> “Today’s indictment reiterates the FBI’s commitment to identifying and addressing bad actors defrauding investors and sullying the ability of legitimate entrepreneurs to innovate within the emergent cryptocurrency space,” said Special Agent in Charge Eric B. Smith of the FBI’s Cleveland Field Office.
I found this notable. The messaging is clear: the DoJ supports crypto within whatever the current legal framework is.
Not untrue. If you're quick to get in and time your exit right, you can make some seriously good money. Basically leveraging someone else's scam to scam people yourself.
bitcoin and crypto is just a technology, a tool at the end of the day. It is like saying nuclear fusion is only for mass destruction and extinction of the human race. Oh wait, nevermind. I retract that.
There are a couple of "token sales" (they don't call them that) that only allowed accredited investors to invest, and had their "token sales" registered with the SEC before they went live with them. If those were designed to defraud the investors, I'm pretty sure SEC would go after those first.
It’d be tricky to define criminal criteria based solely on running a Ponzi scheme so there isn’t a “USC Section #” crime called “Ponzi Scheming”. They just charge the various illegal parts of the scheme separately. His charges:
Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud—Title 18, U.S.C., Section 1349
Maximum penalty: Twenty years in prison, forfeiture, restitution, and $250,000 fine
Wire Fraud—Title 18, U.S.C., Section 1343
Maximum penalty: Twenty years in prison, forfeiture, restitution, and $250,000 fine
Conspiracy—Title 18, U.S.C., Section 371
Maximum penalty: Five years in prison, and $250,000 fine
Operation of Unlicensed Money Transmitting Business—Title 18, U.S.C., Section 1960
Maximum penalty: Five years in prison, forfeiture, and $250,000 fine
Why do people trust middlemen to handle their crypto in a safe manner? The whole idea behind crypto is that it's decentralized. Interacting with exchanges, investment platforms, etc is asking for trouble. Assume any exchange is another MtGox waiting to happen. Assume you no longer own your funds once you interact with any crypto platform. Fraud is rampant in the crypto scene and has been since the beginning. And for those crying 'But Coinbase!'. I don't trust them either. Coinbase must have a really hard time sleeping knowing they're the custodians / middlemen of so much wealth.
The only way cryptocurrency goes mainstream is with these middlemen you speak of. Do you really think the average person has the knowledge and time to manage this themselves? It is far from decentralized, but the entire idea of a decentralized financial system is nothing more than a pipe dream.
For the same reason people use banks and brokerages -- it's easy.
There are also significant risks to managing your own crypto: managing wallet security is not trivial, people have lost money because they lost their passwords etc. There is a staggering amount of scams to avoid.
The level of complexity and risk inherent in self-managing crypto is just too much to expect from the general public.
And all three of those parts are why the crypto dream of decentralized payments for all will never come to fruition. It is simply not possible for a decentralized system to have the same convenience and low cost as a centralized system. In the end, any decentralized system will tend to have a centralized layer built on top of it that eventually makes the underlying decentralized system obsolete.
We see this everywhere: in Web 2.0, in Apple's walled garden, in Canonical's dominance in the desktop Linux space, and in the political history of basically any country you can name. Even most people who in theory support decentralization end up in practice choosing the centralized system every time.
Fees are why I haven't moved my ETH after using an exchange to buy some for USD. I don't want to pay the stupidly high costs to move the ETH into a wallet that I fully control. Especially because turning that back to USD so it's actually usable in day-to-day transactions would require paying yet more fees to move the ETH back to an exchange (or to an independent buyer).
Have you had a look at gas prices recently? A transfer costs between 1$ and 2$ depending on the time of the day.
It's still much higher than it should be, and let's hope that will change soon with the merge and L2 adoption, but that's not what I would call stupidly high costs to move the ETH.
A single transfer for ETH maybe but that's also in part because ETH price is low. If you want to move erc20s it costs significantly more And if your portfolio includes many projects it is unseemly. Also a lot of exchanges or at least the biggest one - Binance - have higher withdraw fees in part because they must make multiple transactions to send your money out.
While I agree with the premise of not leaving crypto in online wallets, at this point it's absurd to think you can interact with crypto without interacting with exchanges. Very, very, very few people are paid in crypto, and still very few (legitimate) merchants actually accepts crypto as the final form of payment for goods, so if you actually want to use crypto as, you know, money, at some point you'll be dealing with an exchange.
I always used to think the founder was the guy from the famous YouTube meme. Never in my wild imagination would have though it would be a guy from pretty much rural india. World is more connected than I think I guess.
Most of the early yelling is done at 1:04. Then you get the guts of his talking points.
Make massive financial gains, the gains are due to faith and belief that by purchasing this currency you will be responsible for changing the world.
This guy’s intro / enthusiasm is a long running joke between a pal and me. Crypto price is up? Bitconnect…! Price is down? Bitconnect…! In a pinch, the screaming and stomping around encapsulates anything crypto.
Really, it is a notable performance of “hype man.”
Carlos was not really a part of Bitconnect. IIRC he just showed up to some event and did such a good job riling up the crowd that they started making him part of the show.
> BitConnect operated as a Ponzi scheme by paying earlier BitConnect investors with money from later investors. In total, Kumbhani and his co-conspirators obtained approximately $2.4 billion from investors
That $2.4B is real money they stole from people. The monopoly money would start at the first penny after that number.
You're right and I made an error too. Previously, they had nothing but a scam but now a government force trying to recoup the sum. That is labor paid for by taxpayers. Something which was previously worthless in now worth something as it is backed by labor.
To me it appears to be useless labor so its value appears to be negative. To the lawyers however this must be a great source of income.
ironic how just a few stories down is an article about how approx 50% of steam payments with bitcoin (when they accepted it) were fraudulent... everyone wanting a quick buck without doing the work
That was Steam's fault for accepting unconfirmed transactions.
You can make a fake Bitcoin transaction but you can make 2 transactions using the same funds but going to different addresses. Only one of those will end up on the Blockchain. If steam waited for the transaction to appear on the Blockchain instead of just the mempool, they wouldn't have had the problem.
Nice job. Now if only some people would see the difference between an actual ponzi scheme like this one and bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. That would be nice.
The common characteristic is that "early adopters" get disproportionately large returns compared to later adopters. Indeed those later adopters are financing the exit of the participants who "got in first". In this way it's like a Ponzi scheme, but the same could be said for stocks.
You might call the above a simplification; that is fine -- my point is that this is a (inaccurate) linguistic shorthand -- calling something by the name of something else which shares a characteristic, but it is inaccurate (a Ponzi scheme has a central organizer / hub), and bitcoin does not.
Stocks pay dividends, or have the potential to pay dividends in the future.
You're right that if you look strictly at the now, it resembles a Ponzi scheme, but there's an underlying intrinsic value that supports a given price. If there's not intrinsic value, price usually collapses in the longer run. E.g dotcom, many of the 200x price sales companies over the last year.
Many growth stocks with valuations far detached from fundamentals are very crypto like. Trading on likeability/goodwill rather than anything real.
The lack of intrinsic value is why Crypto is probably doomed to volatility forever.
It's grossly untrue to say it's a Ponzi scheme "like stocks" which are part ownership in companies that actually sell things in the real world and are valued by the present value of their future expected cash flows, rather than cryptocurrencies which have no such relationship to the real world, and some would argue are valued entirely on the premise of returns that can only be sustained by finding the next sucker.
I think we are in violent agreement. Two things can share a characteristic and yet be completely different, but people focus on the similarity (which is easily understood and explainable) and ignore the differences (which can be more difficult to understand and explain).
Blockchains (like eth and its alternatives) sell blocks (compute with a ledger). Those blocks "have value" to the people who build things on them like NFT's, defi, ponzi schemes, etc... One can argue that those applications don't have value, are scams, are unethical but people are paying a lot of money for those blocks on a daily basis; and holders of those L1 tokens benefit from that value. If you think of eth as a niche cloud provider providing compute with a ledger, then it looks like a stock who's long-term value will depend on useful and legal it's niche becomes after people (do or don't) come up with products and regulation is implemented.
> cryptocurrencies which have no such relationship to the real world
This is a key point unless the concept of the metaverse takes off; you're starting to see this change though. Look at the Coachella NFT as an example. People will pay to have guaranteed weekend 1 tickets for multiple years; there are years where this is basically sold out before public ticket sales but there's a status element to be able to go W1. These people (like young adults) will probably go for a few years, get bored (or have a change in lifestyle/priorities), then probably resell those NFT's to someone who's a few years earlier in their lives and wants guaranteed W1. This sounds like a ponzi scheme by the description many commenters here are using; the only value is getting some sucker down the road to waste their money for a guaranteed W1 ticket. There's a non-zero chance that coachella doesn't even exist 5 years from now. There's a bigger chance that it's not as popular and the value of any NFT is worth less then it is today. Yet it doesn't feel as scammy because of the real world event that's involved.
But the product being sold in this example is a season ticket, not an NFT.
The NFT part of the product has no relevance to why it’s valuable. The valuable part is the promise by the event organizer to save a spot for you.
Every major sports team has had this product for decades. It’s literally the same thing as having season tickets to the White Sox or something. The blockchain has added no value to the transaction.
Hah, no it doesn't; anyone can mint what they claim is a season ticket right now. The buyer still has to verify that what they're purchasing is genuine.
