America must lead on cryptocurrency

Washington Examiner ^ | 3/26/24 | David McCormick

[EnderWiggin1970]

He’s not calling for a CBDC. He’s just calling for the government to stop being a force for repression in the financial arena. That has just been driving everyone overseas, leading to a tremendous loss of leadership for America in the financial sector.

[EnderWiggin1970]

So in order to buy and sell using private crypto, I will need to be a criminal. Swell.

? Can you explain what makes anyone transacting with crypto a criminal? Are people also criminals every time they use cash (that's pretty private/untraceable), or silver or anything else? You've lost me.

Keep in mind cryptocurrency is just an asset, like a gold nugget or a cow or a phone. Anything can be used in barter for a transaction for anything else in principal. Cryptocurrency is just far more convenient as a medium of exchange, being impossible to counterfeit or forge a check in, having provable scarcity, being free of censorship and clawbacks (no blocked or reversed TX), and able to transact globally in seconds to minutes.

[DesertRhino]

Government control of cryptocurrency is evil. It will only be used for totalitarian on this.

[EnderWiggin1970]

Why are you and other commenters inferring that the author is calling for a CBDC, the exact opposite of his stance in the article? Can someone explain this?

[BenLurkin]

I asked what will happen when private crypto is outlawed. I read your answer to be that “When governments outlaw private crypto people will still use it.” Is that not what you meant?

[Carriage Hill]

On the heels of Crypto/Block, will be CBDC, and all the inherent horrors it entails.

[cgbg]

They are pushing crypto while refusing to upgrade and expand the electric grid.

Nothing could possibly go wrong....

go wrong....

go wrong....

[SaveFerris]

(If the Biden White House and Congress don’t provide the support and regulatory certainty this burgeoning industry requires, there is little doubt it will develop and thrive elsewhere.)

🤔🤔🤔🤣

[SaveFerris]

Bump to what you guys just said

[Dead Corpse]

No grid. No gas. No cash...

Breadlines and a Nationalized police force of “migrant labor”...

[EnderWiggin1970]

And what I'm saying is that the government can't really outlaw it, not in any meaningful sense. First, it would be outside the scope of their constitutional authority. Second, you are basically talking about "outlawing" a string of digital bits. To give you an idea how absurd this is, there is a service that lets any email account be used as a wallet for Ethereum. So every time some clueless politician railed against crypto and insisted that anyone with crypto be treated as a criminal, somebody would deposit a couple dollars worth of ETH in said politician's email account.

Boneheaded judicial systems have created precedents claiming that it doesn't matter if you didn't realize you have crypto, you are still on the hook for it to pay taxes and so forth. So it would be amusing watching these "criminal" politicians try to wriggle out of their own laws if they actually do go ahead and try to "ban" crypto.

[mo]

not sure any country or bank really needs to “lead” on cryptocurrency. Seems to be prospering just fine on its own

[EnderWiggin1970]

It is prospering despite the criminal activity by the SEC mafia and so forth. But they've successfully driven a large portion of the US-based crypto industry overseas over the years. (I can't give an exact number, but I've been involved over 10 years now and would characterize it as a majority of businesses and projects, at a minimum.) There's no positive side to that for the US. The scammers without the slightest slowdown, while the industry has offshored en masse. Imagine driving the entire auto industry out of the US while claiming to be fighting carjacking. It's that stupid.

[cgbg]

Millions of foreigners have lost their life savings to crypto scams.

This whole area is a big hot mess.

I don’t care what the legislators do with it—for individuals it is caveat emptor on steroids.

[Dick Bachert]

[EnderWiggin1970]

And I’m sorry for everyone that has lost money to a scammer. But are you pro-gun control? Because you should be. You are blaming the gun/crypto instead of the criminal, and imagining that banning the gun/crypto will make the problem go away. The problem is the criminal, not the tool.

[T. Rustin Noone]

My first reaction to the author’s thesis is that the barriers into our private financial lives can be entirely eliminated by converting to a crypto economy. It is inevitable that the government will want to tie something ubiquitous, like our social security numbers, to these accounts. And they will retain the power freeze, thaw or even drain our accounts at their whim.

It is bad enough now that banks are required to record and report transactions over $10,000. The Biden Administration had previously proposed that that limit be lowered to $600.

[gitmo]

If you wish to examine a granfaloon
Simply peel the skin off a toy balloon.

-Kurt Vonnegut

[NWFree]

Has anybody ever thought of having real cryptocurrency instead of the fake crap?

[cgbg]

“The problem is the criminal, not the tool.”

Guns have been around for centuries—people who buy them generally know what they are getting.

At this point in history most crypto buyers have no clue what they are getting.

Homo sapiens needs time to understand something new.

In one hundred years crypto may have a similar utility to guns—for now it is just big trouble.