Shouldn't all true crypto believers hate this news?
It's the government trying to enforce their opinion of who should own those Bitcoins, thereby taking power away from the owner that the network has decided on, which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
> It's the government trying to enforce their opinion of who should own those Bitcoins, thereby taking power away from the owner that the network has decided on, which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
I really don't understand these arguments.
The law still applies whether or not you use cryptocurrency. Using cryptocurrency doesn't free someone from the consequences of their actions.
If we have the government to weigh in on which transactions are legitimate or not, why do we need a distributed ledger? Cryptocurrencies are trustless, but if we can trust the government to rule on ownership fairly why do we need a trustless system?
To say crypto isn't being inflated by behind the scenes players or right in your face players for a matter of fact is wishful thinking. Look at how bitfinex and tether operate. Artificially pumping the price of bitcoin by purchasing with newly printed tether that many sources point to isn't actually backed by money as they claim. Same goes for many of these stable coins. The crypto industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures who use bought influencers and pay for play media outlets. BTC and others are the easiest way for new entities to scam the proletariat. This is no revolution of the common citizen. When a select few own the majority of btc how can one surmise that it is invented for all. For example, one btc maximalist I know claims a 100 million dollar btc is on the way. So we will have a couple thousand btc trillionaires, what a utopian vision.
Isn't crypto plagued with the same problems? Sure fiat isn't perfect but it doesn't look like crypto is solving any of those problems, as exemplified here.
What if they acquired the Bitcoin without using illegal means
Probably not possible in this case, but in DeFi where everything is ruled by smart contracts, what would make executing behavior allowed by those contracts illegal.
Laws of USA and pretty much every other country reject the notion that "everything is ruled by smart contracts" and assert that legally, as far as their jurisdiction reaches, their law is the deciding factor. Contracts have their basis in contract law. You certainly can write a paper contract which "allows" some illegal behavior, and executing such a contract would be illegal, no matter what the contract says. The same applies for a "smart" contract.
Obvious no-true-scotsman. Believing that the goal of crypto is to circumvent laws regarding possession and theft is at most a fringe belief. The fact that this is at the top of HN demonstrates how devoid of merit crypto discussion here is.
Circumventing property law has absolutely been a selling point of crypto, front and center, since its inception. The real no-true-Scotsman is saying, "Those who want an extra-governmental system of property aren't the real crypto fans." Yes, they are.
In reality, crypto's true purpose is a moving target, so it can never be criticized because that's not what crypto is really about.
I know too many people who aim to become millionaires off of btc and then move to countries without cap gains tax. I feel their sentiments are held by a large constituent.
The flipside viewpoint is that cryptocurrency bypasses censorability by large corporates; cryptocurrency embodies the freedoms that appear to be espoused so loudly and delightedy by "the US"^.
Guns = good
Cryptocurrency = bad
Opinions I agree with = good
Opinions I disagree with = bad
Me getting mine = good
Someone else getting theirs = bad
Censorship is the battleground issue for the 2020's.
^Apologies for the lumping of 300 million people into a single sentence description, it's for the sake of trying to make a point of the entanglement of "the US" and "freedom" - which isn't a bad thing.
Lots of tools that are useful for marginalized groups are also useful for marginalized groups that want to spread hate. Same goes for the internet. It was hard in the beginning on internet mainstream (late 90s/early 00s) to find any community that didn't have a bunch of racists and fascists in it as well.
And it's official, Godwin's Law [0] has reached crypto. The purpose of Bitcoin is of course to support the Nazi cause. What other purpose could it possibly have? /s
Hint: Millions of people use Bitcoin as a:
- store of value to protect purchasing power over time
- inflation hedge to protect savings from the ravages of inflation
- a hedge to protect against corrupt governments manipulating currency
- protection from negative real interest rates
- censorship-resistant payments
- anonymous payments with instant finality (Lightning)
Money is a tool like any other. Cash, gold, NFTs, Bitcoin, and credit cards can be used for good or evil, lawful or unlawful purposes. The technology isn't inherently moral or immoral. It is just a tool.
The "it's really for nazis" argument is particularly weak. The critics must be getting desperate.
This is the first time you hear "Bitcoin is for nazis"? You're lucky, I guess. It's a pretty common accusation because many Bitcoin advocates are also far-right and/or extreme libertarian.
Anyway, I'm not saying that. Eichmann is simply a reductio ad absurdum example of the problems with the "it's just a tool / technology has no moral" position.
Keeping the government from "seizing" assets is a big crypto goal, and avoiding taxes is included in that for a subset of users (which is "theft" if you agree with them). What to do with actual theft is kind of swept under the rug until it actually happens to a cryptobro, at which point they are very much in favor of a central authority getting their bitcoins or ugly monkey jpegs back.
That's such a sad view, especially to hold in a generally curious place like HN. Another example is narcotics, yes we know that most narcotics usage is bad, but does that mean all usage of narcotics is bad? Obviously not, and we take those articles as they come, and discuss the angles each article has independently, in most cases at least. But somehow cryptocurrencies are so emotional for most people, that they hold such a black/white view of it.
