First paragraph is on point. Sad about the second paragraph. That isn't a brave or impressive thing to say, it is a common and misinformed perspective.

Regarding Bitcoin, it's important to recognize that it's fundamentally about decentralization of financial control, not necessarily decentralizing value hoarding (though it largely does that too). It uses a distributed ledger technology, where the minting process (mining) and transfers (transactions) are verified by a consensus mechanism across a global network. This eliminates the need for central banking authorities, theoretically reducing the points of failure and censorship. It's designed to be a deflationary currency to counteract inflationary fiat systems, with a predictable supply that's governed by math, not by policy changes. While concerns about energy consumption are valid, the network is increasingly moving towards renewable energy sources and more efficient mining practices. Moreover, innovations like the Lightning Network are addressing scalability and resource issues, aiming to make Bitcoin more sustainable and accessible.

I think you should revisit your talking points / read the code / understand the thing you're talking about before having such a strong (false) statement.

> Regarding Bitcoin [...] the network is increasingly moving [...] more efficient mining practices

Has Bitcoin changed its mining protocol?

It is and always will be Hashcash with SHA256d as hash function.

That's an example of sunk cost fallacy, where the miners have spent so much money on otherwise useless ASICs that they obstruct any attempts at progress.

That's not a sunk cost fallacy, that's just sunk cost.

> not necessarily decentralizing value hoarding (though it largely does that too)

I could have agreed with that if it had a fixed block subsidy. Not with the repeated halving that leaves each next generation with 32x less bitcoin to mine.

No, the second paragraph was correct. Bitcoin has been a complete failure at accomplishing any of those things you mentioned. They're all just wishful thinking by Satoshi and his fans, that never became reality. In practice it's not decentralized (the network is consolidated into just a few mining pools), it still requires central authorities to validate every transaction (the miners), it doesn't reduce points of failure (see any of the high profile collapses causing lots of people to lose their money) or censorship (historically disadvantaged groups largely aren't using cryptocurrency because it's overloaded with scams). The fixed supply is itself a man-made policy (it's not actually governed by math) and doesn't counteract inflation (see how often the bitcoin market has crashed). The use of renewable energy sources doesn't change that mining is a complete and total waste of energy (see any of the other coins that managed to ditch proof of work). Lightning network is also a complete failure of an experiment that solves nothing and only creates additional scaling problems (see here for a long list of problems, few of which have been addressed: https://github.com/davidshares/Lightning-Network). The number of open Lightning channels is actually shrinking because of how impractical it is to have your own channel (See also: https://bitcoinvisuals.com/lightning).

> It's designed to be a deflationary currency to counteract inflationary fiat systems,

Even if you take this conceit, we have to step back that bitcoin has irrevocably failed. Governments have definitely proved that they can regulate bitcoin transactions through various mechanisms. In China, mining is banned. In US, they are considered securities and regulated. No use case has emerged to truly transact in bitcoin. The only deflationary aspect is it's value in relation to fiat currency, which is still downstream to the supply of money controlled by central banks.

Personally, I don't think bitcoin is viable. The root of the problem is that no one is willing to transact in it. But beyond that, looking at it's implementation, I am not convinced that it accurately models the relationship between demand for the currency and the people willing to mine it. It seems very dogmatic to assume that it is just a logarithmic relationship between computing power and money supply. At the end of the day, there might not be a more efficient solution than some kind of political process.

> That said, Bitcoin is a state sponsored pyramid scheme, ...

I would say the same about the Federal Reserve.

And the stock market.

I can't wait to start getting my social security checks 30 years from now.

You'll get them, but you'll have to be 91 to start collecting, and they will be worth less than it took to print them, because some "people" think that giving more tax breaks to those that need it the least is a better use of the money you've been forced to pay into the system.

of course without either of these every Americans incomes, wealth, etc would shift to the left by 1 if not 10 decimal places.

The size and complexity of both of those has increased since the 50s, a time when "every American"¹ was far better off financially with their takehome.

So, I'm not sure I follow your assumption.

¹with obvious regards to those of color

> I don't have a problem with surveillance.

Hard to continue reading you after that kind of statement.

