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Comment by udev4096 | Hacker News Reader

> What is crypto mining if not a textbook Captain Planet villain scheme—to kill and raze and destroy for nothing but imaginary tokens proving that you did lots of killing and razing and destroying?

Are you serious? You complain about the 2008 crisis and capitalism and yet completely neglect the true purpose of crypto? No wonder you drank the Google kool-aid

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>the true purpose of crypto

What's the latest version of this one these days?

“Enabling the Dark Economy” is one I’ve heard.

>the true purpose of crypt

Fraud?

Fraud is a tiny sliver and it would be unfair to judge crypto on that alone. There's also ransomware, extortion, payments for drugs and theft by North Korea hackers.

You missed arms dealing, human trafficking and sanctions avoidance, but then there seems to be a lot of cryptobros who would think those are features not bugs.

> there seems to be a lot of cryptobros who would think those are features not bugs.

That's an unfair generalization of a completely normal group of people who just want to own islands where age of consent doesn't exist.

Touche! They have gotten so innovative with it

But what about theft?

Clearly there are way too many bad actors now which makes it seem like a fraud to anyone from the outside

A system that enables a proliferation of fraudsters _might_ have an inherent flaw that needs addressing.

As if the banking system is any better. How can any legitimate payment system which has no cryptographic operations, is highly centralized, where the money can be printed out of thin air and way too many other reasons, be taken seriously?

Because it works, and we've developed massive institutions (the federal reserve, FDIC, SWIFT, credit rating agencies, and other financial market utilities) to keep it working in a way that benefits the vast majority of people that use money

I'm so glad to witness the evolution from "Revolutionize finance" to "No worse than banking most of the time, right?"

Somehow 99.999% of the world's economy takes place upon it. Is all economic activity from the advent of banks to now not to be taken seriously?

You've essentially just backed up the quote from your first post with this comment.

What's the true purpose of crypto? It can be used to escape the banking system?

Asset that can't be involuntarily taken away or printed by a government.

It seems like Crypto can be taken away by the government. If the government orders you to give up your crypto they will just throw you in a cell until you comply. Or as it happening more and more often, a guy with a wrench persuades you to give it up.

They can't actually do that at a mass scale - they don't reliably know how much crypto any given person owns.

Ditto, if someone beats me with a wrench and I give them a password accessing $500 of crypto, what % of my stash have they just claimed? Do they stop or continue with the wrenching? What is the stopping condition here?

It blew my mind they did that with Gold in the US. It's really scary what were are capable of.

Only if you are "legible" to them.

Maybe barter should be better, then.

Sure it can.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-h...

> On November 9, 2021, pursuant to a judicially authorized premises search warrant of ZHONG’s Gainesville, Georgia, house, law enforcement seized approximately 50,676.17851897 Bitcoin, then valued at over $3.36 billion. This seizure was then the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice and today remains the Department’s second largest financial seizure ever.

Having you physically within their jurisdiction (and/or drone strike reach) permits quite a bit of leverage. As the XKCD comic notes… https://xkcd.com/538/

It does seem slightly silly that a through-line of the article is disgust at societal power dynamics and surveillance, and then not recognize that Bitcoin and other proto-cryptocurrencies were invented by anarchist cypherpunks as a solution to the same thing in the monetary system.

The author of this article is not slamming the authors of the protocol. They're criticizing what it became and what it's used for now. There's a difference.

You can not seriously claim that this modern incarnation of Bitcoin is what was originally intended. That would be ridiculous.

Did it work?

"Privacycoins" exist and lots of anarchist cypherpunks are able to use them to buy drugs, so I'm liable to say yes

Not for you. Come to think of it, a monetary system which is designed on cryptographic operations would never be truly understood by people who love being oppressed and thrive under the mass surveillance of the banking system. You are just a stupid pawn

If only we were all as smart and enlightened as you.

That's a no then?

avoiding monetary control policies?

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