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A Use Case for Cryptocurrency
As I’ve said many times, I’m broadly skeptical about cryptocurrencies, think blockchain falls right behind self-driving cars as the second most over-hyped computer technology, and believe Bitcoin is a speculative bubble of little intrinsic value.
Having said that, there is one use case for cryptocurrency that I’ve acknowledged from the start: it can be a practical way for people to execute transactions that those in authority would like to prevent them from making. In some benighted places, like Cuba and Venezuela and other progressive utopias, cryptocurrencies allow people to circumvent kleptocratic governments. That’s nice, and I’m all for that, but it isn’t (yet) a First World problem.
However, what is a First World problem is sanctimonious “woke” corporations that put their own smug self-righteous moral superiority over serving their customers. That includes, for example, every financial institution that threatens to refuse service to legal gun dealers.
So, while the largest serious application of cryptocurrency transactions in the United States is probably to enable criminals to get paid for their crimes, there’s a real, legitimate application as well: making it possible for law-abiding citizens to transact legal business that gives the preening pansies of woke America the vapors.
Those gun sellers who don’t already should start accepting cryptocurrencies.
Anyone interested in cryptocurrencies might want to listen to Rich Goldberg’s excellent new Cryptonite podcast.
Published in General
This is getting really bad. Biden is proposing some really crazy regulators in the financial system. I think they are trying to move the Overton window and it’s working..
Retarding credit and capital this way is terrible. They just need to ban an industry if they don’t like it.
Also, I would hurry up on whatever plans you have. lol
That article has a quote from another great interview from that guy. The whole thing is free on hidden forces. It’s more about social stuff in comparison to the fall of the Soviet union.
There is also the hard money aspect that governments are worried about. When they talk about money laundering, I think it’s far more that they don’t want hard money to get popular.
I’m pretty sure the United States really does have to worry about cryptocurrency undermining our geopolitical power. Look for interviews of a guy name Mike Green.
https://blockworks.co/el-salvadors-president-calls-us-senators-boomers-over-bitcoin-bill/
Except the vast majority of people who carry cash around don’t have it taken by police, or anyone else.
Trust me, if people start carrying large amounts of cash they will seize it.
Do you think in Canada right now anyone with a lot of cash searched by police will keep it?
I don’t think there are enough police in the country to do that. Maybe 700,000 total, spread over a country this side, that’s over 500 non-police for every cop. That’s mostly slanted towards larger cities too. Where I live, there are I think 3 or 4 deputy sheriffs for a population of over 3,000.
Roadblock
Search Cars
There you go.
He will just do it by fiat.
Can’t have people in control of their own money.
What kills me is, if you stick some Mongolian tögrög in a safe and then it goes up because people want it, and then you trade it for something, you are supposed to get taxed for that. Pieces of paper.
Not one percent of politicians anywhere can tell you how legal tender laws advance human flourishing. (just to be clear it would be terrible if we lost the reserve currency status, but that doesn’t mean we run this crap to advance distributed prosperity)
Stonk spelled backwards is knots.
3 or 4 deputies could probably handle one roadblock. There are at least half-a-dozen easy ways in and out of town.
The point is that just like the police don’t have to shoot more than a few people to disperse a crowd, they don’t have to steal the cash of more than a few people to get people to stop carrying or storing money.
I don’t think those types of situations are very comparable.
Yes, this is exactly right. and as we see in the current “unrest” (in which only the government is “restive”), the government has national resources which can be concentrated on hot spots. This is a sorta localized, sorta generalized issue, but only a few local hotspots can serve as pressure points.
This is the same way that police, with the benefit of training, radios, red lights, and top cover, can effectively (YMMV) police a city of hundreds of square miles and tens of millions of people. C3 is Key. Computers just help.
As long as the city is mostly inclined to behave anyway. But it takes only a small change in that, for the police to be totally overwhelmed.
Your point is valid (IMHO) and still stands, as you are not trying to cover all bases. Rather, you point out that one can get around run-of-the-mill woke corporate shenanigans through bypassing their preferred methods. This thread has wandered far afield. Your gun store example is perfect for this, provided that the gun store accepts crypto. Well more people accept it tomorrow than yesterday, and long may it wave.
While I have serious reservations about crypto (Biden is about to back me up on this), that is because my use case is different — inappropriate for crypto. Always use the right hammer (uh sorry, tool) for the job. Whether you develop a hunch about fascist corporate government-by-proxy is a sidebar to your larger point. Crypto has a role to play in privacy and “assurance” of financial capability. Some folks go all-in, treating it like digital Jesus. I’ll assume (without response) that yours is a more nuanced portfolio.