> That said, Bitcoin is a state sponsored pyramid scheme,

And now damn near impossible.

> Bitcoin is a state sponsored pyramid scheme

There's billions of USD of it owned by dozens of different countries.

Which state are you implying to be sponsoring the "pyramid scheme"?

> I don't have a problem with surveillance. I have a problem with surveillance under the

Also, just stop there!,

because the rest of that sentence will change every 5, 10, 50 years, no matter what anyone does.

Don't start any program within your home that you don't want your enemies to have access to use against you while they're in power.

I don't get how people don't understand this.

One of the reasons that the Nazis were especially effective at finding Jews in the Netherlands is because of their very detailed civil registry, that included religious affiliation.

French authorities were also forced to help the Nazis locate Jews during their occupation, and this is one of the reasons the French today don't keep official records on people's race or religious affiliations.

Just because you fully trust authorities today doesn't mean the guard won't turn over in the future for any number of reasons.

The point is to put into place systems that will protect you from abuses no matter who comes into power. Those systems, and how well they function, can act as a bellwether indicating how tyrannical the authorities are becoming. If you're lucky exposed weaknesses in those systems can be patched up, and corrupt individuals ousted to shore up your freedoms before things slip too far, but if nothing else those early warning signs can tell you when it's time to get out while you still can.

At the point where you've already been taken over by the new "Nazis" it doesn't much matter. They'll put into place the systems you fear anyway. You say the French today don't keep official records on people's race or religious affiliations, but corporations do, and so that data on the population already exists and could be obtained very quickly. The nice French government today won't touch that data, but New Hitler would.

In the meantime, because France doesn't want to consider race in statistics, it's made documenting, understanding, and addressing the massive racial discrimination problems they have very difficult. For years there have been calls for the French government to start collecting ethnicity data in their statistics because blinding yourself to problems means you can't solve them. (https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_international_compar...) The policy to avoid that kind of data collection was well-meaning, but it turns out that not collecting that data doesn't adequately protect the people of France, and in fact it's actually hurting them.

Except that I want my "enemies" to be able to conduct surveillance. There are genuine reasons for surveillance where it's honestly the best tool for the job. I also want the oversight and accountability to ensure that nobody (especially not my "enemies") are abusing that power.

Very few people would be happy with their lives if there were suddenly no surveillance at all. There would be crime, corruption, disease, pollution, extinction, and abuses of authority everywhere. We'd be totally blindsided by extreme weather, incoming asteroids, solar flares, and earthquakes!

One of my favorite forms of surveillance is body cameras on police officers. Body cams are amazing tools! They help protect the police from false claims of abuse and aid them in training, while at the same time they help protect the public by helping us find tyrants and corrupt cops.

These body cam systems aren't perfect (tapes "go missing", some cops can turn them off) but they can be improved, and they should be because surveillance (like most valuable tools) isn't all good or all bad. Don't throw away powerful tools because you fear how they can be abused. Develop systems of transparency, accountability, and (ironically) surveillance to make those tools work for our benefit.

Cryptocurrencies have no value, what do you intend on taxing?

I suspect you're aware that your rhetorical question rather neatly makes the point that taxing in crypto would immediately (and for crypto-bros, ironically) imbue them with value.

What’s the point you’re trying to make? Do cryptocurrencies have value or not? It’s one or the other, you can’t claim they have value when you want to tax them and then claim they don’t when you want to regulate them.

That the process of taxation in a certain money is a sufficient condition to give that money value.

I’m not asking you to “give” my money value. I’m asking you to answer a simple yes or no question: does it currently have value or not? The way you’re trying to defend your obvious lack of consistency is purely circular. If it has value, you tax it. You can’t say that if you tax it then it’ll have value that justifies taxing it the first place.

If you can use it to satisfy your tax liability, then it has value.

It’s a yes or no question.

I think your difficulty is in understanding what states hope to achieve by taxing, which is not in order to capture some "value" from the thing being taxed. To them, crypto obviously has no value beyond anything they can do with the crypto (i.e. none). On the other hand those that fall under the tax jurisdiction of a state have a tax liability and whatever unit they can satisfy that liability in has value.

