[HN Gopher] Regulating Crypto: How we move forward as an industr...
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Regulating Crypto: How we move forward as an industry from here
Author : wslh
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-12-21 12:01 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.coinbase.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.coinbase.com)
| schizo89 wrote:
| why would anarchists even use centralized exchanges and provide
| their identities. i'd say these central crypto bros go serve
| coffee to your boss on walk street
| Mistletoe wrote:
| This all seems to make sense to me. I hope it is implemented.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Classifying crypto as a "commodity" rather than a currency or a
| security was the fundamental mistake. Correct that mistake and
| really no further regulation is required. If you want to take
| deposits and make loans, you must be licensed as a bank. If you
| want to execute trades and make markets for securities, you must
| be licensed as a broker-dealer. If you want to manage funds for
| customers, you must be licensed as an investment company.
| Existing banking and securities regulations cover all of this.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| How many tokens on Coinbase are securities? The SEC won't audit
| them and Coinbase pretends that they have done due diligence.
| This is the elephant in the room.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Whether a given token is a security or not is independent of
| whether a given exchange can pass an audit (and audit also does
| not mean what you think it means though everyone seems to use
| it that way so I am probably over reacting)...
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Agree. That's my entire point. Coinbase is not in the clear.
| Not even close.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| You know what this currency that was designed to be unregulated
| and decentralised needs?
|
| Regulations and centralisation!
| xnx wrote:
| I often find myself wishing that half of all financial
| regulations were replaced by an aggressive consumer
| education/consumer reports type agency.
| throw_me_5555 wrote:
| So outside drug trade and crypto lockers what constitutes the
| crypto industry? The only constant I know are pump&dumps, be it
| in form of alt-coins, ICO or NFT.
| intotheabyss wrote:
| How about the recent news from Visa where they would like to
| develop a smart contract wallet infrastructure (no seed phrases
| and account abstraction) on a layer 2 which uses zero knowledge
| proofs to batch transactions offchain for scalability?
| https://usa.visa.com/solutions/crypto/auto-payments-for-self...
|
| Oh right, this doesn't follow the narrative that crypto is
| useless for everything.
| striking wrote:
| > As part of Visa's internal Crypto Hackathon challenge
| earlier this year, we took on the opportunity to explore the
| above scenario using a novel technique.
|
| They say in their conclusion that they're interested in this.
| I don't see any talk of commitment.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| All you need to know is right there in the heading - "Visa
| Crypto Thought Leadership".
|
| You can go back years finding all kinds of research papers,
| press releases, broad statements from you-name-it Fortune 500
| talking about some crypto project.
|
| It means absolutely nothing for these big corps to take a
| tiny portion out of their income-offsetting R&D departments
| to put a few people on moonshot/fluff/PR campaigns for papers
| like this. It makes them look cool, relevant, whatever and in
| the event it somehow goes somewhere they look like geniuses
| (and some exec gets a promotion). If it doesn't work out they
| never mention it again -OR- release a statement announcing
| termination of the project because of environmental concerns,
| etc (like Tesla).
| yao420 wrote:
| Where are you getting that they would like to develop or even
| explore this further?
|
| From the link, this was taken from an internal hackathon
| earlier in the year before the further crypto meltdown. they
| didn't even write a proof of concept. Call me when they
| actually trapease or do something.
| __derek__ wrote:
| That describes an approach to solve a problem _with using
| crypto for payments_. The problem (bill pay) is already
| solved in the real world.
| robby_w_g wrote:
| > Oh right, this doesn't follow the narrative that crypto is
| useless for everything.
|
| As someone with casual knowledge of crypto, that jargon in
| the first paragraph sounds useless to me
| ilikerashers wrote:
| Art NFTs seem legit. I like this piece of digital art, I pay in
| crypto for the piece. It's like an open art collection
| database.
|
| Is it a billion dollar opportunity, don't think so but I can
| understand the appeal.
| tokai wrote:
| Has ownership of any artwork actually changed hands through
| NFT sales? Every NTF project I have looked at are just
| digital receipts containing an URL.
| nailer wrote:
| > Every NTF project I have looked at are just digital
| receipts containing an URL.
