[miracle2k]

> The solution is to decriminalize drugs and use the existing financial system to pay for them.

When can we expect this utopia to be ushered in? What about paying for abortions? Sex work? Hosting of Kiwi Farms? There is no future where all these contentious decisions will align with your preferences. You can either throw your support behind the prohibitions that the collective enforces, or you can support an escape valve for individuals to defy it.

> What if someone contends they own it on the Tezos chain, or any one of the hundreds if not thousands of other ones? Or more fun still, what if someone just mints another of the thing you own on the same chain? Nobody is stopping them.

NFTs don't work this way; the goal is not for the chain to tell you which token is "real", whatever that means. That's up to you to decide. The chain just ensures that you get to own a token until you decide you no longer want it. No one cares that you print your own versions of valuable pokemon cards at home.

[ToucanLoucan]

> You can either throw your support behind the prohibitions that the collective enforces, or you can support an escape valve for individuals to defy it.

I 100% support individuals defying illegitimate laws. I did so twice in the last few months. I did not require cryptocurrency to do it and presenting either supporting prohibitions I disagree with -OR- supporting cryptocurrency is a false dichotomy.

We already have an untraceable value credit system in place for transacting illicit things. It's called cash, and it predates even the financial markets that crypto alleges to be trying to replace (while tripping over themselves to continue having access to the real financial system which incidentally is the main way crypto becomes non-anonymous because cryptocurrency cannot in fact create wealth it can only move it around from the actual financial system it claims to oppose, but that's a whole other thing entirely).

If it's a release valve as you say, then it is a release valve bolted to the side of an oppressive financial plumbing system, and is therefore reliant upon it. It is not salvation, is it at best, a new set of masters who have different preferences to the old. Perhaps an improvement (sex work) perhaps merely a different sort of monster (hosting kiwifarms) but nevertheless, not freedom. Just a different puppeteer with a different set of strings.

> NFTs don't work this way; the goal is not for the chain to tell you which token is "real", whatever that means. That's up to you to decide.

THEN WHAT DOES IT MATTER!? I have decided I own the Brooklyn Bridge. May I now list it for sale on Zillow?

Ownership as a concept only functions as a social contract with everyone else who shares your reality. I can SAY I own whatever the fuck I want, that is meaningless, utterly without value at all, if the person I'm attempting to sell it to does not recognize my ownership first, which for anything of value requires documentation. I own my home, because my name is on the deed, and it's also worth noting that I don't really, because the property is actually owned by a mortgage company, to whom I pay money. Nevertheless, I could sell my home, and then use the proceeds to pay off that mortgage company, and then take what's left and pocket it. But that entire arrangement depends on a contractual legal system with it's origin of trust in, ultimately, the Federal Government and judicial system, and because cryptocurrency is allergic ideologically to centralization (which isn't to say centralization isn't rife through the entire ecosystem anyway, because as it turns out, you kinda need central resources to use, well, anything) they refuse to do this.

> No one cares that you print your own versions of valuable pokemon cards at home.

In fact people do care! If you sold counterfeit Pokemon cards to a collector, you could be sued in civil court and possibly charged with fraud for misrepresenting goods! Not to mention sued by the holder of that intellectual property for reproducing it without their permission.

Maybe they can't recover their money under this stupid system, perhaps that's true, but that only matters if literally all your assets are in crypto. If you have a car, they can take that. If you have a home, they can take that. If you have $50 to your name in a checking account, they can take that and burden you for life with debt for whatever that doesn't cover. And in the event you manage to somehow crypto your entire life and they "can't touch you," you then go to jail because while everything is else beyond the reach of the feds (kind of) YOU, as in the physical manifestation of you, are not.

Up to the point where you leave this ecosystem, you have "money" in ethereum. Once you cross that threshold, you have *jack shit.* Actually you have less than jack shit, because you're down whatever real money you exchanged for fake money on the promises of whoever convinced you to buy into it.

[miracle2k]

> We already have an untraceable value credit system in place for transacting illicit things. It's called cash.

Sure, cash is great. I hope we get to keep it, but it seems clear we'll need to fight for that. It has advantages over crypto, and but also obvious limitations. Cash and crypto are both tools that provide some measure of freedom to individuals. It's not only about laws you perceive as illegitimate. It's that all laws are unjust to some degree some of the time.

All I am saying is there is no future where drug legalization replaces the need to have cash - or crypto.

