While you were busy being a proponent of crypto's moral utility, I've been a proponent of its exploitation for over 10 years. To me, it's always of great utility.

I am a regular guy but I just never understood the point of Crypto other than for scams and get rich quick schemes. Not to mention it still is tied to the dollar for value which defeats the entire purpose doesn't it ? I thought it was supposed to be an independent currency. And then you have companies like coinbase which are centralizing something that was supposed to be decentralized ? I just don't get it.

The has been a clear increased in payment processors ( be it Visa/Mastercard/Paypal/... ) that blocking payment access to websits.

These may be perfectly legal (example xxx sites), gray at worst (like anime websites). Some anime site that had (for example) paypal for over 15+ years. Plop ... gone.

Crypto has become become the alternative payment method for those sites. So its not "dictators that are doing pretty nasty stuff" but a ton of sites and services that can be affected.

Ironically, there has been a lot of focus also in Europe regarding this issue, as much of the internet payment processors are in or linked to the US. With the focus to get a alternative to Visa/Mastercard going.

The reality is that a lot of power regarding payment processing is in the hands off one country, that has a lot of large companies with interests/powers to dictate over the entire world, what is and is not allowed. And crypto has becomes a necessary evil. In a ideal world we do not need crypto as payment processors are neutral or at minimum have very stronger requirements to kick off clients. But the reality is different...

I think crypto lead in 99% of cases just to bad actors and use-cases, I still have to encounter one real success story of someone using crypto successfully long-term or to pay for legit, legal stuff where a different method was not allowed due to unfair restrictions.

The real value in crypto is for storing black market currency. Before, it had to be stored in cash where it could be stolen by other criminals or confiscated by law enforcement. (Watch Narcos if you want to see a pretty good dramatization of how Pablo Escobar buried his money in caches around Colombia.) If Bitcoin was around at the time, Escobar certainly would have used that instead.

It does have speculative value, as well, but I suspect that if you subtract speculative investments, the remaining total market cap of crypto is the value of criminal profit.

The value of it to me is that as money has got more digital, I feel that there is an incredible amount of tracking that previously did not exist in a primarily cash based society. It really isn't my bank or the government's business what I'm buying, or that I went to a casino, or that I went into an adult shop, or <insert sensitive purchase for your situation here>. Using cash more is another solution, but that's not feasible for most online services, and not all businesses accept cash any more. Maybe this is all paranoia, but you see data breaches all the time, and you see how so many industries mine data (and there really isn't much better data for advertising than your entire purchase history).

This is why I don't particularly support most cryptocurrencies, as they don't solve these issues and feel more like a horrific version of the stock market. Monero on the other hand does pretty decisively solve these issues, I can give you an address to send money to without giving out any other information, I can send money to you without my purchase history being public (unlike bitcoin), the transaction fees are very low (unlike bitcoin), the block time is quite low. It does feel like the perfect system for daily purchases if it would be embraced, which I am aware it won't be. The issue of no recourse for keys being compromised could be slightly mitigated by putting only limited amounts of money in the wallet at a time, although I do know this isn't ideal (but it's probably a cost for having actual privacy). I really don't get most cryptocurrencies though, bitcoin was a good POC but it's been surpassed in every way by now.

I just feel like I'm being forced to give up my privacy, and Monero (or similar) is a potential solution to this that doesn't give up the convenience of digital currency. I guess though I'm seeing it from the perspective of a daily payment system, rather than a savings system (I'd pretty much always prefer my savings in an actual bank with the protections therein).

I think that public/permissionless crypto is going to remain a niche. It's clear that there are too many footguns and failure modes for the average user.

But I think private/permissioned chains will gain some adoption in the background of tradfi, especially for clearing and settlement, collateral management via tokenisation etc. Your bank might eventually use technology developed in crypto, but it'll be called 'distributed ledger technology' or 'tokenisation' rather than crypto because of the negative image.

Don’t want to weigh in on the crypto debate; just your argument.

