The article has the veneer of being well thought out, however if you look at their other writing & twitter there's definitely a I think I'm smart & didn't invent/make money/gain referential power from crypto so it's a scam & they now have ego tied up in being right/seeing the state clamp down on it.
Given two options A and B:
Option A) Status quo stays as is. Option B) Legally ban end-to-end encryption.
My experience has been that most tech people advocate for A.
Personally, I have no desire to have every conversation I expect to be private with the government watching over my shoulder, but that’s exactly where we’re headed if the tech community’s response to the problem of perverts/pedos/launderer/druglords boils down to “oh well gotta break a few eggs”.
Techies can balk all day long at the idea of the government legislating away end-to-end encryption but the voting public won’t (and I don’t blame them, given the tech community’s response of ignoring this issue so far).
Now, you might be thinking “but it doesn’t make sense! if you ban encryption, evildoers will still use it, and everyone else will have lost their privacy for nothing”. True.
The tech community needs to find an Option C that resolves criminality before Option B is forced on everyone.
(I have no suggestions for this, and doubt it’s possible, but maybe there’s a novel idea no-one has thought of.)
But, to address your point, because they're good arguments. "We need to regulate $thing" has saved lots of lives. No longer can you sell plain river water to drink, dump sewage directly back into rivers, dump industrial waste into rivers, build houses which collapse, build hotels with no fire consideration, build using asbestos, make buildings with electric wiring without circuit breakers, adulterate food with sawdust and plaster, sell products with lead paint, burn leaded gasoline in places where people breathe, and on and on and on.
That's progress; try things, filter out the things which are badder than they are good.
Crypto is heavily regulated at least in the US, Western Europe and huge swaths of Asia. Exchanging to/from fiat can only be done through entities subject to KYC, AML laws, and OFAC regulations. Additional regulations are coming - see "travel rule".
Bitcoin is infinitely more traceable than cash. Here's one of the most popular software routinely used by law enforcement to trace crypto payments: https://www.chainalysis.com/. Tumblers / mixers, etc. have only limited cloaking power.
Most of these criminals perpetrating ransomeware aren't in the US or Western Europe.
Which is a call for regulating, not banning. If you want to use something different which the author said somewhere else, to back some other point and say that it outweighs what the author says here, then actually do all those things. What are the author's own words elsewhere, where, and what point are you trying to make by vaguely gesticulating towards them?
The author is extremely prolific and vocal about his support for outright banning cryptocurrency. It's all over his blog, it's all over his Twitter. He is proud to admit it. It could have taken you 30 seconds to verify what I was saying, but instead you chose to double down on your ignorance.
The most expedient actions would be fourfold:
Halt all wire transfers of dollars in and out of cryptocurrency exchanges.
Halt foreign entities trading in dollar cash-equivalent crypto assets.
Add Chinese and other foreign cryptocurrency exchanges hiding in tax-havens to sanctioned entities lists.
Regulate the sale of any existing cryptocurrency assets to US persons by classifying them as securities investment contracts moving forward.
> "It could have taken you 30 seconds to verify what I was saying, but instead you chose to double down on your ignorance."
I'm asking what relevance your comment has. "He calls for a ban" - so what? Make a point.
There, can you stop being so obtuse now? You are wrong. My point is that the author is calling for a ban and that nobody was putting words in his mouth, as you suggested.
It isn't "obtuse" to ask you to back up your sneering with evidence. It also seems to have no relevance to this thread and "why arguments of this kind are so common"?
Your first emotion is most likely fear. Like how the hell does that thing does it, how does it's magic work?
This is how many people see cryptocurrencies. Something "magic" that just somehow is used as money for some people, but it's still just ones-and-zeroes, how does anything make sense?! First reaction is to be careful around it, and try to "protect" yourself from it.
We saw the same thing with the internet initially, until it gradually sucked us all in. We saw the same thing with social media initially, until it gradually sucked most of us in.
2- Government are there to ensure law and order.
Result:
Crypto is a great tool to evade law and order
Governments will have to control crypto or governments will stop working
hmm... seems like all positive to me
The half-life of anarchy is measured in hours. Then the gangs show up. Gangs are basically governments, except even less responsive to your needs and more openly committed to enriching their own leadership.
However I have to completely disagree that governments are responsive to anyone needs, or that they are not committed to their own enrichment
Then we'd have the ages-old dynamic that something that benefits everyone a bit but harms a minority a lot will be pushed out by people.
Cryptocurrency is bad and must be banned because ransomware. Encryption is bad because pedos, let’s ban Tor and Signal. We need a permanent surveillance state and forfeit most of our rights to privacy because terrorists bad, what do you have to hide?
Is it an appeal to emotion? Fear?