On the other hand, it's probably easier for Coachella to maintain a public list of valid ticket NFTs than it is for them to maintain a P2P marketplace for items that change hands very rarely. And also it means that any fraud that occurs is Not Their Problem.
There are stocks which are fraudulent, e.g Theranos, Enron, or ZZZZ Best. The fact that a company might have expected cash flows does not make them impervious to defrauding investors. Similarly, something issued without any claims of future cash flows does not imply that it must be a fraud.
No, you mentioned stocks not having future expected cash flows. I just don't see the difference between that and Ponzi schemes, even if there are some real examples of this
Many popular stocks (all stocks without dividends or buybacks) are like a Ponzi scheme in that all of the money used to pay early investors (through sale of the security) comes from later investors (buying into the security).
However, they are different from a Ponzi scheme in that there is a real business behind them, and no deception/fraud.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... Even without the Ponzi scheme and market manipulation; Proof-of-Work based cryptocurrencies are an ecological catastrophe. Other Proof-of-Something™ currencies do not bring much to the table either.
At some point it's only normal there's a push back against cryptocurrencies.
Yet Bitcoin is still considered the OG token and a "true" cryptocurrency as mentioned above and not old dangerous tech.
Also in the last 10 years, only a handful of tokens have had a somewhat usable blockchain which grinds to a halt anytime people share pictures of cats or monkeys and we're told to wait for another year or two for an update to whatever protocol is trendy at the moment. Rinse and repeat every year.
Also also, every other year a cryptocurrency comes along and professes to be the second coming of God with solutions to problems with don't have.
> Yet Bitcoin is still considered the OG token and a "true" cryptocurrency as mentioned above and not old dangerous tech.
The solution to that is to educate people on how Bitcoin is old dangerous tech, not to throw out all other blockchains along with Bitcoin.
> a somewhat usable blockchain which grinds to a halt anytime people share pictures of cats or monkeys
These chains don't "grind to a halt" in any sense of that phrase, they dynamically price a scarce resource (block space). The chain runs at 100% capacity during these spikes in demand.
> we're told to wait for another year or two for an update to whatever protocol is trendy at the moment. Rinse and repeat every year.
Every few years, cryptocurrencies upgrade their capacity using new technology, and every few years, enough new people start using them to saturate the new, higher capacity. There's nothing contradictory about that.
> Also also, every other year a cryptocurrency comes along and professes to be the second coming of God with solutions to problems with don't have.
Every other year a traditional tech company also comes along and professes to be the second coming of God with solutions to problems we don't have. But we don't judge Apple based on the failure of Juicero.
You're moving the goal posts. It's fine to be against cryptocurrencies, but I think it damages your credibility when you claim bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. Since it shows a lack of understanding of what a ponzi scheme actually is. By you I don't mean you in particular, I mean it in a more general sense.
We can argue about what constitutes a proper Ponzi scheme, but the idea that the promotion of crypto thus far has existed to allow early adopters to cash out at the apparent expense of later adopters, while bringing essentially no other utility to any of its backers or the public at large, is pretty obvious.
That’s just semantics at this point. I would encourage you to address the statement being made and ignore the technical definition of the phrase. To restate without the offending phrase:
[T]he idea that the promotion of crypto thus far has existed to allow early adopters to cash out at the apparent expense of later adopters, while bringing essentially no other utility to any of its backers or the public at large, is pretty obvious.
And the semantics matter. When we are using words that mean specific things. Other wise why even care what words we use? Just throw something and expect everyone automatically understand.
I wasn't trying to debate the merits of crypto. I'm pointing out that the parent has a clear misunderstanding of what a ponzi scheme is. The semantics is the whole point. He's using the word incorrectly.
By your definition, every successful stock on the planet is a ponzi scheme
I double checked and no one in our comment chain has said anything about legality at all, or even implied same, so you pointing that out as the defining distinction is not really relevant, don't you think? Besides, pump and dump schemes of securities are illegal, though notably most crypto is in the grey area because the SEC doesn’t classify it as a security.
It's a bit of a shortcut. It implies that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum don't fulfill the necessary criteria to be deemed a ponzi scheme. If we look at all the red flags mentioned in the wikipedia article.... I shortened some criteria, for a more detailed explanation of each criterium I suggest you check the Wikipedia article.
High investment returns with little or no risk. --- Not true.
Overly consistent returns --- Not true.
Unregistered investments --- True in some cases, not true in others.
Unlicensed sellers --- same as above.
Secretive or complex strategies --- Not true.
Issues with paperwork --- Not true
Difficulty receiving payments --- Not true. Actually irrelevant.
The sales personnel or adviser are overly pushy or aggressive. --- Not true. Actually irrelevant. Not bitcoin or ethereum sales personnel or advisers exist.
The initial contact took place by a cold call or through a social network, a language-based radio or a religious radio advertisement. --- This one is a tough one since there are definitely devotees that likely were vital in the initial spread. In most cases people probably came into contact with crypto through the mainstream media though.
The client cannot determine the actual trades or investments that have been carried out. --- Not true
The clients are asked to write checks with a different name than the name of the corporation (such as an individual) or to send checks to a different address than the corporate address. --- Not true. Actually irrelevant.
Once the maturity date of their investment arrives, clients are pressured to roll over the principal and the profits. --- Not true. Also irrelevant.
A Ponzi scheme (/ˈpɒnzi/, Italian: [ˈpontsi]) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.[1] The scheme leads victims to believe that profits are coming from legitimate business activity (e.g., product sales or successful investments), and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds. A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as new investors contribute new funds, and as long as most of the investors do not demand full repayment and still believe in the non-existent assets they are purported to own.
> The scheme leads victims to believe that profits are coming from legitimate business activity (e.g., product sales or successful investments), and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds.
I think that's the key part that contradicts Bitcoin. Nobody believes that Bitcoin is a business that generates profits, and everyone is aware that when they cash out, other investors are the source of funds.
There's no illusion of a business, and no assets that are promised to exist but don't.
Do you need to crack it if the government can be a majority hashrate of the miner pool? One need not crack it to control it. You'd be able to double spend, mine empty blocks, orphan blocks from other miners, etc. Just need to get to and sustain 51% of the hash pool, which sounds trivial considering nation state compute resources.
I see no scamming in say Link (bringing offchain data on-chain for other projects to use) or SNX (on-chain synthetic assets). There's a ton of examples of projects that have nothing to do with scams and are more akin to normal companies providing blockchain-related services.
That may be true, but I was looking for positive outcomes from the industry as a whole. Of course there are companies like metamask as well that just provide services within the crypto industry.
Alchemix, Axie Infinity, Balancer, Aave, Pool Together, DyDx, Sorare.
Hundreds more too, I list them in most of these threads and yet every time, same question. The amount of people who confidently proclaim crypto does nothing useful without actually looking into the cool things that are happening is getting old.
The fact that cryptocurrencies are even Ponzier than any Ponzi scheme, more pyramidal than any pyramid scheme, much getter, richer, and quicker than any get-rich-quick scheme, and more shaggily carpeted and vigorously jerked than any rug-pull scheme, doesn't mean they're not scams.
Edit: when shills gets called on purposefully missing the point by arguing over semantics, they switch to outright denial and making stuff up. Actually, ethereum and bitcoin ARE both scams, in fact the biggest ones of them all. And that IS the point.
> Edit: when shills gets called on purposefully missing the point by arguing over semantics, they switch to outright denial and making stuff up. Actually, ethereum and bitcoin ARE both scams, in fact the biggest ones of them all. And that IS the point.
I think I replied in a respectful way to your original comment that was essentially just poisoning the well. I also feel it's a bit dishonest to reply to my comment by editing your post. You are now deliberately trying to discredit what I say by calling me a shill, this is not how we can have a curious discussion.
What is it that I am outright denying and making up?
Just claiming something is a scam doesn't make it so, you have to provide some sort of arguments to support your thesis.
There are definitely cryptocurrencies out there that are scams, but big ones like ethereum and bitcoin for example are not. This is besides the point though.
Haven't you watched "Line Goes Up - The Problem With NFTs" yet? It's about a whole lot more than just NFTs. Your question is thoroughly addressed and truthfully answered in that video. Also see his references and citations in "Sources and Further Reading" for more proof.
A friend asked me to watch that video back when it came out, but I couldn't get past all the technical inaccuracies about Bitcoin and Ethereum in the first half hour or so.
Most of those links are about artwork NFTs, not Bitcoin or Ethereum.
There are a lot of cryptocurrencies that are scams, and there are a lot of NFT projects that are scams. I've heard respectable arguments that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not actually all that useful (which is for the most part the point your remaining sources attempt to make), but that's a whole world of difference from them being scams.
And just what specifically were those "technical inaccuracies" that were so intolerable to you that you couldn't stomach watching the whole thing?
You should thank your friend for trying to deprogram you from the cult you've fallen for, and go back and watch the entire video. Because he makes excellent and "technically accurate" points about the cult-like behavior of that community, which explains why you're so quick to "ignore warning signs and dismiss criticism", and have a such a difficult time perceiving the pervasive fraud that's so stunningly obvious to everyone else:
>The shorthand WAGMI, We’re All Going To Make It, is aphoristically bandied about even in openly zero-sum competitions where, by definition, most participants explicitly won’t make it.
>But you can’t point that out, because that would be FUD.
>And if you’re spreading FUD then you’re NGMI, Not Going to Make It.
>And making it, getting rich, is all that matters.
>HFSP, have fun staying poor.
>These are synthesized into a No True Scotsman paradigm.