We can, and should discuss subjects without "tainting" them with general, over-discussed points when we can, especially if we want to keep HN curious and not turn into a echo-chamber.
It might take time, but the fact that the government can't print free bitcoins as it does with fiat to pay off its usurious debt and devalue everyone's hard work is a compelling basis.
But won't you just hoard all of your earnings if it isn't inflated away by 2+% every year? I've been told spending would grind to a halt. Also without holding your wealth in cash in a bank, how would banks use your money as a reserve for lending out to their favored clients?
Not necessarily. Secondly, banks and money lending are immoral and predatory. Usury is prohibited in the three major religions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity), so we're better off without this dangerous practice. It goes hand in hand with fiat money by the way, the government is taking loans from the Fed, which is why it keeps needing to print more and more money to fuel it. The sooner we get rid of money lending as a business, the better.
On a side note, Islam requires a 2.5% Zakat from money hoarded in your account, to be donated to charity, so there's your solution against hoarding :) We don't need the government to fake print money to prevent people from hoarding. Better that money go into charity to truly have a more equitable society, as opposed to the fake and useless proposals we keep seeing and pitting parties against each other.
The Zakat is an interesting concept, but I don't see much functional difference from inflating the currency by 2.5% and then giving the newly created currency to the poor. Presumably some system is needed to enforce Zakat, that same mechanism of force could be used to inflate currency.
Since inflation is a centralized operation and Zakat is decentralized, I would wage enforcement of inflation is much easier than enforcement of Zakat.
According to https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_spending_analys..., in FY2021 welfare (not including Social Security or Medicare, which are for retirees, but including Medicaid) was $2,418B across federal, state, and local, about 76.6%. Neither Zakat or US welfare spending includes discretionary charity.
Overall, US welfare spending seems to be on the same order as, albeit a little less than, a Zakat imposed on all US wealth. Also, I'm not sure if this welfare figure includes EITC, which is the logical way that additional cash benefits should be distributed (since it avoids welfare cliffs).
Different types of wealth have different Zakat values, and not all wealth is subject to Zakat (e.g. the value of your home does not count towards Zakat). For example, currency, including fiat, gold, silver and other precious metals, is at 2.5% annually. Livestock has a different calculation, and so does produce.
Bitcoin and ETH combined are over 1T USD, much more than the figure you quoted. That's 25B annually, imagine how many lives that can change. Not to mention gold, which is at 11T, so 250B annually. Insane money that can revamp the entire planet.
It's strictly superior to have a system based on Zakat than the insane income taxes that we have today.
> Neither Zakat or US welfare spending includes discretionary charity.
Zakat is the bare minimum required for Muslims to pay per year. Islam heavily encourages discretionary charity, called Sadaqah. Both approaches are complementary.
> Different types of wealth have different Zakat values, and not all wealth is subject to Zakat (e.g. the value of your home does not count towards Zakat).
Of course. I did not want to get into such complications. This was more of a Fermi estimate to compare the amount a Zakat would raise in the US.
> It's strictly superior to have a system based on Zakat than the insane income taxes that we have today.
Maybe - remember that the US government pays for more besides bare welfare for the needy. Also the Islamic Zakat pays for more than welfare - also administration of Zakat (reasonable, but should be kept as low as possible) and Islamic missionary efforts (I don't think the US should redirect its welfare to "spreading liberty and democracy").
Even in Islam, there were more taxes than Zakat[1] - at the very least, a tax on harvests (corporate income or business reciepts tax) and a land tax - because Islamic governments also have other responsibilities besides charity. It would stand to reason that the federal and state governments would also continue to collect other taxes to support other government responsibilities. Also remember that inflation (certainly that intentionally engineered by the central bank) is effectively a wealth tax.
Which missionary efforts? If you mean paying Zakat to those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam that's something different.
> a tax on harvests
I mentioned this in my previous post. Livestock and produce have different Zakat calculations than the 2.5% of money held for a year.
If you're referring to Ushr, that's imposed on non-Muslim nations that taxed Muslims, so a tit-for-tat treatment, and it's not part of Islam per-se, but a socio-political decision.
> certainly that intentionally engineered by the central bank
Exactly what we don't want. We don't want a select few people to determine the tax rate for the entire population, affecting mainly people at the lower socioeconomic levels in society.
I'm going to assume you're from one of the countries mentioned below? It's my understanding most countries with Muslim majority do not centrally enforce Zakat.
>Today, in most Muslim-majority countries, zakat contributions are voluntary, while in Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen, zakat is mandated and collected by the state (as of 2015).[16][17]
[wikipedia ^]
>How so? Could you elaborate?
By compelling people to hold wealth denominated in currency, and then inflate that currency using central bank or treasury.
> It's very different because when the government inflates the currency, we all know whose pockets it ends up going into :)
No disagreement here. But government can also misappropriate Zakat. I am actually not in favor of most forms of planned inflation nor a compulsory Zakat precisely in part because I predict massive fraud on the minority of those holding the power to distribute it.
> I'm going to assume you're from one of the countries mentioned below? It's my understanding most countries with Muslim majority do not centrally enforce Zakat.