X enables good things but X also enables bad things. Freedom of speech enables democracies, but it also enables mass manipulation. By definition any freedom enables any possible action resulting from that freedom. Note that this is not really the case with everything either. The same argument can’t be made (reasonably) about biological weapons for example.

IMO it’s very hard to make a proper argument pro or against crypto in lay terms. It will be a never ending argument. The fundamental is that of centralization vs decentralization and that’s a relevant reasoning despite of what the current incarnation of currencies and behaviors we’ve been seeing.

I understand the sentiment, but as someone who had to use crypto because all other options weren’t available, I’d rather live in a world where it exists. (I do have different options now, but I still use USDT/USDC transfers when it’s cheaper.)

Without cryptocurrency, dictators and criminals would still be able to move money around, it would just be a bit harder for them. For ordinary people it’d be disproportionately harder and more expensive.

I want to add that this isn't people stealing from other normal people. This is dictators stealing from normal people. So there are losses in both directions: normal people losing their money and dictators gaining money to do nefarious things to normal people.

It would be better if it was dictators stealing from dictators or normal people stealing from normal people, but it's not that at all.

I think it's good that you have reached that point. Now, if you don't mind my asking (I'm curious):

Did it take 17 years for you to get there, or was it a while ago and you just say now that you were into crypto 17 years ago?

And I don't mean to be offending here: people routinely take years or decades on similar things. I have been observing that with climate change for 20 years now. And I see many many people who are still in that process. Actually I would argue that most people out there haven't reached the point where we can have the discussion, they seem to be in the "denial" phase still.

I thought that the whole point of crypto was money laundering and tax evasion. Like, it's in cryptocurrency DNA, even if people try to squint and see legitimate use cases. Does anyone think otherwise?

I mean, that's what the big mean government does, they monitor financial transactions and they collect taxes. But when we talk about financial privacy from the prying eyes of the government as a goal, and let's suppose people actually use crypto like was dreamed, this necessarily implies crypto being a tool to launder money. (in practice, this is better realized by privacy coins like Monero and ZCash, since Bitcoin sucks for privacy: your address is an anonymous handle but the network leak metadata. But, the desire for financial privacy was there in the Bitcoin community since the beginning).

And what else people do when they can hide their money from the government? In a lot of cases, they don't pay taxes (which is also a disposition present in the Bitcoin community since the beginning, with a rhetoric like, collecting taxes are not legitimate)

What I think was a later development was the main use case for crypto in real world, which is to collect payment for ransomware and things like this. This, I don't think it's something the early Bitcoin community envisioned.

Nah, we have to talk about why head engineers suck at security.

Crypto also facilitates various forms of crime, e.g. ransomware hacks, or any crime that requires a ransom, e.g. kidnappings.

I don't disagree, but the way you say that makes my eye twitch uncontrollably. So many of us have spent the better part of those 17 years trying to get the crypto proponents to have a real discussion about it.

> safe from dictatorial countries.

Yeah, that's definitely an argument. But it's kind of funny when the backdrop is that $6B was taken by North Korea.

It feels like a sibling to the popular attitudes towards not trusting big banks, or voting for <candidate> who demonstrably achieves the opposite of what you're seeking, or feeling that democracy ain't working out great, or that vaccines are scary and dangerous. There's just a fundamental lack of higher-order thinking. It's all vibe-based reasoning. What feels scary is what guides these behaviours. Which, I think, is why it's so unsurprising that people in these camps make such unbelievably strong candidates for exploitation.

The value crypto does bring to the world is this:

The unbanked, like myself. People that for any reason is being locked out of the "american" way of doing things

Stripe doesn't cover 200 countries, nor does Apple Pay, Google Pay, Paypal, Visa, etc (all american btw). So a parallel banking system is needed, no questions about that, and Binance provides the best of all, and that's why it's being targeted by we know who (just follow the money)

Now, whether if it is crypto or not, I don't care, all I want is the possibility to pay and receive money (USD, EUR or CNY as the top currencies right now) without the draconian restrictions imposed by the hegemons trying to asphyxiate does who don't kneel

That's exactly why we need a parallel banking system, crypto or not

Cryptocurrencies give sovereignty over your own money... and all the bells and whistles that come with sovereignty: You're responsible for keeping your own funds, and life, safe.

