I've experienced HN to be highly anti-Bitcoin for some reason -- got instantly downvoted for commenting neutrally on it [0].
However, I sort of expected more people on here would sympathize with the Cypherpunk Manifesto [1] and band together against pressures to minimize our privacy.
The crypto world is running out of safe havens. China cracked down, and cut the power to large Bitcoin farms. In the US, the SEC and CFTC have been tightening up on crypto-related things that look like securities and things that look like exchanges. Israel kicked out the binary option crowd, which overlapped with the crypto crowd; they seem to have moved to Bulgaria. Now the EU.
The bigger countries are in general tightening up on tax havens; incorporating in the Cayman Islands or Vanatu raises more red flags now.
The Economist has an article this week, "What if Bitcoin went to zero?"[1] Cryptocurrencies haven't hit a recession yet, and we're getting close to one. Look at house prices. In a recession, things which depend
on a net inflow of money collapse.
I don't expect Bitcoin to go to zero, but Tether could, easily. When stablecoins crash, they crash all the way.
So just to be clear, your definition of "safe haven" is, what, total lawlessness with no governmental oversight?
Frankly, these moves make me think people are taking crypto seriously now, as we're finally treating it like real money or the banking sector and regulating it accordingly. If anything, it seems to me that should be a sign of success, not failure.
(and I should point out I own no crypto and I think blockchains are the biggest technical snake oil grift I've seen in the history of computing)
I've come to realize that the current fiat scheme and the crypto scheme are both unethical in their own way. But it makes me sick to hear people talk about banning crypto without at least suggesting to dramatically reform the fiat system.
Crypto would not have existed in the first place if most people felt that the fiat system was fair.
People who don't acknowledge this at this stage are either totally blind or totally corrupt.
Binary options shouldn't be compared to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and largely looks like a currency. You can buy it, own it, sell it and exchange it freely for other things. The same is mostly true for proper regulated options.
Binary options are more like a game on a slot machine. You put money in, wait a bit and see if you get money out. You can't own them or transfer them to anybody else. There isn't an open market for them, the counterparty is the broker (i.e. casino). The broker is usually barely regulated if at all, so they can (and do) freely scam people as they please.
> The crypto world is running out of safe havens. China cracked down, and cut the power to large Bitcoin farms. In the US, the SEC and CFTC have been tightening up on crypto-related things that look like securities and things that look like exchanges. Israel kicked out the binary option crowd, which overlapped with the crypto crowd; they seem to have moved to Bulgaria. Now the EU.
Which further proves the idea that cyberspace is independent of actual space is a lie, which renders any idea predicated on that as suspect.
There may be a brief periods where cyberspace is "more free," but it doesn't take long for the real-space authorities to notice and assert control (often in a way that's more complete than could ever be achieved in real-space).
By “ban anonymous crypto wallets”, this article is referring to commercial custodians that offer wallet services to customers.
But it doesn’t say anything about whether the ban will apply to FOSS crypto wallets people can download and run on their personal computers.
As long as the latter remains protected by free speech laws, similar to cryptography code, and commercial custodial wallets are affected, then this is a reasonable compromise not a huge problem imho.
The EU isn't doing anything to bitcoin. They have no ability to regulate bitcoin. They can make it traceable when it is held on kycd exchanges In their jurisdiction. That is a big difference
El Salvador is trying to use it a currency. Well, I still wouldn't consider it a currency since pretty much everything will be priced in dollars, but they are using to transfer value. One of the man reasons for this was to send home remittances.
Many people still believe Bitcoin could at least be used to transfer value, like a currency. AMC, Starbucks, and United Wholesale Mortgage are all looking into accepting it. Whether these come to be seems to be seen, but there is obviously a lot of people that still expect Bitcoin to be a currency, or at the very least a way to transfer value.
When governments stop taking monetary policy seriously and inflation starts to meaningfully destroy savings, you can understand why alternatives gain some traction.
> who uses bitcoin for something different than transfering illegal funds and speculation?
A couple of months ago, a combination of Covid-related travel restrictions and new EU KYC regulation lead me into a situation where the only way to renew my VPN in a timely manner was through crypto. I was really lucky to have some.
