
Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies: Burn It with Fire [video] - wz1000
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=240&v=xCHab0dNnj4
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cornholio
There is a contradiction when saying that cryptocurrencies are great for
criminal endeavors but useless in the real world - because, clearly, the black
market is part of the real world. Illegal things are not necessarily immoral
things - sometimes the reverse is true.

We should at no point compare unstable, 1st generation bubbly tokens with fiat
cash at it exists today. We are fast entering an era of the cashless society:
every transaction, every purchase ever done stored for the duration of your
lifetime and up for grabs for the tax-man, law enforcement, any interested
agency and any future repressive regime. Financial privacy is quickly becoming
illegal and synonymous with money laundry.

Crypto is certainly a nice thing I would hope to exist in this brave new
world.

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schoen
There are a lot of arguments in here, but I think the main one goes something
like this:

* Government control over and monitoring of financial transactions, currencies, and financial services is a good thing. It exists for many reasons and serves many important purposes. Many regulations respond to historical experiences of problems which critics might not be familiar with.

* Cryptocurrencies have been created and adopted by people who actively dislike such regulation, disagree with particular policy aspects of it, want to experiment with alternatives to it, or benefit from avoiding it. I (Weaver) don't sympathize with these people, don't appreciate their creation of parallel monetary and financial mechanisms partly or wholly outside of regulatory frameworks, and would be happy if they got in trouble or had these capabilities taken away.

* Cryptocurrencies are an unreasonably expensive, impractical, and risky alternative to existing financial institutions, instruments, and technologies for the overwhelming majority of purposes _except for_ the antiregulatory ones. If people are willing to bear these costs and risks, they probably don't understand them, or else they willingly accept them for antiregulatory purposes. I (Weaver) wish they would understand these costs and risks better and decide that they aren't worth it, or be prevented from pursuing antiregulatory goals.

My attitude is quite different from Weaver's, but I think it's good to be
aware of this argument.

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wz1000
Yes, even I'm sympathetic to the anti-regulatory uses of
cryptocurrency(donating to Wikileaks or safely buying drugs), but I haven't
really seen a use case for blockchains or cryptocurrencies outside of these.

From what I can see, blockchains can only be used to keep track of digital or
network resources, that can be transferred and validated on the network
itself. So you can track stuff like Zorgbucks or DNS addresses on the ledger,
but you run into serious problems when you need to keep track of meatspace
resources. The local governing authorities don't give a shit about who your
blockchain says owns this toothbrush or this plot of land. The only way to
track and enforce transfer of this kind of stuff is if you create a fleet of
Robocops to go along with your blockchain.

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hndamien
Neither of you have experienced warrantless freezing of assets of theft of
money by your financial institution. If you had, you would understand why it
might be important to preserve this control, even as a law abiding citizen.

~~~
schoen
I didn't mean to endorse Weaver's views, only to summarize them.