Today, many Muslim countries are not in a good shape unfortunately, and that's due to several reasons beyond the scope here. I'm referring to how things are required by Islam, and how things were done historically when Islam was actually implemented. Today Islam is not applied 100% unfortunately, which is a main cause of weakness for Muslim nations. They're either in property due to occupation, current or historic, or have to bow down to the West's whims, so that they are not overturned or invaded.
> By compelling people to hold wealth denominated in currency, and then inflate that currency using central bank or treasury.
I meant how would inflation happen in case of Zakat being enforced? They're orthogonal things unless I'm misunderstanding you.
> But government can also misappropriate Zakat
There is a set category of people whom are deserving of Zakat clearly outlined in the Quran. So, if Islam is properly applied, there would not be any meddling. It has been historically documented that in Iraq during Ummayad rule, there were no more poor people left to accept Zakat. Quite amazing.
You've said If Islam is properly applied, there would not be any meddling and Zakat would be applied appropriately. I guess you have more faith than I do that a human vested with these large sums will apply it appropriately. Humans can be greedy, corrupt, and clumsy and may not practice the word of the Quran accurately. They could simply make bad mistakes, without any bad will. Having centralized access to large sums of alms could result in Zakat going to benefit other powerful parties as well. Since it is collected by government, it would be hard for those paying it to stop payment in protest if someone did start meddling. Note this is also a problem with secular welfare systems, I am not saying it is a problem only with centralized Zakat.
>It has been historically documented that in Iraq during Ummayad rule, there were no more poor people left to accept Zakat.
Umayyad had a variety of religions of persons overseen by their caliphate. Was Zakat distributed to poor Christians in the Caliphate? Or did Zakat only go to Muslims? This is important to know, because supporting only minority of the poor who practice Islam could mean Zakat may have not solved poverty for the entire populace. I'd also be interested in seeing the citation that poverty didn't exist under this caliphate.
In America we have the problem that lots of administrators and bureaucrats siphon off much of the money in the welfare system into their salaries as well as issues with the money going into the hands it is intended to go to. Also since the money is taken by force, there's not a lot of control by those who contribute the money over making sure it is used appropriately.
I will note I find it both fascinating and worthy of respect that many cultures have come up with their own ways of helping the poor.
Personally I would be much more on board with a decentralized type of Zakat where individuals can pick what charity to go to, in order to protect from centralized failures of government.
>I meant how would inflation happen in case of Zakat being enforced? They're orthogonal things unless I'm misunderstanding you.
If I wanted to enforce Zakat via inflation, I would mandate people to hold their money in bank, as debt, or fiat denominated bonds, and then I would inflate the money supply by 2.5% by mailing out 2.5% of the current supply to the poor per year, or something approximating that. But that would also be an imperfect system.
> I guess you have more faith than I do that a human vested with these large sums will apply it appropriately.
I agree that humans can be greedy, etc. But that's why we have a judicial system. When you look at history, the Islamic scholars took their faith extremely seriously. Their accounts and biographies are not something you'd find in Western texts, but those exceptional people truly did exist. And because of them, we had things like the Islamic Golden Age.
The governments today have way more money on their hands don't they? Especially with the insane taxation rates we see. You allude to this point when you mention secular welfare systems. But history shows otherwise when Islam was applied.
> Umayyad had a variety of religions of persons overseen by their caliphate
Islam was the dominant religion, and the majority of the population were Muslims. The non-Muslims had to pay Jizya (limited to able men, i.e. not women, children, old men, or religious priests).
One of the categories of people who are eligible to receive Zakat, are those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam. Other than that, I don't think non-Muslims receive it. That being said, poor and needy non-Muslims are definitely eligible for charity (Sadaqah), and it is the responsibility of a functioning government to ensure that its population is well taken care of. Islam guarantees the rights of non-Muslims, and is very strict about it.
> I'd also be interested in seeing the citation that poverty didn't exist under this caliphate.
I didn't claim that no poverty existed in the entire Caliphate. As you know, the Caliphate spanned several regions and districts. I mentioned the Iraqi district, but I came across this question[1], which mentions that the mayors of the Libiyan and Tunisian regions wrote to Umar ibn AbdulAziz that they could not find a needy person to give them Zakat, so he responded to give it to the poor among the Jews and Christians. They replied that still no one took it, and they were no needy among them, so Umar replied to leave it in the market for anyone to take as they need. When still no one took it, Umar ordered to purchase slaves and free them.
I'll have to validate the authenticity of this specific account, but the notion that during Umar's rule, in certain districts there were no poor people left to accept Zakat is established.
> If I wanted to enforce Zakat via inflation, I would mandate people to hold their money in bank
Ah I see. It's prohibited in Islam to hold someone's money against their will, so there goes that :)
>The governments today have way more money on their hands don't they? Especially with the insane taxation rates we see. You allude to this point when you mention secular welfare systems. But history shows otherwise when Islam was applied.
Yes and I think the level of money and trust the government holds is a source of massive failure. I think those practicing Islam should be free to distribute their Zakat directly to poor or their select organizations that aid poor, rather than being forced to give it to a central authority. Otherwise one central authority has a monopoly on distribution of Zakat, which can lead to many inefficiencies and failures.
