[whyte_mackay]

At least crypto is way more censorship resistant than oldschool money. That's why it is called "censorship resistant" not "censorship proof". Claim stands.

Make a Jewish joke and Paypal will not be your friend. Piss of governments and Visa and Mastercard will make it impossible to donate to your cause.

[hudon]

I appreciate the nuance. "Today, Bitcoin censors less than PayPal" seems closer to the truth.

Would you then agree with "Cryptocurrencies in 2010 censored less than cryptocurrencies in 2018"?

[whyte_mackay]

Yes. Cryptocurrency will eventually have to bite the bullet and become legit: KYC/AML, deanonymizing bad actors, defunding terrorists, hitting ICO's with laws, exchanges who cooperate with the IRS. It is getting there whether its users want to or not.

[hudon]

Right, and this is the contention: I'm pretty sure when bitcoiners say "censorship resistant", they believe that Bitcoin will be resistant to any future law enforcement. I used to believe this, which is why I'm assuming it's what they believe... Your position that "you can buy drugs today with Bitcoin but probably not in the future" seems much more reasonable, but I'd call this "regulatory arbitrage" (like Uber), not "censorship resistance".

[spookthesunset]

Ah bitcoin, standing up and providing a platform for all the racists, antisemites and bigots of the world. Don’t forget all the drug kingpins, terrorists, child pornographer peddlers, and crypto-ransomware makers too!

[dang]

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

[whyte_mackay]

Yup, that is a hairy decision to make if you advocate for privacy and anonymity, and against censorship: What to do with the bad actors who will make use of it?

From the Tor FAQ:

> Some advocates of anonymity explain that it's just a tradeoff — accepting the bad uses for the good ones — but there's more to it than that. Criminals and other bad people have the motivation to learn how to get good anonymity, and many have the motivation to pay well to achieve it. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims (identity theft) makes it even easier. Normal people, on the other hand, don't have the time or money to spend figuring out how to get privacy online. This is the worst of all possible worlds.

> So yes, criminals can use Tor, but they already have better options, and it seems unlikely that taking Tor away from the world will stop them from doing their bad things. At the same time, Tor and other privacy measures can fight identity theft, physical crimes like stalking, and so on.

BTW: Those examples I gave are for Milo Yiannopoulos and WikiLeaks. I am not sure they fit into any category you mentioned.

> If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

[Tsubasachan]

Anarchists. But with computers now.