|
| That is how digital art changes hands.
| tokai wrote:
| No, the ownership has not change by buying a NTF. Not the
| rights to the work nor even the ownership of a specific
| digital file. That's why I'm asking. Cause the whole NTF
| space is held up by a general misunderstanding of
| ownership and rights.
| miracle2k wrote:
| > Cause the whole NTF space is held up by a general
| misunderstanding of ownership and rights.
|
| It would we more correct to say that critical NFT
| commentary is held up by misunderstanding about what
| digital art collectors actually think and want.
|
| If I want to buy rights to a JPG, I go search on
| Shutterstock. If I want to buy a piece of digital art (in
| form of a limited edition receipt), I go to a gallery.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| you die, hopefully.
|
| crypto will live on. but the "industry" of money people
| parasitising on it will inevitably die. and that's a good thing
| beefield wrote:
| I would be quite keen to know how a state trust based
| "stable"coin would work in an environment where treasuries give
| negative yield. (Only a question of time, even if yields are
| currently going up)
| blitzar wrote:
| 20 Oct 2022 -- FTX CEO, SBF Releases Draft That Proposes Crypto
| Regulation
| Mistletoe wrote:
| SBF was the complete opposite of this proposal if my memory
| serves. He wanted to neuter defi with regulation and push more
| people to his centralized exchange.
|
| Once we've seen how the sausage was made at FTX, you can see
| why haha.
| blitzar wrote:
| > Coinbase - "Regulating stablecoin issuers is a good place
| to start"
|
| 12 Oct 2022 - Sam Bankman-Fried: Stablecoins Are 'Lowest-
| hanging Fruit' for Crypto Regulation ... One regulator should
| have the duty to ensure all stablecoins are backed by
| dollars, FTX founder says
| nailer wrote:
| As someone who hates SBF I think he was right on requiring
| proof of capitalization for stablecoins that say they're
| capitalized. USDT used to say this on their website, then
| removed it and now they just print money (Hacker News
| doesn't support emoji but I'd use the person throwing trash
| into the bin emoji here).
| blitzar wrote:
| If stablecoins are regulated then they are just USD's.
|
| They are just an excuse to earn transaction fees and
| print fake money in exchange for bypassing regulations,
| always has been - insert _Always has been_ meme.
| nailer wrote:
| I can send you a million USDC right now on the most
| popular blockchain, it'll arrive in less than a card tap
| and the transaction fee is USD .00025.
| blitzar wrote:
| I can write you a cheque for a billion actual USD for 0
| cost.
| nailer wrote:
| Cool but:
|
| - my bank has an upper limit of 1500 GBP so I can't
| receive the cheque
|
| - if I could receive the cheque, the latency on me
| getting the funds is a few orders of magnitude more than
| 400ms
| blitzar wrote:
| And getting 1 mil of USDC to your bank account would take
| longer and be more problematic!
| nailer wrote:
| I don't need a bank account to use the USDC. I can store
| it myself, buy goods at retail or online, and purchase
| tokenised investments (eg real estate, equities, ETFs)
| with the USDC, invest in physical art, pay people I need
| to pay, etc.
| blitzar wrote:
| But you cant actually do any of that (yet) - well except
| for buying tokenised gifs
| roenxi wrote:
| The incentive structure for any large exchange is to make an
| attempt to capture the regulator. In a free market, exchanges
| can't make a big profit because they are too easy to replace. In
| a regulated market, where new entrants are blocked by KYC and AML
| regulations and a host of red tape, the exchanges can maintain a
| much higher profit margin.
|
| I don't think Coinbases' interests align with the interests of
| the people using crypto in this article.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| So we have now come full circle.
|
| Crypto started out as a naive attempt at money without
| government. But this was quickly shown to be an open invitation
| to rampant fraud that is still ongoing and technology alone can
| not prevent.
|
| So now in a last ditch effort at survival, crypto is begging for
| a government lifeline with oversight and regulation.
|
| I said all along that the only thing government needed to do to
| kill crypto was absolutely nothing --- just give it some space to
| self implode.
