> So it's one rule for the government and another for the people.

Of course it is, otherwise it wouldn't be a government. People get really silly with this. Governments can define laws, enforce them and so on. They have many rules that apply to them and not to everyone else. That's the whole point.

The US also has done the exact same in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act

I agree with you on how governments often work. I can’t agree that’s the whole point, though. Why would it be? I’d be curious to understand why you think so.

The whole point is to enforce rules that benefit the whole, at the cost of individual benefit.

Say you have 100 rials or 1M. Converting it to BTC might be good for you individually if you believe the local currency is going to lose value, but it’s not good for the collective as there will now be less demand and more supply of it. So the individual benefits at the cost of the group. Stopping that is the gov’s job.

This is a general comment, I am not familiar with Iran as a country and might be missing context.

this is a really unconvincing example, at least to me. despite the name, bitcoin doesn't function much like a currency. that is to say, someone who would otherwise hold $1mm cash would probably not want to convert that to bitcoin, at least not for legal transactions. so if a meaningful amount of people would rather use BTC than fiat, the problem is not that people are allowed to buy BTC. the problem is that the government has failed spectacularly at issuing a stable currency, which is one of its main jobs.

It might not be a pertinent example for btc, it was just used as an example.

The US did something similar with gold - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act#:~:text=The....

The main point is, the govt has a mandate to take actions that benefit the whole, even at the cost of individuals.

Yes it will make mistakes, and yes it sometimes will be corrupt and abuse that mandate, but in those cases the country can appoint a different group of people to try and fix things, that’s its only option that addresses the problem and is not “benefiting the individual and harming the whole”.

Sometimes a foreign force will overthrow your elected government, because they want your oil, appoint a dictator instead and provide him with support in exchange for military interest. After decades, he is ousted, foreign relations are understandably sour and your neighbor decides to invade, so the powers provide support lest he be defeated and you are pronounced a country non-grata.

More to the point, it shouldn't be the or a country that appoints leaders. They should be appointed by the people, but for various reasons it has a rather poor success rate.

> So it's one rule for the government and another for the people.

You cannot imprison other people, but your government sure can. There are many cases where the government has special jurisdiction as compared to citizens and it is clearly recognized as a moral thing to have in democracies around the world.

There is a strong philosophical argument in favour of governments following different rules from people.

However, in this practical case, the government is forcing people to make bad choices (to use a second rate fiat currency). It understands it is forcing people to make a bad choice, because it doesn't want to make that choice itself.

This is the thing I don't get about more tin-pot dictatorships. It is obvious why the States force people to use their first-rate fiat currency - the US benefits hugely from people using the dollar.

It is obvious why Iran might force its citizens to use the US dollar - if they didn't they probably get invaded by the US on some flimsy pretext.

But why force people to use a local fiat currency? It just makes their country poorer. Why are there all these idiots who look at their own economy and think "gee, this thing might work to well if we let people save in a liquid asset"?

How do people think they are going to generate wealth if not incentivising people to consume less than they produce? It is the only reliable path. Why do all these governments find it so scary?

I think this is a bit different. They’re exporting something that’s illegal to use locally. It’s like if the government of a dry county was distilling liquor.

In the absence of a state, personally jailing someone who violated your rights would be morally just. With the establishment of the state, we still maintain this right. We just delegate its exercise to the state, to ensure it is subject to due process.

It is unjust to delegate moral rights we do not have, and could no not legitimately exercise on our own in the absence of a state, like jailing peaceful people, to the state.

> You cannot imprison other people

People who aren’t the government do, in fact, do that.

With a strong and effective government, there is a high probability that they eventually face significant adverse consequences for doing so, which may deter those who are deterrable, but even then it still happens.

> You cannot imprison other people

There is an estimated 40.3 million slaves on Earth today. Just throwing that out there.

Bitcoin will never be true decentralization because the real world runs on centralized violence and power grabs.

True decentralization means you don't get to complain when Bitcoin is used to do everything you hate.

You don't get to complain when honest people lose cumulatively billions of their hard earned savings to scammers and hackers.

You don't get to complain when peope hire hitmen, buy drugs and child porn with it.

