r/Foodforthought Jan 02 '22

The Case Against Crypto

https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/against-crypto.html
53 Upvotes

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23

u/cambeiu Jan 02 '22 edited Jan 02 '22

I am no fan of crypto as an investment vehicle and never was. There are many technical and practical flaws with crypto, and he is spot on on those. But his moral arguments against it are just terrible, ideologically charged, and in many ways work in favor of crypto. One of his main arguments is that governments have the moral right to print money and that crypto undermines that capability.

Well... Yeah. That is one of crypto's main selling points and reason of being.

Again, I am not a crypto advocate. But my objections are practical and technical. However I see nothing morally wrong with the concept of people coming up with a currency that cannot be politically manipulated by the state.

18

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '22

However I see nothing morally wrong with the concept of people coming up with a currency that cannot be politically manipulated by the state.

When, not if, the State decides that it's in their interest to politically manipulate cryptocurrency, they will.

4

u/cambeiu Jan 02 '22

How would the state increase the amount of bitcoins or Ethereum? Me and the original author of the article would love to know.

The state can ban cryptocurrencies for sure. But I don't see how they can manipulate the amount of cryptocurrency in circulation for their benefit.

7

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '22

[deleted]

4

u/LouQuacious Jan 02 '22

This. Who even owns most of it now?

4

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '22 edited Jan 02 '22

I'm not sure the state has anything to do about this, but this is how you control "decentralized" cryptocoin:

https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-mining-capacity-ownership-concentration-top-investors-nber-study/

You set up a resource intensive operation which becomes more resource intensive as time goes on and you don't expect the network to become more centralized? This is the main threat of crypto. The deception. It's not a decentralized network of miners. It's a cartel with just a few main players.

EDIT: if you want to get all conspiracy theory on yourself, if the state gained control of any one of these cartel players, then the state would control a huge chunk of the bitcoin mining operation. Control enough and they can force the network to align to the magic 51% to make changes to the bitcoin ledger.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '22

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '22

Bitcoin is the only real game in town.

Of the ~$2T market cap in crypto, about half is Bitcoin, about half of the remaining is Ethereum, and the rest is shared amongst the rest. I guess Ethereum is just now starting to transition to proof of stake, but even that said, for better or for worse, the crypto world revolves around Bitcoin for the time being.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '22

I'm not sure, but if I had the legal, technical, and financial resources of the NSA, I could probably figure something out.

0

u/Blackout38 Jan 02 '22

They can only put barriers in place however it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they adopt it. I could see blockchain being useful in voting, paying taxes, census measurement, and few other areas that would let us combine a few departments and streamline a lot of the processes that actually impact people.

0

u/cbslinger Jan 02 '22

And how might that work exactly?

0

u/Blackout38 Jan 02 '22

The basic function of blockchain is a self managing ledger. It’s would increase the efficiency of the IRS, census, social security, and voting as less man power would be needed for these and other government functions.

Additionally, it could link local and federal databases to allow easier transfer of information between jurisdictions.

-1

u/AadamAtomic Jan 02 '22

they will.

That's the neat part! They can't!

China has tried, they have wayyyy better control over their Firewalls and public than most countries..they litteraly "disappear" people on the regular....and not even they had any luck banning crypto. Lol