> Ownership as a concept only functions as a social contract with everyone else who shares your reality.

Right, and that's exactly how NFTs work? There are a bunch of enthusiasts who share a common belief, namely that tokens minted on a blockchain - by an artist purporting to represent an artwork they created, or a collectible purporting to represent a community - have a value.

If you create your own token purporting to represent someone else's artwork, this community won't value it, nor will they be bothered by it.

I don't fully understand the remainder of your point; if someone sold you a crypto token while making false representations as to what you are getting, you can try to sue them in court, and I would hope you'd win that case. That's a feature of our legal system. If you don't know the identity of the seller, or they aren't in your jurisdictions reach, you may have some trouble getting your judgement enforced. That's a property of a bearer asset.

[ToucanLoucan]

> Sure, cash is great. I hope we get to keep it, but it seems clear we'll need to fight for that.

OH COME OFF IT. There is not a Government on this planet that wants to get rid of cash. We've been TRYING to get rid of the PENNY in the United States for actual decades because it's fucking useless and we can't even manage that, and you think there's a future where we get rid of all of physical currency? Go outside!

Like telling people to touch grass is low-key shitty but Jesus Christ, I will never, ever get over how talking to crypto people is talking to fucking aliens. Y'all are trying to build a new financial sector for the entire economy and you don't know a SINGLE. THING. About doing that. You've build an admittedly quite impressive hammer in the form of cryptography in the form of currency, and based on that, you just assume everything else is merely a simple nail, ready to be driven by it. It is EXHAUSTING.

> All I am saying is there is no future where drug legalization replaces the need to have cash - or crypto.

Crypto is useless as currency! Absolutely useless. It's market volatility makes it PURELY a speculative vehicle as it's liable to change value by orders of magnitude between when you order something and when you pay for it, meaning accepting it as payment for anything is fraught with returns with negotiations with pending balances or refunds, each of which can re-occur in itself. A currency that is more stable and operates with lower fees is only that because of it's lack of adoption. As one gains users and traction and becomes attractive to speculators, it becomes both more expensive to use, slower in operation, and the value begins spiking and crashing because of those things. And that's not an "unfortunate side effect" or whatever, THAT'S what TO THE MOON MEANS. That's the GOAL of all these projects is to drive the value through the ceiling and cash out.

> Right, and that's exactly how NFTs work? There are a bunch of enthusiasts who share a common belief, namely that tokens minted on a blockchain - by an artist purporting to represent an artwork they created, or a collectible purporting to represent a community - have a value.

> If you create your own token purporting to represent someone else's artwork, this community won't value it, nor will they be bothered by it.

Except, again, that's not the situation. The absolute explosion of art theft and the enthusiastic participation of crypto users with it seems to indicate nobody really gives even a slight shit about owning real art, apart from being able to resell it later at a higher price. Tokens minted of the same pieces, tokens minted by people who aren't the artist, tokens minted of work from DECEASED artists, name it, it was made, it was sold and is probably still being traded today.

Like I'm willing to grant you just might not know this because you seem to be quite detached from reality, but I cannot overemphasize the GULF between what you think is happening and what is actually happening. It's PROFOUND.

> I don't fully understand the remainder of your point; if someone sold you a crypto token while making false representations as to what you are getting, you can try to sue them in court, and I would hope you'd win that case.

No, you can't. Because the thing they sold had no value, because they didn't own it. They sold you a receipt for a purchase of a thing that isn't real. Therefore, no court is gonna do shit.

[miracle2k]

Try to use less all-caps?

> OH COME OFF IT. There is not a Government on this planet that wants to get rid of cash.

It is a real civil rights concern:

- https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/say-no-cashless...

- https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/710118/6bab368611007...

These aren't exactly cryptobros.

> Tokens minted of the same pieces, tokens minted by people who aren't the artist, tokens minted of work from DECEASED artists, name it, it was made, it was sold and is probably still being traded today.

Not really. Copy-minting did happen extensively, but it's more like phishing emails trying to get someone to click. No one really minted or traded these tokens. There were one or two projects based on stolen artworks that had a modicum of traction, but none that I know that is relevant today.

Feel free to proof your point by citing examples if you think you can.

> No, you can't. Because the thing they sold had no value, because they didn't own it. They sold you a receipt for a purchase of a thing that isn't real. Therefore, no court is gonna do shit.

Just one example: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/are-nfts-property-stol...