Cash is the original anonymous "crypto"-currency. Still the preferred tool of money launderers, drug dealers, pimps, black marketeers, and other neerdowells everywhere. Also, offers real anonymity with no blockchain records.

I completely agree with this. For years, I was a crypto-currency advocate, telling any and all that it's better than their credit and debit cards. When I took a look at why, though, I realized that tool (in physical form) already exists: cash. As long as you trade a few with a few friends, or buy something from a Mom & Pop, no one can really know what bills you have, and there's no record, ever.

Every bill has a serial number. Social graph exploration of paper currency is possible with bill readers at only a few points in the bill life cycle.

If the same nodes repeatedly 'touch' the same serial numbers you can infer a relation.

You make it sound easier and more powerful than it really is though. For all intents and purposes, cash is mostly anonymous. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is traceable if you can map accounts to real people.

> no one can really know what bills you have, and there's no record, ever.

The only downside to cash is a central authority controls it and can devalue if they so choose. Other than that, I agree, cash is great.

>But regulation is only there to keep the established order.

That's a very narrow minded view of what regulation is good for.

> No one talks about USD being used in the same way!

They do, literally all the time, to talk about money laundering and justifying absurdity like seizing cash from motorists.

The only money that isn't Supporting Terrorism!(tm) is Fed Fun Bucks(tm), which are stored as a number you may request be told to you from a participating national bank.

China is only communist in name. It's a non-liberal capitalist country, with something of a non-universal social safety net.

The US takes active efforts to prevent USD being used in illegal activities. That's not to say that it isn't, but there are legal red flags if you try to haul a big pile of bills through customs. Cryptocurrency's entire use case so far has focused around illegal activity. Whether said activity is immoral is up for debate (you can certainly deem breaking the laws of some countries to be moral), but illegal? Absolutely.

If you want to know why people associate bitcoin with crime, look no further than the people celebrating that it will be easier to commit tax fraud now in this very thread.

That kind of petty criminality and fraud seems to run through the heart of the bitcoin community, and is part of why I think people are reasonable to associate it with questionable activity -- that's what it's advocated as supporting even here on HN!

Come on though, it's not that unreasonable to point it out, and it doesn't mean anyone who points it out is a menace to society like you seem to imply.

It's not that different than when people (used to) talk about not paying sales tax on online purchases, but hopefully you wouldn't conclude that "petty criminality and fraud seems to run through the heart of ecommerce."

Isn't it precisely that?

I'm actually confused by your example, because it looks like an example of precisely that happening (and then they were forced not to allow that). Lots of people flocked to e-commerce because of changing the ability to tax transactions.

Lots of "technology disruptions" seem organized around allowing people to break the law on the broad scale by making enforcement complicated and infractions easy. Not to say all of them, but enough that it's certainly a trend.

We can view that as a good thing or a bad thing (and there are reasons it might be a good thing), but it seems strange to ignore it happening.

No, I really do think that's a pretty unreasonable take on ecommerce. The sales tax loophole might have been nice, but I highly doubt that it was a significant cause of ecommerce success, and its elimination (in most US states, AFAIK) doesn't seem to be hurting ecommerce much.

It's really a perfect analogy. Apparently some people think that cryptocurrencies and ecommerce were both founded or significantly based on criminality, but I think there are some great advantages and opportunities with both that have nothing to do with crime. With cryptocurrencies, that's still largely a prediction, but with ecommerce I think it's ludicrous to claim that its success is owed to crime to any meaningful extent.

> its elimination (in most US states, AFAIK) doesn't seem to be hurting ecommerce muc

This seems to be the crux of your argument, and doesn't necessarily follow. Just because it was instrumental for the rise doesn't mean it will cause a fall if its removed at a significantly later point in time.

A support can be essential for building a bridge, even though the bridge stands without it when completed. I think tax evasion was precisely that bridge support for online commerce.

> Apparently some people think that cryptocurrencies and ecommerce were both founded or significantly based on criminality, but I think there are some great advantages and opportunities with both that have nothing to do with crime.

These two positions aren't contrary, and I'm curious why you're presenting them as if they were -- criminality is incentive to switch services, which are then sticky because they do provide features. However, pretending that those features is what caused the initial switch is revisionist.

> ecommerce I think it's ludicrous to claim that its success is owed to crime to any meaningful extent

I think claiming its success (and certainly that of current players) doesn't have anything to do with early criminality is absurd.

That being said, no one is talking about its present generator of value, we're talking about what created the incentives that led to this outcome two decades ago.

So regulations against pollution are only there to keep the established order?

You took that out of context.

Monetary regulation protects, supposedly. It may protect individuals against losing money in stupid schemes. But it didn't save us from the recent massive and costly market crashes which hurt far more people than a few loan sharks ever could.

The rich use regulation to control markets, that's why the gaps are growing between rich and poor people.

Regulation protects from both sides. It can protect you from getting rich too, by loading barriers to your opportunities.

Look at climate change - if you want to use another regulatory framework as an example of governmental regulatory failure.

Did environmental regulation stop climate change? No it became a tool for lobbyists to use to delay changes to the market that would harm profits. A protectionist racket, full of do good fools who think they know best.

Regulation is a tool used by governments to control stuff. Look at what is broken in the world - regulation is a huge factor in that.

The answer to regulation is self education.

That's because buying coffee with USD is the cheapest available option. There are very few things you can buy where BTC would be the least costly option, outside of the darknet markets.

>Libertarian ideals do not fit in communist societies. Regulation was always coming, as even liberal societies regulate.

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here; that regulation is a Communist idea? Either way, China is not a Communist society, it's a very capitalist society, with private property, wage labour etc. Also, libertarian (used in the original way libertarian was used) is Communist society. The modern "libertarian" (propertytarian) ideals do not fit in Communist society. Great lovers of freedom from democratic socialists Oscar Wilde to George Orwell to the social anarchists knew this.

The essence of Chinese politics is communist control. The actual iteration is very different as you say. But this does not alter the fact that freedom of the individual as provided by bitcoin runs counter to the Chinese communist manifesto. I am talking about the clash of ideals really, not actualities.