If you need crypto to avoid the legal framework when transferring value, accept the risk and operate accordingly. If you want crypto exposure as an asset class, find a custodian who will hold the crypto for you offline, prove it is offline, and allow you to borrow or otherwise leverage it as an asset on fiat or capital market rails that provide you recourse. Anything else is pointing a gun at your feet.

Analogy is holding and trading gold underground that hasn't been mined yet using securities or other representation subject to capital market regulations and the legal framework. Is it an asset? Yes, if proven, documented, etc. Is it safe? Yes. Will you get your value back if the capital market representation of the underlying is stolen? Most likely (finra, sipc, etc).

But having live value on rails that enable instant movement globally with no recourse for unauthorized transfer? You're gonna have a bad time.

> And crypto is facilitating that.

I don't know about that. What I know is that dictators and criminals have existed since forever and the official estimates put the part of the worldwide GDP tied to criminal activities to between 3% and 5%, which is gigantic.

I don't think Bitcoin is to be blamed for that. If we're worried about dictators and criminals, a good question to ask would be: why do those exists at all? (and that's irrelevant to Bitcoin)

Outside of being money for criminals, there is some value for investors. For them, it is a way for their portfolios to get exposure to the booming criminal economy.

Notice that the hacking is mostly happening with centralized venues. And that is to say nothing of FTX, Celsius etc.

The original promise of crypto and blockchain was to cut out the middleman and NOT concentrate a lot of money under a few custodial keys.

If you took your crypto off exchanges when not in use, you’d be fine. Not your keys, not your crypto.

I agree with you. Is there a name for this logical fallacy?

I equate it to anonymity on the internet. Yes, if everyone had to associate their real identity with everything they posted on the internet some unjustly persecuted individuals would not be able to get their stories out. And there would be a heck of a lot less other bullshit.

One of the things I was forced to reckon with over the pandemic was that I'd spent my entire life with undiagnosed autism. Looking back, there were lots of warning signs but we know things now we didn't then. For example, up until the 2010s the medical consensus was you couldn't have ADHD and autism.

One of the ways this manifested was my ability to anticipate problems at work and poke holes in things. This made me incredibly unpopular. You never get thanked for this. Instead you get punished for being right too early. You are negative. You are a naysayer. You aren't a team player. And you were 100% correct and it didn't matter.

Back in 2012 I remember thinking "I don't see how crypto has any applications other than illegal stuff". And I stood by that. Note that morality and legality are two different things. Sending money to relatives in a country that disallows foreign currency transactions may be moral but it's still illegal.

What's frustrating is dealing with the same consequences of being right too early. It's muddied by true disruption. An example that was often brought up was Google. In the late 1990s, it was believed that search was a "solved" problem and there was no money in it. That's 100% true. But you can't ignore any criticism with "people once thought the world was round". It's a useless fallacy to deploy.

The absolutely dumbest people and outright scammers were attracted to crypto. A bunch of people who missed out on Bitcon's meteoric rise didn't want to miss the next meteor or they simply wanted to rug pull before they themselves got rug pulled.

The financial system is an endless series of Chesterton's Fences. So many things work the way they do because of a problem that occurred. They say that safety regulations are written in blood. People died to make those regulations. Well, financial regulations are the same way.

Being able to freeze assets and reverse transactions, for example, is a feature, not a bug.

The real story with crypto is how greed clouds people's judgment. So many people on HN thought they were going to make their bag on crypto and people like myself got shouted down as naysayers.

I really don't know what to do with this information other than those same warnings are beign ignored about AI and in 5 years I will be punished for being right too early. There's simply no market to recoup the trillions invested in rapidly depreciating assets around software with no moat.

i hope you say the same thing about AI 10 years from now