Please don't tell me whether or not to respond. If you want to point out that the question has much more salience for those who have to deal with terrible governments then I think that's a very important point to make and I appreciate you pointing it out. But I come to Hacker News to hear from everyone with insights -- NOT just the subset who happen to live under terrible governments.
It’s not the same everywhere though!
Closing debate on any topic is not a free society.
Otherwise we wouldn't have had two full years of central bank-fueled upwards wealth redistribution almost everywhere in the world.
I agree with you in reality though. The average person have 0 input in the monetary policy in America or Europe.
Monero is getting to the point where it will not need permission.
It will soon be added to the decentralized exchange Thorchain. On top of that, the Haveno project is making great progress and will be a Monero version of Bisq.
Thorchain will be swaps that don’t require specific orders, much higher liquidity. Haveno is the traditional platform where someone puts out an order and someone buys that exact amount.
Oh and I almost forgot about regular atomic swaps which also exist today.
If you're interested in actually using your currency for anything in the real world other than swapping it for other cryptocurrency you'll always need permission.
If I want to go to the supermarket and pay with Monero that will require that legislators deem Monero a legitimate currency.
As long as governments begin to accept Bitcoin, it becomes trivial to accept altcoins because they're often easily exchanged for Bitcoin.
Governments of small countries, maybe... but Bitcoin is already banned in China.
There are talks about a ban in Russia (Putin seems to be satisfied with taxing mining more harshly, though):
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/russian-cbank-propo...
It's not a case that it was first China, and now Russia (which is in the top 3 for mining).
In the top 3 for mining there's also Kazakhstan, and their recent crisis was also caused by energy prices, so I can see them tolerating bitcoin only in the short term.
That leaves the US, but that country is too corrupt... And it has too many bitcoin billionaires to allow the value of bitcoin to tank. But no one knows how long this will all last.
Bitcoin continues to thrive despite their bans.
A huge portion of many countries' economic activity happens outside the reach of their governments. This is the present reality, not some anarchist dream.
In this context, people are free to use the currency they prefer.
A US controlled internet currency is going to do better than any of the cryptos
A lot of people use giftcards. That's what people do with bitcoin too.
Completely irrelevant to this conversation.
It's just a risk of self-custody of keys and it's a good reason for the industry to push forward better key management solutions (multi-sig + shamir secret sharing, etc)
You're still a single point of failure, aren't you? Apply wrench until you've given up all the privacy coins you have access to
Until wallets gets smarter and safer, and these smart/safe features are so mainstream that even muggers understand it, this will always be a risk
The problem with cryptos with public balances is that attackers can know your net worth in advance, and thus know whether you're a valuable target, and exactly how much they can ask of you. And this is the reason why privacy technology likely won't be outlawed: high networth individuals use them constantly.
Not really... a mugger can read people well enough to know that they have more than $100. More than $1000, etc. A random person older than 30 can likely give you a lot more than $2000 even.
So this goes back to wallets needing to be smarter all around. I expect there to be companies/services that spring up specifically around this need.
However, one thing that I predict in the next 5 years is that people will simply stop having crypto wallets on their phones. They will either not have mobile access to their savings accounts at all or they will use something like a SatsCard that only has like $100 on it https://getsatscard.com/
In many countries, kidnapping and torturing someone for $2000 is not worth the risk for anyone. But for amounts 6 figure and up, it makes good risk-adjusted sense to many people.
Given how few people have a proper security setup, cryptocurrencies with KYC'd accounts and public balances are lists of juicy extortion targets.
I've heard about XHV and Monero being added to Thorchain a year ago, described as coming soon. Somehow it feels more like marketing than a real thing.
Also, exfiltrating value via crypto is not sufficient for most people in oppressive countries. The overwhelming majority need to be able to spend the crypto locally as cash, which isn't possible in any oppressive country except El Salvador.
The other person at Bisq would simply wash his bitcoins through monero - and that would be that.
Not only its good for Chinese citizens, it is very good for western democracies to funnel money to opposition figures in hostile countries (or plain old spies). In a world where the digital Yuan reigns supreme (where everything is monitored), would the US want to pay a Chinese spy in paper USD, washed bitcoins, or digital yuan?
I live outside China and I am baffled about how you get a VPN that you trust. A VPN is a third-party who shields you and that you trust.
Everyone on HN recommends Mullvad because of their track record. Do you know that Mullvad is not compromised?
If you lived in China, how would you find a VPN that you trust?
The locals know what to use. Also, you don’t need a non-monitored VPN. Just one that’s not monitored by your own government.
When I need to make an unapproved transaction (donating to a Muslim charity if you are a Yighur for example). I go through the hassle of using Bitcoin, either directly or after changing to USD by P2P exchange.