|
| This has largely come to pass. Only one final realization remains
| ---- if regulation is needed, crypto is not. It no longer will
| have any compelling *legal* reason to exist
| logicchains wrote:
| This is not crypto, it's parasitic centralised exchanges that
| want a bunch of institutional money in the ecosystem so that
| they can collect their cut of the fees.
| acdha wrote:
| That is cryptocurrency, even if you find it inconvenient for
| marketing purposes. You can "no true coin" everything
| negative but at that point there's almost nothing left -- all
| of the billions in funding have had surprisingly little real-
| world impact because once you subtract the scams and the
| effort spent trying to work around problems created by the
| design there isn't much left.
| jrm4 wrote:
| But "not much" is completely different from "nothing," and
| it would be a massive mistake to presume "little real world
| impact" because you haven't seen it now, or yet, e.g. Black
| Swans et al.
| acdha wrote:
| I said little real world impact because after many years
| and billions of dollars, the number of people outside of
| the industry who'd be inconvenienced if it disappeared is
| very small - perhaps a few people who can save a
| percentage over Western Union and some people in
| Venezuela who prefer laundering money that way. Contrast
| that with things like the web which despite much higher
| barriers to adoption had been incorporated into normal
| people's lives within a couple of years. In less than the
| time bitcoin has been around, we went from the pre-iPod
| era to one where most people were connected everywhere
| and the way people worked, played, traveled, dated, etc.
| had changed notably.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| And why do these "parasitic centralised exchanges" exist?
| Because the crypto market isn't really functional without
| them.
|
| Even people using so called "decentralized" exchanges turn to
| them to obtain a market rate for their transactions.
|
| In effect, "decentralization" is just a crypto
| marketing/selling point that has never been achieved. It
| takes more than accounting to build a functional market.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Decentralized exchanges are in their infancy. They're not
| as efficient as centralized exchanges yet, but that seems
| more like a temporary technological limitation rather than
| some sort of iron law. What can't be decentralized is the
| fiat currency interconnect.
| mjburgess wrote:
| The only thing decentralised was the ledger and it's
| consistency. There never has been any sense to "political
| decentralisation" having anything to do with crypto.
|
| A social network isn't decentralised because it's people
| use a centralised or decentralised proof-of-correctness. An
| economic network isnt centralised or decentralised if its
| ledger of promises is stored centrally or otherwise.
|
| This is a fairly obvious fallacy to anyone who understands
| that centralisation of power is a social-graph structure,
| and economic centralisation is transaction-graph-structure
| and crypto "decentralisation" concerns only the storage-
| and-computation of a ledger.
|
| Ironically, the crypto "economy" is radically more
| centralised in social-graph and transaction-graph terms. So
| much so that it's incredibly fragile to a handful of
| individual failures.
|
| The idea that these have anything to do with each other is
| such an obvious nonesense that the only reason its repeated
| is just people _do not understand_ at least one of these
| issues. Ie., very few are both in the camp of technically,
| politically and economically competent.
|
| Money is already close to the maximally decentralised a
| ledger storage can be. It's already close to maximally
| decentralised proof-of-correctness. Having a bank-note in
| your hand is extremely good proof it's yours, and extremely
| hard for others to steal.
|
| Decentralisation, in the only relevant sense to crypto,
| already exists in a close to perfect form (ie., money).
| kodyo wrote:
| Bitcoin isn't going away, sir.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| I never said it was. But with regulation and increased focus
| on blatant market manipulation/fraud/speculation, the demand
| for it will likely decline from current levels in my opinion.
|
| Just wait for a full government mandated audit of Tether and
| other "stable coins" then get back to me on this. "Stable
| coins" are the support mechanism for Bitcoin and the crypto
| market in general. And they are on less than firm ground ---
| again, in my opinion.
|
| It's difficult to say anything truly definitive about the
| current crypto market because transparency is the exception
| rather than the rule. This will likely change with government
| regulation.
| bookaway wrote:
| Frankly, I was expecting Coinbase to capitalize on the roaring
| 20s by slowly pivoting from crypto to something that had legs
| in the real world and start building software useful for small
| businesses, you know, start slowly entering into something like
| Stripe's domain, since they had a front-row seat to the mess
| and should have been able to see that the good times couldn't
| last.