>One of the categories of people who are eligible to receive Zakat, are those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam. Other than that, I don't think non-Muslims receive it. That being said, poor and needy non-Muslims are definitely eligible for charity (Sadaqah), and it is the responsibility of a functioning government to ensure that its population is well taken care of. Islam guarantees the rights of non-Muslims, and is very strict about it.
Again I think it's wonderful that people are offered this kind of charity. I'm a little skeptical that the system under the caliphate could have prevented all poverty or that the poverty that remained wasn't solved by collecting Jizya from non-muslims and then distributing Zakat only to those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam. I admit I do not understand much of the history of Muslim Caliphates or nations, so I'm unable to really ascertain where islamqa.info gets its source from, but I doubt we have very good record of income distributions under this caliphate. But hey, I don't have any proof that there were poor, so maybe it's true.
I do thank you for digging up your source in this matter, and it is interesting to note some points on records of history.
> Ah I see. It's prohibited in Islam to hold someone's money against their will, so there goes that :)
A reasonable prohibition, one I extend to involuntary taxes and forced centrally collected charity.
Thank you for your viewpoint here, as it's one I rarely see living in the west.
Narcotic may be whatever you want, but the debate has to be honest and transparent, not shady and criminal: if you want to legalize heroin, make a case to the people, get it approved with safeguards, say like Portugal or France to some extent (Methadone), and make sure it won't profit people who also do other things with the proceeds of sales.
The problem with Narcotic is simple: people lose freedom when getting into addiction, then with hard narcotics they also lose the ability to make important life choices, minors and generally disfavored people are targeted by addictive substance sales people, production is rarely done well (because most fields should be used for food, if they are used for more profitable narcotic purpose legally or due to lax enforcement, ALL FIELDS become opium fields like in Afghanistan, which can cause food safety issues etc.
You can't just talk as if narcotic consumers are innocent party goers. Many are absolute victims and we must talk about it without crypto entering the debate. Crypto is just a weak way to try to hide the source of completely illegal funding for narcotics without going through the painful discussion with the population that we may have to sacrifice a lot of victims for the sake of spending less on narcotic enforcement.
Seems like a win to me. The government had to physically go to their house and arrest them to get to their funds, whereas normally all they had to do was call up their bank and had their money frozen. Not to mention, this threat could have been easily mitigated by keeping your funds in a multsig wallet, with the keys distributed in multiple redundant locations.
> Not to mention, this threat could have been easily mitigated by keeping your funds in a multsig wallet, with the keys distributed in multiple redundant locations.
And if you're released from prison and recover your Bitcoin, you will be arrested again for contempt of court or a similar charge.
If you read the original DOJ filing, they actually did that. They used :
> anonymity-enhanced virtual currency (AEC), in a practice known as “chain hopping”; and using U.S.-based business accounts to legitimize their banking activity.
Their problem was that they "closed" the money circle by sending it to real bank accounts. That's how they caught their trace. It seems that laundering billions of dollars is not as easy as they thought haha.
Someone was saying they could have moved to South America and laundered $1000 at a time, but you'd think that the US government could've easily tracked that down as well.. "Hmm, it appears someone is living off this stolen 3 billion dollars in South America"
How would you trace $1000 to a larger source after it passes through a privacy coin? The only way to do that is either with some side channel information, or by monitoring the person selling the funds. In a cash economy in the third world the odds of that look pretty poor. I think what happened is large deposit in bank account caused some to start asking questions.
Because they stole bitcoin. Good luck finding a non institutional buyer for tainted bitcoins when you're dealing in billions usd. Everyone shuffling bits at that level is going to play by the rules and cover their ass. Even large criminal exchanges will avoid stolen bitcoin in any sort of volume because it means instant scrutiny.
Is it practical to convert literal billions of dollars between currencies? And even if you did, wouldn't liquidating it so you can actually spend it on things in the real world prove to be almost impossible? Billions of dollars worth of currency is more than I'd expect most privacy coins to deal with over the course of months.
Laundering within the constraints of a public ledger isn't feasible for long periods of time or large amounts of money - the only way to win that game is to be so small nobody cares.
They could have possibly gotten cash from cartels at a steep discount, but that story would probably have ended with a richer cartel and two dead nerds.
I always wonder how many people won this long con by being so small nobody cares. The DoJ document states they already succeeded in taking the funds cross chain and through some privacy enhancing alternative assets. For every idiot dumping millions in a bank account there's got to be someone else living a "modest" but luxurious life looking like a small guy nobody cares about, cashing out a few hundred to a thousand at a time somewhere where that kind of money is big enough to get a nice day to day living but small enough to not be worth organized crime taking much notice.
On the flip side, most of us could already live quiet, comfortable lives in Thailand or Cambodia on our normal software engineering income.
Maybe these guys are thinking if you're going to be a criminal, you had better make the juice worth the squeeze. Live large, party extravagantly, and probably just rent everything from hotel rooms to yachts so there's less for the authorities to eventually impound when it catches up to you.
The classic libertarian adage is that a government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have.
Some corollary would apply here. (it's not that anyone particularly loves letting criminals off the hook, it's granting that ability is a slippery slope)
To secretly monitor a single individual's communications, law enforcement should have to get probable cause, present their case to a judge and obtain a court order.
