[overthrow]

> I think if people have working mobile phones then they're able to be sent electronic cash without a p2p system. Indeed, more easily than having a VPN and relevant skills to received crypto assets.

Spoken like a true first-world armchair warrior. Maduro shut off the non-p2p systems, as dicussed. He then failed to stop crypto payments. Do you think it was his "preference" all along to fail to control the flow of money?

Don't underestimate people's ability to figure out a VPN. It's not hard, and the prospect of literally starving to death can be quite motivating.

And since you mentioned magic, the real magic would be any country stopping its citizens from accessing the internet. Even in North Korea, there are people with unfiltered satellite internet, because Kim Jong Un has not yet built a Faraday cage around the sky.

[mjburgess]

> He then failed to stop crypto payments

lol..err, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_(token) -- the government has not tried to "stop" anything.

If any of these systems had any actual utility many states would spend the relatively trivial amounts of money to 51% attack them: https://www.crypto51.app/. Or force take over their miners. Or monpolise half the stake. Or control the (local) mining networks. Or one of a number of trivial actions.

These systems do not work. Their alleged properties are lies. They are not immutable, they are not decentralised, and they are not capable of supporting non-trivial economic transactions.

This is a scam. These stories are lies. They are told by people who are in on the scam. This is a manipulated market, these are manipulated ideas, this entire system is comprised of about 100,000 people around the world, 5% of whom benefit from it.

It is incapable of supporting millions of users, let alone how severely impoverished they'd be at the expensive of the present holders -- thank god such systems cannot scale.

Present holders, no doubt like you, desperate to bring cash into the system, more people in, so your present holdings can increase in value.

I find this reprehensible

[overthrow]

Petro is an attempt at embrace-extend-extinguish. If that "Reception" section is to be believed, nobody is using it willingly. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Look under "NiceHash-able", if the number is less than 100% it means (to an approximation) not enough idle hardware exists on the planet to perform an attack. This means any attack must start with a manufacturing project that must stay secret for a decade+, then outpace growth and eventually surpass the capacity of the private sector. And then you need the energy to actually run the chips - no country would ever consider diverting that much energy away from their population.

If it were possible to compromise a $xxx billion dollar system, with only $x million, don't you think it would have been done by now? Maybe even by some bored billionaire just for fun?

And trust me, I don't think posting in a dead HN thread will speed up or slow down crypto's success in any way, lmao. I just enjoy the banter.

[mjburgess]

States can afford billions. A 5bn attack is cheap.

Also, all these "market cap" numbers are made up. These are heavily manipulated markets. There are about 100k users, and almost no buyers -- this stuff is trivial to bring down.

It's a scam.

[overthrow]

This message is devoid of evidence lol

Look how hard some governments have tried to stop this movement, and none have succeeded. That's real life evidence that they simply aren't capable.

I think this cloud will outlast the old men yelling at it.

Also: I hope one day someone calls my company a failure because it "only" has hundreds of thousands of users

[mjburgess]

I can't tell if you're gullible, or in on the scam. Either way, spreading this around is immoral.

Regulators are well-aware this is a scam which is why they're afraid of regulating it: as soon as they say "put up or shut up" the whole things collapses. they dont want to be blamed for that collapse.

As for politicians, they're corrupt. Trump and his cabinet were scam artists (betsy devos the wife of the head of a pyramid scheme, etc.); and likewise senior figures in the dems have historically been deeply connected to pyramid schemes.

This will all go to zero. The fastest way there is anyone actually trying to use it for money.

At the moment, it's one closed-off casino with a handful of people gambling with each other -- that's the total amount which any of this tech can support.

Regulators are hoping it will collapse in on itself without prompting.

I think the only law required here is "do something useful for real people" -- with that law this entire ecosystem will collapse and be exposed for the inherent fraud it is.

I encourage anyone with assets here to divest, and never to promote any of this -- do not rope people into holding the bag.

[overthrow]

> I think the only law required here is "do something useful for real people"

It did something useful for the Venezuelans. But you don't care about that because, why? Because you made up a story in your head that someone somewhere probably scammed everyone, somehow? And even with complete transparency and a publicly auditable ledger, they've kept it a secret for years?

All publicly available information points to the project being a success. Is there even a shred of evidence for your accusations? Or do you not need evidence to ignore events that don't fit your worldview?

---

https://www.reuters.com/technology/lse-teams-with-digital-tr...

What about the London Stock Exchange? Do you think they're just a bunch of filthy scammers as well?