The fact that states can't issue more crypto on demand is why they'd be stupid to ever pay attention to it, much less let people pay their taxes in it. Crypto is not even money in the sense that it doesn't represent a debt, which is where the value of money is derived from.

Without fail, every single time I ask person like you a yes or no question, I receive an essay evading the question in response.

That's because your question is not meaningful. You haven't found some great way to catch people out, you've just found the limits of your understanding. That's great, it's a chance to understand where the problem with the posed dichotomy lies.

The reason I'm here is to discuss issues, which means more than single word answers. I'd love for you to respond in a way that actually challenged what I'm saying, or questioned it more deeply or whatever. I'm not here to win; I'm here to learn.

Whether or not crypto can be used to pay taxes is irrelevant to whether or not it holds the value to be taxed itself. But you’re demanding that I address an argument you made in an attempt to evade an argument I made. You’re now trying to have it both ways in more than one way. My question has a yes or no answer, you can either give me a yes or no or I’ll answer for you. I’m not interested in letting you continue to run from your obvious lack of consistency while asking me to let you try everything and see what sticks.

I'm not aware you've made an argument and I'm not demanding anything of you (beyond an implicit request to discuss in good faith). I'm not sure what I'm not being consistent about. I suspect you're assuming quite a bit about what my views are.

I addressed the specific point you made in your first sentence in the thread. It having value is irrelevant to whether or not it can or should be taxed, but it being taxed is sufficient to give it value.

I already told you. Either it has value or it does not. “Depends on when” is not addressing it. If you don’t want me to assume your views, the state them directly, it takes a single word.

It’s relevant unless you plan on taxing things with no value.

My views are irrelevant to the discussion.

Context is everything: Does a bar of gold have value? What about if you're alone on a desert island and dying of thirst? What's the value of a glass of water?

How about a £10 note? Does that have value? Does it depend on whether you're in the UK? Does it's value change depending on the availability of a money changer?

You absolutely can tax things with no value and poof, they suddenly have value. Everyone can now attach a real value to that thing dependent on how it will allow them to satisfy their tax obligations. Indeed, fiat currency has value precisely because of the tax obligations it can be used to satisfy.

No, your views on tax obligations are irrelevant to the discussion. If I have no tax obligations and I hold cryptocurrency, would you force me to pay taxes? If you plan to tax me on the value of the cryptocurrency itself, then you’re back to being forced to admit it had value in the first place. Tax obligations are an irrelevant facade you’re hiding the same circular argument behind.

You say context is everything and yet refuse to share the contexts you believe cryptocurrency has value. You lack confidence in your own consistency.

I have no interest in whether crypto should be taxed based on value or the colour of the sky or anything.

I think I do now understand the point you're trying to make, which is that should you be taxed on your holdings of a commodity for simply holding them? Let's talk about something different - pebbles say, since crypto is so loaded. Do you think that changes the discussion?

That's a question I have no opinion on. It's just political. That said, tax has always been about taxing something that is valued by the tax payer not the tax recipient, so I see no inconsistency with a state saying they don't value pebbles but still taxing people based on their holdings of it.

That’s not any better, you’re just changing how you’re being inconsistent. You want to regulate crypto on your perception of its value while taxing it on my perception of its value.

As for whether I think pebbles should be taxed, no. I don’t think you should be taxed for holding anything, regardless of anyone’s perception of its value. Taxes are to pay for state services you use and should be directly proportional to your use of them and nothing else. Paying your fair share is not the job of my cryptocurrency.

Why do you assume I want to regulate crypto?

Your problem is you completely misunderstand what tax is for in a sovereign state. Of course you then fail to understand why states might wish to tax things you think are irrelevant to them in terms of holdings. You can rant at your living in within the confines of a state, but you're deluded if you think crypto has anything to offer the situation.

I suggest you understand how a little more about how currencies actually function (hint, you won't find it in a mainstream economics textbook, but the mechanisms are well understood). Alternatively you can get angry in your ignorance. I'm relaxed either way. In any case, I'm done here. Take care.

Another essay that didn’t address the inconsistency, I guess you got tired of running.