Dragnet surveillance of all communications all the time is a Very Bad Thing.
Financial surveillance and seizure is currently at the Very Bad Thing stage and bitcoin helps move us back toward a better balance between the rights of the individual and the interests of the state.
As a crypto unbeliever I hate this too. Legal enforcement legitimizes crypto as property. It expands the definition of property by institutionally conferring the status of "owned" to a functional configuration of bits distributed over thousands of computers. Do we have this concept for other things? yes. But I'd rather like to contract the space of property rather than expand it.
> It expands the definition of property by institutionally conferring the status of "owned" to a functional configuration of bits distributed over thousands of computers. Do we have this concept for other things?
Intellectual property has been a thing for a long, long time. You don't literally need to have a physical thing somewhere for laws to apply.
Thank you. My yes (which was left off of the quote for some reason) includes intellectual property. I, like many people, are aware of the concept of intangible property. Dollars in my bank account are another example of intangible property.
I'm curious why you included a statement about IP existing for a long time. Is there something about the duration of existence that makes something important? Descriptive statements are notoriously difficult to transform into normative statements.
> Legal enforcement legitimizes crypto as property. It expands the definition of property by institutionally conferring the status of "owned" to a functional configuration of bits distributed over thousands of computers.
9/10ths of law is property ownership. I find hilarious that anyone would want less of this concept, not more. My interpretation is that crypto enthusiasts want the "trust of the crowds" not a centralized government. Which doesn't mean the trust system becomes contracted per se, but rather under a different set of rules (i.e. purely direct democracy vs centralized republic).
It's simply that people who begin thought experiments with one island, two people, and three cows tend to reach absolutely unhinged conclusions about how the society should work. Not wanting to live in a world governed by those systems is why I intent to frame them as such. Before we get to the part where some responder concludes, "you should go live in the woods then", I'd rather they did.
Another way of putting it is this. Expansions in the legal concept of property are consequently expansions in the dominion of the state.
I don't follow. The state recognizes I own something, therefore the state power has been expanded? I'd argue the opposite. Virtually everything else I own, the state doesn't really recognize is fully mine, but rather they think they own a piece of the profits on. Currently the state thinks they own part of others' crypto (tax on profits payable in fiat only though!), so to relinquish that ownership is a step up. The state legitimation of crypto as being owned by me means they've ceded power of private property to private entities, rather than it being public or unrecognized property. Since the state recognizes it's all mine, I don't owe the government any of it and as full owner I can unmolested exercise control of my private property without interference by government.
When the government steps in, it's not usually to say _you_ own it but rather _they_ own part of it. If you own it of course you owe them nothing of it. Government finally getting their greedy hands out of private property would be a huge step up.
This is even more obvious when I present it this way. Yesterday there's a cow in my yard. The next day my neighbor says he recognizes the cow as my cow. The neighbor has ceded over power of the cow, now recognizing I have full control of the cow and they're removing any claim of power they had. It's a contraction or break even of, not expansion, of my neighbor's power.
Ownership means you have full control over your crypto. Paying taxes on it means you don't have ownership, but rather partial ownership. If the state is conferring you full ownership, it would appear their power is decreasing. If the state is taxing crypto, then they're taking away ownership status and instead attributing some of it to themselves -- THEN it's an expansion of power.
6000 years ago, one could have ownership over the right to buy a still unborn goat at a certain price in the future. It's amusing to see these modern philosophies of trying to go back to a noble savage past that never was.
Likewise it's fascinating to me to see today an assumed, "expansion of property and its financialization are natural progressions of human societies." This factoid is itself baked into the fabric of our current society and presents itself as assumed knowledge. In reality no such natural progression exists any more than people believe that the universe is just, or that nature is cruel.
I think you have to get with the times a little. Crypto is an asset (some coins a security) and has been recognized as such under the law for several years, and it's taxable.
Crypto is on the balance sheet of individuals, businesses, financial institutes and even at least one nation (El Salvador). There's crypto index funds and ETFs trading on wallstreet.
And here you are philosophizing about whether crypto can really be owned? You're a decade too late.
> It expands the definition of property by institutionally conferring the status of "owned" to a functional configuration of bits distributed over thousands of computers
Human society is rapidly moving more and more "things" in the electronic realm. By necessity of technology (we're on HN for goodness sake!) the realm of property absolutely must expand into electronic representations.
Ironically, Bitcoin enables ownership to be established (at least as far as knowing the private keys = proof of ownership), in addition to the transaction path the electronic bits and bytes took in order to reach its current place of ownership.
In the context of crypto-as-property constructivism, I'm neither an absolute institutional nor a communal conferralist. Presently, it appears like there is much more communal conferralism constructing crypto as property, I'd like to avoid institutionalization. In practice, this would not look like prohibition, rather the avoidance of extending existing property laws to encompass crypto assets. ie: courts and lawmakers saying, "No we're not going to get involved." Unfortunately, any future crisis where crypto can be blamed is a convenient way to extend to crypto the legal construction of it's status as property.
