people with 5$ wrenches /s
Not at all. Otherwise they’d be truly anonymous. People with guns know how to parse the blockchain and how to find you if they need.
And as for BTC, the lightning network will add a level of anonymity as well.
Further, even if people with guns can track you, at least the people with guns can print more BTC or XMR to buy still more guns with.
Does that mean it'll eventually eclipse and live in front of the current timeline of banking, so we'll see banking and finance following the crypto industry at one point, repeating the same mistake that happens in cryptocurrencies?
But it would be funny if banks started encrypting my files and demanding ransom.
They're making a jab at a large usage of cryptocurrency: payment for ransomware exploits
As banking transactions can be reversed and are as opposite of anonymous as is practically possible, it would be (darkly) amusing if a traditional bank did that, precisely because the damage would be undone and the guilty parties trivially identified.
Every oil pipeline, school, hospital, farm, old age home that's ransomed is 100% thanks to Bitcoin and its progeny. But hey, at least it's found a use case.
> One of the first ransomware attacks ever documented was the AIDS trojan (PC Cyborg Virus) that was released via floppy disk in 1989. Victims needed to send $189 to a P.O. box in Panama to restore access to their systems, even though it was a simple virus that utilized symmetric cryptography.
[1] https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/ransomware/his...
Not your ability to keep your Ledger safe under your birdbath.