[V__]

> you need a distributed ledger for this

You don't need it. That doesn't mean it doesn't work as a solution. Not everyone can open a wise account. KYC makes it difficult for people without proper documents.

One can accept that most of crypto is bad, and still see that some people have some use for it (for now). Like, nuance is a thing.

[arcticbull]

And in exchange you get wild volatility swings and full financial freedom for criminals. Some things are just bad.

[latchkey]

This is very much a snarky troll comment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[arcticbull]

No it isn't. It's a statement of objective reality. That isn't really forbidden under the news guidelines to my knowledge, although I could have expounded as the topic became more divisive so here goes:

The system is specifically designed to permit unchecked criminality. That is a fact. Lack of AML, KYC and any oversight, recourse or control that you would use to reduce malicious actor impact in the space is explicitly, intentionally removed. This allows for unchecked criminality. That's why we have the volume of ransomware we do, because in the past you couldn't send millions of dollars in Starbucks gift cards by FedEx to get your data decrypted.

Given substantially all legal use cases are served better, faster, cheaper, safer and more reliably using classical systems it's no surprise crypto self-selects for criminality.

The volatility is an objective reality. Its easily one of the most volatile assets on the market today.

I'm sure DDT salesmen would agree feel the same way if I said that DDT was 'just bad' despite its obvious and measurable negative effects on the environment, but I can't say I shed a tear when the eagles managed to emerge from their shells with all their limbs.

[latchkey]

Sigh, your anti-crypto trope needs better analogies. We've been through this many times and you just keep repeating the same tired arguments in an effort to sound knowledgable and spread your one sided and often misguided and outdated opinions.

> It's a statement of objective reality.

No, it isn't. USDT, a crypto currency, is pegged to the dollar and doesn't have consistently huge swings in volatility.

> The system is specifically designed to permit unchecked criminality.

Fiat USD will always be the largest, by orders of magnitude, used currency for criminality, on the planet.

[arcticbull]

> No, it isn't. USDT, a crypto currency, is pegged to the dollar and doesn't have consistently huge swings in volatility.

The one that's not backed? Whose money is supposedly in a bahamian bank run by the man who created Inspector Gadget? The one that settled with the CFTC and the NYAG for being unbacked? How you could possibly recommend this as a beacon of stability is beyond me. Especially when they don't even pay interest but you can get 5% on treasuries, so even if you just held it and they somehow never go under, you're still getting rekt.

However, USDC (or if we pretended there was anything in the vault at USDT) you don't need a blockchain lol. They could just put a portal on their website and you could just move between accounts there. But without the imaginary layer of indirection of the blockchain people would demand AML/KYC.

Those are fully centralized, fully controlled. USDT and USDC can be frozen by government entities and even by Tether themselves arbitrarily. They've done it many times.

This is a silly thing to advocate for.

> Fiat USD will always be the largest, by orders of magnitude, used currency for criminality, on the planet.

But not as a percentage of transactions. That's just a red herring. If you had the ability to wipe out a large pocket of criminality that provided little or zero real world value, why on earth wouldn't you?

What's next, comparing the size of the mob's bank accounts to the treasury as a reason not to pursue? Or because they kill less people than the army they're good to go?

[latchkey]

I mentioned something not volatile that I knew would trigger you to go off on some rant about the backing. That's the part where your trope is really tired.

> But not as a percentage of transactions.

Source? In your eyes, 100% of crypto is criminal, but that's not reality, by a long shot. So, if you're going to call it all criminal, I want a source for that. I know my transactions aren't and I pay all my taxes on it, so do what you will with that data point.