Well yes, obviously this will be the case, and it will also be the case with any future crypto currency.

If a currency can be used completely free of interference from the government, then it can and will be used for crime. In fact, if crime is easier and more profitable because the finances are safe and protected, there will be more of it. Eventually victims of all this crime will demand, rightly, that the government put a stop to it. So in come measures where government can interfere in the finances of the currency, for the purpose of preventing crime.

The power is zero-sum and it'll always be a trade-off between who has it. Total government control has problems because of potential abuses, by politicians. But a complete lack of government control also has problems of abuses, for crime. Both are bad, so it'll always be a trade-off.

The "trade-off" system is where nobody has any privacy except for politically-protected criminals.

>If a currency can be used completely free of interference from the government, then it can and will be used for crime.

If a currency can't be used completely free of interference from the government, then it can and will be used for crime.

Governments always want more control. More control requires trust. Governments have not shown themselves trustworthy.

Random people on the internet have also proven themselves to be untrustworthy. At least I know who the elected officials are.

Random people on the internet have enslaved and/or killed far fewer people than governments have.

This is a non sequitur. It's also true that governments have saved far more people from being killed and/or enslaved than random people on the internet have.

"... demand, rightly, that the government put a stop to it." Why "rightly?" This isn't the right way to fight crime. You start with "if crime is easier..." That is the problem, not the payment.

"Rightly" because one of the jobs of government is to enforce its laws. And yes, it is true that if crime is easy to do, there will be more of it. The payment part is key because getting paid is the key motivation for many crimes - those scammers from "visa bank" aren't calling you because its fun for them. An example is ransomware attacks - without an unregulated anonymous digital payment system the getting paid part of this crime would be much more difficult. Are they going to try and pick up a bag of cash?

>Total government control has problems because of potential abuses, by politicians.

Now that's an understatement. When in doubt, err on the side of limited government control.

In the US, we have a history of what happens when citizens were wronged and there are no laws or enforcement of laws to help them: Vigilantism. And lemme say right off the bat, it's a pretty bad system. Look up "3-7-77" sometime.

I, personally, would prefer minor political abuse instead of citizen enforcement of "rights" in the absence of laws or enforcement of those laws. Because the latter quickly gives lie to the "governments have a monopoly on force" catechism.

That's my point, its a trade off. Who decides what 'limited' means? The answer is the that it depends who already has the most power. In China, you can be certain any new e-currency of any form will be completely controlled and monitored by the central government. But in western democracies, there is at least a chance that a negotiated balance between oversight and control needed to prevent crime, and privacy and autonomy for citizens. But there has to be that balance. A completely unpolicable currency/financial system is just as bad (but in different ways) as a completely policed one.

Excellent points. I'd suggest that even if the financial records are completely untraceable that policing would still be possible. Of course, it wouldn't be as easy as full transparency.

Perhaps I'm in a stage of paranoia when I think that all democracies are on a slow inevitable slide toward a China-like fully monitored economic system. Either with or without cryptos.

I would think the trade-off is between who will be committing the crimes, the governed or the government, not how much crime there will be.

I agree. Crime is not something that can be eliminated. But you can develop systems where its minimized and others where its maximized. The two extremes of totally policed, and not policable at all, are both examples of systems which will maximize crime. This seems obvious to me which is why I don't understand why people think a completely decentralized, anonymous, unregulated currency, with irreversible transactions is a good thing. It creates as many problems as it solves.

...those exceptions already exist? It sounds like you're describing court orders and civil forfeiture, both of which let the government take your cash, durable goods, deposit account contents, stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies, etc.

It sounds like you're suggesting that because they already exist in some more-bureaucratic form (seizing cash isn't logistically straightforward), there is no meaningful change to making these things digital and "push button".

The (hypothetical) proposal from the linked piece is to create a non-forgeable digital bearer instrument. The enumerated requirements include that there be no ledger or central clearinghouse and that the medium support offline transactions.

I don't see how this is different from physical cash wrt civil forfeiture or court-ordered seizure.

The government has to know about your transactions and has to know where your cash is in these cases.

The point is privacy like _cash_ -- not like digital bank transfers.

From the article:

> An E-Cash device is any piece of secured hardware issued and/or authorised by the government for the purpose of receiving, holding, and transferring e-cash balances.

> In contrast to ledger-based systems (including those that use a blockchain and/or distributed-ledger rather than a centralized ledge), which prevent double-spending by verifying unspent balances against a common record of all previous transactions, e-cash devices verify funds locally via a dedicated or trusted computing environment located on the device itself.

> This allows it to facilitate both offline and genuine peer-to-peer transactions without generating transactional data or requiring the approval of third party intermediaries or network validator nodes.

Totally agree. If it was so genuine, it should immediately mention existing alternatives like Monero as possible options. Why recreate the wheel when there is already a successful cash like digital asset that meets all requirements _and_ is technically infeasible to be screwed with later by politicians.

According to TFA, they are searching for a solution that does not involve a decentralized blockchain. They are looking at portable physical devices (either dedicated or built into your phone) to store balances and verify transactions.

I'm concerned about whether or not this whole thing is a sham right off the bat because any security expert will tell you that there's no such thing as guaranteed security of a device in the physical possession of a motivated attacker. The best you can do is make it "pretty hard" below some threshold of spending.

> According to TFA, they are searching for a solution that does not involve a decentralized blockchain. They are looking at portable physical devices (either dedicated or built into your phone) to store balances and verify transactions.

The goal sounds admirable and better than some Orwellian central database, but on the other hand it seems that it would to some extent also combine the drawbacks of both cash and hardware devices, especially in the case of something as complex as a phone:

Things that would destroy the cash in my wallet would most likely also wreck my phone, but additionally my phone is more sensitive to being dropped (on the ground and/or in water), subject to random hardware failures, bad software updates, etc. etc. which currently wouldn't affect physical cash at all.

Yes. Just stick to cash.

Its been tested and its proven. It works. Its stable.

Lets focus societal change on fixing climate damage instead of gambling with our economic structure adapting to new high risk changes.

and it's not just stick to cash, but use cash as much as possible. it's as convenient as a card, and has built-in loss aversion effects to help curb frivolous spending. cash is anonymous, universal, fungible, and hidden-fee-free.