[revel]

I was a big enough believer in crypto to literally start a company in this space only to leave it completely disenchanted and deeply pessimistic about the direction of the industry. I felt that there were many real legal and regulatory challenges that governments just didn't want to deal with. No government wants to enable money laundering, black markets, corruption and terrorism; or so I thought!

Now we're in a situation that's so much worse than I ever imagined -- Trump coins are vehicles for naked bribery and corruption with a sprinkle of encryption on top. I was worried about black markets, Trump has literally been using his office to grant access to top holders of his scam coin.

This is a big lesson for everyone about why some degree of regulation is necessary.

[viksit]

+1 to this - exactly the same experience. I started a company in the space because I believe that the decentralized technology and its ability to have world impact is truly amazing.

But after spending ~2y in the space, I realized another thing -- the people in this space right now are in it purely for speculation and monetary gains. There's a lot of talk about decade long horizons, but any app that achieves pmf in the short to medium term has to cater to the speculators or die.

We chose not to go down the path of launching a coin or doing speculative stuff, even though the demand for it was intense. We hit some PMF around creators, but didn't have the conviction that it would scale without speculation. A year down the line, I believe that was the right pov to have.

[dylan604]

>No government wants to enable money laundering, black markets, corruption and terrorism; or so I thought!

what ever gave you that thought? There are countries that do this right out in the open. The rest of the countries do it in various shades of gray to not be right out in the open, but still visible for those that can see in higher bit depths of gray than black and white

[Sammi]

You're not wrong, but your comment lacks so much necessary detail that I find it's just causing noise.

[dylan604]

I mean, how much details do you need for this to be understood? Every tinpot dictator openly run black markets, are the definition of corrupt, while many openly operate or support terrorist organizations within their borders. Depending one looking at the US from the point of view of someone living in a country they have rained freedom down on for the past quarter century probably feels the same towards the US. Launching missiles from a remotely operated drone blowing up buildings while incurring civilian casualties definitely has the feeling of terrorism to me. They just hide it under the veil of defeating terrorism shades of gray.

I really feel like your comment was much more noisy than mine ever was.

[ethbr1]

Don't leave out money laundering! The US is also competitively good at that, post-9/11.

Err, I mean "good at ensuring the absolute privacy and confidentiality of financial clients."

[cmurf]

Is that really the lesson?

John Adams told us the Constitution is intended for a moral (or virtuous) people.

The point is the law isn't self enforcing. People have to insist upon Constitutional order, not because of (blind) faith in it, but because the alternative is tyranny. Not anarchy.

Does this country deserve Constitutional order? The People abandoned it by electing someone virulently and openly opposed to it.

The regulation you seek is utterly meaningless in an autocracy. Or even in a unitary executive theory of Constitutional order.

But in the specific case of Trump, among the most untrustworthy liars America has produced, what does Constitutional duty mean to him? What does it mean that he took the oath of office? He said the words but no serious person believes he took an oath.

People still have no idea what we've done. And what is yet to come.

The POTUS is a psycho. And the replacements aren't good people either.

100 days down, 1369 to go. It's going to get much worse.

[citizenpaul]

>No government wants to enable money laundering, black markets, corruption and terrorism; or so I thought!

There's an old saying that goes something like there is crime, there is organized crime and there is government.

[csomar]

> This is a big lesson for everyone about why some degree of regulation is necessary.

I really wonder how you come up to that conclusion especially that there is more than a degree of regulation. If regulation will not apply for the top anyway, then it's better to remove all regulation.

[psyklic]

Removing crypto regulation only benefits those at the top and scammers, since it gives them one-sided control of the market with few consequences. Which is exactly what's happening.

[ceejayoz]

"If we can't stop serial killers, let's legalize murder!"

[cruzcampo]

It takes a lot of character to admit you were wrong and see the error of your ways. Congrats!