>The “we” in We’re All Going To Make It does not refer to we all, it refers to the select, the chosen, the Diamond Hands and the hodlers.
>Those who make it are clearly the We, and if you didn’t make it, then you weren’t.
>People who get angry about being scammed by a rug-pull or by malware or by social engineering are berated and belittled for not following the crowd.
>This incubates a community trained to ignore warning signs and dismiss criticism, a community with internal language and customs that are explicitly incompatible with outside communications.
>Skepticism is FUD from non-believers who are trying to undermine the value of your assets and manipulate a crash or trick you into being a paper hands.
>It all maps onto narratives of sin and deception, a chosen-few who are privileged with advance knowledge about the promised land, which they can achieve by holding strong to the rituals and expelling all doubt.
>The end product is a self-organizing high-control group.
But back to the main point: Do you earnestly believe that his extremely well-documented point that Bitcoin and Ethereum are riddled with fraud that's pervasively promoted by shills is "technically inaccurate"? Are you asking us to believe all those shills are actually correct and telling the truth, or do you deny the existence of shills and their get-rich-quick pyramid schemes?
Since you asked "why" "Bitcoin and Ethereum are scams", here is the transcript of Line Goes Up, which decidedly answers your question.
Which of the following quotes do you claim are "technically inaccurate"? And what do you claim are the "technically accurate" counter-arguments? Please refer to specific quotes.
>And as far as banking is concerned, Bitcoin was never designed to solve the actual problems created by the banking industry, only to be the new medium by which they operated.
>Peter Thiel, who also went from wealthy to ultra-wealthy off the Web2 boom via PayPal, loves crypto, and is friends with a bunch of eugenics advocates who promote cryptocurrency as a return to “sound money” for a whole bunch of extremely racist reasons because when they start talking about banks and bankers, they mean Jews.
>So just to head all this off at the pass, Bitcoin and proof-of-work cryptocurrency aren’t incentivizing a move to green energy sources, like solar and wind, they are offsetting it.
>Because electrical consumption, electrical waste, is the value that underpins Bitcoin.
>Miners spend X dollars in electricity to mine a Bitcoin, they expect to be able to sell that coin for at least X plus profit.
>When new power sources come online and the price of electricity goes down, they don’t let X go down, they build a bigger machine.
>[Drumming] In 2012 Vitalik Buterin, a crypto enthusiast and butthurt Warlock main set out to fix what he saw as the failings and inflexibilities of Bitcoin.
>Rather than becoming the new digital currency, a thing that people actually used to buy stuff, Bitcoin had become an unwieldy speculative financial instrument, too slow and expensive to use for anything other than stunt purchases of expensive cars.
>It was infested with money laundering and mired in bad press.
>After the FBI shut down Silk Road you couldn’t even buy drugs with it anymore.
>In practice you couldn’t do anything with your Bitcoin but bet on it, lock up money you already have in the hopes that Bitcoin goes up later, and pray you don’t lose it all in a scam, lose access to your wallet, or have it all stolen by an exchange.
>In terms of problems with Bitcoin, Ethereum solves none of them and introduces a whole new suite of problems driven by the technofetishistic egotism of assuming that programmers are uniquely suited to solve society’s problems.
>Bitcoin in particular, owing to its glacial transaction times, suffers from problems where the value of the coin can change dramatically between the start and end of a transaction.
>Ethereum is ultimately a central platform, and the fact that a few dozen people need to sign off on every major change before it can be implemented is largely meaningless and symbolic, with the validation network ultimately sitting somewhere between consortium and cartel.
>While the network of Ethereum miners and validators are not a formal corporation Yet There’s no mechanism in existence that compels them to act in the interest of users, particularly poor and disempowered users, where those interests conflict with their own.
>The movement of Ethereum from proof of work to proof of stake has been vapourware in no small part because the validators simply choose not to.
>The entire market is absolutely lousy with scams, and has been since Bitcoin first gained any traction.
>Every single scam structure imaginable has been dusted off and redeployed into this explicitly unregulated market where victims are largely without recourse.
>These range from institutional scams, like Ponzi schemes, pump and dumps, and insider trading, to middle-weight scams like gold brick and wash trading, to grittier scams like phishing and sending fake links.
>Pump and dumps, in particular, are conducted in broad daylight, since it’s not illegal, it’s just against the terms of service of the exchanges that you use to do it, so the worst case scenario is you burn your account.
>They’ll straight up walk you through the process of doing a pump and dump, no codewords, diagrams and everything.
>They’re notable as they’re actually a two-headed scam because, you see, you might get recruited onto the pump half of the scheme, or you might think you’re being recruited to pump, but you’re actually the dump.
>And as far as banking is concerned, Bitcoin was never designed to solve the actual problems created by the banking industry, only to be the new medium by which they operated.
Bitcoins original goal was to try and solve the trusted third-party issue. "A peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." So definitely not be the new medium through which banks operated.
> Peter Thiel, who also went from wealthy to ultra-wealthy off the Web2 boom via PayPal, loves crypto, and is friends with a bunch of eugenics advocates who promote cryptocurrency as a return to “sound money” for a whole bunch of extremely racist reasons because when they start talking about banks and bankers, they mean Jews.
Guilt by association isn't an argument. You tried to use the same trick on me by calling me a shill, so maybe that's why you don't recognize the logical fallacy. Either way, it's not valid. It's a staple in any propaganda handbook though. Web2.0 was coined in 2004, two years after Paypal IPOd by the way.
We're on quote number two and the "arguments" are already at rock bottom, I'll stop here.
None of that speaks to Bitcoin or Ethereum being scams.
You've posted a wall of text about how they enable scams and how the community is riddled with fraud and pyramid schemes. Guess what, I agree with you.
You accuse me of ignoring the cult-like behavior of the crypto community, when I am more familiar with it than anyone. But the behavior of a community has nothing to do with whether a network communications protocol is a scam.
You accuse me of "ignoring warning signs and dismissing criticism" when I am intimately familiar with the warning signs that many cryptos besides Bitcoin and Ethereum have, and I welcome criticism as long as it's not based on a foundation of misunderstandings of the technical workings of the protocol.
You accuse me of having a difficult time perceiving the pervasive fraud that's so stunningly obvious to everyone else. I am acutely aware of the pervasive fraud, but fraud being pervasive doesn't mean that the Bitcoin or Ethereum protocols themselves are frauds.
You know what else is riddled with fraud? The internet, the telephone, and originally the telegraph (leading to a whole new class of crimes called wire fraud).
But to pick at just one of the technical inaccuracies:
>Ethereum is ultimately a central platform, and the fact that a few dozen people need to sign off on every major change before it can be implemented is largely meaningless and symbolic, with the validation network ultimately sitting somewhere between consortium and cartel.
Ethereum has roughly 2,000 nodes, the operator of each of which must approve a change and manually upgrade, otherwise they continue to participate in the unchanged version of the network. In practice, this means that every customer-facing exchange, custodial wallet, and service provider needs to "sign off" on a change in order for the fork to be legitimized.
>The movement of Ethereum from proof of work to proof of stake has been vapourware
Ethereum's beacon chain proof of stake network has been running since November 2020 and has received its first hard fork upgrade, Altair. Currently, there is a public merge testnet named Kiln, the second testnet rehearsing the "merge" event where Proof Of Stake replaces Proof Of Work as the Ethereum execution chain's consensus model. The code is there, the network is there, and it's all running publicly. You can download the client software today from the public github repo and run it to join the network and help rehearse the merge, in a way that is very close to the final specifications. That's the opposite of vaporware.
> in no small part because the validators simply choose not to.
Moving consensus models is done by hard fork, it has absolutely nothing to do with "validators choosing not to." Think of it like the Ethereum development team, with the explicit permission of the exchanges and service providers, changing the direction of a firehose to point at the PoS validators instead of the PoW validators. The PoW validators can't grab on to the stream of water and wrestle the hose away, their income stream just vanishes.
Those are 2-3 examples of technical inaccuracies. More technical inaccuracies in that video surround the characteristics, economics, minimums, and protocol liveness guarantees for Proof Of Stake, the nature and maturity of protocol scaling, the nature of bounded historical data size, and the nature of network congestion (it does not in any circumstances lead to forks, that's complete bunk).
If I chose to indulge your shotgun approach, we'd both be here all day and I don't really want that. This comment is already getting long and took a lot of effort for me to write up. Most of your copypasta can be summed up as problems with the community, not problems with the network protocols themselves.
I'm not here to try to convince you to like cryptocurrency, you're free to hold whatever opinion about it you want. It just really annoys me when people spread misinformation about how the protocols are constructed, and try to characterize them as scams when they are nothing more than distributed database software.
What is the factual difference? The similarities being that both rely on finding an ever greater number of people to buy in so that early investors can cash out.
That's a pyramid scheme, a Ponzi scheme is a subset where earlier investors are paid profit using money from the later investors, giving the appearance of a functioning business.
In the same way you can argue that investing in gold is a pyramid scheme (since it relies on its price going up), you can argue that crypto is too.
(Note that there are some real Ponzi schemes in crypto too, but they're not real cryptocurrencies either.)
Let's assume for the faith of your argument that Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. Who is at the top that gains from all of this? And how are you gonna indict "them" when seemingly no one knows who they are?
Names are hard, because it is common to name something with what looks most like it, even when there are differences.
There are two separate phenomena that give it the appearance of a Ponzi.
