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Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

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Yep, the belief that governments would just give up control of money always seemed incredibly naive to me too.

On the other hand, doesn't all "wouldn't it be nice if it was like this?" look naive and wild before they were implemented/fought through?

Things like "Womens right to vote", "Civil rights" or even democracy was seen as completely backwards and naive at one point in history (and still is in some places), but today we kind of see it as something good to strive for, most of the times.

I'm not saying it's 100% the same for cryptocurrencies, but isn't there a chance it's something similar at least?

> nation is going to give up their self-determination because someone thinks countries having self-control

Nations do not have selves. That's taking the analogy too far. I do agree that they will definitely continue trying to exert control, though. It's kinda their thing.

Unless they personally can profit from the situation anyway. Then they’ll often do perfunctory PR prosecutions while taking kickbacks. See things like prosecutions around prostitution for one usually pretty clear example.

I believe you, but do you have any evidence of how the prostitution kick backs work? Interesting articles?

A more egregious case than most [https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/springfield/press-releases...].

Usually it’s as simple as the cops looking the other way in exchange for ‘freebies’.

It would also be delusional to think crypto-bros will give up their self-determination to the nation-state.

It's really not. 100% of the time the nation state is winning that battle, as evidence by literally all of human history. Crypto-bros make up a fraction of a fraction of the population and most people don't have sympathy for any of them when the primary use cases of crypto today are extortion and black markets in the western world.

I don't think there's any shortage of history of people fighting the impossible, mostly getting crucified, and occasionally winning, and occasionally just existing as someone that would take the state more money than it's worth to go after.

You're expecting crypt-bros to act rationally based on utility of outcome. If they're acting ideologically there's no guarantee that will be the case.

it's another $5 wrench situation

Sure but now you need a $5 wrench to essentially force a guy to tell you where he buried the gold, rather than just walking to the bank and taking it. I don't see that as some kind of win for the guy with a wrench, especially when you realize the bank manager is way less likely to be a violent nutter sov-cit.

The solution is to store your money on a wallet where you do not have the private key. This way if you cannot access your funds nobody will be able to coerce you.

Their solution to that is "rot in jail for a long time, then".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Beatty_Chadwick

Demonstrating that if you wait long enough (14 years in that case), you can get away without loosing the funds, even from the state?

> On July 10, 2009, Chadwick was ordered released from prison by Delaware County Judge Joseph Cronin, who determined his continued incarceration had lost its coercive effect and would not result in him surrendering the money.

His finances are gonna be under close inspection for the rest of his life, and fourteen years is a lot to lose.

2.5 million was a lot in 1992, and who knows what that amount is today, if they've offloaded it to somewhere it earns interest. I know plenty of people who day-by-day sacrifice their time for way less than ~500 per day which that ends up being if we assume the money been still since they were arrested.

But none of that matters if it's fundamentally inaccessible. The instant he spends outside of his known means, they have evidence he's accessed the funds and can jail him for contempt again. Travel is probably barred.

Yeah, of course, but since he didn't wanna give it up, and was willing to take 14 years of prison, I feel pretty confident he has some way of being able to use it, otherwise why not give it up?

Of course, this is also assuming he was lying when he said all the money been spent and he had no money when he was arrested.

> I feel pretty confident he has some way of being able to use it, otherwise why not give it up?

People go to shocking lengths to spite their exes sometimes.

In that case the obvious move from the 5$ wrench perspective is to hit you with it until you tell them where the private key is kept, because you would need to have it somewhere.

The key must exist somewhere and the wrench may make you reveal that information instead.

What 5 dollar wrench wielder is going to believe that, even when it's true?

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