Does this not defeat the whole purpose of cryptocurrency? The fact that a government can control its transparency, anonymity, the “currency” is now just a digital object, like any other in a bartering system. I don’t like that a government can trace and identify payment. Perhaps that is nihilistic but it speaks for me to the heart of freedom.
The entire point is accountability, that seems to be what many people have forgotten. Also, you still have to use the state to enforce property disputes, so cryptocurrency will never buck the traditional system, it simply cant.
Look, where I live weed was decriminalized relatively recently. I could still get weed before, but I couldn't rock up some where and get a CBD soda, or a vape cartridge, or nice edibles, or a variety of products. In the same way you say "how will they ban anonymous wallets" you might say "how do you criminalize a plant", and thats by making possession illegal and following up on that by targeting people/places they expect to find said things. They don't have to make it physically impossible, they just need to introduce enough friction into the process that for most people it stops being worthwhile.
Unless you only ever transact in crypto, at some point you need an on-ramp or off-ramp from/to the traditional banking system, and at that point regulation is pretty straight forward. My read of it is that they're going to ban anonymous accounts on platforms that provide those services.
Typically, by preventing regulated institutions to accept deposits from and withdrawals to addresses that do not match a wallet that has been associated with an identified entity. That would be unfortunate.
Old news... also the people announcing it are actually idiots or misinformed on terminology because they aren't talking about local wallets on your computer. By "anonymous crypto wallets" they are talking about anonymous wallets on exchanges, which is very different than most people would think at first glance. This is not "send in the public key of every wallet you've ever touched to the tax service."
Sounds like this will only cause people to trade more in crypto. It's not like bitcoin needs to be able to be traded to fiat to be useful as an item for transferring value.
I know this is an unpopular take, but for sites (like Stackoverflow) that give me options (if they don't, some times I just skip), I will select "strict" and continue. This is probably an improvement from previous status-quo for me.
I'm mostly pro-EU but the cookie thing is just a display of unbelievable incompetence. It's ridiculous that they still haven't fixed the highly annoying popup problem.
Instead of making meaningful change, the EU proceeded to make almost every European website 10x worse with egregious cookie nag screens filled with dark patterns.
They trained users to accept all advertising cookies, while being massive hypocrites (a lot of EU bureaucratic websites ship user data to Google via GA or GTM).
The EU is one of the biggest threats to online freedom. Threatening to ban memes, egregious copyright laws to serve Hollywood interests, cookie nag screens and US media excluding EU IPs altogether because EU law is insane.
Access to media within the EU has never been worse. A significant portion of US news media exclude all EU traffic due to regulation.
EU regulations are all over the place. There is no cohesive moral thread behind any of them.
Firstly, they introduced GDPR regulations to prevent companies and organizations from collecting data on citizens... But now they introduce regulations to force companies and organizations to collect data on citizens. It's ridiculous.
It's frightening that the government could possibly win a case in a court of law with such fundamentally flawed logic. What would the verdict be like? "Collecting data on people is illegal, but it's also illegal to not collect data, therefore you are guilty!"
That must be how totalitarianism comes about; make sure everyone is guilty of something, then you can arrest all your political opponents on any pretext you like.
What is the point of the law if it contradicts itself? We may as well go back to living in caves.
[+] [-] avnigo|4 years ago|reply
However, I sort of expected more people on here would sympathize with the Cypherpunk Manifesto [1] and band together against pressures to minimize our privacy.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28114156
[1]: https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
The bigger countries are in general tightening up on tax havens; incorporating in the Cayman Islands or Vanatu raises more red flags now.
The Economist has an article this week, "What if Bitcoin went to zero?"[1] Cryptocurrencies haven't hit a recession yet, and we're getting close to one. Look at house prices. In a recession, things which depend on a net inflow of money collapse.
I don't expect Bitcoin to go to zero, but Tether could, easily. When stablecoins crash, they crash all the way.
[1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/08/02/w...
[+] [-] CarelessExpert|4 years ago|reply
So just to be clear, your definition of "safe haven" is, what, total lawlessness with no governmental oversight?
Frankly, these moves make me think people are taking crypto seriously now, as we're finally treating it like real money or the banking sector and regulating it accordingly. If anything, it seems to me that should be a sign of success, not failure.
(and I should point out I own no crypto and I think blockchains are the biggest technical snake oil grift I've seen in the history of computing)
[+] [-] cryptica|4 years ago|reply
Crypto would not have existed in the first place if most people felt that the fiat system was fair.
