[seibelj]

I’ve been in this space for a long time, know a lot of people. Lebanon is another country that is heavily using crypto. You will see a lot of countries with corrupt governments and central banks become bottom-up crypto centric, but this won’t be reported for a long time until suddenly the NYT will release an article and only then it is “actually” happening.

Here’s an informative episode on a podcast if you actually care https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-standard-p...

[simonw]

The summary of that podcast episode says:

> Thomas Semaan is an ex-student of Saifedean who has been active in the Lebanese bitcoin scene. He joins us to tell us about the Lebanese fiat crisis, how bitcoin has helped him and other bitcoiners, and compare its effectiveness to political activism and delusions of reform.

This is the problem. Obviously bitcoin is of use and interest to bitcoiners. What we're trying to understand is if regular, non-bitcoiners are getting value from it on a large scale.

Is crypto in Argentina and Lebanon something that has a real impact on regular people who are not deeply involved in the technology?

This is why I only believe it when a publication like the BBC or the NYT cover it: crypto incentivizes people who hold it to boost it, so it's very hard to trust stories that don't come from news sources with strong conflict of interest policies and a long standing reputation for journalistic integrity.

That podcast is called "The Bitcoin Standard"!

[hnthrow1010]

I don't have time to listen to this podcast (I'll read a transcript if you have it) but just to respond to your comment: I've never seen the question of what happens after a society becomes "bottom-up crypto centric" get addressed. You have a country where the central bank is suddenly not doing anything, tax fraud is rampant, and the local currency is now further on the brink of collapse. All the citizens' money is effectively being funneled away into entities operating as foreign banks. The government is forced to accept crypto to avoid insolvency and now makes it so you have to pay your taxes in it. If they're still corrupt they'll force people to follow the same regressive restrictions again, and no one will be able to do anything about it because the blockchain is all public. How is this going to help anything? I'm trying not to be bleak here but the idea here seems to be disregarding any hope of reasonable reform.

[seibelj]

I am a libertarian and I fundamentally believe the current central banking model is not only hopelessly corrupt but morally evil. Politicians have been able to steal from common people via inflation for a century while the rich are easily protected.

This is a long topic but to summarize I am quite hopeful that the ability for governments to extract wealth is limited greatly by the rise of crypto. If the government wants taxes they can do it by selling services to people who can pay for them if they agree it has value.

Of course I’m a minority but like all movements crypto is selling something to average people but the grand plan is only understood by a minority. Countries like Argentina have been basket cases for decades despite endless bailouts and IMF shenanigans. It’s time for something new that I believe is a valuable experiment with clear theoretic and ideological underpinnings that couldn’t possibly be worse than the socialist nightmare destroying billions of common people.

[hnthrow1010]

>I am quite hopeful that the ability for governments to extract wealth is limited greatly by the rise of crypto

I described a situation where this wouldn't happen though.

>If the government wants taxes they can do it by selling services to people who can pay for them if they agree it has value.

I'm sorry, this seems contradictory. I thought the possibility of this was already discarded when the idea of reform was thrown out. The assumption with the "bottom-up" idea seems to be that the government will always stay corrupt. If you take that approach then can't you see how this probably will end up like another failed bailout where nothing changes? Effectively all that's happening is more foreign money is being dumped into the system, except now it's just coming from offshore crypto speculators instead of from other governments. Try to look at this from a macro view.

Just my opinion: Crypto is pretty bad regardless of what your politics are. The ridiculous amount of fraud and scams in crypto, and other bad things like ransomware, are wrecking common people too. It can absolutely be worse. And, the theory and ideology of crypto doesn't actually stop a government from collecting taxes anyway.

[seibelj]

Just my opinion: Central banking is pretty bad regardless of what your politics are. The ridiculous amount of inflation and corruption in central banking, and other bad things like telling society to stop using energy to "sAvE tHe PlaNeT" and be cold all winter (while I seriously doubt the rich politicians are keeping their thermostats low!), are wrecking common people too. It can absolutely be worse. And, the theory and ideology of central banking doesn't actually stop the individual from revolting anyway.

[Fnoord]

> I am a libertarian and I fundamentally believe the current central banking model is not only hopelessly corrupt but morally evil.

The problem is that your alternative has proven to be worse.

But also, lets assume that everyone in Argentinia is going to convert all of their currency into cryptocurrency.

What kind of repercussions is this going to have?

Well, for one, the currency in which people get paid is still the Argentinian one, not a cryptocurrency. Keep that one in mind, because its going to be affected by the rest.

What is going to happen next is massive tax fraud. People are not going to pay taxes over their belongings (you might agree with that as 'libertarian' but its going to hurt the government income for sure). This is going to result in a weaker government, and a weaker coin.

With a weaker government and a weaker coin, people get less value out of their currency. Remember that the people were paid in the national currency? Its worth less now. And also, what is going to happen when the government runs weaker? More crime, less public health, outsourcing to private entities, and defacto you will get something akin to some libertarian paradise where the top on the pyramid can actually survive and have opportunities, while the rest ends up on the bottom of cannon fodder.

With cryptocurrency, there's no such thing as accountability or paying your taxes. Such libertarian dreams are going to have the effect that the government becomes weakened and eventually you get that survival of the fittest in an unhealthy way. Without accountability and without taxes you'll get more corruption, not less. If you want an example of that, just look at Russia.

Meanwhile, all of these people are heavily dependent on? On what you think? Exchanges. Which, as proven by Mt. Gox, are not always going to be pure in their effort. So spare me the independence bullshit.

Centralized banking works, as long as there's accountability. You reach accountability by rule of law, by regulations. Cryptocurrencies try to avoid these, but neglects the reasons these were enacted in the first place. They're a massive step backwards in that regard.

[Fnoord]

> I’ve been in this space for a long time, know a lot of people. Lebanon is another country that is heavily using crypto

Every country uses cryptography.