First, a Ponzi works by taking the money of new investors, and distributing it to past investors that cash out with “profit”. Similarly, BTC investing (as in, intending to make a profit from the difference between the buy and the sell price) works by taking the money of new investors (in an exchange) and distributing it to past investors that cash out, yielding a profit that, from a systemic perspective, will eventually cause someone’s loss. From that viewpoint, successful investors are unwittingly taking the money of people that may not afford the loss.
Second, a Ponzi works by making up assets (typically financial instruments) out of thin air, and selling them to victims (some of which will profit, many will lose), making a profit out of thin air. Similarly, the creator of a cryptocurrency typically puts itself in a position where they either premine the coins, or create an algorithmic schedule where most of the coins are created in the first few years, making them out of thin air, and giving themselves a significant advantage, as they will give themselves a generous chunk. They then sell those coins to victims, making a profit out of thin air. Even Nakamoto famously was flagged as an intensive miner in early years, and clearly did not expect to be deanonymized by the coinbase counter, since they changed it once it was found out.
It is true that there are dissimilarities as well. The largest one is the failure mode. A traditional Ponzi fails because people that did not get their “guaranteed profit, whisper past performances is not a guide for future performance”, are unlikely to reinvest, leading to a breaking point where everyone takes their money out until none is left. In the types of cryptocurrencies described above, people are often willing to reinvest even when they lost substantial amounts.
The failure mode typically comes many decades later, when lost keys (deaths etc) cause a slow deflation until no coin remains in use.
In a ponzi scheme the people higher in the pyramid are anyone who joined in the past and is trying to grow it. You could say Satoshi with his early mining and various other "insiders", whether their identity is known or not, are at the top. I don't necessarily agree that it's a ponzi scheme, although I'm sympathetic with many anti-crypto arguments, but that's the reasoning if expect they'd use.
There is nothing special about crypto apart it being digital and new... Art, collectibles, real estate... Many things have been overvalued with basis that prices have always gone up and being paid by those acquiring them later...
I keep being annoyed that people keep throwing ponzi at things that really aren't that. Words has meaning and Ponzi describe certain kind of scheme. Not a scam in general...
I'm very sympathetic with many of the "anti"-crypto arguments but to say there is no difference between BitConnect and Bitcoin/Ethereum is just wrong. You might believe their value is based on a similar concept, pyramid scheme type construct, but they still have massive differences. Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc actually do /something/ (even if you ultimately come to the conclusion that that something is bad).
Plausible deniability is one of ways the cryptocurrency schemes have continued for so long without collapsing - members can convince themselves that Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc. aren't ponzi/pyramid schemes because they "do something". Furthermore, that "something" can keep changing over time (e.g. for Ethereum it was first ICOs and DApps, currently it is NFTs and DeFi, and in future likely to be something else), which keeps the schemes self-sustaining. It is the plausible deniability and evolving self-sustainability which are the main advantages Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc. have over simpler schemes like BitConnect.
No, DApps didn't change into NFTs, and yes, DApps and ICOs still exist. But DApps and ICOs are not the current "revolutionary" "game changing" drivers for "line goes up" in the Ethereum world. Similarly I'd expect NFTs and DeFi to continue to exist after whatever supersedes them as the main attraction to draw in new members. Just like there are still people who talk about Bitcoin as "electronic cash" even though most have moved on to other narratives like "digital gold". That is the evolving self-sustainability aspect of plausible deniability. The schemes are flexible enough for existing scheme members to claim they are whatever they need to be to continue drawing in those all-important new scheme members, although most likely only for a finite period of time.
You might think that the "something" "legit" crypto does isn't a good solution even though it IS doing "something". Bitcoin works as a distributed ledger, depending on your view that might be a solution in search if a problem but it's still something.
It will take time. Upsetting technologies attract conartists like flies to honey. Critics will deliberately conflate the cons with the rest until then, as it's a very convenient argument (though obviously fallacious.)
Alternatively, con-artists pose as upsetting technologies to convince people to get in on the "ground floor" of the exciting hyped tech (doesn't necessarily apply to crypto).
The really fascinating bit isn't that they're currently programmed to think that crypto is doubleplusungood, it's the 180 narrative flip they'll do the second that their chosen media entities tells them to view crypto as doubleplusgood. You're going to see hordes of former crypto detractors rewrite history in their minds and come out with a new viewpoint without an inkling of self-awareness.
I'll ask you the same question I ask everyone who spouts nonsense - when it turns out you're wrong, will you care? Or is possessing this worldview somehow intrinsically satisfying to you, regardless of reality?
1) What exactly would I be wrong about? A good test for cognitive dissonance is comparing your predictions to reality, and I do not believe that I ever stated that BitCoin is inevitably going to become the most important currency in the world. I think crypto is great conceptually (which will never be not true) and that it may or may not succeed in the marketplace. Bitcoin itself may not succeed long-term even if crypto does. I acknowledge all of those things.
2) If crypto "fails", I'd say that the reason for the failure is important in making an assessment. If it fails because the technology is too slow long-term or not enough people choose not to use it for a very long-time, that's one thing that would be harder to argue against. If crypto fails because it's effectively legislated out of existence, that would be hard to see that as anything but a vindication of the concept.
3) For what it's worth, while I consider myself to be a fairly rational person, nobody is absolutely immune to cognitive dissonance. You should constantly check your premises and examine your past predictions. That's part of why I support the absolute right to free speech and debate ideas and play devil's advocate a lot.
4) I stand firm on one prediction. If some government out there decides to use some crypto for their central bank, they're going to have their media pump out support for it, and many former crypto opponents will be reprogrammed on the fly and take on a pro-crypto viewpoint without skipping a beat if they're told to.
That's all well and good. The only thing I'll say is, I think you vastly overestimate how many people are programmed one way or the other. I think a few people have formed their own opinions, a few people have been politically programmed, and the vast majority have no real opinion on the goodness or badness. For them, Bitcoin is just a curiosity or a fun casino to play in.
I also wouldn't neglect that a lot of people have been programmed by crypto ideology.
> If crypto fails because it's effectively legislated out of existence, that would be hard to see that as anything but a vindication of the concept.
If the concept is "decentralized payments are resistant to government intervention", then wouldn't the government killing crypto be proof that the concept failed?
> If the concept is "decentralized payments are resistant to government intervention", then wouldn't the government killing crypto be proof that the concept failed?
Anything can be physically destroyed and anybody can be physically jailed or killed, so I suppose there will never be a currency that is 100% immune to punitive government action.
But it seems like a vindication of the concept if some government felt threatened enough by crypto to have to forcibly go after it. Harmless bad ideas are generally not targeted (see furries for example) the only things that are forcibly banned are things that pose some kind of threat to the power structure.
1) Despite crypto being around for just over a decade and real commerce being transacted with it, we're still in the frighteningly early days of its use. I'd say that even super-smart technical people are just barely scratching the surface and it's probably going to be about 3-5 years before an average technical person has a proper understanding of what a blockchain is and how it works, let alone understanding the ramifications of oracles when combined with smart contracts. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but there's no chance that the general public really understands crypto right now, especially when their impression of it comes from a media that doesn't understand it either.
2) Regardless of most peoples' understanding of it, it should go without saying that human rights should not be up to a poll.
> want crypto banned simply because its uses seem to be almost entirely restricted to criminal activity
1) I don't know what percentage of crypto uses are normal commerce and which are criminal actions, but I know firsthand that crypto is used for all kinds of business payments for years.
2) You might as well advocate banning paper cash, most banks, etc if you want to ban something tied to crime.
> and speculation (i.e. gambling).
It should go without saying that even the worst excesses of gambling are legal in a free society.
If you want to ban all financial speculation, you might as well ban all betting and the stock market too.
I stand by my statements. Bitcoin is a bad currency for anyone but criminals and speculators. People toy with using it for legitimate purposes, but it's fundamentally not competitive.
Most of your response is based on a failure to understand how useful things that can be misused are different from things that have virtually no good use and lots of bad ones. If Bitcoin was banned tomorrow, the world would be no worse off.
Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen.
Apart from the obvious issues (eg energy expenditure) the one myth that needs to die about crypto is that it is extragovernmental and indictments such as this and the Bitfinex laundering case recently should underline that.
The simple fact is that the developed world could shut down what little utility cryptocurrencies (and NFTs) have tomorrow if they chose to. China banned mining and mining was gone immediately (largely moving to Kyrgystan it seems). Defenders will say you can't shut down the network and that might be true but it's irrelevant.
The threat of legal action will be enough to keep th evast majority of people away. And the weakness of any crypto is that at some point it has to interface with the real world or it's completely useless. Obvious example: the traditional financial system. Access to the US financial system is what allows the US government to exercise influence over European financial institutions to stop them, for example, dealing with sanctioned countries like Iran.
Cryptocurrency is the solution for a very valuable problem. How do you commit financial crimes and frauds in a way just new enough to confuse people that what you're doing may be valuable?
It could provide as a store and transpiration means of value in times of crisis. For instance some of the Ukrainian banks are now shutdown. If you had crypto you could access your wealth. Same thing applies for Russian citizens who have nothing to do with the war but will soon have their assets frozen. Did you consider all use cases before posting, or just glee at yet another anti crypto post on HN and thought “yay! I get to post something negative about crypto again today”?