Since you brought up prohibition, I'll take the bait. We already have prohibitive socio-legal constructions which few people use to form the basis of "prohibition has never worked, so we should not prohibit it." Some examples that are socially and legally prohibited are: murder, rape, incest, slavery, torture, buying and selling of children. I'm unsure if you believe that the prohibition of these acts has also never worked as intended and should be left unprohibited.
Literally none of your examples of prohibition are those against an inanimate object. Crypto prohibition is completely incomparable to selling children (which by the way, they may not call it 'selling' but adoptions typically require tens of thousands of 'buying' in, so there is sort of a buying and selling of children at least in the US.)
I would be convinced if you could cite prohibition against inanimate data that maintains the 4th amendment protections in US while simultaneously thwarting those determined to share and manipulate that data. It might, might, work somewhere in someplace like Singapore where the population has widespread support for execution of those found with contraband and few constitutional protections.
Prohibition has doubtful effect in US on even universally hated and criminally suppressed content like CP.
I'm saying it [criteria from my previous statement] would convince me to change my mind, was that not the question you asked?
Allow me to rewrite since it wasn't understand I was replying to your question:
I would be convinced to change my mind if you could cite prohibition against inanimate data that maintains the 4th amendment protections in US while simultaneously thwarting those determined to share and manipulate that data.
What is your current belief and what new belief would you have if supplied with that evidence. We never really spelled out exactly what the claim was.
My understanding so far is that "I currently believe prohibition of inanimate objects has no effect. If supplied with this evidence, then I would believe prohibition of inanimate objects would have an effect."
edit: also under what criteria would be used to judge whether a prohibition "maintains the 4th amendment protections in US"? Any specific relevant cases? If I go hunting for evidence, I want to make sure the goalposts are not moved.
My current belief is that attempting prohibition against inanimate data (sharing and manipulating) while maintaining the 4th amendment protections in US and simultaneously thwarting those determined to share and manipulate that data, will be minimally effective and will not significantly impact the ability of those determined to violate the prohibition.
My new belief is immaterial to whether I have changed my mind, other than it must be different somehow (otherwise the mind wasn't changed). Changing your mind just means it changed, so the only requirement is the belief is different. Without evidence, I can't possibly predict what my new belief would be. Therefore I refuse to box in what my new belief would be, and I think it would be ignorant of me to make such a presupposition.
Bear in mind 'change your mind' was a notion introduced by you not me, I can't possibly speak for what you meant there when you brought this phrase into the conversation.
>I currently believe prohibition of inanimate objects has no effect. If supplied with this evidence, then I would believe prohibition of inanimate objects would have an effect."
That's actually not my belief. Clearly there is an effect, and the criteria I think crypto meets is much stricter than merely an inanimate object but rather it drills down to just being sharing and manipulating data. You can memorize a seed phrase that resides entirely in your mind, and other than chemical storage in your brain there is no physical manifestation to seize at a national or individual level that would effectively destroy that wealth.
I think prohibition on inanimate objects has an effect, just not usually the intended effect.
The only data that can even comparably be viewed as a candidate for what prohibition of (strictest case) crypto data can look like I think again is CP. It is universally detested, the criminal penalties can be devastating, fellow prisoners may straight up kill you, and the community will virtually always back the jailing for as long as anyone cares to jail the people engaged in sharing it. I think that puts a decent ceiling for what is possible to impose on crypto, because the public will to impose prohibition on crypto surely can't be as high as it is for the prohibition of sharing data of the abuse of children. Given that even this effort has been essentially futile, I'm not seeing much of a prayer of crypto prohibition being effective at thwarting anyone but the undetermined.
There may be prisoners this moment mining some crypto on their phone, smuggled up someone's ass into prison. If they're not, they trivially could be. That's how hard it is to get rid of.
>also under what criteria would be used to judge whether a prohibition "maintains the 4th amendment protections in US"
The criteria would be not to violate the 4th amendment.
>If I go hunting for evidence, I want to make sure the goalposts are not moved.
That's really up to you, you don't owe me anything and I don't owe you anything either.
> Legal enforcement legitimizes crypto as property. It expands the definition of property by institutionally conferring the status of "owned" to a functional configuration of bits distributed over thousands of computers.
Isn't this exactly how your access to digital content is mediated? A bunch of servers somewhere says that this user identifier is allowed to access this content.
I might be missing something with this analogy. Is there a legal component to accessing digital content that re-enforces its concept of being property? /gen
There are general similarities in computers mechanically enforcing access that applies to crypto-assets and digital content. I'm specifically interested in how the legal system confers additional properties or re-enforces these properties in digital assets that legitimize the properties institutionally.
Technically they were charged with conspiring to launder money, completely unrelated to any mention of theft or hacking.
From TFA: "Court papers filed against the couple did not accuse them of the hack itself; officials declined to say if the pair are suspected of stealing the money."
Interesting point, but if the government considered whoever had control of the coins the rightful owner and not stolen, would it be laundering then? It doesn't sound like a problem of taxes.