Good post. I think I helped derail it. Which gives me an EXCELLENT idea. Stay tuned.
It’s never too late if economics is the driver for doubt. Once it’s too late to invest in ammo, you won’t be able to buy it for any price.
Small ammo, like water, is the solution to a range of acute survival problems. Some preppers think they can collect ammo for barter usage in a post-Biden scenario. WRONG. You don’t barter with ammo. People who need ammo too late will just use it against you once they have some. At least you can give or share water outside your circle of trust if you really want to — ammo, not so much.
If you aren’t already invested in the two most precious metals of the bad-branch future — brass and lead — it is never too late to make a worthy investment. If it ever pays for itself, you’ll know it without checking your grungy account notebook.
I’m comparing instilling fear of loss by government action with instilling fear of loss by government action.
And it’s as simple as making an example of others to control the population. That’s what holding the Jan 6 protesters is ultimately about.
And that small change is either nothing left to lose, OR “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism”.
When it gets big enough, I don’t think “making an example” would stop the truckers protests etc any more than British ships etc “making examples” stopped the American Revolution. It can get pretty quickly to a point where the more they try to stop it, the bigger it gets.
“all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism”
Yeah, my quote is, I’m sure you know, from the Declaration of Independence. It hit its critical mass.
yep
The Norks are on the case:
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220217000673
Hank: you should quit while you’re behind. Your bitcoin is PayPal 2.0 essay aged poorly, hopefully you have aged better
Snort.
No, I’ll stand by every word (or pretty much every word, as I haven’t reread them recently) of both this post and my earlier critique of Bitcoin here. Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme and a grotesquely inefficient way to manage transactions. For most users it provides no advantage over Paypal or Venmo or any other online payment system.
It’s a gift to criminals, a faddish speculative bubble, and a ludicrous misuse of electricity.
Pretty cool algorithms, though, and an origin story that should be a big hit someday.
Consider this for a second: Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, founders of PayPal, would vehemently disagree that bitcoin is PayPal 2.0.
The statement was idiotic in 2018 and it is more idiotic today
You can be stubborn or you can be smart and you are choosing to be stubborn
I don’t get it. What are you trying to accomplish by badmouthing people and pushing your view, as if castigating someone for what he said years ago makes your argument for you now. What’s about to happen to bit coin now that you want to come out and boost it.
And by the way, what are the three most expensive purchases you’ve made with bit coin this year (without converting it into dollars)? Bought a house? A car? Groceries? Or a cup of coffee?
Or maybe some [redacted].
Did I ever call Bitcoin “PayPal 2.0?” If so, I misspoke: Bitcoin isn’t anywhere near as good as PayPal.
You’re probably being gratuitously rude because you can’t actually make a rational case. I get that: the Bitcoin bubble requires that people remain enthusiastic about it as a speculative investment, and maintaining that enthusiasm requires people beating the drum of Bitcoin. I’ll assume you’re simply doing that, and will address a couple of comments to anyone else here who’s interested in the topic.
Bitcoin’s benefits relative to conventional payment systems are negligible unless you’re in one of those few categories I mentioned: people behind iron curtains, criminals, or folks engaging in transactions that big financial institutions have decided to discourage. That doesn’t apply to most of us; for most of us, Bitcoin is merely a speculative investment of low intrinsic utility.
In terms of transaction efficiency, Bitcoin is beyond atrocious. It’s a disaster. Established payment systems can process anywhere from a couple of thousand to tens of thousands of transactions per second, and do so with modest computational costs. In contrast, Bitcoin is good for on the order of ten (10) transactions per second — and those transactions cost an enormous amount of energy to process. Bitcoin is about the least efficient way imaginable to process transactions electronically. That’s be design: inefficiency is the core of Bitcoin’s “proof of work” algorithm, and the thing that makes Bitcoins a scarce (and thus interesting to investors) commodity.
I’m not saying that Bitcoin isn’t a gold mine for some people. It obviously is. But it’s a farce as a payment system (again, for normal people not in that minority I mentioned having special needs), and an ecological atrocity.
That last bit doesn’t bother me, as I think our energy challenges are largely self-inflicted by people ignorant of climate reality. I’m a big fossil fuel advocate. But Bitcoin is still ridiculous.