The operative word here is “could”. There are a number of pie in the sky benefits of crypto that may be supported by small handfuls of anecdotes that don’t and never will generalize to the public at large. When comparing the potential pros to the existing cons, crypto is a gigantic net negative that is being pushed in order to make small pockets of investors very wealthy, nothing more. And yes, I understand the data structures, protocols, and most of the ideological rationalizations used to promote the fantasy.
> For instance some of the Ukrainian banks are now shutdown. If you had crypto you could access your wealth.
For instance, the Russians were cut off SWIFT. If the oligarchs had crypto, they could access their wealth and render sanctions ineffective.
Believe it or not the Ukrainians are in a war, and currency is not their biggest problem - that would be the tanks, and the bombs and the planes. Once the war resolves, so will their access to money. On the other hand, systems designed to evade sanctions are making that process longer and more painful - and more likely to resolve in the aggressors favor, as the Russians are better capitalized. The Russian people need to feel the pain to pressure their government to end the conflict.
Some pain is good, and so is our ability to inflict it.
I do thousands of transactions with thousands of people every day without committing financial crimes and without paying any fees. It's extremely valuable to my businesses.
Wrenches can be used as weapons but they are also essential for plumbers.
I mean I don't defend crypto, the way things are going is that they'll be just as regulated and centralized as digital fiat is, and a lot of it is people getting rich, or hoping to - I mean I'm one of those people, still waiting for my handful of dogecoin to go up 10.000% so I can retire. But I also have a regular job, regular savings, and regular stonks because savings account interest is a joke.
But it’s not widely used, that’s the whole problem.
Say you created a business accepting exclusively cryptocurrencies. You need to ship an item? You need “dirty fiat”. Let’s say you’re only selling NFTs or services, your hosting provider wants paid in real currency. Food? Housing? Utilities? Fiat. Fiat. Fiat.
Unless it’s accepted for the entire supply chain of LIFE, you’re screwed.
Look at bittorrent. While it's impossible to kill it, targeting agregation platforms definitely made the protocol immensely less relevant than it was 20 years ago.
Seems like a mix of port blocks and criminal penalties, while not killing cryptocurrency, would greatly hinder its overall utility and thus any associated fiscal value.
What these critics don't tell you is that the transactions of these cryptocurrencies are traceable and transparent making the majority of many cryptocurrencies pointless to use for 'committing financial crimes'.
Otherwise, why do you think that these criminals are turning to privacy coins like Monero and MobileCoin, etc?
Fun fact (and not to detract from your allegory), agent orange was widely used by Ontario Hydro from the fifties to late seventies to clear trees from around power lines. The people handling it weren’t really well-informed of what exactly it was or how dangerous it was, so there have been a number of lawsuits. I have an uncle who recalls being jokingly hosed down with the stuff on a hot day by a guy working a sprayer in the back of a truck. Whoops.
Folks tend not to answer this question because they know it's not a good one.
Let's take bitpay, probably the largest and oldest merchant processing system for crypto transactions. They publish stats. [1]
- 40% of all of their transactions globally are for prepaid gift cards.
- 20% of all of their transactions globally are for "internet."
- 14% of all of their transactions globally are for "vpn."
So 75% of all of their transactions globally are for merchant categories closely associated with fraud. And the reason is obvious: it's slower, more expensive and less convenient than using a credit or debit card. So it self-selects.
Folks who "find a way to make it work" are usually ideological, in crypto (i.e. found other people who don't care that it's impractical or criminal) or have otherwise found ways of "processing crypto transactions" (i.e. using bitpay where the merchants do not receive crypto because of course they don't why would they).
Fewer middlemen? Now to buy from your dealer, you have to go via a marketplace, after converting your real money on an exchange. That's at least two other intermediaries...
Easy. Criminals, extremists and fraudsters use Signal for E2EE communications and MobileCoin (an untraceable, privacy cryptocurrency) to fund it all. [0]
It is what criminals and terrorists are using to make their activities impossible to trace. Got to thank MobileCoin for enabling that.
What does 'No one except for the sender and receiver can see the details of the transaction.' with an encrypted blockchain tell you about MobileCoin's traceability?
Keep in mind that "financial crimes" can mean very different things to very different regimes. In Nazi Germany, it was a "financial crime" for Jews to take any wealth with them when they emigrated.
This idea that cryptocurrency is good because it enables “good” crimes (avoiding unjust oppressive governments) is at odds with the hard facts that cryptocurrency is used for “bad” crimes far more often. Many orders of magnitude more often, in fact.
I just can’t buy into these arguments that we should be overlooking these rampant frauds and crimes (like the multi-billion fraud in this article and many more like it) because it might hypothetically enable some oppressed people somewhere in the world to escape some government oppression.
In these hypothetical scenarios, are we supposed to believe that the oppressive governments would just look the other way and let people transfer their wealth into crypto exchanges before fleeing? That would defeat the purpose of the government restrictions, so obviously not. Or are we supposed to believe that they moved all of their wealth into crypto and took it out of exchanges and into private wallets before the oppression? The crypto maximalists would love that because it would drive up crypto prices, but it’s not practical in a world where most people have their weath in assets like houses, cars, and diversified investments.
> This idea that cryptocurrency is good because it enables “good” crimes (avoiding unjust oppressive governments) is at odds with the hard facts that cryptocurrency is used for “bad” crimes far more often.
The Fifth Amendment is invoked far more often by actual criminals to hide their crimes than people avoiding government oppression. Doesn’t mean the Fifth should be abolished.
Actually yes assume those things happen and move the oppressive government further down the line to see a pro-crypto absurdity:
Are we supposed to believe that crypto is magically cleaned when the oppressive government seizes it and uses it or resells it? for all purposes right now, thats true and no transaction flagging software is advanced enough to consider that yet.
Woah woah that crypto came out of a mixer at some point in time!!! Thats used for “bad” crimes orders of magnitude more than “good crimes”, I think….
Oh nevermind, this passed through one of the seoveriegn washer addresses later, all good!”
If you are for bitcoin and its 'benefits' and you are not someone who is doing tax fraud in a big way, you do not benefit from crypto, you are loosing.
Unreported income is tax money which is missing for schools, infrastructure and co.
It might not be used always efficency but it benefits you more than not having it. It should also be a much higher motivation for everyone of us to stop tax fraud all together instead of complaining about taxes and trying to avoid taxes.
What exactly is the valuable problem you are thinking in your head and how is it better solved by cryptocurrency and blockchain that can't already be done with existing methods, technologies and contractual agreements backed by various international treaties and dialectic tests for loopholes through thousands and thousands of years trading between countries, provinces, cities and entities?
This is bullshit. People deserve a way to send money without middlemen and unfortunately that requires a means of attempting censorship resistance or at least consensus within a nearly arbitrarily adversarial network.
What's "deserved" is subjective, but I'll bite. People from countries that are fiscally irresponsible and have tight capital controls "deserve" access to an asset that, while volatile, gives them a better hedge than hyperinflation and can't effectively be blocked by their dysfunctional government. See Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and citizens of any country that has a black market exchange rate for dollars/euros(Argentina, Lebanon, Turkey). You could make the case that this is something for international organizations like the UN/IMF to solve, but, they don't on any timescale that's meaningful to the person whose weekly paycheck buys less bread every week. They already have access to the same information and websites we do(with a VPN), accessing a globally distributed and decentralized ledger is as fundamental as their right to access twitter/facebook.
Americans and Europeans have very limited experience with hyperinflation and volatile currencies, plus we have robust banking/fin-tech sectors so of course we're more prone to scoff at the problems cryptos will solve.
Are you sure crypto will solve the problem of volatile currencies? BTC crashes on around a yearly basis [0], it's to find any currency more volatile than that.
Yes, they're called stablecoins. Dai is a decentralized stablecoin that is always pegged to $1 USD. Rai is a stablecoin that is pegged to itself (using a feedback mechanism).
Both are on Ethereum and if you keep wealth in them that wealth cannot be confiscated or censored (except with a physical wrench attack).
That's the European single market. Single market means freedom of movement of goods and services, capital and labour. In other words, it's not just capital. And it applies to a small set of countries which all agree to having a number of common rules and regulations. And it's not without intermediaries.
except that sometimes they reduce to speech. especially in cases where there are incidental human rights violations suppressing those payments. the examples why this cannot be left up to arbitrary governments are abundant. so there's nothing wrong with my argument. if you disagree then please show proof.
by the way just a heads up I suggest you learn the value of basic human kindness in your manner.
My definition of basic human kindness includes NOT shilling and trying to defend and justify get-rich-quick pyramid schemes and fraudulent scams, under the pretense of not wanting to pay your taxes.
Speech is the use of language to communicate ideas and thoughts. A payment is not speech. Paying involves transmitting of a financial asset. It doesn't involve the use of language to communicate ideas and thoughts. Therefore, it's not speech. You can't arbitrarily decide that something is speech, just because it suits your interests. This is not how things work.
I don't need to, mr. creates-strawmen-to-try-to-avoid-the-real-discussion. Many people already hold the view that certain financial activities reduce to the freedom to speak or pursue happiness. It didn't come from me. Good luck convincing anyone that you've ever experienced real threats to your human rights.
You are part of a system like a country. You are part of that country and the country acts on your behalf.
IF there is a good reason that the state only allows sending money after certain criteria are met, its for the good of the country (normal countries, not corrupt ones).
Then the country and its laws has the right to reduce that freedom.
You might believe in the republic idea of everyone for him/herself but studies also show that for normal earning people, this is not helping them at all.
