There are a few more reasonable options here.
1) Create or advocate for a cryptocurrency with reversible transactions and all of the regulatory features you desire. Let the market decide how large that niche is.
2) Loosen or advocate for loosening the existing regulations on traditional financial products so that they are competitive with some of the features of cryptocurrency. See also, Zelle. Another product HN seemed to hate.
Yesterday someone was arguing that Peter Thiel is a super villain. Another full page of comments was decrying one of PayPal's policies necessitated by regulations. People are generally unhappy with PayPal's fee structure, but they continue to use it. The fees and draconian policies are largely required to comply with regulations. Want more personable human support? That also costs money.
The argument for regulating cryptocurrency is basically an argument for creating a captured and gatekept ecosystem. Of course, I get it. "Think of the children", "Think of the helpless normies", same story. What we will get instead will be more PayPals.
As for scams and outright Ponizis, it is worth noting that those go on under the watchful eye of the regulatory state you love so well. Bernie Madoff was similarly connected and even served on regulatory boards. SBF, the disgraced FTX head had direct connections to the SEC and chairman Gary Gensler. SBF even testified, asking for more regulation.
I'm doubtful, but still hopeful for the possibility of a good faith discussion. Regulation is not a pancea against fraud. Instead it creates an atmosphere were connected insiders can create greater frauds. The FTX debacle is illustrative of this. Yet here we are hearing the same appeals for more regulation from would be saviors of normies. Posters who themselves do not use cryptocurrency and insist that it has no legitimate use.
For myself I just wanted to run a few online games with payouts for players in cryptocurrency. Now players also want NFT character saves. I've never used a centralized exchange. I don't make big money in this niche. I do have fun. The community is happy. Nobody is crying about valuations. Actual users of cryptocurrency aren't saying, "There outta be a law!". None of my users are claiming, "If only there were a statist savior protecting us from this video game!" or, "This game would be so much better with barriers to entry for developers"
From that perspective, yes I do feel comfortable asking you and the rest of HN's passionate cryptocurrency haters to butt out. You could also go out and build a better alternative in the marketplace of ideas.
I'm not sure how you read my comment as elitist or utopian. All I'm asking here is that paternalists don't ruin it with saviorism, regulatory capture and gatekeeping.
>When something goes mainstream that gets lost.
Isn't this an elitist sentiment?
Our community has fun with people who aren't deep into tech at all. I started it with faucet rewards integrated into an io game. Anyone can install a wallet when transactions are free. Couldn't be further from what you're projecting.
And "dedicated hardware wallet devices" are exactly the kind of thing that I'm talking about here. There is no way those are going to be appealing to mainstream users; thus, if cryptocurrency were ever to genuinely enter the mainstream, the vast, vast majority of users would be keeping their crypto on exchanges.
Y'know, exactly the way the vast, vast majority of people keep their money in regular bank accounts. Which don't require this kind of rigamarole, and never result in regular people (ie, not the very wealthy) losing money, because it's all regulated and insured by the government.
(Yes, I know FDIC insurance has a limit. The limit is high enough that regular people will never even have to care that it exists.)