Crypto Madness

[GGT]

Yeah, and no one really knows how "economic sanctions" would work against crypto investments by nefarious governments like Putin's Russia. Sounds to me like it's a platform *ripe* for laundering political money on a global scale.

[Aimless]

Over 10% of the crypto market's value may be held by Russians. Guessing most of that crypto isn't held by ordinary people.

Twitter Link

[Being]

Over 10% of the crypto market's value may be held by Russians. Guessing most of that crypto isn't held by ordinary people.

17,379,175 Russians own crypto. Topped only by India 100,740,320 and the USA 27,491,810.

https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership/

Click View More in the table to drill down.

[ar81]

There is a possibility that when governments implement CBDCs in 2 or 3 years, you will be forced to exit crypto and move to CBDC.
The difference of CBDC is that CBDC is a government controlled currency, and it is programmable, so they can force you to spend it before it expires, or if they put caps on carbon, you may not spend beyond your carbon allowance. Money will be as programmable as software and it means your money could be full of rules where government basically forces you to use your money in certain ways.

[Lewkowski]

There is a possibility that when governments implement CBDCs in 2 or 3 years, you will be forced to exit crypto and move to CBDC.
The difference of CBDC is that CBDC is a government controlled currency, and it is programmable, so they can force you to spend it before it expires, or if they put caps on carbon, you may not spend beyond your carbon allowance. Money will be as programmable as software and it means your money could be full of rules where government basically forces you to use your money in certain ways.

I see that coming to China and maybe the EU since they also hate freedom. Things would have to get considerably worse in America for that forced usage of digital fiat currency in lieu of Bitcoin isn't going to fly.

[Loki]

Lewk, how often do you use Bitcoin?

[Lewkowski]

Lewk, how often do you use Bitcoin?

Almost never, I'm just holding it instead of using it. The infrastructure is there to easily use it but it hasn't really taken off mainstream quite yet (though more and more lately) and I'm pretty happy with having everything flow through one account for budgeting purposes than to deal with the hassle of using bitcoin with bitcoin friendly entities and then another account for everything else.

[Steely Glint]

governments implement CBDCs in 2 or 3 years

No way.

[Ziggy Stardust]

and maybe the EU since they also hate freedom.

You're a fucking moron Lewk.

[Loki]

Almost never, I'm just holding it instead of using it. The infrastructure is there to easily use it but it hasn't really taken off mainstream quite yet (though more and more lately) and I'm pretty happy with having everything flow through one account for budgeting purposes than to deal with the hassle of using bitcoin with bitcoin friendly entities and then another account for everything else.

So you're really riled up at the government regulating a behavior that neither you nor most law-abiding citizens actually engage in?

[LittleFuzzy]

So you're really riled up at the government regulating a behavior that neither you nor most law-abiding citizens actually engage in?

This IS Lewk. He is someone who, despite championing using a flat sales tax rather than an income tax, loudly objected to the idea of there being a sales-tax on very high end luxury items like trips to space. Making use of a sales tax is only moral to him if it is primarily used to ensure the poor stay poor. This is more of the same. And it actually makes sense, when you consider how he thinks about incentives and disincentives. Welfare is wrong because it's not about disincentivizing being poor. The way welfare should work is the government should be taking from the poor and giving to the rich, as an incentive to the poor to become rich themselves and stop being poor.

[Loki]

Sounds like an economic version of Stockholm syndrome.

[Steely Glint]

A deflationary currency would create generational wealth inequality so extreme even the boomers would look at it and be, like, 'jeez'. You're already fucked if you buy in at the current price of $40k and you're trying to compete with someone who brought in at $40 dollars, which in the sociopathic logic of libertarian-cryptobroism I guess you deserve it for not being "smart" enough to buy in when bitcoin was cheap, but if bitcoin's deflationary mechanics work as intended then future generations will *never* have the chance to buy in at $40 or even $40k. The bitcoin rich and then, presumably, their children would form a kind of new aristocracy. And this is the future bitcoiners want. They brag about it.

You take a superficial look at bitcoin, you see at best a technological novelty with a few interesting ideas and at worse a pointless waste of time, it's remarkable just how dystopian it gets, and how fast, when you really dig into the mechanics of it.

We should be thankful the technology is garbage.

[Lewkowski]

This IS Lewk. He is someone who, despite championing using a flat sales tax rather than an income tax, loudly objected to the idea of there being a sales-tax on very high end luxury items like trips to space. Making use of a sales tax is only moral to him if it is primarily used to ensure the poor stay poor. This is more of the same. And it actually makes sense, when you consider how he thinks about incentives and disincentives. Welfare is wrong because it's not about disincentivizing being poor. The way welfare should work is the government should be taking from the poor and giving to the rich, as an incentive to the poor to become rich themselves and stop being poor.

If you want less of something you tax, if you want more of something you subsidize it. Why do you want less success?