|
| I was stupefied as I watched the opposite happen. If memory
| serves me correctly, it was Stripe that started getting into
| crypto instead of the other way around as the bubble was
| bursting--to my amazement. And this despite having patio11 in
| their ranks. Yeah yeah big company etc etc, but still, it
| really dented my confidence in the Stripe brand and the people
| working under its umbrella.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Lots of companies start with a singular idea ... and never
| grow beyond it.
|
| At one time, I looked at using Coinbase/crypto for money
| transfer purposes. I had several clients who tried to open an
| account but their applications were rejected. They were more
| strict than most banks.
| vageli wrote:
| An established player looking to cement its position through
| regulation? Color me surprised. Less cynically, though, crypto
| could stand to benefit from more regulatory clarity. Though it's
| interesting that coinbase considers stablecoins "other" when I
| believe coinbase itself offers interest on its stablecoin. It
| remains to be seen if interest-bearing stable tokens are
| securities.
| ramoz wrote:
| "Trust the laws of math"
|
| Can someone explain to me how code that processes my private
| information, in some "Bob's 40K Basement Mining" node is
| protected and secured? Whether it be a smart contract or these
| new "use GPU VMs at fraction of cloud costs- through this token
| market"
|
| "Because Bob risks a large stake if reputation is tampered"
| doesn't cut it.
|
| What's the tech here, genuinely.
| kayamon wrote:
| Math takes time and energy. It's like a race to keep ahead. The
| fair trading rules of Bitcoin remain enforced because no one
| party can ever gain control of the race.
| ramoz wrote:
| Sorry, my comment wasn't about bitcoin/sybils.
|
| More about the computational aspects around things like smart
| contracts.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Trick question: Bitcoin-style systems make all your transaction
| information public. Including before confirmation, so people
| can front-run you.
|
| The "security" is trying to hide your payment addresses to
| avoid people associating them with you.
| CurrentB wrote:
| The only info miners/validators have is public info anyway.
| Their job is just to constantly decide which public ledger is
| the "real" one.
| csomar wrote:
| The miners don't decide the chain. The users do. You can fork
| off to a lower hash rate chain if you want to.
| CurrentB wrote:
| We haven't specified which exact blockchain we're talking
| about but in basically all cases you're wrong.
|
| Users just send their transactions to a p2p network. It's
| miners that pick those up and put transactions into a block
| and decide which block is the parent to the one they built.
| miracle2k wrote:
| Social consensus > blockchain consensus.
|
| Its the job of miners/validators to pick the head of the
| chain.
|
| But users have the ability to send transactions to
| whatever p2p network they want to send it to, even if
| it's a fork proposed by CurrentB on Hackernews.
| epolanski wrote:
| You got to love how industry regulations really defeat most of
| the benefits and points of the decentralization by going in the
| opposite direction.
|
| The problem in reality would be non existent if people used
| crypto currencies for what they were meant to be used for: an
| alternative economy with no need for exchanges and third parties:
| you sell me a banana, I give you some satoshis.
|
| Not saying this is convenient IRL, requiring to sync to a network
| and chain is expensive and difficult from a phone, but that was
| the supposed use case.
|
| I'm more and more convinced that blockchain industry solves no
| real world problems at all, except in the crypto sphere itself
| (like smart contracts do have a use...for crypto exchanges,
| crypto games and crypto gambling) and that 99% of the people who
| get involved couldn't care less about crypto use cases, only if
| they will sell for more $ than they bought for.
| nailer wrote:
| > You got to love how industry regulations really defeat most
| of the benefits and points of the decentralization by going in
| the opposite direction.
|
| Are industry regulations preventing self custody?