Its not a global basic right to 'deserve a way to send money without middleman'. I'm not even allowed to just move to another country. I'm in one way or another imprisoned in my birth country.
I'm totally lost on what you are trying to imply with "And please show me where rights are granted to governments and by who and for what basic purpose."
You are fully aware that there are countries. You should know how they work, you should know what models of representation exists and which forms of gov you are in.
Give yourself the illusion that you are independent while paying taxes and putting on your seatbelt.
Just answer the question. If you can't then perhaps you should admit you're arguing about your ideas rather than specific facts. Nuances actually matter here. You said a government has a right to reduce my freedom to participate in a certain system. I'm asking you to cite it so we can speak about something real instead of following a path that leads very clearly to imprisonment of those with whom the buck actually stops (the citizens).
For me it’s funny to see twitter comments now asking can we impose crypto sanctions on Russia. It’s like all these institutions and mechanisms we have are there are for a reason
> The simple fact is that the developed world could shut down what little utility cryptocurrencies (and NFTs) have tomorrow if they chose to. China banned mining and mining was gone immediately (largely moving to Kyrgystan it seems). Defenders will say you can't shut down the network and that might be true but it's irrelevant.
How is it irrelevant? The ban in China did not affect the operation of the network.
With regard to the "move", this is plagued by the same flaw the energy consumption statistics are: you don't know where the miners are. Not acknowledging this limitation is somewhere between disingenuous and stating a falsehood.
This does not demonstrate that developed nations "could shut it down tomorrow".
It’s a good point that so far, major changes for miners haven’t affected operations.
I’m not sure it’s true that nobody knows where they are. There are rankings by country. They need Internet access and power. Many operate openly. Large data centers aren’t invisible.
Also, miners were kicked out of Kyrgyzstan. Many machines were confiscated. It seems a lot of miners moved to the US because, even if they are eventually shut down, at least they will still have their machines, hopefully.
Governments could greatly reduce the hash rate by cracking down on miners who operate openly, and then Bitcoin would be considerably less secure against a takeover.
Suppose, after getting kicked out of many places, many miners move somewhere without strong property rights, and then the government takes control of the machines and runs them? Or maybe the miners keep running, but the government tells them which transactions to block?
If Western nations enacted policies on bitcoin similar to China, this wouldn’t shut down the network entirely but would drive it underground. This would limit the usefulness and presumably value of the network, at the very least.
I want to donate to a cause that Justin Trudeau finds "unacceptable."
I want to send money to Ukraine.
I think this week we saw problems with tradfi in the developed and developing world.
And of course in the good ole US of A, I hear stories of civil forfeiture every other month.
Note that folks who claimed their bank accounts were frozen because they were “donors to the convoy” never actually verified that that actually happened [1]. At the same time the government, the RCMP, and the banks have come out and said “that didn’t happen” [2]. Last, the government ceded its emergency powers after about a week total, despite claims on HN and various thinkpieces that they would be extended in perpetuity [3].
>and the banks have come out and said “that didn’t happen”
The article didn't say it didn't happen. In fact, it says it did happen:
“individuals and companies suspected of involvement in illegal acts,” such as “influencers in the illegal protest in Ottawa””
What exactly does it mean to be an "influencer"? Why are people being punished for "suspected involvement"? You're using circular reasoning claiming the only people affected deserved it.
>Last, the government ceded its emergency powers after about a week total
What does this matter if they can turn around and re-enact it tomorrow?
I specifically referred to donors, it is largely understood that convoy organizers and a number of participants had their accounts frozen.
I am not using circular reasoning; I am literally addressing the fact that donating $50 to the convoy did not subject you to your bank account being frozen, despite purported claims to the contrary.
The “illegal acts” are referring to the plain-as-day laws that the protesters (to some, occupiers) were accused of breaking, like parking tractor trailers in the middle of the street for weeks blocking traffic in downtown Ottawa.
If folks outside the immediate circle of downtown protesters and organizers were affected, I would find that deeply concerning. But I can only find unsubstantiated rumors. If you have a credible source indicating otherwise, I’d appreciate it.
And then there was GoFundMe and GiveSendGo. I am not arguing the politics here. I am responding to the critique that crypto is a solution in search of a problem.
Guess what happens if crypto would become bigger and actually a problem for all states globally?
Do you really think they will just accept this? In which way do you think they literlay can't control crypto anymore?
Just because its digital and on the internet, doesn't mean its digital only. It is not and as long as that is, its easy for a state to make sure crypto will never ever reach this level.
You don't believe a state can do this? Just a small reminder about the great firewall from china. There are countries who shut down their internet, literaly.
The reason they didn't extend them was that they didn't want to go through the senate vote, and also because of the extreme controversy it caused. Trudeau had said earlier he wanted to extend them past the 30 days. So it's weird to say that the controversy and reactions were baseless because their intended goal was achieved. And that was to make Trudeau's decision as politically costly and controversial as possible.
Also accounts were still seized over a protest, so it doesn't matter if it was from people donating or those who were protesting
I guess but only because there was a very very vocal backlash. It wouldn't have necessarily worked if everyone was just complacent and apologetic for Trudeau. Trudeau had no intention of showing any restraint until the backlash intensified.
“Civil forfeiture” does not and has never meant “fiat forfeiture.” If the government tells you to forfeit your assets (justly or unjustly!), you can be certain that they will not be amused or deterred by attempts to hide those assets via cryptocurrency.
> “Civil forfeiture” does not and has never meant “fiat forfeiture.” If the government tells you to forfeit your assets (justly or unjustly!), you can be certain that they will not be amused or deterred by attempts to hide those assets via cryptocurrency.
If they don't know it exists, they can't take it. Just like I can cross the border with a hundred thousand in crypto in a wallet. And even if they find the hardware wallet, that is not enough to seize the funds, especially if it's a brain wallet or something similar. The same simply doesn't exist for fiat.
Just like I can cross the border with a hundred thousand in crypto in a wallet.
No, you can't. You can cross the border with the private key for a wallet containing the addresses of a hundred thousand units of crypto, but the crypto isn't in your wallet (either kind), it's in the blockchain ledger of whatever cryptocurrency you're using.
And this is an important distinction from money, because the money is actually in your wallet and you can use it without an internet connection, but the crypto is actually in the cloud and requires an internet connection to access and use.
Interesting. Just for fun, thinking through this more I could just give someone my private key instead of transferring funds on the blockchain. Then the transaction does not require the internet, only the verification of funds in the wallet (which could be elided if the participants so chose).
> If they don't know it exists, they can't take it.
I've said this before: any financial system that turns a presumed crime (the efficient cause of the asset seizure) into direct evidence of another crime (trying to hide assets) is not a good financial system.
What you're describing doesn't exist in practice for any medium of exchange.
> Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen.
I think this hinges on what problem you identify. If someone identifies centralized financial systems as bad, even if they're efficient, the problem is real and the solution fits the problem. If you contest this, as many do for good reason, it becomes a solution in search of a problem.
The solution doesn't fit the problem though. Sure, in theory bitcoin-style cryptocurrencies can replace centralized financial systems. But, as keeps being demonstrated, including by this very example, in practice what you end up with is different, less-efficient, centralized financial systems dominated by fraud.
how is it less efficient? Obviously btc can't replace the financial system but crypto can.
Investors in the next 10 years are going to realise that an omnipool was all that was needed in the first place and the NYSE is a dinosaur in comparison.
Can you buy options, derivatives, futures?
Can you invest in startups?
Can you easily send money anywhere in the world in seconds?
99% of the world can't, either because of where they live, or the government deciding they're not allowed to because they're not rich enough to join the elites.
This is the world Ethereum unlocks - a global financial system that allows anyone to participate regardless of where they were born or their background.
If you value freedom you'll see it's a far superior financial system than the one we have today.
It's not technically ready yet, but the path is clear and it will be there sooner than you think.
I'm just going to point out that you said nothing about proof of stake here, and I am getting the sense from your other comments that you do not understand the technicalities of the traditional finance system, or cryptocurrencies.
I'm fully aware how PoS in context of crypto works.
But let me tell you what the PoS part is in our current fiat system:
I get my salary in fiat. I save my fiat in a bank account for being used later. I might not need to hold 1tb of ram available and proof that i have it running, but i already proof that i trust my fiat because i get my salary in it. I pay with it, i save it.
I have a high stake in it. I also have systems/tools available to me for my fiat like banks and laws.
This is no different to what etherium proposes: For PoS you need to buy and hold etherium and you get etherium for doing so.
this comment shows a bit of misunderstanding on what the point of POS is.
It is not some saving mechanism, it is a concensus mechanism. It ensures fraud doesn't occur and that more crypto isn't being created out of thin air. It is a way to incentivice node operators to act fairly.
If the USD had a POS system, I would 100% have all my money in it. but i can't verify the whims of the FED
- transparency
Crypto, besides privacy coins is the most transparent you can possibily get. It's a public, immutable ledger. The US can literally go in an change the total supply anytime with zero transparency. And since USD is the global denomination of debt, when i increase my supply it actually makes my currency more valuable since everyone is shorting their own currency (Since their debt is in USD) and inflation leads to asset inflation which is a good thing for the wealthy, but a negative thing for those holding and dealing in USD. = us plebs.
- fraud detection
See point above, fraud is built into the system.
- political sanctions (russia vs. ukraine, north korea, iran...)
