It could provide as a store and transpiration means of value in times of crisis. For instance some of the Ukrainian banks are now shutdown. If you had crypto you could access your wealth. Same thing applies for Russian citizens who have nothing to do with the war but will soon have their assets frozen. Did you consider all use cases before posting, or just glee at yet another anti crypto post on HN and thought “yay! I get to post something negative about crypto again today”?

The operative word here is “could”. There are a number of pie in the sky benefits of crypto that may be supported by small handfuls of anecdotes that don’t and never will generalize to the public at large. When comparing the potential pros to the existing cons, crypto is a gigantic net negative that is being pushed in order to make small pockets of investors very wealthy, nothing more. And yes, I understand the data structures, protocols, and most of the ideological rationalizations used to promote the fantasy.

> never will

And from which time traveler did you get this information?

The future is pretty hard to predict accurately, especially in such definitely terms like "never".

You realise, if the banks go, so does the internet, right?

https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1497409488403505153

> For instance some of the Ukrainian banks are now shutdown. If you had crypto you could access your wealth.

For instance, the Russians were cut off SWIFT. If the oligarchs had crypto, they could access their wealth and render sanctions ineffective.

Believe it or not the Ukrainians are in a war, and currency is not their biggest problem - that would be the tanks, and the bombs and the planes. Once the war resolves, so will their access to money. On the other hand, systems designed to evade sanctions are making that process longer and more painful - and more likely to resolve in the aggressors favor, as the Russians are better capitalized. The Russian people need to feel the pain to pressure their government to end the conflict.

Some pain is good, and so is our ability to inflict it.

didn’t bitcoin price take a nose dive when russia invaded? the opposite behaviour than what you’d want from a store of value

Yeah, went from $35,000 each to $39,000... it's about a 8% increase or "nose dive" as you call it.

And... 18 hrs prior to being at $35000 it was at.... wait for it... hang on... can you guess... ? $39000.

We did it! War = good for crypto?

Assuming ill-intent is not an argument. Engage with the argument. This is HN.

I do thousands of transactions with thousands of people every day without committing financial crimes and without paying any fees. It's extremely valuable to my businesses.

Wrenches can be used as weapons but they are also essential for plumbers.

And fiat money can be used to deal drugs.

I mean I don't defend crypto, the way things are going is that they'll be just as regulated and centralized as digital fiat is, and a lot of it is people getting rich, or hoping to - I mean I'm one of those people, still waiting for my handful of dogecoin to go up 10.000% so I can retire. But I also have a regular job, regular savings, and regular stonks because savings account interest is a joke.

The exchanges can be regulated, but good luck trying to regulate a global peer to peer network!

You just need to regulate the end points. At some point, someone needs real money instead of robux.

Those are the exchanges I mentioned. But no, if it's widely enough used, it can be an entirely self contained system.

But it’s not widely used, that’s the whole problem.

Say you created a business accepting exclusively cryptocurrencies. You need to ship an item? You need “dirty fiat”. Let’s say you’re only selling NFTs or services, your hosting provider wants paid in real currency. Food? Housing? Utilities? Fiat. Fiat. Fiat.

Unless it’s accepted for the entire supply chain of LIFE, you’re screwed.

Look at bittorrent. While it's impossible to kill it, targeting agregation platforms definitely made the protocol immensely less relevant than it was 20 years ago.

BitTorrent made itself less relevant by relying on end to end networking and symmetrical links, neither of which panned out.

Such as? The Pirate Bay still exists as do thousands of other websites listing torrents.

BitTorrent traffic went down as streaming services increased.

Seems like a mix of port blocks and criminal penalties, while not killing cryptocurrency, would greatly hinder its overall utility and thus any associated fiscal value.

What these critics don't tell you is that the transactions of these cryptocurrencies are traceable and transparent making the majority of many cryptocurrencies pointless to use for 'committing financial crimes'.

Otherwise, why do you think that these criminals are turning to privacy coins like Monero and MobileCoin, etc?

It’s more that you found a legitimate use for Agent Orange.

Fun fact (and not to detract from your allegory), agent orange was widely used by Ontario Hydro from the fifties to late seventies to clear trees from around power lines. The people handling it weren’t really well-informed of what exactly it was or how dangerous it was, so there have been a number of lawsuits. I have an uncle who recalls being jokingly hosed down with the stuff on a hot day by a guy working a sprayer in the back of a truck. Whoops.

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1048075

Agent Orange isn't toxic (colloquially speaking) if it's manufactured properly and free of dioxins.