|
| I hope and believe we're talking about regulation being rightly
| applied to centralised exchanges. So they don't front run
| customers on token listings (Coinbase), use customer funds when
| customer's haven't allowed them to (FTX), replace their
| customer's coins with a different currency (Binance), or
| whatever else.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| didn't read the article
|
| its regulation on centralized popup companies and letting
| onchain activity and constructs operate as they are
| JonathanBeuys wrote:
| industry regulations really defeat most of the benefits
| and points of the decentralization
|
| How so? Bitcoin's use cases seem unaffected:
|
| 1: Hold something that is expected to stay scarce and not
| printed or mined to infinity
|
| 2: Make international, fast and cheap payments that are
| instantly finalized.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| > A purely 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
|
| > We have proposed a system for electronic transactions
| without relying on trust.
|
| Any regulation introduces a 3rd party which Bitcoin was
| designed to remove.
| epolanski wrote:
| You seem to have jumped my second sentence:
|
| > The problem in reality would be non existent if people used
| crypto currencies for what they were meant to be used for
|
| Which is more or less what you're pointing at.
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| 1: How do you easily get bigger amounts of crypto, without a
| centralized exchange?
|
| 2: How does the receiving person use the received bitcoins,
| unless there is a real economy or again a centralized
| exchange?
| CurrentB wrote:
| Who said anything about not having a centralized exchange?
| Centralized on ramps are not necessarily antithetical to a
| decentralized system.
| messy wrote:
| I'm sorry, but yes they are... the security of the system
| was supposed to be built in, and it was supposed to have
| its value built in. Neither are true. It's not
| decentralized and at this rate it never will be, and
| seeing how it turned out so far, it would be a good thing
| to fail.
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| In this specific argument, it was about regulations,
| which such centralized exchanges would need to comply
| with.
|
| Generally, it's literally the whole basic premise of
| everything 'crypto'!
| jrm4 wrote:
| This argument kills me all the time.
|
| Like, yes, when I take my kids to Chuck E. Cheese I do
| want to convert my money into the tokens. I do not want
| to store them as that.
| matt_s wrote:
| Most regulations around securities involve disclosures as in
| over some percent threshold the entity owning that security
| must disclose their ownership and report on it every quarter
| to the SEC.
|
| Disclosure of ownership in crypto really should be around a
| dollar threshold, not percentage and that mostly defeats the
| purpose of anonymity. I think financial institutions (banks,
| exchanges, wall st.) should have to disclose holdings in
| crypto for both crypto trader awareness but also for their
| customers in other business sectors awareness.
|
| There should also be strict rules preventing operating an
| exchange/market maker and any sort of investment firm (hedge
| fund, etc.) by any degrees of separation. That means they can
| have no relationships at all organizationally
| (parent/grandparent company owns both type of thing). Any
| transactions between exchanges and funds of that sort should
| 100% be reported and tracked. I think it can be anonymously
| tracked for some period of time but must be disclosed to an
| independent regulating organization.
| britneybitch wrote:
| Bitcoin is not a security though. Both the CFTC and SEC
| have said so publicly:
|
| https://bitcoinist.com/cftc-chair-only-bitcoin-is-a-
| commodit...
|
| https://decrypt.co/103926/sec-chair-gensler-bitcoin-not-
| secu...
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| maybe it should be?
|
| on SoFi for example the UI/UX for trading stocks and ETFs
| is the same flow for trading crypto and people trade it
| like it is one. Else, why hodl at all if it's not in
| hopes it'll go up in value?
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Do you mean that crypto actually might not solve a real problem
| within the realm of finance and that the tools and structures
| that exist today actually serve a purpose?
|
| Who could have seen that coming? /s
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > Who could have seen that coming? /s
|
| Clearly someone who lives in some small insular corner of the
| world with good governance and stable currencies would
| definitely imagine all the benefits of crypto. /s
|
| Some real life examples of problems crypto has solved
| (compiled just for comments like yours which seem to be
| lacking empathy or imagination or both):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095
| nyolfen wrote:
| you ought to tell that to the millions of people across the
| developing world who suddenly have a means of resistance to
| their governments debasing their savings: https://upload.wiki
| media.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Venezuel...
|
| crypto is many things, but the single most important is
| demonstrating cryptography as a foundation for robust digital
| rights. we can guarantee digital rights in a way that require
| complex and frequently corrupt institutional enforcement in
| the real world. this is a mind-bending achievement and we're
| only at the very outset
| pjc50 wrote:
| Instead, by declining against the dollar by a factor of
| three in the past year, Bitcoin is quite good at debasing
| people's savings on its own.
