Comment by Eddy_Viscosity2

Comment by Eddy_Viscosity2 10 months ago

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The 'crypto ideology' (for lack of a better phrase) of some who completely believed in the power of crypto to change the world and unshackle the masses from the tyranny of financial regulations. But then all the scams happened (and keep happening), and many commented how its was like they were speed running the last few hundred years of financial markets in realization that many rules/laws were they for good reason.

I don't see this country thing as being any different. More cynically, I see this as a bunch of divas who want to officially be above the law because they feel they are better than that and its only holding back their greatness. They, and they alone, are the only ones smart enough to create utopia.

ETH_start 10 months ago

There is no empirical evidence that the laws you're talking about benefit society. Take anti-money laundering laws for example, which have demonstrated no evidence of policy effectiveness:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1...

For a more personal look, see how it affects people born in the "wrong country":

https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO/s/XYh1ajhP0P

The actual laws that are needed, are those against victimful acts, like fraud, and you don't need the kind of freedom-reducing regulatory restrictions that have become so numerous in recent decades to have anti-fraud laws.

Effective enforcement of anti-fraud laws alone would be sufficient to stop the bulk of the scams in the crypto space, and there is nothing inherent to crypto that prevents legal authorities from pursuing those who perpetrate fraud and bringing them to justice.

On the plus side, free market competition has fostered innovation and discipline in the crypto space. We've gone from bug-prone smart contracts like the DAO eight years ago to highly secure bluechip DeFi applications like Aave, Uniswap, Compound and MakerDAO surviving completely unscathed in the last crypto crash.

Scams still abound unfortunately, and I believe that will only subside once people at large understand that crypto is more like cash than like a bank account, in that there is no social consensus system that can reverse fraudulent transactions in crypto like there is in banking. This is the flip side of being able to control your own funds, and transfer them without censorship.

Once people do broadly come to realize this aspect of crypto, I believe they will be far more cautious in how they choose to handle it.

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  • Eddy_Viscosity2 10 months ago

    > there is nothing inherent to crypto that prevents legal authorities from pursuing those who perpetrate fraud and bringing them to justice.

    I will happy to be corrected here, but my understanding is that the foundationally key aspect of crypto that makes it worth anything at all, is that people can use it to circumvent traditional financial tracking of transfers and how they are associated with the individuals who made them. So in order for legal authorities to go after fraudsters, wouldn't they need these tools - the very ones crypto circumvent by design?

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    • KetoManx64 10 months ago

      Bitcoin, the first, biggest and most important cryptocurrency blockchain is a often referred to a "public ledger". There is no obfuscation built into itz all transactions you make are public and if someone knows your wallet address they can see every transaction you've made. Very few cryptocurrencies are private by default (eg, Monero) and they hold a very small portion of the cryptocurrencies market cap.

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    • ETH_start 10 months ago

      Most of the scams happening in the crypto space involve a significant non-crypto element, like a fake website that is made to look another website, or social engineering through messages on Discord.

      These criminals are well known by crypto communities, with repeat offenders targeting a given community numerous times over a course of months/years. Law enforcement has numerous opportunities to go after these individuals, even if they used a perfectly traceless cryptocurrency.

      In the case of FTX, it was run like a traditional bank, taking deposits and holding users'crypto and fiat assets on their behalf. The signs of a fraud were replete for many months before the crash that exposed it all, but the company was simply never investigated.

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  • bdjsiqoocwk 10 months ago

    > Take anti-money laundering laws for example,

    So are you arguing that we should do away with those laws and people should be allowed to launder money? Or are you arguing that we should keep the laws and not go after "victims" and presumably hope that everyone behaved according to the law?

    If possible keep it short, if you're writing 7 paragraphs I can't be bothered.

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    • ETH_start 10 months ago

      AML laws are misnamed. They're really something like "report every transaction to the authorities" laws, or "prove yourself innocent to your bank before you transact" laws.

      I'm suggesting that the transaction layer is not the point at which crime should be targeted. Doing so requires the entire population being burdened with prior restraint where every they need to jump through hoops for every transaction, and need to give up their privacy altogether.

      If criminal acts are generating illicit revenue, then those acts should be investigated and prosecuted. Investigations should be targeted, and done in a manner that respects privacy rights, with authorities obtaining warrants before searching an individual.

      Real criminals and crime leave all manner of evidence trails. The dragnet surveillance approach to combating crime, that requires doing away with foundational rights like the right to privacy and the right to be presumed innocent and to freely associate, is not justified in any way.

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      • Eddy_Viscosity2 10 months ago

        I agree with the sentiment here, but financial transactions have to be recorded anyway as proof of who is supposed to have what. If people can be anonymous in these transactions, then they will be used for criminal activity. These scams and such are all money-driven crimes, so the 'follow-the-money' approach seems like it would be the most effective to find the criminals and also used as proof by prosecutors to the courts.

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      • bdjsiqoocwk 10 months ago

        Well I'm just happy that people like you have no power.

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        • ETH_start 10 months ago

          So you would rather we all be under warrantless surveillance by the state? Looking at the historical record, do you think this makes us more safe?

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bdjsiqoocwk 10 months ago

No one believed any of that. It's always been about selling to someone else higher than you paid for it.

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