Curious - what is your use case?

Folks tend not to answer this question because they know it's not a good one.

Let's take bitpay, probably the largest and oldest merchant processing system for crypto transactions. They publish stats. [1]

- 40% of all of their transactions globally are for prepaid gift cards.

- 20% of all of their transactions globally are for "internet."

- 14% of all of their transactions globally are for "vpn."

So 75% of all of their transactions globally are for merchant categories closely associated with fraud. And the reason is obvious: it's slower, more expensive and less convenient than using a credit or debit card. So it self-selects.

Folks who "find a way to make it work" are usually ideological, in crypto (i.e. found other people who don't care that it's impractical or criminal) or have otherwise found ways of "processing crypto transactions" (i.e. using bitpay where the merchants do not receive crypto because of course they don't why would they).

[1] https://bitpay.com/stats/

What about drugs? Cheaper, less middlemen, higher quality, safer delivery. What’s not to like?

Fewer middlemen? Now to buy from your dealer, you have to go via a marketplace, after converting your real money on an exchange. That's at least two other intermediaries...

Your dealer… may just be buying online (and stepping on it).

Depends on what they’re supplying. Something locally grown, ok, but overseas labs synthetics can involve a lot of middlemen.

Easy. Criminals, extremists and fraudsters use Signal for E2EE communications and MobileCoin (an untraceable, privacy cryptocurrency) to fund it all. [0]

It is what criminals and terrorists are using to make their activities impossible to trace. Got to thank MobileCoin for enabling that.

[0] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In...

MobileCoin whitepaper didn't make any claims about untraceability, AFAIK.

What does 'No one except for the sender and receiver can see the details of the transaction.' with an encrypted blockchain tell you about MobileCoin's traceability?

Keep in mind that "financial crimes" can mean very different things to very different regimes. In Nazi Germany, it was a "financial crime" for Jews to take any wealth with them when they emigrated.

This idea that cryptocurrency is good because it enables “good” crimes (avoiding unjust oppressive governments) is at odds with the hard facts that cryptocurrency is used for “bad” crimes far more often. Many orders of magnitude more often, in fact.

I just can’t buy into these arguments that we should be overlooking these rampant frauds and crimes (like the multi-billion fraud in this article and many more like it) because it might hypothetically enable some oppressed people somewhere in the world to escape some government oppression.

In these hypothetical scenarios, are we supposed to believe that the oppressive governments would just look the other way and let people transfer their wealth into crypto exchanges before fleeing? That would defeat the purpose of the government restrictions, so obviously not. Or are we supposed to believe that they moved all of their wealth into crypto and took it out of exchanges and into private wallets before the oppression? The crypto maximalists would love that because it would drive up crypto prices, but it’s not practical in a world where most people have their weath in assets like houses, cars, and diversified investments.

> This idea that cryptocurrency is good because it enables “good” crimes (avoiding unjust oppressive governments) is at odds with the hard facts that cryptocurrency is used for “bad” crimes far more often.

The Fifth Amendment is invoked far more often by actual criminals to hide their crimes than people avoiding government oppression. Doesn’t mean the Fifth should be abolished.

Actually yes assume those things happen and move the oppressive government further down the line to see a pro-crypto absurdity:

Are we supposed to believe that crypto is magically cleaned when the oppressive government seizes it and uses it or resells it? for all purposes right now, thats true and no transaction flagging software is advanced enough to consider that yet.

Woah woah that crypto came out of a mixer at some point in time!!! Thats used for “bad” crimes orders of magnitude more than “good crimes”, I think….

Oh nevermind, this passed through one of the seoveriegn washer addresses later, all good!”

Just that normal people don't benefit overall.

If you are for bitcoin and its 'benefits' and you are not someone who is doing tax fraud in a big way, you do not benefit from crypto, you are loosing.

Unreported income is tax money which is missing for schools, infrastructure and co.

It might not be used always efficency but it benefits you more than not having it. It should also be a much higher motivation for everyone of us to stop tax fraud all together instead of complaining about taxes and trying to avoid taxes.

What exactly is the valuable problem you are thinking in your head and how is it better solved by cryptocurrency and blockchain that can't already be done with existing methods, technologies and contractual agreements backed by various international treaties and dialectic tests for loopholes through thousands and thousands of years trading between countries, provinces, cities and entities?

Read past the first sentence. Comment is tongue in cheek.

This is bullshit. People deserve a way to send money without middlemen and unfortunately that requires a means of attempting censorship resistance or at least consensus within a nearly arbitrarily adversarial network.