Political sanctions have been this economic philosophy that hasn't entirely played out in the countries doing the sanctions favor. These economies, due to force have been required to be much more verticly integrated and invest into the economies most hit by sanctions. Sanctions don't do much and the problem is, the more you sanction the less leverage you have.
- fairness due to transparency (you pay your taxes, i do: we both pay our fair share of infrastrucutre cost etc.)
What is fair about the current tax system? See my transparency point above, all those people trying to evade crypto taxs are in for a rude awakening when the governmeent develops machine learning to track and trade public ledgers... Everyone knows it's a public ledger... exactly the oposite of being descrete.
- easy to use (my grandparenst were able to use it)
Becausee it started being built when your grandparents grandparents were alive. Most shops didn't accept CC's when they first came out and it took a generation for the technology to preliforate. I'd say crypto has done what the old system did in 1/4 of the time.
- save
I get 4% APR on my stablecoins. 20+% on my DeFi Pools paid in stable coins.
- easy authentication and authorization system (i can get money with my passport)
I can provide authorization with a 10 word pneumonic.
- globally accepted
What is globally accepted exactly? USD? no it's not... it's only acceepted in the US. If i want to do business globally i have to swap to that asset. I not only have to worry about remittance, currency exchanges, trade fees and loan denomination. Terra has the ability to swap between many different currencies using stablecoins with almost no transaction fees.
- low transaction fees
BTC and Eth have extremely high transaction fees, but any V3 crypto has lower transaction fees than the current financial system.
- self optimizing system due to capital market (one bank can do transactions faster and cheaper than you can)
self optimizing system due to capital market (one bank can do transactions faster and cheaper than you can)
Play around with some decentralized exchanges, solona or DOT. they can do transactions faster and cheaper than any incumbent, including VISA or the NYSE.
You make a lot of wrong assumptions. Not sure why or if you do this on purpose though.
- Crypto is not transparent. Its continuously mentioned as a benefit of crypto. You should be fully aware of all the methods crypto provides to be intransparent. Tumblers, Lightning network or when you go away from bitcoin, monero is inherent intransparent.
- You might ignore the Efficiency of political sanctions, but the struggles for those people are real. I have been to Iran and have seen it by my own eyes.
- Crypto is still not easy to use. Stop lying to yourself. Go to el salvador and look how they use it. There is only one small city able to use the lightning network properly. The rest of the country doesn't know how to handle it properly. They also have fraud as most of them never got their crypto which was promised to them.
- " 20+% on my DeFi Pools" you should understand better what you are actually doing. You do high risk, low sanctioned, under the radar gambling. Stop comparing 20% of some shitty gambling/ponzi schema to anything real life
- "I can provide authorization with a 10 word pneumonic." wow. I forgot my 4 digit pin a few times in the last 10 years. I literally lost my company password and the muscle mnemonic for half a day. I literally can't lose my passport. My country will make a new one for me. Try to rememeber your 10 words when you are 70. Try to make sure that you do not enter your 10 words in a system which can transparently steal your money as soon as you tell it your 10 words.
Have you ever spend the amount of time you spend on learning about crypto to learn about fiat?
> Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen.
It seems like it precisely solved the problem it originally claimed to solve to me. Permissionless p2p transactions. Full stop, no political baggage to argue about.
I think it's others look for "bigger" problems for it to fill that are the problem, not the tech itself.
Blockchain's killer app is Bitcoin. Someday folks will finally realize this.
Many will think it's useless until they unfortunately find a need for it.
You can only do this as long as you are able to convert fiat to crypto and back.
You can also only do this as long as crypto is so small that its not getting banned.
And for everyone who doesn't has this issue, crypto is actually bad: the overall benefit of anonymous money transfer benefits who want to do illegal things which are illegal for purposes.
Would you like to know that others are doing tax fraud and you are the fair citizen? Knowing that they do not contribute to schools and infrastructure while using your schools and infrastructure?
>You can only do this as long as you are able to convert fiat to crypto and back.
>You can also only do this as long as crypto is so small that its not getting banned.
Killing cryptocurrency is impossible if people value it and can exchange it for fiat in-person.
>And for everyone who doesn't has this issue, crypto is actually bad: the overall benefit of anonymous money transfer benefits who want to do illegal things which are illegal for purposes.
Governments can make anything illegal for any reason they want. I've lost a ton of trust in the Canadian government after they deemed it illegal to donate to a cause they disagree with.
>Would you like to know that others are doing tax fraud and you are the fair citizen? Knowing that they do not contribute to schools and infrastructure while using your schools and infrastructure?
>We do not benefit from tax fraud. The mafia does.
The mafia has far better ways of committing tax fraud than using cryptocurrency.
Only the rich will benefit from banning cryptocurrency.
People stop valueing it when they can't do anything with it. Currently no one cares about crypto for anything besides gambling. There is a very long way ahead for any crypto to become anything else.
". I've lost a ton of trust in the Canadian government after they deemed it illegal to donate to a cause they disagree with."
You are still in a democracy. Feel free to move to russia if you prefer a dictatorship. but otherwise its your responsibility to accept democratic decisions you don't like or you don't understand.
I'm not saying its always fair or that democracy/canada is the best thing in the world but for you as an individual, with the current options that actually is the best case for you.
"Only the rich will benefit from banning cryptocurrency." the rich don't care. They benefit from everything which makes money.
Everything is inflated and has been bid up. Cryptos are certainly no exception, it's only gotten worse in the last two years with all the FOMO they fostered and salesman that gathered to profit off my disillusioned generation. To each their own, but I think the idea that TINA to crypto is plain silly, yet I know more people (am millennial) owning crypto than stocks, always with this notion that TINA. At least with stocks you're still entitled to legal ownership of cashflows, with cryptocurrencies today you merely get a late entrance ticket to a digital commodity that might have monetary value, but trades like just another risk-on asset.
The S&P500 will always look like a 90 degree angle on a long enough timeline, that's just how exponentials work. And it is by definition exponential as earnings compound, a quality cryptos do not possess. But it is ironic to hold that against it when 5-year charts in the crypto world look as they do.
yes, crypto is inflated, and a pump and dump, but there is opportunity there, and hope. and that is what most retail are buying.
i mean something changed in the stock market after 2008. i'm not really educated enough in finance, but it seems the value of stocks just went vertical. and since the covid pandemic everything has doubled in value. i know its related to decrease in value of usd but since my salary doesnt even increase to match inflation so its the same both ways.
if i invest in stocks, at best i will get 2x after 5 years, at worst i will be buying at the peak of the everything bubble.
FWIW, my point isn't that crypto is doomed and entirely useless - I have a more nuanced opinion (tho no position) but that's not why I'm commenting. I also don't mean to be giving advice to anyway, just sharing opinions while it's on topic. My point is that a whole damn lot of my age group peers have drunk the Kool-Aid that crypto is the only game in town and that there is no alternative, which is silly to be respectful, and foolish to be less so.
No one rational would argue there is no opportunity there, there's tremendous trading opportunity in any market and it only goes up (as well as the risk) the more volatile and unregulated it is. There's also tremendous opportunity to make money in the Turkish market, Russian ones these days I bet will mint millionaires. That doesn't say anything regarding if it's a good idea or not to partake, let alone to buy, pray and hodl.
>that is what most retail are buying.
That kills your opportunity, going to the crowded asset isn't exactly good for you, it just increases your cost basis and reduces your earnings or dividend yield (not that you get one with most cryptos). It's good if you're trading and have an edge in that game tho, but that's not what people I know do when they buy crypto for the long haul or gamble for the short term.
>if i invest in stocks, at best i will get 2x after 5 years, at worst i will be buying at the peak of the everything bubble
That seems to be the general theme. Pessimistic outlook on the best case for stock with an optimistic outlook for the best case in crypto while ignoring it's worst case. Also while ignoring the monumental amount of fraud and open scheming in crypto (CC: all the influencers and their literally worthless NFTs, the rugs, the thefts, the bot-phishing), doesn't exactly scream "rational, not a bubble market".
Why not realistically looking about the worst case for both rather than focus on the best case for one? For crypto it's possibly getting offramps rugged by governments or even simply the market changing it's mind - with no intrinsic value there's basically no floor. In both cases you get wiped entirely. For stocks there'll always be a floor as they represent stakes in the actual economy, real companies with real balance and earnings sheet. Worst case historically is a -90%, but that went with the great depression and famine, you'll have bigger worries. A 2008 style historic crisis is a mere -50%.
I think owning crypto makes sense, but I can't understand the rationale behind being all-in crypto with significant life savings which I see a lot. If it's really gonna overtake the entire fiat system, you'll be just fine even without risking to lose everything you own in the even it's a dud and doesn't overtake the financial system.
You mean miner fees? How's that a 100% margin after hardware and electricity? Sure if the network transfers to a PoS/ETH2 model those operating costs go down, but so will transaction fees, hence revenue, with the planned sharding, transaction wrapping/bundling (I'm forgetting the terminology here) and burning, no? It also seems necessary to gut those transaction costs if ETH wants to be useful. Even then, that staking model isn't exactly costless either for nodes, they do have to freeze assets therefore giving it opportunity cost and making their goods highly illiquid.
I'd add, if your revenue figure is right, 12B profit (let's be generous) isn't exactly something to drool about on a 250B base. A 5% yield is of course fine if sustainable, arguably high end (in line with sectors like oil, but below sin sectors and specific stocks), but I'd bet 5% is not the sort of returns the crypto crowd is aiming for, not even close. There are safer ways to earn 5%.
>Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen.
