[antaviana]

I have the impression that if Bitcoin was banned in all major countries, the valuations for cybersecurity companies would be much lower.

Bitcoin as a payment method has been instrumental in attracting the brightest minds to build malware and, as a result, has boosted the cybersecurity industry.

[andirk]

Interesting take that a lot of bright minds are being stolen from us due to the allure of riches via crypto malware. But I'm hard pressed to assume that they would have stayed on the virtuous side of things in the absence of crypto. Then again, being well versed in cryptography/blockchain/etc isn't something any person can learn quickly and easily.

I also use the skillset to build Bitcoin as a way to pinpoint who Satoshi is/was. It had to be 1 of those small finite # of people who were able to build such software around mid-2008.

Lightly relevant quote from Albert Einstein, "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

[eimrine]

I would like to say that data scavengers are a threat not to some really bad guys like killers, but for regular people who just want some democracy like journalists.