Laundering is any process to legitimize illicit income. It does not matter who owns the coins or other assets in question. What matters is if the coins represent any vehicle of fund transfer that originate from any form of criminal enterprise or other unreported financial activity.
which is why they weren't charged with actual money laundering. they only got them with conspiracy which is a super weak charge.
a money laundering charge requires an illicit origin, which means it can only be a tacked on charge after charging or proving someone was involved in the illegal activity.
the government just doesn't know, they just find everything this couple did to be super suspicious. they clearly had control of an excessive amount of cryptocurrency that they were reintegrating into the economy. the government doesn't seem to know if they were actually involved in the heist, or how, or to what extent.
simply obfuscating money isn't illegal. obfuscating an illicit origin is. lets see if the government can get to the bottom of this "conspiracy to obfuscate money of an illicit origin".
I was replying under some comment thread about the the government "not legitimizing" bitcoin, and thus not considering "bitcoin theft" to be actual theft.
All it says is that they don't yet have strong evidence to expect a conviction on hacking charges. And it's quite likely that some other people were involved in the hack itself - perhaps after this arrest, they will get some new information that will allow them to charge someone for the hack itself, for example, out of a plea deal when one of the gang turns against the others.
no. this is quite bullish for bitcoin. they're showing that bitcoin can't be used for criminal activity, whatever the government decides that should be (usually in favor of the general public). this helps to legitimize bitcoin. Protecting consumers of bitcoin is bullish for bitcoin. helping to prevent fraud in bitcoin is also bullish for bitcoin. All these things increase confidence in bitcoin as a legitimate way of storing wealth.
It sounds like all the good things for bitcoin here are coming from the power of the central authority to provide confidence, legitimacy, protection, and legal recourse.
So why on earth is that a good thing for an asset which is all about the power of decentralized systems?
Human society, for a number of years now, has been governed by central authorities that define the rules in which society has to live. Bitcoin cannot and does not take part in dictating how society is to function, Bitcoin is put forward as an alternative currency that cannot be quantitavely eased / printed and gifted to society's largest entities as reward for criminal behaviours that endangered the very society that the central authorities are meant to be acting in protection of.
Central authority is a basic requirement of society. Bitcoin is an alternative currency. Recognition by the central authority of society is a legitimisation of Bitcoin in its position as an alternative currency.
I don't (sort of I do actually) understand Bitcoin being seen as a replacement for all centralisation / government. Bitcoin has never attempted to make legislation. Currency only (and that's shrunk to 'store of value').
People get way too hung up on the concept of "hard" currency. It really takes some study of economic and financial history to understand that currency is just a means to an end, and that hoping for some immutable piece of value in your personal vault isn't what powers our world. Money is far more abstract than anything in the crypto world, and that's why it's not a good long-term bet.
I'd encourage you to read an excellent primer on the subject: The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson. Money is a social construct, not anything tangible. You can create money from leaves you rake in your yard, and organize your neighborhood around how many leaves you have. You can all agree that the giant stone at the bottom of the bay belongs to the unfortunate sailor who lost it, and therefore he's still wealthy even though he can't get his giant stone back (true story). You can agree that the people who are oldest in society deserve the most access to credit, and give them services accordingly.
Basic point here is that wealth is derived from society creating connections and performing services for each other, not from holding currency. Currency is simply the oil in the machinery which helps facilitate these connections. It has no intrinsic value, and the easier it flows, the faster the engine can run. That's why the Fed conducts QE and money printing - it's about the economy, not the currency. Inflation is a side-effect but it's often preferable to loss of real assets and jobs and lives.
You're describing credit, not currency. You can access credit to fund daily transactions without touching the principle of your investments. That's what a credit card does.
the power of "decentralized system" in this case is merely from the fact that more of it can't be created. When we're talking about the big movers, the institutional investors and the big money, they didn't run to bitcoin because it was cool tech, or cool to be decentralized. they're investing in bitcoin not because of bitcoin. they're investing in bitcoin because central governments have defaulted on their obligation of having a stable currency. You can't hold fiat currencies when they're loosing value at 6% to 12% or more per year, it's just too costly.
Bonds and cash are no longer viable investment asset classes. So all that leaves is Equities, Gold, real estate and bitcoin. It's all about TINA -> there is no alternative.
What is a "true crypto believer" anyways? As a matter of practicality, everyone that interacts with financial assets of any sort are bound to laws imposed by some government. Equating "whoever has the keys" to ownership feels more or less equivalent to saying "finders keepers" is a valid justification for taking possession of a physical leather wallet. Or "We broke up, but I fed the dog, so it's mine". Or whatever.
A person can believe whatever they want, but when push comes to shove, it's a country's court of law that ultimately determines who legally owns what.
> A person can believe whatever they want, but when push comes to shove, it's a country's court of law that ultimately determines who legally owns what.
I think you've answered your own question - a true crypto believer does not agree with that. If the smart contract says the Ethereum is mine because you wrote it poorly and I called the transfer money function in the right way ("exploited it"), a true believer would say "yep, it's yours."
But that's not the way real contracts work. Contracts are an agreement between parties. If there is later a disagreement about what was agreed to, a judge sorts it out.
> If there is later a disagreement about what was agreed to, a judge sorts it out.
