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.
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.