[jMyles]

I think that attempting to pretextually take action based on some threat (and let's be honest, "think of the children" is one of the primary vectors for this) is more likely to curry political favor (and provide political cover) than mere censorship.

So yes, I think that embedding illicit material is a more likely tactic than prohibition. The latter - because it will be such a colossal failure - will only serve to show the state's inability to control the internet, and that's exactly what the state is trying to hide right now.

[21]

To use your own argument, "child porn being illegal didn't work for stopping child porn, did it"?

The second huge fallacy (you are also making it) is that the government wants to ban crypto, but is afraid of saying it and comes up with all kinds of contrived tactics.

[nickelcitymario]

> The second huge fallacy (you are also making it) is that the government wants to ban crypto, but is afraid of saying it and comes up with all kinds of contrived tactics.

"Government" is a term that covers an awful lot of groups with differing agendas.

Law makers make laws. But "government" includes spy agencies, law enforcement, central banks, competing political actors, as well as just rogue individuals.

Making cryptocurrency illegal would require having some degree of popular support (which maybe they would have).

One dude with an agenda, though, could poison the blockchain with a single image. And that one dude (or dudette... i shouldn't be so close minded) could very well be a high-ranking member of a government agency of some sort.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting there's any evidence for this. Just that it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to consider the possibility.

[jMyles]

> To use your own argument, "child porn being illegal didn't work for stopping child porn, did it"?

Two things:

1) child porn is materially different from cannabis or blockchains. Prohibition of child porn is supported widely, and banning production of child porn is supported by, as far as I can tell, nearly 100% of the population. Marijuana, on the other hand, is one of the most popular plant medicines in history. I don't know where blockchains fall on this spectrum, but I think it's fair to say that they're much closer to cannabis than child porn.

2) Sadly, I don't think that banning possession of child porn has been particularly effective, has it? I don't know enough about this area to make an assessment with a high degree of confidence, but the fact that a material that is desired by so few people is still distributed so widely suggests to me that the prohibition has failed.

> The second huge fallacy (you are also making it) is that the government wants to ban crypto, but is afraid of saying it and comes up with all kinds of contrived tactics.

I can see why you thought I was saying that. What I was saying is subtly different: if the state becomes determined to censor blockchain content, I think that it is likely that it will not attempt to do so by naked prohibition, but instead will employ a more indirect and surreptitious strategy.

On the deeper point, of whether the state will come to the conclusion that it wants to disrupt blockchain tech - I think that it probably won't. Whether or not blockchains specifically are understood to be politically powerful and counter to centralized, authoritarian power structures is yet to be seen. But the evolution of the internet more generally clearly is. I'm sure that people who have wielded power through state channels can see that as clearly as anyone, and I don't think they'll be so childish as to stand in the way of the internet, which is a significant evolutionary step for the species.