> People deserve a way to send money without middlemen

Why? Please don't just make unfounded assertions.

What's "deserved" is subjective, but I'll bite. People from countries that are fiscally irresponsible and have tight capital controls "deserve" access to an asset that, while volatile, gives them a better hedge than hyperinflation and can't effectively be blocked by their dysfunctional government. See Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and citizens of any country that has a black market exchange rate for dollars/euros(Argentina, Lebanon, Turkey). You could make the case that this is something for international organizations like the UN/IMF to solve, but, they don't on any timescale that's meaningful to the person whose weekly paycheck buys less bread every week. They already have access to the same information and websites we do(with a VPN), accessing a globally distributed and decentralized ledger is as fundamental as their right to access twitter/facebook.

Americans and Europeans have very limited experience with hyperinflation and volatile currencies, plus we have robust banking/fin-tech sectors so of course we're more prone to scoff at the problems cryptos will solve.

Are you sure crypto will solve the problem of volatile currencies? BTC crashes on around a yearly basis [0], it's to find any currency more volatile than that.

[0] https://www.yahoo.com/video/7-biggest-bitcoin-crashes-histor...

Yes, they're called stablecoins. Dai is a decentralized stablecoin that is always pegged to $1 USD. Rai is a stablecoin that is pegged to itself (using a feedback mechanism).

Both are on Ethereum and if you keep wealth in them that wealth cannot be confiscated or censored (except with a physical wrench attack).

The free movement of capital is a long-established right in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Single_Market#Capital

If you read what you linked, you'll find that this only applies for Euros within the Eurozone, with exceptions for capital controls in place.

That's the European single market. Single market means freedom of movement of goods and services, capital and labour. In other words, it's not just capital. And it applies to a small set of countries which all agree to having a number of common rules and regulations. And it's not without intermediaries.

because it crosses the line into censorable speech

Payments are not speech. Find a better argument.

except that sometimes they reduce to speech. especially in cases where there are incidental human rights violations suppressing those payments. the examples why this cannot be left up to arbitrary governments are abundant. so there's nothing wrong with my argument. if you disagree then please show proof.

by the way just a heads up I suggest you learn the value of basic human kindness in your manner.

My definition of basic human kindness includes NOT shilling and trying to defend and justify get-rich-quick pyramid schemes and fraudulent scams, under the pretense of not wanting to pay your taxes.

Speech is the use of language to communicate ideas and thoughts. A payment is not speech. Paying involves transmitting of a financial asset. It doesn't involve the use of language to communicate ideas and thoughts. Therefore, it's not speech. You can't arbitrarily decide that something is speech, just because it suits your interests. This is not how things work.

of course it uses language. it's called a protocol for a reason. god this debate is tiresome.

Whatever. Good luck convincing anyone that a financial transaction is speech.

I don't need to, mr. creates-strawmen-to-try-to-avoid-the-real-discussion. Many people already hold the view that certain financial activities reduce to the freedom to speak or pursue happiness. It didn't come from me. Good luck convincing anyone that you've ever experienced real threats to your human rights.

Of course it didn't come from you. It came from the bitcoin ideologues. You simply repeat what they say like a parrot.

You're welcome.

Your logic doesn't make sense.

You are part of a system like a country. You are part of that country and the country acts on your behalf.

IF there is a good reason that the state only allows sending money after certain criteria are met, its for the good of the country (normal countries, not corrupt ones).

Then the country and its laws has the right to reduce that freedom.

You might believe in the republic idea of everyone for him/herself but studies also show that for normal earning people, this is not helping them at all.

Its not a global basic right to 'deserve a way to send money without middleman'. I'm not even allowed to just move to another country. I'm in one way or another imprisoned in my birth country.

I'm not the property of a government. And please show me where rights are granted to governments and by who and for what basic purpose.

And it's not always about govs.

You may be imprisoned. but dont imprison others with your assumptions

You are part of a system not the property of it.

I'm totally lost on what you are trying to imply with "And please show me where rights are granted to governments and by who and for what basic purpose."

You are fully aware that there are countries. You should know how they work, you should know what models of representation exists and which forms of gov you are in.

Give yourself the illusion that you are independent while paying taxes and putting on your seatbelt.

Just answer the question. If you can't then perhaps you should admit you're arguing about your ideas rather than specific facts. Nuances actually matter here. You said a government has a right to reduce my freedom to participate in a certain system. I'm asking you to cite it so we can speak about something real instead of following a path that leads very clearly to imprisonment of those with whom the buck actually stops (the citizens).