bl557

Unfortunately some people do think differently of you based on your accent, subconsciously or consciously

I'm no more a fan of billionaires than the next guy, but is this argument not extremely hypocritical:

“Billionaire Jeff Bezos could personally pay for enough vaccines for the whole world, yet he would rather spend his wealth on a thrill ride to space. COVID-19 is turning the gap between rich and poor into an unbridgeable chasm” - millionaires.

Millionaires could personally alleviate so much suffering in the world, yet they would rather buy... Nice houses, cars, and whatever else millionaires buy. You could extrapolate this argument all the way down even to those in objectively unfortunate circumstances. It's turtles all the way down.

These pleas seem motivated more out of virtue signaling than anything else.

The post i was responding to made the point - "do we want to attach extremely important things to a system that is by design irreversible?

Human life is both extremely important, and the loss of it is irreversible, at least for now :). People generally seem to be willing to take risks for the sake of convenience.

But in the end I believe we should be able to have our cake and eat it too - that is benefit from blockchain tech with safeguards preventing such scenarios

Good points, and in response I would say that not everything needs to happen directly on chain. Just as an example there can be some company that develops an interface between the blockchain and the user that audits their code, insures themselves in the case of software bugs, and provides users with the ability to eject their assets from the platform. Maybe there are regulations that protect consumers against these problems. Crypto/blockchain UX is not even in the "command line" phase yet, we're still writing punch cards and feeding them into computers in my opinion :)

by that logic we would never drive cars, ride airplanes, go to space, etc

Bitcoin is still only 1/10 the market cap of gold, with the argument by Bitcoiners being that the asset is a 10-100x improvement over gold.

Yeah, Bitcoin is great, I agree :)

It seems pretty natural to me that someone who believes in Bitcoin would also purchase it.

Tether is definitely very sketchy in their practices, but there is simply no good evidence that Tether issuance inflates the prices of BTC.

Here is a study arguing the opposite - https://voxeu.org/article/stable-coins-dont-inflate-crypto-m...

Study finding no correlation between stablecoin issuance and BTC price - https://voxeu.org/article/stable-coins-dont-inflate-crypto-m...

Some of my favorite "Intro to Bitcoin" pieces -

"Bitcoin For The Open Minded Skeptic" - https://www.paradigm.xyz/Bitcoin_For_The_Open_Minded_Skeptic...

"Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter" - https://www.microstrategy.com/content/dam/website-assets/col...

Watch this video before you jump to any conclusions - https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1357757736394444800

Some of my favorite "Intro to Bitcoin" pieces -

"Bitcoin For The Open Minded Skeptic" - https://www.paradigm.xyz/Bitcoin_For_The_Open_Minded_Skeptic...

"Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter" - https://www.microstrategy.com/content/dam/website-assets/col...

> Assets in registered wallets will simply not be relayed to unregistered wallets.

I find this hard to believe. I think it's more likely that the gov't would treat crypto like fiat, and make it law to report any income in crypto. It's not like you don't have to pay income on any salary you receive as cash, and cash is even moreso untrackable than crypto.

Bitcoin doesn't really work as a currency (at least without some layer 2 solution). It's most valuable currently as a store of value / hedge against institutions.

The article kind of lost me at times, but on the high level topic of (US) government regulation as an existential threat to crypto:

- The US government is very slow moving, and crypto is quickly gaining popularity amongst the voting public and institutional investors (with access to lobbyists). Once the gov't realizes that crypto is a threat and is able to position itself to form legislation, actually passing the legislation would piss off a lot of groups that the gov't is incentivized to make happy.

- Crypto is technological progress, and banning it would push innovation out of the US and into countries that decide not to regulate

- Banning crypto is an authoritarian act, and is basically an admission by the gov't that it prioritizes tight gripped control over our liberties (not that this point is actually all that unlikely...)

I'm biased, but Occam's Razor applied to the above points makes me feel like the banning of crypto is unlikely... Am I missing something?