[Steely Glint]

Jesus Christ, this is a new low.



I mean, I know there are some shady people in crypto but those two? Come on.

[Loki]

Their private jets don't pay for themselves.

[Dreadnaught]

A deflationary currency would create generational wealth inequality so extreme even the boomers would look at it and be, like, 'jeez'. You're already fucked if you buy in at the current price of $40k and you're trying to compete with someone who brought in at $40 dollars, which in the sociopathic logic of libertarian-cryptobroism I guess you deserve it for not being "smart" enough to buy in when bitcoin was cheap, but if bitcoin's deflationary mechanics work as intended then future generations will *never* have the chance to buy in at $40 or even $40k. The bitcoin rich and then, presumably, their children would form a kind of new aristocracy. And this is the future bitcoiners want. They brag about it.

You take a superficial look at bitcoin, you see at best a technological novelty with a few interesting ideas and at worse a pointless waste of time, it's remarkable just how dystopian it gets, and how fast, when you really dig into the mechanics of it.

We should be thankful the technology is garbage.

I lean towards this view

[Lewkowski]

So you're really riled up at the government regulating a behavior that neither you nor most law-abiding citizens actually engage in?

If the government banned mohawks I'd still be against it and I don't have an investment in mohawks.

[Aimless]

And this is the future bitcoiners want.

They wanna hook up with girls in junior high, that's about it.

[Steely Glint]

So, if you imagine there was a big concert for a major artist and obviously there's limit supply of those so you need to snap them up quick because it's Kanye or Taylor Swift or something, and there's 100s of thousands of people trying to get them at the same time... how high do you think gas would get, with everyone trying to outbid each other to get their transaction through faster? You'd be paying maybe 10x-100x more than the actual price of the ticket in gas?

[Dreadnaught]

What in the name of hell am I looking at here

[Steely Glint]

What you're looking at there is a spike in transaction fees ("gas") on Ethereum in the early hours of this morning, London time. Specifically, for several hours it was $3859 for a NFT sale, $3519 to exchange one cryptocurrency with another cryptocurrency and $1032 to transfer some Tether. This was because, I guess, some people were trying to buy some new NFTs all at once or something.

The irony of this is that on this air quotes "decentralised" system a spike in demand for one product renders the entire network effectively unusable for several hours until the transaction costs have calmed down.

This is with a miniscule (compared to the global banking industry) amount of transactions being processed.

[Lewkowski]

What in the name of hell am I looking at here

Here's a decent article on what happened:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/1/23...eeds-yuga-labs

Also note Ethereum transactions and Bitcoin transactions are separate chains. There are other cryptocurrencies that have different types of processes so called light weight currencies like Mina protocol or Vechain won't ever have Etherum type high gas fees. Bitcoin also created a layered solution through the Lightning Network that allows millions of transactions a second.

[Steely Glint]

A number of users also reported losing thousands of dollars to gas fees in failed transactions.

Oh yeah, I forgot about this. If the cost of the transaction exceeds the amount you bid for gas at the time the transaction is processed then the transaction just fails with an 'out of gas' error and you still lose the gas fee.

This is intended behaviour. I have no words.

Bitcoin also created a layered solution through the Lightning Network that allows millions of transactions a second.

Lightning Network just shifts the cost/inefficiency of the blockchain from transactions themselves to the act of opening and closing a channel.

[Loki]

This fails to solve any problem we currently have in the financial system while creating a whole lot of new ones (unpredictability, high transaction costs, the potential all your money will be stolen, the potential of you forgetting your password). How any reasonable person is into this is beyond me.

[Lewkowski]

This fails to solve any problem we currently have in the financial system while creating a whole lot of new ones (unpredictability, high transaction costs, the potential all your money will be stolen, the potential of you forgetting your password). How any reasonable person is into this is beyond me.

Out of curiosity what do you think the solution is to government control of fait? Oh wait what am I thinking, Loki you *want* the government to be able to shut down anyone's bank account if they disapprove of the behavior.

[Loki]

Out of curiosity what do you think the solution is to government control of fait? Oh wait what am I thinking, Loki you *want* the government to be able to shut down anyone's bank account if they disapprove of the behavior.

You mean the way Russians had their crypto wallets frozen at the beginning of the current war?

[LittleFuzzy]

How odd. You approved of the government doing exactly that, without recourse to the courts, when it was introduced back in 2001. As part of the Patriot Act.

But it has absolutely nothing to do with fiat currency. You could be using gold and the government could still do the same thing.

[Steely Glint]

Loki you *want* the government to be able to shut down anyone's bank account if they disapprove of the behavior.

You want them to kill people because they disapprove of their behaviour (i.e. they do a crime), or at the very least deprive them of their liberty, but shutting down their bank account is a bridge too far?

[Lewkowski]

You mean the way Russians had their crypto wallets frozen at the beginning of the current war?

Only on exchanges, you can't freeze a personal wallet.