People don't understand crypto yet... play around with it a bit.
Things not possible in the current financial system:
- Participate in a crowdlown on polkadot.
- Play around in some DeFi. Earn yield on two assets.
- Store some files hyperlocally and encrypted on peoples laptop with filecoin. And learn how persistant indexing will help the internet be more resiliant.
- Sell some data using ZKsnarks.
- Query the blockchains persistance with the graph.
And if you don't do any of the above and you still hate crypto, just do this for your future self.
- Write a smart contract that sends some coins back to your wallet in 10 years.
If you're correct in your opinion, you get to make fun of all your friends who spent a percentage of their portfolio in the crypto space. And joke about how they should have cashed out in 2020.
But if you're wrong, you have missed the technological innovation of your generation and the potential to shake up the class system.
for the rothchilds it represents .00001% of their total wealth.
The rothchilds keep their wealth in art, land and gold and why they have managed to stay rich for so long.
I can point to atleast one person who's class shifted and that person is me.
Also, you cherry picked one point among many and misunderstood it. Although there may be some of the financial elite who bought in early in BTC and crypto (Especially A-Z) there was alot of nerdy technologists among the winners. Also, alot of those winners have gone to set up hundreds of crypto companies who might even be more centralized.
Anti-centralization isn't the point i was making, it was a redistribution of that centralization which obviously can never be supported with hard facts but rather a feeling and subjective experience i've had with crypto billionaires.
What you're saying comes down to "it might make the problem of inequality and class worse, but hey maybe I'll be on top this time".
I suspect you're having a hard time getting people to sympathize and are receiving a lot of pushback because that is an incredibly selfish view that makes people dislike what you're proposing.
You're coming at if from an angle of fixed pie wealth, then yes. It might make inequality and class worse. But if the total wealth on planet earth is not fixed and you can create wealth through technological innovation, network effects and solidarity then no, giving the technologically driven nerds alot of money to do cool shit with hardly makes "he problem of inequality and class worse".
Edit: Also, your WSj article is bullshit. I believed you, but that analysis is a bold faced lie and cherry picks alot of facts to arrive at the analysis. OFC all the exchanges are going to appear to have alot of btc and since they are "Actively" trading it, that's the only accounts showing up on the analysis. Most of the BTC owners are maxi's - they don't move or use their BTC. Look at a real wallet distrobution and exclude sitoshi's old wallets cause everyone is pretty sure those are lost to the world. BTC distro is ALOT more decentralized than the USD.
> Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen.
Truth. And I have not idea why people think Crypto is a hedge against anything. It pretty much follows the stock market and gold, albeit in much higher gamma.
I'm not aware of any threats by developed countries to ban citizens from interacting with cryptocurrency networks. It seems like the trend is quite the opposite, actually: Most countries are clarifying and tightening up their regulations to ensure legal cut-outs for exchanges and other crypto related money service businesses.
If anything, countries might want to ban mining due to its environmental impacts, but as you illustrated, there are plenty of countries for mining operations to move over to, resulting in a game of cat-and-mouse that at its very most impactful might help catalyze the move from Proof of Work cryptos to Proof of Stake cryptos. I just don't see any future where all crypto is largely banned.
Where is this threat of legal action I'm not seeing?
Agreed. I think the Russia situation may be an interesting test to see whether cryptocurrency can be a viable replacement for SWIFT. I don’t think it will be because, as you said, it is not extragovernmental, and at some points those funds need to be repatriated. And of course cryptocurrency provides a useful public ledger all the way to repatriation.
So why this and not anything else? What's so special about Bitcoin anyways, other than the fact that some HN commenters seem to have some heavy bags that need offloading
Most of them know what exactly cryptocurrencies/blockchain are in detail. But usually the negativity comes 'muh climate change' while having 100x carbon footprint than an average individual let's say in El Salvador.
Other point is that a lot of these folks dislike what cryptocurrencies are used for like decentralization, censorship-resistance, financial privacy etc
Then there are those who are still butthurt that they did not buy Bitcoin when it was $100.
Smart contracts are the best shot we have of doing carbon, methane etc. tracking, managing offsetting payments and everything else required to start getting a grip on the CO2 emissions of the consumer economy.
This may well be a troll. I really want to believe that it is because the alternative is too depressing. I have a sinking feeling it isn't a troll however. I see so many Crypto Andys who argue for crypto out of unadulterated gross naivete about how anything outside of a very narrow slice of crypto works.
The obvious problem is that crypto is hugely energy inefficient. Bitcoin in particular consumes a ton of energy with PoW (proof-of-work aka proof-of-waste). Defenders will then point to PoS (proof-of-stake) but that creates a different set of problems (eg the computing power for PoW is part of what keeps the network robust whereas PoS is more like a democracy where you get one vote for every $1 you have).
Carbon trading is never going to happen. It's an idea that's been around for at least 30 years. The only people who are interested in it are those who are invested in it. The only thing that will reduce carbon emissions is the alternatives being cheaper. That's it. Absolutely no one is going to even mildly inconvenience themselves otherwise.
And again, any such ideas suffer from the same problem all crypto does: interfacing with the real world. Like how do you agree on the value of something releasing (or potentially sequestering) carbon (or methane or whatever)? It's up for debate. How do you make sure what someone emits is what they claimed to have?
It's a bit like the ivory traders of Hong Kong who magically have never run out of ivory even though the trade was banned and they're only meant to sell existing stocks.
>whereas PoS is more like a democracy where you get one vote for every $1 you have
Less like this and more of how a company is run in real life. Investor, founder, codebase contributor and early coin buyers have alot of the say in the network... Which actually is exactly how it should be. If you were involved in the creation of the network, you should have a say in it's path forward... So am i missing something or does POS completely invalidate your arguments?
>And again, any such ideas suffer from the same problem all crypto does interfacing with the real world. Like how do you agree on the value of something releasing (or potentially sequestering) carbon (or methane or whatever)? It's up for debate. How do you make sure what someone emits is what they claimed to have?
Same way we do it now... Outside validation. The only thing it would do is make it more resistant to fraud is you can have multiple oracles in an open contract that eveeryone will cry foul over if it. Additionally, some of those oracles can be IOT objects controlling and reporting emissions.
These are all solved problems that you are bringing up, the only thing new here is that smart contracts would allow a number of novel things to be done with carbon credits like swapping them for various assets, more controlled reporting with a fixed standard, greater visibility across the supply chain, etc. etc.
I get he didn't explain himself, but there are smart contracts on !Ink which is POS and eth is trying to transition to POS if they can convince individuals to bet on the concensus change.
I’ve got to admire the Chutzpah of claiming that crypto is the solution to climate change… and seriously, why on earth would this sort of tracking need smart contracts rather than say a database managed by a certification organization? Or even the UN?
In case Justin Trudeau's war on truckers prevents you from helping them buy electric cybertrucks. Or you need to do some cap and trade with Russia. You've got to take the internationalist view here.
Meanwhile in other news, water is wet, the sky is blue, Putin is a tyrant with blood on his hands, and I'm SHOCKED, SHOCKED to find that GAMBLING is going on in here!
You’re so ignorant. It isn’t gambling, it’s grass-roots investing to disrupt the centralized financial system owned by the government that’s trying to inject you with a microchip under the guise of stopping a scamdemic, just like they did to the frogs (which are all gay now)
If the US constitution was originally minted as an NFT, none of this would be necessary.
> Kumbhani is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodity price manipulation, operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business, and conspiracy to commit international money laundering. If convicted of all counts, he faces a maximum total penalty of 70 years in prison.
Liberty Reserve operator Arthur Budovsky is serving his 20 year prison sentence, Kumbhani will likely serve 40+ years.
Liberty Reserve wasn't even incorporated in US or did a lot of business after getting booted but that didn't stop it from being used as money laundering.
Tether isn't very much different, LR/E-gold both tried various forms of insulation (LR not providing fiat on-ramp/off-ramp but through "verified" 3rd party).
In the end, the trail of money and cui bono ultimately indicted Arthur for facilitating money laundering and subverting US banking system. It's very likely that DOJ and other three letter agencies are utilizing Tether/Bitcoin/Monero as a honeypot to gather intelligence on the parties.
Imagine the wealth of information they are sitting on after capturing the hard drives of darknet marketplaces like Alphabay which were allegedly used to trace a former YC alumni's stolen Bitcoins.
Tether is a well known cable for moving money out of China and into real estate markets in the West, it's ironic that so many do not see the complete geopolitical ramifications: housing affordability has been hijacked to facilitate money exfiltration in authoritarian countries by the elites in the West, to make cheap goods.
In the West, lower and middle class unwittingly traded affordable housing for affordable consumer goods produced by authoritarian labor control and the beneficiaries of this were able to move their wealth out of reach from the same authoritarian government. Now that the musical chairs is ending, the same demographic in the West are being encouraged to become unwitting exit liquidity for the upper class. I predict this would have destabilizing effect on societies all over the world, especially countries that are over-leveraged and buying crypto on margin.
Funny how both "Cryptocurrency Derangement Syndrome" and "Trump Derangement Syndrome" are both un-ironically used to describe critical people who are strongly against both of those scams, when they much more accurately describe gullible people who are deeply fooled by both of those scams.
Bitcoin is like bit torrent. A technology that has legitimate use cases in theory, even can be really truly useful tech, but is used mostly for shady things.
I found this notable. The messaging is clear: the DoJ supports crypto within whatever the current legal framework is.