I’m curious if you would prefer crypto disappear entirely, or if you would prefer it be properly regulated so it has all the same, or greater, protections so that it can be part of the economy without being as risky for consumers.
I can only assume the early internet had little to no consumer protections on purchases (compared to the protections they have today, that is), but I could be wrong on that. Laws and regulations tend to always lag behind technology.
I like the idea of taking power away from big banks. Crypto is no silver bullet, but I’d like to think it could get there one day. But since capitalism always protects itself, I doubt any wealthy lobbies are going to be asking congress to pass common sense regulation for a currency that takes power away from institutional banks.
Hm, my understanding was that blockchain was the technology that handles the distributed ledger rather than the currency itself. Blockchain seems useful to a point in this realm, but is, like we both know, extremely energy inefficient and unsustainable.
No arguments here. Though I think there could be better solutions out aside from using some centralized authority to delist stolen tokens. Blacklisting certain wallet IDs could be a crowd-sourced project, much like how blocklists for adblockers are largely community-driven.
Gotta disagree with “crypto doesn’t take power away from institutions”. Exactly as you said, if institutions leverage their pre-existing power in the crypto space, it becomes centralized because a small pool of wealthy players control the majority of the currency. The currency itself is not centralized, but it can be exploited by bad actors who wish to manipulate its value (or just profit off of it, either way). If existing institutions weren’t using their massively accumulated wealth to affect the crypto space, they would be losing power over the people who decided to avail themselves of it and bypass conventional banks. I consider this a weakness in cryptocurrency that needs to be addressed, but is this weakness any different from any other currency?
Zero arguments from me. It’s an environmental disaster.
Depends on how you intereact with crypto. In the US, most states require crypto brokers to verify the identity of those trading on their platforms. No different from opening a checking account with a bank. Sure, one could get into crypto anonymously but it’s considerably harder. Some crypto ATMs exist, but I think virtually all of them have cameras and require you to show photo ID to use them (at least in the US).
I disagree that it’s been a speculative vehicle since its inception. It’s undeniably a speculative investment now, and has been for years, but when it first started out, it was basically worthless and adopted by a handful of businesses who were understandably pissed off after the 2008 market crash. People naturally speculated as to whether or not it would take off, and I think it’s unfortunate that it became a speculative investment by those who weren’t really interested in its use as a currency.
I’m no economist, but I don’t see much difference between “crypto’s value is implicitly tied to the belief that it can be sold for FIAT” and “FIAT’s value is implicitly tied to the belief that the issuing government values it”
Oh believe me, none of this is news to me. I just wanted to see what you thought. I’ve found the cryptocurrency conversation interesting as the years have passed and enjoy asking people for their thoughts when they appear to be engaging in good faith. Most people I see are very unpleasantly hardline for or against crypto and don’t care to take time to discuss any of the nuance.