Is the US trying to kill crypto?
bbc.com
bbc.com
To describe this as an attack on crypto repeats the propaganda of an industry built on fraud. What's happening is enforcement of laws previously unenforced on an industry with widespread law-breaking.
The reason these cypto companies aren't in the US is because the US gov will enforce the law.
> an industry with widespread law-breaking
I'm not sure there's a meaningful difference.
If you don't agree with my outlook on cryptocurrency, you're mafia, rogue, too small to matter, or failing otherwise.NO state truly supports crypto, as it bypasses state-controlled money (by design or not; I'd argue that is exactly one of the design goals).
I'm not sure how true it is, but I have read N Korea uses cryptocurrencies to trade ?
fixed that crappy title for you! and no need to read, the answer is "Yes."
so maybe they can just be classified as some kind of gambling product.
And how about day traders and individual "investors" trying their luck with options?
But the gambling/crypto/options platforms need to be regulated and transparent. Because otherwise, you don’t know how much the game is rigged against you, the player.
Allow crypto platforms to operate and even thrive. But bring them under regulation so that users can buy without the constant threat of market manipulation, insider trading, and all the opaque shenanigans that currently happen with crypto.
Only downside is that sports betting doesn't let you move money across borders
And the US should.
It should just die already. Crypto, NFTs, Web3, Blockchain, whatever, I mean ALL of it.
Nobody needs or wants it. It has really been almost 15 years with no viable legitimate use case at all.
For the crypto bro pedants out there, this also includes the biggest energy wasting, 'distributed sudoku solver' that is Bitcoin.
There exists not one use case that crypto solves at all that the current system already does better.
That's not true. It's been very useful for funding the DPRK nuclear program through ransoms.
For the record I don't hold any Bitcoin or classify as a "crypto bro". Your comment is just factually incorrect.
'Self custody digital currency' is not a use case anybody has asked for.
The current system already has a solution that is better than Bitcoin, and that everyone already uses it's called:
Cash.
UPI also already solves this as well in India, to the order of hundreds of millions in less than 10 years it has existed.
Other countries are following suit as well.
> Bitcoin solves this.
No it doesn't. Why does Bitcoin still gets seized by the government?
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/07/feds-seize-3point36-billion-...
Is that the goal of Bitcoin? It also needs to engulf the planet in enormous electricity waste to compute billions of meaningless puzzles.
Other countries have better systems that doesn't use Bitcoin and are far cheaper and scale better than Bitcoin.
There is no need for a volatile unregulated token that nobody takes as payment such as Bitcoin.
and works better than Bitcoin ever will.
Funny how the US government is one of the biggest holders of Bitcoin, even though that the whole point of Bitcoin is to get away from governments.
It's almost like Bitcoin is unregulated and fit only be used to launder money.
Not a legitimate use case at all.
For me this has also been an attraction to crypto as I lost faith in the banking sector after 2007. But I have no crypto left because the regulation makes it so difficult. And I don't care about the speculation, I just wanted a truly safe place to store my money.
Because you cannot use cash to transact globally, and you cannot use digital forms of central bank issued currency permissionlessly or have self-custody. Cryptocurrency gives you all those three properties.
So you must give up something. HNers typically are willing to give up the permissionless and self-custody properties. After all, most of HN audience lives in developed democratic countries where personal freedoms are considered fundamental pillars and protected. But at a minimum you should consider that, not all the world lives under those circumstances. And that there are no guarantees that those circumstances will always be preserved in your cozy first world country. Certainly if you are willing to give them up so easily.
Don't be so quick to assume it cannot happen where you live. One day they may go after some fringe truckers protesting in Canada. Another day they may go after some camgirls earning a living in ways that some executive board of a payment processor considers reprobable. Maybe one day they will tell you in what you can or cannot spend your money or where you can invest it and how much.
The number of hardware wallets clearly shows that this statement is false. Someone who uses Bitcoin today might not have asked for it but now that it exists they use it just like smart phones.
> The current system already has a solution that is better than Bitcoin, and that everyone already uses it's called:
Cash.
Cash and Bitcoin are not directly comparable as they have different properties but even if you were to focus on the one property that they share notice how controls of cash are getting more and more restrictive.
> Why does Bitcoin still gets seized by the government?
Because people allow it to be seized by their own volition or their own incompetence.
> It also needs to engulf the planet in enormous electricity waste to compute billions of meaningless puzzles.
The same could be said for video games. Video games cause more e-waste, use more electricity, are designed to be addictive and rob people of doing productive things for themselves and others.
> Other countries have better systems that doesn't use Bitcoin and are far cheaper and scale better than Bitcoin.
Far cheaper and scale better but have none of the properties that make Bitcoin attractive or essential in the first place.
Regular currency is also abused, but at least it has a clear beneficial use case. Crypto only destroys, it sucks wealth away from those who often can’t spare it.
Crypto is the culmination of all the hubris of both men and capitalism combined. A solution without a problem.
The crypto people have it so backwards: they looked at those bankers and HF traders and they didn’t think: this industry must be regulated to death. No, they didn’t see anything wrong: they just want their cut, they were entitled to (temporary embarrassed millionaires).
The whole Wall Street Bets / GameStop phenomenon is also exactly that. But trying to join a destructive industry is only self absorbed nihilism (getting rich at the expense of others (which may be a tautology)). It doesn’t solve any of the systemic underlying causes and most other people end up being the bag holders.
Crypto in short is so similar to HF trading, just sucking out value without creating any value and as a society at large we can do without.
Notice every tech company is an AI play now? haha.
Every CIO/CTO of every company in every industry is now "looking at AI". Much more so than any were ever looking at crypto.
There is now a rich market of B2B customers looking to write checks for "AI stuff".
There was a moment like this for cryptocurrencies a few years ago, but that was when every CEO and startup was trying to do something with "blockchain" to make investors salivate.
...but you repeat yourself
I don’t know or care much for crypto, but man does it bring out Ayn Rand villains you thought only existed in books.