Also- are there defenses against physical seizure/confiscation under duress of e.g. the bit-coins used for Ethereum, built into the protocol? If not, how can it be free from government interference? Unless you're paying entirely for digital goods which can be delivered anonymously, wouldn't you still have to interact with the physical world at some point? Is the idea just that it makes it harder for the government to stop money laundering and so they'll hopefully give up?
I mean, look at your examples, Uber and AirBNB. They moved fast and made lots of money for themselves... And, what, changed the world? Eh, not really. As they matured, governments caught up with them, and now they're collaborating more and more. Uber and AirBNB aren't subversive anymore- they've done their disruption, had their fun, made their money, and now they're just another app. And looking at the bitcoin space, I see similar movements- miners are big conglomerates now, major exchanges roll out more and more invasive KYC protocols, the IRS releases guidelines describing how to declare these on your taxes...
You think AML enforcement won't be coming? "Hey, where'd you get that Ferarri?" "Uhh, well, somebody must have just accidentally sent the money to my Monero address, and it's untraceable so I can't send it back, so..."- you're not going to have a great time fighting that! Sorry if you can't handle the facts- but if you actually want to fight a government (whether or not that's a good thing for society) you should really think about what you're dealing with! In terms of enforcement, even a perfect privacy coin doesn't seem much harder for a government to handle than cash or precious metals.
The big exceptions are those working in areas where their local governments turn a blind eye- e.g. ransomware gangs. So, if you don't have to fear the government asking questions, but the people paying you might (or if you want the people paying you to not be able to find you), there could be a reasonable use case.
Although I keep all my savings in fiat at the moment, I can still understand the value of crypto, and the position of libertarians.
Should the government have the power to seize all your assets and savings?
Some will say yes, because they believe the government will always be just. Others don't trust the government to always do the right thing, and so believe it shouldn't have those powers to begin with. This is an especially common belief among the technically apt crowd, who watched whistleblowers like Snowden be punished for exposing mass surveillance. That eroded a lot of trust in the institutions of the United States. Citizens of other states may have even less trust in their institutions.
Some don't agree with what they consider to be reckless and needless levels of spending - especially when that money is wasted by a public sector that tends to be inefficient, corrupt, bureaucratic, and incompetent - that will have to be repaid through either perpetually increasing taxes or inflation. Even Alan Greenspan recently cited inflation as his top concern. Again, the situation is probably much worse in many other countries, where politicians pilfer public coffers, assign contracts to friends, or generally poorly allocate your money (whether through taxes or inflation).
If you believe the government cannot be tyrannical, aren't bothered by high taxes or inflation, aren't concerned by waste or corruption, then I could understand why you don't see the value of a currency outside of the jurisdiction of your government.
Of course, there are downsides as well, like facilitating criminal activity that does hurt regular people, or facilitating tax evasion for necessary spending and services. That can't be ignored either.
And of course governments are going to do everything they can to stop this- what makes it interesting is the wide-spread effort to make it generally difficult to do so.
I sort of felt like there was a missing step here- your arguments are supporting the statement "the government SHOULD NOT have the power to seize all your assets and savings", which doesn't necessarily imply "and therefore, cryptocurrency is good"- but then I looked at the parent posts and remembered I asked (approximately) for an answer to the former. So, yeah, you gave a good answer to the question you replied to, my bad.
Well, hmm, I guess I still do sort of object to this paragraph-
"If you believe the government cannot be tyrannical, aren't bothered by high taxes or inflation, aren't concerned by waste or corruption, then I could understand why you don't see the value of a currency outside of the jurisdiction of your government."
I actually do think you can believe/be bothered by/object to all of those things, except possibly inflation, and still not see the value in a currency outside the jurisdiction of your government- currencies don't really have jurisdictions, banks and financial systems do. People and assets can be in jurisdictions, though- so let me just steel-man you a bit here, if you don't mind:
If you believe the government cannot be tyrannical, aren't bothered by high taxes or inflation, aren't concerned by waste or corruption, then I could understand why you don't see the value of a currency that is harder for the government to track at scale, and more resource-intensive to seize.
I think that's even more reasonable, but let me know if I'm misrepresenting your argument at all.
And thanks again!
At least thinking about it myself, it seems like the conversation with an investigator might go something like this-
"Where did you get this money"
"I made this art, and then bought it from myself."
"Why?"
"No comment."
"...okay, where'd you get the money to buy it from yourself?"
...and now you're in the exact place you were before you tried the art thing, except you now look extra suspicious. There may, however, be some emotional benefit from letting your creative juices flow and expressing yourself, so I guess it's not all bad.
Or did I misunderstand what you were asking? Sorry- getting a bit late here.
Effectively what you’re advocating for is criminality, which is ironically the only major industry that’s thriving in crypto right now, as far as I can tell.
Just from last week
https://coinnounce.com/swift-report-reveals-criminals-prefer...
“ A new report by the SWIFT says criminals prefer using fiat currencies over cryptocurrencies for money laundering and other criminal activities”.
They say up to 2 trillion could be getting laundered annually- at that point, Bitcoin's entire 2019 transaction volume could be money laundering, and it would be no less true that "criminals prefer fiat over cryptocurrency for money laundering." Obviously, this is absurd- the point is the article doesn't tell you what you actually want to know (how prevalent is money laundering in cryptocurrencies compared to legitimate transactions in same?)
If you don’t understand this technology then it’s easy to be naïve. Check out https://tornado.cash/ It is an unstoppable contract to facilitate monetary anonymity! Good luck
There was a reason Poloniex pulled out of the US last year, right? What was that reason?
And remember- if your paycheck depends on this technology- or, particularly, if you hold lots of cryptocurrency- it's easy to be willfully naive about its potential.
That's not even approximately true.
Laws are only enforced if there are people that think that it's worth enforcing them and who have the means (which usually i closed government sanction) to do so, which often happens when far less than all of the governments constituents think the laws involved are just.
Nope. Bitcoin trading volume (for example) has plummeted to a miniscule fraction of its late-2016 hype height.
It’s difficult for people outside of this space to see, as you only notice when news hits the front page. I work at a major crypto exchange (Poloniex) and all of our metrics are very bullish. I don’t think your 2017 opinion is relevant anymore.
My "lie" is so trivially and easily confirmed: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/all?c=e&t=b
Yesterday’s volume of $54,406,443,211 was the highest in one hundred and eighteen days, 138 percent above last year’s average, and 26 percent below last year’s high. That means that yesterday, the Bitcoin network shifted the equivalent of 871 tons of gold.
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2020/09/11/satoshi-nakaboto-...
E: I quacked for myself.
This seems to show trade volumes in terms of BTC and trades/min have indeed plummeted since late 2016.
https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/5y?c=e&t=b
https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/tradespm/5y?c=e&t=a
You can draw your own conclusions as to what that means but the specific claim that trading volume has decreased does seem to be true.
A cursory glance:
- bitcoinity doesn't include Binance in its list of exchanges which is a strange omission. https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/
These might be a bit more accurate:
- Exchange traded volume: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/trade-volume
- Transactions per day : https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions
7 day averages are down from 2018, but up compared to 2016.
This is not a pipe dream. This happens every day in increasing numbers. I’m sorry if you don’t like this.