[Melting_Harps]

You mean this:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/binance-coin/

Which would effectively give them close to 1/4 of the entire token supply, which they could dump at any time and disrupt Binances financials? That's worse than giving them cheaply printed fiat from all of these bailouts/stimulus.

[londons_explore]

Could be... But paid in newly issued coins, over a period of 250 years, with a break clause exercisable by either party at any time...

[cryptica]

Agreed. The bailout money will go straight into crypto.

I predict that people are going to start taking out bank loans at 0% interest to buy crypto. Crypto assets have a very unusual attribute that they cannot always be recovered in case of bankrupcy because only the owner knows the private key to their wallet and they can claim to have 'lost their keys'. Cryptocurrencies therefore offer a decentralized mechanism to allow people to convert their ever inflating debt-money (which is not even their own money) into money that is their own and in limited supply.

Is it unethical? Yes, but we all know what happens when everyone start doing the wrong thing; it becomes OK. That's how fiat money came about; it's also highly unethical (compared to gold-backed currency), but when all the banks started loaning money backed by gold which they didn't actually have, it became OK too.

Our financial system's incentives which reward reckless behavior are going to be its own demise.

[Nursie]

I also predict some utter idiots will indeed take out low interest loans and stake them in the heavily manipulated, volatile casino that is the cryptocurrency market.

Then they will find themselves with a pile of debt and no way to pay it off, just as many have before when 'investing' in hokey schemes and outright scams.

[Melting_Harps]

> Then they will find themselves with a pile of debt and no way to pay it off, just as many have before when 'investing' in hokey schemes and outright scams.

Oh, you mean like the rest of the entire banking and financial markets that led to all of the bailouts in the first place? And enriched and further consolidated the power of the 'too big to fail' institutions that continue to be rewarded for their corruption.

I'm not going to engage with the same tired arguments we had last time, and I don't doubt the scenario above happening either now that the Federal Reserve essentially got Carte Blanche to buy up so many loans should they go bad from the Banks, but given the current situation you have to at least see the BLATANT irony in your statement.

The SEC shuts down the mainly algo-trained, bot-trading driven stock market because they're taking on too many loses and you're decrying Crypto as the hotbed of malfeasance and manipulation?

If you can't see regulatory capture when it stares at you in the face this way, maybe you should really be looking at another more pertinent axe to grind.

[gridlockd]

Whataboutism does not strengthen your own position.

Cryptocurrencies still suck as currencies and they are always just one regulatory action away from becoming practically useless for non-criminals.

[NhanH]

I don't care much about cryptocurrencies, but everything is always just one regulatory action away from becoming practically useless for non-criminals.

[JoeAltmaier]

Isn't that backward? Regulation doesn't affect criminals. Look at 'gun control' attempts.

[Melting_Harps]

> Whataboutism does not strengthen your own position.

Granted, but what you may fail to see is that Cryptocurrency is reactionary to the blatant corruption that has been normalized, the very same beahviour that the poster decries is plaguing Cryptocurrenices without providing much of an argument.

When in reality, currencies like Bitcoin continue to follow the Network's protocol that it derives its value from and has not detracted from it, despite the continuous polemics and external threats and attacks.

Sucks in what way exactly?

Because this is always a point of contention for most of its detractors. They aggregate all Cryptocurrencies into a single group, which is absurd.

Telling me how easy it is to lose a private key, thus your ability to move your funds, may be a valid point to your argument as functional (read: entirely fool-proof) key storage is still why I think its not ready for global mainstream use, in my opinion; but telling me about how a celebrity influencer Marketed alt/ICO didn't 1000x overnight as projected and instead crashed and burned as the creators absconded with the money that you read a blurb on techcrunch's twitter account is not.

Because from where I'm standing: I continue to have access to a low cost, friction-less token on an immutable ledger operating on the World's most secure Network on my phone, that I can use anywhere with wifi, and I can pay anyone who currently accepts Bitcoin and it operates 24/7 without anyone's permission.

And I can program it to do various things on top of that should I need it to, with built in trustless systems; and is also one that I can use to divide my unit of currency to 8 decimal points and still be able to operate on said network(s).

All of which incentivizes not only fair commerce and a real usecase for triple bottom line accounting, as it spurs on renewable energy as its main source as it continues to grow but also allows for previously marginalized/undocumented people into an economic system to be on boarded; unlike the exclusionary, war and fossil fueled driven fiat based system that is used to props up the Institutions I think we all know have outlived their purpose.

[gridlockd]

> Sucks in what way exactly?

You can't really use them as currencies. They're too unstable. Cryptocurrency transactions are taxable events in the US. That alone is too much of hassle to make them worthwhile.

They're usually backed by nothing, which makes them a purely speculative risk asset. The most stable coins are backed, ironically, by fiat. Sometimes with fractional reserve. I've looked into crypto backed by precious metals, but liquidity is awful.

So they're useless as currencies, they're useless as a hedge, the only use for cryptocurrency is to speculate on cryptocurrency.

> Because from where I'm standing: I continue to have access to a low cost, friction-less token on an immutable ledger operating on the World's most secure Network on my phone, that I can use anywhere with wifi, and I can pay anyone who currently accepts Bitcoin and it operates 24/7 without anyone's permission.

Yes, that's the gimmick. I get it.

