[vishakh82]

If you think all cryptocurrencies are scams or think blockchains do nothing useful, please skip this comment.

If you think things like decentralized finance, storage and identity have the potential to improve our lives and offer some of the only genuine alternatives to an increasingly privacy-hostile status quo, please look into the shambolic legislative process that threatens the entire blockchain industry in the United States. This is the time to act and ensure that cryptocurrency provisions are debated meaningfully in Congress before any relevant legislation is passed. What the Senate is doing right now reeks of both outright incompetence and malice. There are many, many companies and builders active on HN who are about to have their existence challenged.

[gameswithgo]

you have artificially tried to divide people into one of two extreme camps! cryptocurrency is either totally useless or the savior of the world!

Most of us do not believe either of those things. At the moment I apllaud any legislation that outs the brakes on current crypto currencies. The damage they have been doing to the world so people can gamble/speculate has been immense, its a tragedy. Money transferring to the lucky all while burning through energy.

[dcolkitt]

If your primary concern is the superfluous waste of energy you should be vehemently opposed to this amendment. It specifically exempts proof-of-work blockchains, while essentially outlawing alternatives.

It will drastically slow down innovation, and keep the majority of crypto activity on electricity guzzling proof of work chains. Already major Ethereum community members are discussing delaying or canceling the transition away from proof-of-work scheduled for the end of the year.

[vc9999]

You do understand that nobody forces anyone to gamble or speculate with cryptocurrencies, right?

[IMTDb]

You do understand that everyone is forced to endure the consequences of people gambling or speculate with cryptocurrencies, right?

See: Nvidia ship shortage, Bitcoin CO2 emissions, tons of ASICS destruction because miners are literally stealing electricity, ....

It's the same reason why psychoactive drugs are forbidden: no one forces you to use them, but everyone has to deal with the negative consequences of their usage. I don't think we should put drug users in prison, but I d'ont want to see a meth store at every street corner either.

[vc9999]

I think we need to ban Christmas lights too, after all we all have to endure the consequences of people using electricy for stupid things like creating a decentralized financial system without the government stealing everyone

I guess we need a government to regulate all these things, the same way they did with the victorious war on drugs.

At least you don't have a meth store at every street corner, right, what a win

[pibechorro]

Nvidia chip shortage? It only leads to cheaper prices long term, innovation, etc. sorry you are sad about not gaming in 4k.

Bitcoins co2 will get better, its also less than the energy used in trafitional finance (buildings, employee's, security, mining, etc). If anything crypro mining is encouraging green energy and able to locate itself to use otherwise wasted energy.

The war on drugs is one of the most useless and innefective policies EVER. It was created on racist terms to combat hippies and black activists, to protect monopolies (tabacco, big pharma) and it has led to the largest non violent prison state in history and made criminal cartels immensely wealthy. Not to mention the billions wasted and the millions dead. Look at Portugal, making drugs legal is the way forward.

Prohibition doesnt work. If you are afraid of cheats, gambling and pollution.. look no further than the big banks caught over and over laundering money for cartels and arms dealers the world over and to the largest polluter peotecting them, the military.

[verdverm]

Same can be said for stocks, yet the crash of 1929 still happened and laws were written to help protect consumers and the economy

[dcolkitt]

The response to 1929 wasn’t to functionally outlaw the existence of stocks.

[verdverm]

This law does not functionally outlaw the existence of cryptocurrency, it clarifies requirements to operators that they cannot escape AML.

I would expect a court to find that PoS is close enough to PoW as Congress intends this legislation, without digressing into the various types of PoS. While poorly written, it is likely that pure network operations will be ok long term.

[nightski]

Except it does. Because as written it includes miners in that group. Miners have no possible way of having the full identity of the parties involved in every transaction they verify and it would be impossible to comply with this reporting. That effectively outlaws it.

[NateEag]

How does being required to track data about taxation challenge the existence of the builders you mention?

I can see how it might for the companies - people who use crypto for tax and authority avoidance seem likely to stop using any service that complies with this law.

I don't see how this bill threatens any human's existence.

[mcherm]

> I don't see how this bill threatens any human's existence.

It doesn't.

> How does being required to track data about taxation challenge the existence of the builders you mention?

Suppose US law says that it is illegal to "mine" a block of bitcoin unless you keep records of the true name, address, and social security number of every person whose transaction occurs within that block and provide that information to US banking regulators on demand.

Since the information available to miners does not include true name, address, and social security number, the only way to comply with such a requirement would be to not mine blocks for bitcoin.

(There's another option -- go ahead and violate this law. If the US government doesn't have a beef with you then they'll just choose not to prosecute you. If they DO have a beef with you then you can try arguing in court that the law is unconstitutional. This will take years and extremely large legal fees and it might or might not be successful.)

I don't have a problem with requiring Coinbase or Biance to maintain records of information available to them. I DO have some concerns with mandating that no transactions may be done anonymously except those done in cash -- although I understand that some may disagree on this. But I strongly oppose imposing impossible-to-meet requirements on those who write code for cryptocurrencies, perform "mining" of cryptocurrencies, or who hold and/or spend cryptocurrencies themselves.

[NateEag]

Thanks for explaining your perspective.

I guess I was too elliptical, because I mostly already understood what you've explained here - I thought the OP was making way too strong a claim.

Instead of just saying that, I asked why he thought the builders in question had their existence threatened.

The builders in question may not be able to legally build the systems they want to in the US, but that's really not threatening their existence.