Only because human language leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Computer output doesn't, or at the very least not nearly to the same extent. If your smart contract is itself legal (you are legally allowed to formalize those terms), and produced an output as a function of it's actual internal operation (and not a random, accidental bit flip) then it should stand even in front of a judge.
I don't know what a smart contract is, but seems to me that if you can convicingly argue that the function output is inconsistent with what the parties agreed to, it would not stand.
There are contract disputes all the time over what a word or phrase means, and what a judge will look at is which interpretation best aligns with the broad strokes of what the parties were agreeing to. Nobody agrees to a contract that contains "I get to void the entire agreement at my discretion, keep the proceeds, and leave you with nothing"
> if you can convicingly argue that the function output is inconsistent with what the parties agreed to
Talking about (smart) contracts in general, if both parties agree that there was an error they can resolve it without any court. The problem is when only one party disagrees.
Imagine you have a contract with the bank and agree to pay 10% interest on a loan. Later on you try to claim you just weren't paying attention and thought it's 1.0%. That's a hell of a case to prove in front of a judge. And if that were the case the concept of contract would be worthless, invalidated by simply claiming "I didn't mean that".
A smart-contract should be easily reproducible. If that piece of code consistently returns the same result under the specified conditions then it's valid even if the result was because of a mistake the author made while preparing it.
> Only because human language leaves a lot of room for interpretation
Technically no. Many things have intrinsic physical value that cannot be tracked via digital contracts. If I go to amazon and buy a book, but they ship the wrong book due to clerical error, then there's a clear cut violation of expectations with no room for conflicting interpretations.
In the crypto world, NFTs are frequently criticized for this very issue, and it doesn't even leave the digital boundaries: you can prove to have ownership of a token through the blockchain, but whether that token is actually tied to legal ownership of an asset is anyone's guess (case in point, there are various cases of people selling fraudulent NFTs for art they do not own).
Technically language is very interpretable but in some very simple cases it can be mitigated to the point where it's not a realistic issue. Even your book example isn't simple enough to be completely iron clad in all cases. You can receive a book that matches the criteria you provided (say title) but it's not really the book you were thinking of [0].
For more complex things like contracts and laws you have a lot of reasonably vague points that are up for interpretation. Courts reinterpret laws an contracts all the time, it's (part of) their job. Math is nowhere near as interpretable.
> and produced an output as a function of it's actual internal operation (and not a random, accidental bit flip) then it should stand even in front of a judge.
Honest questions to people who are familiar with SmartContracts/Ethereum - how do disputes and adjudicating work in this example then?
I think Ethereum is silly too. But you have to realize that their argument is "we'll make our own contracts, and what the computer says is the absolute truth - no judges or kings."
In that world, there is no such thing as stealing. If the crypto transfered, it was allowed to transfer by the contract.
The part that "true believers" are meant to hate is that now, someone on one side of the contract is grasping back to Money 1.0 concepts of conceptual ownership and meeting-of-the-minds type contracts. This enforcement action shows that the government thinks of Ethereum et al in this way too. And therefore the crypto paradise dream is dead.
I'm confused. The government got the money back with perfectly legitimate transaction(s) which they signed with those very private keys. If the rule is "whoever has the private keys is the owner", the the government was playing by the rules.
What crypto believers should really hate is the fact that with a warrant, the government can potentially get at your private keys. That'd be an interesting problem for crypto to try to solve
Bitcoin is about separating money and state, but having a government is still very important.
I'm much more worried about non crypto believers hating crypto believers for getting rich while their life is getting harder because of the inflation central banks are imposing on most people.
I have the somewhat contradictory wishes, that good people should be able to hide from crooked cops, but crooked people should not be able to hide from good cops. Making it somewhat difficult, but not impossible to catch criminals seems to strike a balance.
The cryptographic keys were stored on a cloud storage device. Law enforcement agencies gained access to these keys while executing a search warrant and used them move the funds. So by this logic, the government is now the rightful owner of these funds.
> which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
This is still true, no? Now the government has the keys, so they own it. It's clear that you can't be sloppy with your keys, because "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
I'll put myself at least partially in the "true crypto believers" group, but I think this is good news. Stolen X is 'bad', bringing the people who stole X to justice is good.
This is where I may only be a 'partial' member: My feeling is that Bitcoin (not all cryptocurrencies) was about removing Fed/Gov control of the currency. It takes no position against law enforcement of direct currency theft - outside of what could be construed as the theft of currency value by quantitative easing / gifting bailout money to banks, etc.
Bitcoin, specifically, has always had a public ledger too, so start-to-finish transaction tracking is part and parcel.
“True crypto believers” seems like a loaded phrase these days because I feel like most crypto believers are riding it’s wave to legitimacy. And things like this push it further towards that goal.
I don’t see how anyone could really still believe in the original ideals behind Bitcoin. They made something but not what they wanted.
Most crypto believers, believe in crypto because they have money invested on it and want to get rich. If you remove that variable of getting rich, very very few remain.
how has anything changed in this sense? The owners of bitcoins are always whoever has the crypto keys, that isn't an imperative it's just a fact, now the fed has the keys.
It's the government trying to enforce their opinion of who should own those Bitcoins, thereby taking power away from the owner that the network has decided on, which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".