> And I can program it to do various things on top of that should I need it to, with built in trustless systems

All your "trustless" system can do is shift around entries on digital ledgers. That's not that useful. Most systems require some degree of real world trust and accountability.

For example, how does cryptocurrency deal with fraud and theft? Quite poorly, if you ask me.

> All of which incentivizes not only fair commerce and a real usecase for triple bottom line accounting, as it spurs on renewable energy as its main source as it continues to grow but also allows for previously marginalized/undocumented people into an economic system to be on boarded

I don't see any evidence that it actually does that. Sounds more like wishful thinking.

[Nursie]

The 'fiat' system of floated currencies is able to adapt and change to changing economic circumstances, and be managed to keep the economy ticking over, preventing either the under or over abundance of currency by managing the supply.

In contrast cryptocurrency is fixed, static and inflexible, hampers new entrants to the economy in favour of those with established wealth, and would likely lead to the same stunted, constrained economic circumstances we can see from history, worsen crashes, and generally create the same conditions that lead to abandonment of systems like the gold standard in the past.

[Nursie]

Quick! Look over there! It's huge distraction!

Cryptocurrency is indeed a hotbed of malfeasance and manipulation. Nothing you've said even addresses that point, let alone refutes it.

[Melting_Harps]

You always use that red herring tactic, rather than make a cogent argument--mainly because I don't think you have an actual argument but rather sensationalist knee-jerk reactions masquerading as one--but look below: I actually outlined how and why I think it is a system can actually combat the very pitfalls I listed with current features.

Will corrupt actors use this technology to steal/scheme, sure, of course that much is inevitable of any technology; but condemning the entire protocol and aggregating them altogether as a collective failure because of that is about as useful as saying the Internet should be seen as nothing more than a den of thieves, child pornographers and counter-fitters: when we clearly know it is much more than that.

[Nursie]

They are a collective failure, particularly the places in which they are traded which is what we are talking about here.

You are the one throwing around red herrings and handwaving frantically about corruption elsewhere.

Talking about the value derived from the bitcoin protocol in this situation is absurd - the protocol itself is largely irrelevant, the corruption and manipulation are at the exchanges. The 'value' of your tokens derives more from their manipulation and hype than anywhere else, which is trivial to show because cryptocurrencies are not used anywhere else (besides the dark markets I guess, and even they have moved towards privacycoins).

Your bleating about renewable energy and trustlessness is also bullshit. The claims to use of renewable energy are based on conjecture amd estimation, not measurement. As a counterpoint there is a fossil fuel plant in upstate new york that has recently been kitted out for mining.

Secondly there is no such thing as 'trustless' with cryptocurrency - you must place all trust in people you are transacting with, rather than using a trusted intermediary. I trust established banks far more than J Random Retailer on the web.

Neither is there any compelling case that cryptocurrency has any effect on "banking the unbanked". "The unbanked" have no way to get into the system in the first place, nor the tech stacks to use it.

Your entire post, your entire worldview on this is wishful thinking and practically a set of coiner memes with no basis in reality.

[cryptica]

But think about it. What does bankrupcy actually mean if all of the bankrupt person's assets are in crypto and only they know the private key? The bank/creditors cannot recover these assets.

So by that definition, is the person actually bankrupt if they still control all of these crypto assets?

One could argue that crypto makes reckless individuals bankruptcy-proof.

[cesarb]

> What does bankrupcy actually mean if all of the bankrupt person's assets are in crypto and only they know the private key? The bank cannot recover these assets.

There are two cases: either the person declares these assets, or the person tries to hide these assets. If these assets are declared, they must be sold to pay as much as possible of the debts, or the debts won't be forgiven. If the person tries to hide these assets, the consequences are much worse; a quick web search tells me the debts won't be forgiven (or the forgiveness will be revoked after the fact), these debts cannot be forgiven later on another bankruptcy, and the person can even be arrested and/or pay a heavy fine (source: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/bankruptcy/hiding-as...).

[cryptica]

They can probably leave their home country and go to some country like Russia or China (or they could probably do the reverse and come to the US if their creditors are in China) and take their crypto with them. Even in the absolute worst case, some countries won't extradite to others.

Even the UK willingly accepts money from rich Russians. A lot of properties in London were bought with dirty Russian money; Russia can't get it back.

[Nursie]

Yes, transplanting your entire life somewhere else is definitely better than obeying the law and participating honestly in bankrupcy proceedings, which are there to provide help to people unable to service their debts by providing a reset mechanism.

It's like you think bankrupcy is worse than the alternative - your debts following you everywhere, forever, even when you're utterly insolvent.

[sweeneyrod]

You can just bury money in your backyard and not tell your creditors if you're willing to break the law.

[MadSudaca]

Ironically, if cryptocurrency succeeds, it will only help to put another nail in the marxist coffin.

[cryptica]

I think you may be right. What we would get after with cryptocurrencies might be some kind of unregulated anarcho-capitalism.

According to Marx, the absence of regulations should clear the path for capitalism's self-destruction. So I don't know if this would mark the end of Marxism or be a catalyst for its revival. But it probably won't be a smooth transition.

But who knows, maybe anarcho-capitalism will work if the communities are small enough.

[MadSudaca]

How can you have Marxism without control of capital and/or means of production?