economic value is distinct from social value. the former can be used to describe small groups (e.g. criminals who benefit from a crime), while the latter can be used to describe the negative sum relationship between criminals and their victims.
so, "positive [economic] value [for some]" and "negative [social] value on net" are not mutually exclusive.
Well, I was referring to its social value. A positive value solely for criminals is hardly an excellent economic indicator and I’m a bit surprised you would argue otherwise.
That's interesting, I'd say that it's no business of my government who I decide to transact with. If I'm buying or selling something illegal, charge me with a crime.
I think the bigger problem is not people selling naughty things. It's the absolutely reckless approach governments (and one government in particular) have taken when we give them the lever and dials that control the financial system. The modern fiat financial system is designed to transfer wealth from the least powerful to the most powerful, nothing more and nothing less.
...are we not on the same page here? I'm talking about inflation, if that's not clear. Inflation is a tax from people who don't hold assets to pay people who do.
The sane answer to monopolists abusing the system is not "we should just throw out all regulations and standards". It's "we should insist the government enforce the antitrust laws already on the books against these behemoths, rather than giving them deference".
One of things actually works on the scale of a useful human lifetime. The other does not, and currently is headed in the opposite direction. If things ever get fixed it will be my great great grandchildren that see the results.
I don’t know if crypto is the solution, but watching even supposedly technologically literate places like HN largely cheer for cashless societies where every transaction is monitored and gatekept, while limits continue to be dialed downwards is all anyone needs to see to realize working within the system is a plan for failure.
Transacting money is not a crime, it’s simply a lazy way to fight it. It enables enforcement of trivial policies and more or less removes a key pillar of human freedom.
> One of things actually works on the scale of a useful human lifetime.
One of those things actually works, period.
Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not going to lead to a better system overall. It may fix a few of the specific problems with the current system, but it introduces enough other problems that it becomes, at best, a wash.
And in practice, it's abundantly clear that cryptocurrency does not work. People don't want it. The only reason it is experiencing a resurgence in popularity now is because Trump, under the influence of various cryptocurrency scammers (note: this is not me saying "all cryptocurrency is a scam"; this is me saying "the specific people influencing Trump on this are scammers"), has been promoting it in order to feed their scams.
Some of us can recognize that the fascist takeover of our specific government doesn't change the fundamental truths about how governments function.
Yes, antitrust enforcement in the US is a joke right now. It was actually ramping up to be pretty darn good under Biden. Now it's not, and we have several other problems to solve before we're going to be able to get to it.
None of that makes cryptocurrency a better overall answer to the problems described than fiat currency with proper antitrust controls. Frankly, it's not even a better overall answer to the problems described than fiat currency without proper antitrust controls.
Only problem is, fiat is better at most of the "good-natured" crime too.
The only application I can even think of where cryptocurrency is actually better than fiat is ransomware. Actually I suppose any kind of ransom payment might benefit from using crypto, as there's no risky physical cash handover for police to intercept. Seems like it could be equally useful for kidnappers as ransomware hackers.
But I can't think of single non-ransom transaction where fiat isn't better than crypto. Legal or otherwise.
For example when buying illicit substances, I don't see why I would want to pay extra to make the transaction traceable and public?
Without incriminating myself too much, uh, let's just say I've seen considerable volumes of illegal business conducted with physical fiat cash, to a degree that likely would have been more difficult with crypto
Crypto has uniquely allowed the huge uptick in ransomware.
Before they had to figure out some way to get paid using the banking system without getting caught. These days maybe they would be asking for $50 million in iTunes gift cards, I don’t know. But it was a hurdle.
Once Cryptocurrencies started to get well known ransomware embraced it incredibly strongly. A far far more anonymous payment method that any random company or person could pay through?
That is such a fallacious argument that crypto bros love to trot out. If you look at the ratio of crime to total transaction, then crime makes up a tiny portion of what is happening in real money. Meanwhile, the situation in crypto is the other way around: Actually useful transactions are almost negligible, while >99% of what is happening is speculation, gambling, and crime. If you could shut down the entire crypto ecosystem, literally nothing of value would be lost.
I think you underestimate how much speculation, gambling and crime happens in the fiat ecosystem. The forex, just to name one thing, is $7.5T exchanged a day.
In comparison, it’s estimated that Americans spend about $10T per year. I don’t have the numbers worldwide but America is a big piece of the cake.
So, speculation is vastly higher than regular spending, even for “regular money”.
Do you really not understand that the forex market has several real use cases and serves an actual purpose. Unlike crypto, it doesn't primarily or solely exist to facility crime and speculation. If you somehow shut down the forex trade, the global economy would experience severe disruptions. If you shut down crypto, nobody in the real economy would even notice.
crypto is a kind of live estimate of the frustration with government restrictions on using one’s own property. that in itself seems to have some social value.
in the US, banks will question you if you try to withdraw your own cash from your own bank account past a certain limit set decades ago and never adjusted while the dollar continues to lose value.