People who don't acknowledge this at this stage are either totally blind or totally corrupt.
[+] [-] Youden|4 years ago|reply
Binary options are more like a game on a slot machine. You put money in, wait a bit and see if you get money out. You can't own them or transfer them to anybody else. There isn't an open market for them, the counterparty is the broker (i.e. casino). The broker is usually barely regulated if at all, so they can (and do) freely scam people as they please.
[+] [-] tablespoon|4 years ago|reply
Which further proves the idea that cyberspace is independent of actual space is a lie, which renders any idea predicated on that as suspect.
There may be a brief periods where cyberspace is "more free," but it doesn't take long for the real-space authorities to notice and assert control (often in a way that's more complete than could ever be achieved in real-space).
[+] [-] peter303|4 years ago|reply
https://futurism.com/the-byte/cryptocurrency-worth-more-than...
Crypto has a muchlower velocity of trading than currency.
[+] [-] sennight|4 years ago|reply
We've been in a recession since Feb 2020...
[+] [-] bserge|4 years ago|reply
Afaik shitcoins aren't even backed by the threat of violence (i.e. "fuck with us and we'll do bad shit").
They only work as long as actual organizations with actual armed forces let them be.
Most people forget how fickle their freedoms are, and overestimate their extent.
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|4 years ago|reply
But it doesn’t say anything about whether the ban will apply to FOSS crypto wallets people can download and run on their personal computers.
As long as the latter remains protected by free speech laws, similar to cryptography code, and commercial custodial wallets are affected, then this is a reasonable compromise not a huge problem imho.
[+] [-] anm89|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qnsi|4 years ago|reply
I understand Ethereum and other smart contract cryptocurcies, but time when people believed Bitcoin is going to become currency are long gone
[+] [-] kobalsky|4 years ago|reply
A lot of people. You just have to NOT live in a country that uses a currency that could be considered a global reserve to find us.
[+] [-] wesleywt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frankbreetz|4 years ago|reply
Many people still believe Bitcoin could at least be used to transfer value, like a currency. AMC, Starbucks, and United Wholesale Mortgage are all looking into accepting it. Whether these come to be seems to be seen, but there is obviously a lot of people that still expect Bitcoin to be a currency, or at the very least a way to transfer value.
[+] [-] SamPatt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ls15|4 years ago|reply
A couple of months ago, a combination of Covid-related travel restrictions and new EU KYC regulation lead me into a situation where the only way to renew my VPN in a timely manner was through crypto. I was really lucky to have some.
[+] [-] ajay-b|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdcravens|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bserge|4 years ago|reply
Otherwise you're always going to be stuck completely underground and treated like a criminal/third rate citizen.
[+] [-] lamp987|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russdpale|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nenadg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burnished|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CarelessExpert|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rlpb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdcravens|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uniclaude|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lottin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nenadg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinni2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zigradett|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rad_gruchalski|4 years ago|reply
All other governments will follow soon.
[+] [-] penultimatebro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dusted|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathias|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randomopining|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dt2m|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liuliu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RivieraKid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] croes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xy|4 years ago|reply
They trained users to accept all advertising cookies, while being massive hypocrites (a lot of EU bureaucratic websites ship user data to Google via GA or GTM).
The EU is one of the biggest threats to online freedom. Threatening to ban memes, egregious copyright laws to serve Hollywood interests, cookie nag screens and US media excluding EU IPs altogether because EU law is insane.
Access to media within the EU has never been worse. A significant portion of US news media exclude all EU traffic due to regulation.
[+] [-] cryptica|4 years ago|reply
Firstly, they introduced GDPR regulations to prevent companies and organizations from collecting data on citizens... But now they introduce regulations to force companies and organizations to collect data on citizens. It's ridiculous.
It's frightening that the government could possibly win a case in a court of law with such fundamentally flawed logic. What would the verdict be like? "Collecting data on people is illegal, but it's also illegal to not collect data, therefore you are guilty!"
That must be how totalitarianism comes about; make sure everyone is guilty of something, then you can arrest all your political opponents on any pretext you like.
What is the point of the law if it contradicts itself? We may as well go back to living in caves.
[+] [-] 0xdeadb00f|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fabioyy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] JanDietch|4 years ago|reply
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