My position is that after 13 years of Bitcoin and Ethereum and all cryptocurrencies I still cannot go to my local shop and buy anything with it.

That’s an anecdote, but is your position that because of that, crypto should be banned?

In 1999, you probably couldn’t use a Discover card in your local shop either, 13 years after Discover was founded. It took many years and many lawsuits to make headway against Visa/Mastercard.

Universal acceptance isn’t the right measuring stick here.

There's more to that, I would expect Bitcoin and Ethereum to be everywhere in the real world by now. I still don't see any shop around be accepting it, because the majority of people are only holding / investing in cryptocurrency. Not even PayPal is using it for payments [0]

Even if a shop uses either of these cryptocurrencies, it is comically slow to be used as such anyway rendering them useless. Not to mention the volatility impact.

So please tell me retail shop I can make a purchase using cryptocurrency that is fast, truly decentralised, eco-friendly and doesn't have exorbitant fees.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58277631

None of what you said is a valid reason for "banning" crypto.

I only scratched the surface.

We both know the obvious reasons that cryptocurrencies enable rampant ransomware [0], multiple rug pull scams [1], pointless NFTs [2] and is totally unregulated, I'm seeing crypto bros heralding 'we need decentralisation and web3' when this is all owned by VCs [3] And don't get me started on the Tether fraud [4].

I was being _generous_ in seeing if cryptocurrencies passes the 'retail shop test' and it can't even do that without burning the planet up making useless computations.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-treasury-warns-c...

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/12/17/defi-rug-pull-sc...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dyem/investors-spent-milli...

[3] https://cryptobriefing.com/how-decentralized-is-solana/

[4] https://archive.is/uPQYe

- Phone scammers are running rampant. We don't ban phones.

- Spam has been a problem since the inception of email, and the majority of email is spam. We don't ban email.

- Baseball cards are similarly pointless. So are in-game cosmetic items. We haven't banned those.

The problems you're describing are mostly unrelated to crypto, have existed, and will continue to exist whether crypto remains.

This doesn't mean there are no valid criticisms of crypto - energy concerns are real, and need to be addressed - but if you wish to ban crypto for the reasons you've cited, you need to widen the scope of what you hope to ban.

Out of those things cryptocurrencies is more likely going to be banned anyway, only to be used for illicit activities.

Are you claiming that crypto is only used for illicit activities? Care to back that up?

Not just that, there is speculation, gambling, etc. with those two being the most used usecase, nothing else.

Once banned that is where they will reside, I hear that Monero is thriving in that (illicit) environment, as well as Bitcoin, Ethereum (paired with Tornado)

But for now banning is likely.

>nothing else.

Come on. There are people in this very thread who are using it to evade draconian currency controls their governments have imposed.
Are they lying?

Whether the positives outweigh the negatives in Crypto is subject to debate. But to refuse to acknowledge that ANY positives exist is outright bizarre.

There are lots of things I strongly dislike (eg: religion, guns) but to insist that there are absolutely zero positive aspects to these things in certain contexts would be intellectually dishonest.

There are many shops that either accept Bitcoin or host an ATM that takes Bitcoin, and have been for several years. There are also several "credit" cards that will spend Bitcoin by turning it into a local currency -- just like when using USD cards in Europe and having them automatically convert to EUR. Last, the number of such ways to spend Bitcoin and other coins is consistently growing.

I have a crypto.com card that I top up with crypto to buy things with.

While I don't directly pay with crypto, I still use it to pay for things at my local shop.

You pay using a Visa card with a Bitcoin sticker stuck on it. I am not sure why you think you pay with cryptocurrency

Because I do pay with cryptocurrency.

It would seem easy enough to ban proof-of-waste and encourage people to get on with deploying the alleged better technologies that never arrive. And many places have blanket KYC requirements which using crypto does not exempt you from.

The UK has banned crypto derivatives: https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-bans-sale-cry... and Binance. I suspect further action is coming against unregistered crypto outfits marketing to UK consumers.

> and encourage people to get on with deploying the alleged better technologies that never arrive

If you're referring to proof-of-stake, that technology has already arrived, seeing as how multiple of the top 10 blockchains by market cap (Solana, Cardano, Terra) use it - and consequently do not have the negative impact on the environment that e.g. Bitcoin and Ethereum currently have.

Now there's just the matter of their ponzi scheme structure

It’s had, what, 13 years? And it’s still a solution in search of a problem.

It’s not fair to say that crypto is not solving any problems, or isn’t likely to solve any problems.

Thinking specifically about the identity space for a moment, it certainly brings a new approach to solving a set of problems that still has yet to be solved well.

Should something be banned on the grounds that it’s not ready yet, or hasn’t evolved fast enough?

Plenty of tech on the cutting edge will appear this way before it has matured.

Asbestos solved an actual problem, as did freon. Both also created larger problems and were eventually banned. We could have given them some more time, I guess. Maybe, if given another fifty years, the freon industry might have (waves hands) fixed its issues with the ozone layer. Or maybe not. That wasn’t the trajectory, anyway.

Back in 2022, we’re now looking at a technology that has not, for all its promises of a glorious future, has not produced anything but centralized Ponzi-as-a-Service platforms, a way for organized crime to move money, and smokestacks. At least asbestos and freon had some utility.

> Asbestos solved an actual problem, as did freon. Both also created larger problems and were eventually banned.

I'd argue there's a bit of false equivalence in this paragraph, but for sake of argument:

Leaded gasoline also solved an actual problem, and the industry innovated/evolved beyond that.

Facebook solved an actual problem, and created many more. I still recognize its value even if I refuse to use it myself.

I'm sure there are edge cases, but history is not generally on the side of those who have pre-emptively banned things before they come to fruition.

The problem I see with this current line of discussion is that most proponents of banning throw the baby out with the bathwater, and pretend this is all a single product called "crypto".

Banning "crypto" would be like banning insulation because of the issues with Asbestos.

In all fairness, I don’t think “crypto” should be banned as such. Partly because it’s a loose and descriptive term, unlike asbestos, which is well defined and tangible. So a blanket ban wouldn’t work.

And also because it’s not necessary; existing regulation will get us most of the way:

- if you are, in effect, selling a security, let this be regulated this like any other security

- if you are, in effect, running a bank, etc.

- if your coin X acts like an intermediary for transferring money to hostile jurisdiction Y, then regulate transfers to X like transfers to Y. Forbid these if necessary.

- if your manufacturing process is needlessly wasteful then forbid this manufacturing process (globally) under threat of forbidding your product

Etc

It also took 13 years from the first splitting of the atom to Hiroshima.

Should Nuclear power be banned? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.