|
| Mere issuance isn't enough to guarantee price stability.
|
| (There's an interesting question to be asked about whether
| the US should allow the usage of its digital dollars by
| non-US persons as a means of evading the currency controls
| of South American governments, effectively exporting price
| stability. Much as the existing Eurodollar system. But I
| don't think this is the place for that discussion)
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > Instead, by declining against the dollar by a factor of
| three in the past year, Bitcoin is quite good at debasing
| people's savings on its own.
|
| Srilankan rupee lost 50% value overnight in March 2022
| and is subject to futher deterioration due to the corrupt
| incompetent government. Same with Venezuela. Bitcoin or
| Gold or USD/EUR are the only good options for the
| millions of citizens of those countries, albeit generally
| available on black markets because of government
| controls. My colleague has his family in such a country.
| Guess what is the easiest way for him to help his family
| in need? [Hint: gold is hard to transfer and USD/EUR
| transfers are sanctioned because of US/EU govt policies].
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Democratic world could provide that service without
| exposing their own citizens to a world of scams.
| epolanski wrote:
| The idea that money (which is made as a mean of
| transmission between goods) should be hoarded is stupid.
|
| No wealthy person in this planet got wealthier by hoarding
| pieces of paper with pictures of national heroes, but by
| investing it in gold, art, land, real estate, stock markets
| and many others.
|
| If you and some other people agree that specific hashes on
| a specific blockchain have some value for you and avoid
| "debasing your savings" you're free to hoard them.
| [deleted]
| JofArnold wrote:
| Except that's not really what's happening. In Venezuela the
| only people using crypto to any extent is people who
| already are tech savvy and have the skills to work around
| these limitations. The "unbanked" however still don't use
| crypto and hardly any shops are using it because of the
| volatility and the long times to approve transactions. It's
| good for payments of services (e.g. utilities) I hear,
| however.
|
| But I think more crucially is that what's increasingly
| looking like "the only good use of crypto" is really a
| consequence of social issues a similar way to how cars are
| very popular in countries with poor infrastructure (e.g.
| USA). If the country gets its act together, this aspect of
| crypto's value add vanishes and will just be seen as a slow
| and poor quality volatile payment system.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > Except that's not really what's happening.
|
| Or maybe you are just ignorant? Here are some examples I
| have compiled (took me <5 min):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095
| JofArnold wrote:
| I've been in crypto a long time. I chose specifically
| Venezuela as I know that is a good case of Bitcoin not
| achieving its objectives and was called out specifically
| as an example of it supposedly being successful. And I
| very much stand by this and my related points.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > And I very much stand by this and my related points.
|
| You say - "If the country gets its act together...". I
| think crypto will get its act together and get around the
| adoption blockers before despot regimes of the world get
| their act together. Just a gut feeling based on our
| history so far. I also agree that there will be multiple
| crypto scams along the way. Such is the allure of the new
| tech.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| Since I cannot edit my other reply to this comment
| anymore, here is one more counterpoint: Nigeria is 11th
| in terms of Crypto adoption [1] while its government is
| hostile to Crypto [2]. A great example of how Crypto can
| help ordinary people fight shitty regimes with unstable
| currencies.
|
| [1] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-global-
| crypto-adop...
|
| [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-27/ni
| geria-s...
| nyolfen wrote:
| if the existence of cryptocurrency uhh, solves central
| banking then i think it will have achieved its purpose
| regardless
| achow wrote:
| That's not the point OP is making.
|
| "If the country gets its act together".. you know by fair
| elections, good governance and you know by similar such
| 'non-crypto' things.
| [deleted]
| JofArnold wrote:
| Furthermore, crypto is spectacularly effective at violating
| rights; "so, Mr Arnold, I see on the blockchain your paid
| for your wife to have an abortion. That's 10 years in jail
| for you".
| psychphysic wrote:
| Exactly! What's the blooming point?
|
| What governments want is digital currencies, all the privacy
| concerns and none of the benefits of cryptos.