You don't get to complain when data mining centers hook illegally to the power grid and steal millions of dollars of energy.

Or when countries avoid sanctions, or manipulate other countries through it.

That's precisely what decentralization and deregulation looks like. It's the law of the jungle. Enjoy.

All those things were already illegal (worse yet, immoral) whether you pay for them in fiat or in Bitcoin. That's a false equivalence.

That's the whole point. They're illegal/immoral, but decentralization means you can't mitigate them despite that.

Tell me when is the last time a drug dealer used a wire transfer with reason "for the cocain"? Oh they don't do that. I wonder why.

Drug dealers use wire transfers all the time.

And there are benefits to being able to stop governments from controlling people. I would say the benefits of this far outweigh giving the state an even greater power advantage over non-state actors that may be acting maliciously.

So for me, yes, decentralization please.

Most of the thing you listed are illegal, and paying them with Bitcoins don't make them magically legal.

If someone makes an "Uber for hitmen", it will still be illegal in spite someone is using an app to hire them and paying them with their altcoins.

Honestly it's very disappointing I have to explain this but I NEVER ARGUED THE LEGALITY STATUS of these activities.

I argue the fact Bitcoin and other coins enables crime.

I'll make it really simple for you: would you hire a hitman with a briefcase full of cash, or you'd do a bank wire with subject "for the murder, thanks"?

Think why we don't use bank wires for this.

Now think why anonymous cash transfers are hard internationally.

Now think what Bitcoin is. It's anonymous cash over the Internet.

It's a huge enabler for illegal activities because it's anonymous and decentralized and happens over Internet.

You can spin it any way you wish, but the fact speak if you're a criminal, Bitcoin is automatically the most attractive way for making transactions to you, aside from person to person cash briefcases.

Law is centralized by nature. Because law has to be enforced in a centralized nature. Decentralization and anonymity means you can't apply the law. "Illegal" means therefore NOTHING to Bitcoin.

The irony of this whole statement is that bitcoin isnt anonymous! (which is a core reason it lost its intended value as a medium of exchange)

The general sentiment also applies to cash, and the reality is the authorities want to track your every transaction, which is why every opportunity to diminish cash has and will be taken.

It's anonymous because you see wallets, but you don't know who has them. That's what anonymous means.

The reasons you give against Bitcoin can be used also to against encryption.

We agree that hiring a hitman is illegal, and we agree that it will be easier for the police to solve the crimes if encryption is banned and the police can read all the emails/whastapp/whatever of all the people in the city.

Encryption is tolerated because it also allows protecting regular people from criminals, in ways which allowed to build e-commerce on top, and ultimately enabling great economic boom on the Internet. If it was only about securing messaging, it would likely have been banned already.

People forget what the 90s was like (if you had to export out of usa)

You just haven’t had enough time to see why cryptocurrencies should be tolerated. Eventually you will.

I'm tired of this completely wrong argument.

- Encryption doesn't stop law enforcement from having backdoors at key servers, and they do.

- Also we're discussing a financial transaction instrument, which REQUIRES MASS for it to make sense (for it to be valuable for transactions).

- While you can roll your own unique encryption and communication channel and authorities won't know a thing.

So no, situation is completely different with encryption.

I should have written "end to end encryption".

But if you have written it I'd have to note end-to-end encryption (as in truly end-to-end) is rarely applied in the real world.

It doesn't make even pragmatic sense, for ex. how can Apple index and process your photos, if it just sees them as bunch of binary noise? It can't. So it doesn't.

It can't be decentralized to begin with, because whoever has more money can run more mining and whoever mines more has more power in the network. It's still more about rich hording power. On the flipside it may just be a little bit more distributed and accessible than the current prevalent system.

But mining doesn't grant you any power (unless you manage to accumulate 51% of it, which is in this day and age pretty much impossible for a single individual or organization). Mining is just a service that you provide (to secure the network), and you get rewarded for it.

Compare that to how monetary inflation works in the fiat world: they just press a button, et voi-la, they got their funding.

That's kind of always the case, because using non-government backed currency undermines governments control of its own economy.