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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

That's the thing where if you have significant assets your family members get kidnapped until you irreversibly transfer those assets to criminals, right?

I'm not sure how crypto continues to gain mainstream adoption in the face of that, no matter how much excitement there is for it in the current US administration.

My previous argument was that a technology where losing your password means you lose your net worth was incompatible with how human beings actually work. This kidnapping thing appears to be getting a whole lot more media coverage than that.

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The irreversible transfer is a large part of the attraction isn't it? Your business policy may be "no refunds", but customers paying with credit cards have a decent chance of a refund from Visa or MasterCard. Now your "no refunds" business, which might be on the scammy side, has to deal with Visa's lawyers per charge backs.

Irreversible transactions make scammy businesses more profitable.

Sure, that's attractive to vendors. It's not attractive to consumers.

Hence advocating cryptocurrency based on other aspects of it. Irreversible transactions plus decentralized means scammy businesses are more profitable and harder to be rid of.

Kidnapping and ransom existed before crypto

So did pump and dump scams, but crypto brought in a new golden age of pumping and dumping. It's a matter of scale and ease of execution.

Getting kidnapped happens against victim's will, whereas getting into a global PvP casino, taking a risk and getting burned is self-inflicted. Sure, it's easy to fall into it when everyone, especially celebrities shill these scams but still, nobody's holding gun to anyone's head here. I've bet on wrong thing many times but ultimately it was my choice

Are you really arguing that victims of scams deserve it if no violence or coercion was involved?

Absolutely not, it's not up to me or you to decide whether someone deserves to be scammed. Just saying it's a gamble many choose to take.

That’s not his argument. You must ensure the anonymity of criminals in order to also protect the anonymity of your innocent relatives.

Reducing the barrier to successfully executing a kidnapping-for-cash turns out to make that crime more common.

Yeah but “being your own bank”, keeping all your savings under the mattress, makes your house a lot more inviting target.

Likewise being able to ransom people half way across the world and knowing there is an irreversible way you can get them to transfer the money across borders makes ransomware possible.

That's sort of the point, I think. It's like buying an index tracker in the underground economy.

eh, it was fair to say that 8 years ago...

now it's way easier to track public blockchain transaction chains on Bitcoin, Ethereum and the like than it is to track bank transfers across countries

Yet once you strip out speculation the underground economy is still by far the predominant user of blockchain transactions.

Bank transfers are A) linked to a passport and B) can be blocked.

Sure but you skip across borders, use mixers, over the counter trades and dodgy offshore exchanges.

It’s not that hard to cover your tracks. And sometimes it doesn’t matter if your beyond the reach of the authorities in the country the crimes were committed.

That's the thing, fighting against kings and monarchs with a stranglehold on the colonies means you get invaded by a world superpower, right? Who would tolerate fighting for freedom if it means getting murdered? Such a short sighted pursuit that won't lead to anything better, it is foolish. Clearly we should bow down before the supreme authority and accept their benevolent ruling. /s

History has this way of repeating itself. And it seems the blind will never see. Those who can see, just keep working. Talk is cheap. We will drag humanity into the future kicking and screaming if needed, because we know what waits for us on the other side.

Well, this article is about the difference between USA (with its first businessman president) and the rest of the world. The businessman president offers the cheapest talk, and the greatest return on investment for those who can afford a private audience. The accelerationist future — is this what you mean by kicking and screaming?

Kidnapping for ransom was a thing in human history even before money was invented. And money could be lost in many other irreversible scenarios, like fire, government confiscation or devaluation.

So was speculation.

Crypto is just another value carrier. Password is just a risk factor, like trust in govt is.

Banks can potentially act as gateways that prevent large transactions that are otherwise possible with crypto. They can do this simply by saying that for any amount above a certain level, you need to attend in person.

The whole "time immemorial" argument is a little silly when we put it in the context of modernity: we have safeguards people didn't have "before money was invented" because we're the beneficiaries of a sophisticated set of social rules intended to protect people. Getting rid of those safeguards because they're recent is fairly likely to make our lives worse.

My point wasn't just to awe crypto. For me it is just another asset/vehicle for diversification.

And you never know when safeguards will turn against the beneficiaries, like Freedom Convoy https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottaw...

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