I'm wondering if somebody who spends all of their highly-controlled digital yuan in cash every month, and not on anything detectable, will draw suspicion.
Who's buying yuan from you in exchange for Bitcoin?
Who's selling you yuan in exchange for Bitcoin?
Given that yuan is tightly controlled... How is Bitcoin hiding anything in this process?
It's the same way everywhere really. Technically Elon Musk is supposed to have his twitter activity supervised as per agreement with regulators. I don't think that's happening but somehow nobody cares
For crypto as currency, this is effectively a death sentence. If most people are afraid to hold or trade it, you can't use it locally.
It would only be useful to people hoping to exfiltrate value and then leave the country, which is not a majority of people.
Why? How are they going to keep it down?
I will keep talking about it and trying to use it. Actually managed to get paid with it once. Ironic that the one coin that's actually usable as currency remains obscure.
This isn’t shadowrun, the digital realm isn’t one entirely separate from reality
Another possible solution is to somehow get influential people to buy into these systems. That way, they won't want to stop it even if they could.
What would they do? We still use address systems based on groups owned by the governments. I’m not even protesting that fact. I’m just amazed that a large group of people think they can have a direct dependency on someone else’s property, and pretend that they are completely independent.
This is a misconception. Coins are only associated with the last identified node. So for example if I sent tainted BTC to Coinbase, sure Coinbase would investigate my account obviously. But the coins can be used from then on as "clean" Coinbase coins, until they hit the next identified node by blockchain analysis companies.
If you sent funds to Coinbase's provided address and they wanted to refuse/refund it for some reason, your new owned output would likely be marked as clean and from Coinbase.
This may vary across circumstances of course. And they may decide to refuse to issue a refund.
At first the argument was that BTC is transparent which means it's better than the banks. Now it's transparency that is the problem. And now we can't freely debate it on a forum like HN.
Money laundering for "good" is still money laundering, and that's what your advocating. And money laundering enables all the "bad" things like bribery, human trafficking, arms sales, drugs, and then nation-state sponsored terrorism.
E.g. I keep asking myself, would organizations like NAMBLA like this technology?
It would, I think, be a shame for all the "good" you're hoping to create instead ends up causing far more harm for the people you hope to free with it.
If you can’t see the problem with governments controlling and monitoring transactions and being able to confiscate private property, then cryptocurrency is not for you. It’s simple - you don’t have to use it and you can call your legislators to ban it. Luckily, it’s permissionless, so no one cares.
So you can't see the harm in money laundering support human trafficking? Because that's real tyranny. Not by governments, but by criminals who can project power to bribe government officials to look the other way with anonymous transfers.
Debate is what happens in a free society. If you can't debate it, you can't promote it in a free society.
Trust us. We know what’s good for you. The world is bad, and only us can fix it. /sarcasm
Ironically, that is exactly what you're saying.
It have been you taking the weird authoritarian take of “we must ban a tech because some bad people may use it”. Which is literally true in every technology ever invented.
If you're calling me an authoritarian for espousing views on why a particular technology that allows easy money laundering is bad, then I guess by a variation of Godwin's law, I win by default.
I feel like the crypto arena is conflating the fact that they are small enough to not be worth actually stopping with the idea that they can never be stopped.
Remember, you can say it’s useless (for you.) and harmful. That’s all fair. But, it’s a verifiable, indisputable fact that there are Bitcoin nodes operating in China despite the government ban[0]. You can’t ban Bitcoin, which why the free market deems it valuable.
Smart governments know this and move to tax it heavily(India), or move it to work within the state-regulated banks (Russia). But, no you can’t shut the network down without shutting everyone else internet.
That implies bitcoin, and I am making an assumption that all cryptocurrencies are in the same boat, is worth as much as the rest of the internet.
If crypto markets start threatening fiat currencies, I will be heavily surprised if ISPs choose to protect crypto markets instead of shutting them down when the government threatens their ability to do business.
Crypto is only dangerous to fiat in crypto bros minds right now. They 100% can shut down crypto once it stops being a novelty
Ergo, a government would just need to go after the exchanges. Nobody wants BTC, they want something more stable.
Mixers with Tornado.cash
I lived under an even worse government than you, and find this attitude offensive.
It will continue to have a role and prosper next to Bitcoin though. We need both. One to decouple from government control, and the other to evade surveillance.
It’s a well-known secret that you can change your Bitcoin to monero, then the Monero back to Bitcoin to “wash” your Bitcoin. Also, with enough time, all the Bitcoins would be dirty.
P.S. don’t bother responding if you are coming from the privilege of never having lived under a terrible government.