|
| But, let's see if crypto can survive this pressure. Really it
| must be robust to this if it has any purpose.
| epolanski wrote:
| Currencies are already mostly digital since decades.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Not disagreeing but to many's surprise cash is more popular
| than ever.
|
| Most of us no longer us bank notes, yet the amount in
| circulation climbs...[0] what's going on?
|
| It actually probably acts like a buffer, with BOE spending
| the net on government assets while the notes vanish off to
| places we prefer not to think of
|
| [0] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/banknote
| pjc50 wrote:
| > The problem in reality would be non existent if people used
| crypto currencies for what they were meant to be used for: an
| alternative economy with no need for exchanges and third
| parties
|
| You know, I think we can help you with that: crypto exchanges
| should be banned on sight. Including localbitcoins.
|
| Let the libertarians have their playground, but there must be
| no linkages between it and the regular world of money.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| why?
| kodyo wrote:
| "Regular world of money" is bizarre phrase. I'm assuming you
| mean the government monopoly on currency, but the idea that a
| country outsourcing its currency management to a central
| banking cartel is "regular" is lunacy.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It looks pretty regular to me? Currency issuance has been a
| function of the government since the Bronze age? And paper
| money since, what, the Song Dynasty?
| kodyo wrote:
| You missed the part where I pointed out that the US
| government outsourced the administration of its currency
| to a private banking cartel and some people just think
| it's normal.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| Even in the case described by OP, exchanges would still be a
| thing, just like they are between EUR & USD.
| epolanski wrote:
| Depends on legislation.
| danaris wrote:
| > The problem in reality would be non existent if people used
| crypto currencies for what they were meant to be used for
|
| In other words, "if people would stop exercising their free
| will and acting in ways that may benefit them, but are
| detrimental to my idea/this system/society/etc, everything
| would be fine!"
|
| As the admin and main developer of a small browser-based game,
| this is a hard lesson I've had to learn over the past several
| years: We don't get to define how people act and think. When we
| build systems, we _must_ take into account how people will
| _actually_ try to use them...and if we find that they 're using
| them in ways that are detrimental to the structure as a whole,
| we need to rethink our systems.
| [deleted]
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I say don't regulate it and let it eat itself.
| danuker wrote:
| I am somewhat surprised they tout self-ownership, which would
| work against any fractional reserve scheme that exchanges might
| try with customer funds.
|
| > First, self-custodial wallets allow customers to store their
| own crypto in a way where they don't have to trust anyone else.
|
| But the "multi-party computation and social recovery" is exactly
| "having to trust someone else".
|
| > First, self-custodial wallets allow customers to store their
| own crypto in a way where they don't have to trust anyone else.
| Technology improvements, like multi-party computation and social
| recovery, will make it easy for anyone to safely store their own
| crypto without needing to trust third parties.
|
| I wonder if their tune would change once centralized exchanges
| would become influential again.
| snake_doc wrote:
| "2. Enforce a level playing field Getting regulatory clarity
| would be a good first step, but if we don't enforce these rules
| evenly, both domestically and abroad, we will not have a path
| forward."
|
| How ironic, so a crypto exchange wishes the U.S. government, an
| immensely powerful centralized entity crypto was designed to
| omit, makes everyone else play nice on the global stage. How
| would the US do that? Hmm... guessing regulating flow of dollars.
|
| Ha!
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I think these proposals are mostly good and practical. I see two
| issues though:
|
| * first, we've seen resistance from BOTH sides to sensible
| proposals in the past. Some because they thing Crypto should be
| totally unregulated (purists) and others because they want crypto
| shut down completely and any reasonable (even enabling)
| regulation makes that less likely
|
| * second, there are still some core issues here. For instance, a
| major up side of crypto is the ability to evade regulation like
| sanctions. On a case by case basis this is sometimes good
| (helping Venezuelans access desperately needed international
| help) or bad (helping corruption or ransomware). This line:
|
| >Establish a blacklist capability to meet sanctions requirements
|
| hides within it a very large technical and social problem
| depending on exactly how it is implemented. And should that be
| different between stable coins (where the requirement is listed)
| and other coins?
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