[IKantRead]

The old crypto chants were that crypto would lead us away from the ills of traditional markets/finance.

Glad to see that it's been watered down to "just as bad as" arguments.

[transcriptase]

I’ll admit it has been deeply entertaining watching the crypto community speed-run 200 years of “finding out the hard way why modern financial regulations exist” and “how to recognize a blisteringly obvious ponzi scheme” in the span of 15 years.

I say this as someone who got his first 0.05 btc for signing up for a newsletter in 2009 or 2010.

[mrb]

0.05? You probably misremember the amount. For reference, in 2010 the Bitcoin faucet gave away 5 BTC just for visiting a web page. A decent incentive for subscribing to a newsletter, more involved than visiting a web page, would have to have been higher than 5 BTC.

[wfme]

What "chants" are you referring to specifically re differences in markets? AFAIK it has always been pushed as a decentralized alternative to sending money, but that has little bearing on the way the traded price changes?

[f-securus]

Greed will, uhhhhh, find a way.

[thewanderer1983]

When was that the chant? They said more financial inclusiveness and self sovereignty. There are some with code is law and more cypherpunk ideals that is true. The early internet and open source movement had similar movements and these people still exist trying to improve society. Once things become mainstream the majority of focus becomes business and what products/services it can provide. The same companies in this space focused on business want clear regulation not lack of it.

[xvector]

Tomorrow your bank could cut you off from your own money because you protested the government[1], and what could you possibly do?

Having the freedom to truly own your own money and investments is valuable in and of itself, no matter how much crypto "devolves" towards traditional finance in other regards.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/world/americas/canada-pro...

[lolinder]

If your government wants to cut you off from your money, they'll do it for crypto just as easily as they do it for traditional banks. With the exception of direct-crypto purchases from shady internet sites, at some point your payment rails must pass through an entity that your government has some degree of authority over—you're not going to buy your groceries using Bitcoin over an onion service.

Even if crypto becomes 100% ubiquitous, the end game isn't "now the government can't control finance" the end game is "now the government will find a new way to control the new finance". Eventually, the government will intervene because people will be begging them to, because they don't actually want to live in a world where theft and fraud are irreversible and their entire financial life is tied to a set of cryptographic keys that they barely understand.

You're trying to push a technological solution to authoritarianism, and it's not going to work for the masses. Canada doesn't need crypto, Canada needs voters to hold the government accountable for its abuses.

[huijzer]

Apart from some edge cases, Western democracies have quite solid property rights upheld also by the judicial system. But yes if you’re in Russia or China then this argument is moot. They have much less property rights. However, Bitcoin is also not a solution because there is no point in owning Bitcoin if you fell trice out of a Russian window or are sentenced to a labour camp or to the death penalty in China for "fraudulus activities“. Difficult to spend your Bitcoin in both cases.

[RiverStone]

Instead, you can lose access to your money just because you forgot your secret key.

[JoshuaRogers]

Honestly, the first thing I'd do is hope that they forgot that I make house and car payments though them and that they forgot how much damage they could do to my professional life just by intentionally sabotaging my credit. Crypto doesn't provide any realistic protection to me from their whims should they become bad actors.

[Tao3300]

> what could you possibly do?

Magical Amulets?

Fake your own death, move into a submarine?