Comment on Crypto mogul Do Kwon, known as ‘the cryptocurrency king,’ pleads guilty to fraud charges
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 7 months agoThere are only two good use cases for crypto:
And:
For example, think of:
Bitcoin ain’t it, bit privacy coins like Monero exist and tend to not have as much fraud spam since it doesn’t have as many crazy spikes.
Have to disagree on this one.
How would this even work? You transfer monero to a person in an authoritarian state and then what? What do they do with Monero? You think an authoritarian state is going to allow you to pay for utilities with Monero? Buy food?
Monero doesn’t allow for private transactions as this issue is a social and political problem, not a technology issue.
I wouldn’t be surprised if your transactions would be less private with monero than a bank payment (because of Monero’s unlicensed nature).
What do they do with Monero?
This exact same thing happens w/ a lot of other things, such as:
Basically, the same thing that works for illicit transactions protects activists, political dissidents, etc in authoritarian regions. All privacy coins provide is a convenient digital medium of exchange, how that gets turned into another medium of exchange is up to the merchant.
For things like utilities, authoritarian regimes tend to be pretty corrupt, and they already do under-the-table transactions. Using Monera vs drugs, foreign currency, etc isn’t going to change that.
I wouldn’t be surprised if your transactions would be less private with monero than a bank payment (because of Monero’s unlicensed nature).
How so? Monero explicitly hides transaction details, so even if a large actor like the Russian, Chinese, or US government wanted, they can’t track transactions, even if they compromise one end of the transaction. The wallet ID you use when buying something is ephemeral, the protocol creates a ton of misleading transactions so tracking down the correct one is very difficult, and even if they did, they’d have to break the crypto to link two transactions from the same wallet. Transactions are also very inexpensive, generally costing under a penny, so even if you wallet gets compromised, you can inexpensively move it to a new wallet.
The only way Monero would be less private than a bank is if government regulations make it so and under-the-table transactions are blocked effectively. But that would require a heavy surveillance state, and the heavier the surveillance state is, the more attractive under-the-table transactions become.
Privacy coins get pushback from governments because they’re effective at protecting privacy. It turns out, governments like spying on transactions, and would get rid of cash if they could get away with it. They get used a lot for illicit transactions because they’re effective at it, and that’s why governments have started to restrict their use (i.e. banning Monero from exchanges).
I’m not a crypto fan boy by any stretch, and I don’t think anyone should “invest” in them because they don’t generate any form of value (I feel the same about precious metals). But I do think privacy coins have a place in society as a digital cash replacement, because I’d really rather not have my transaction details spied on by governments. If you want practical reasons for this, look no further than the Mastercard/Visa scandal w/ porn gaes on Steam and other platforms.
With all due respect, you don’t understand what you are talking about. In a sense, your arguments (and their complete disconnect from reality) just proves that monero is not a viable use case for value exchange in authoritarian countries (or even democratic countries).
Your monero for drugs for local cash idea is idiotic and that’s not how any of this works. Have you ever given an “under-the-table” payment for utilities? Of course not! You are just making shit up, I can’t put this in a more diplomatic manner.
Because of what I mentioned, I won’t go into an in-depth discussion around how you would be tracked (I trust you have sufficient common sense to think this through).
That being said I will point out two things:
Make of this what you will.
The main use case for crypto is for peer to peer transactions that do not require the permission of any third party (or government). A secondary use case for crypto is the enablement of self-executing smart contracts.
The problem is that the financial speculation aspect of crypto has eaten everything else. “Number go up” is now the main use case, and people do t actually transact much with crypto anymore. And the only type of smart contract that has gained any popular use whatsoever is the type that makes more shitty crypto tokens. Any general utility it had years ago evaporated when it became too valuable to transact with.
Except for those criminals and fraudsters you mentioned: they do put crypto to good use evading government oversight of their transactions. In this respect, crypto is no different than a briefcase full of cash. Yes, you could legally stash a briefcase full of cash in your house, but there are so many better (trackable) places to keep that cash that if the cops found that briefcase in your house wbile executing a search for other reasons, they would cite the existence of that briefcase as proof of sometnig nefarious.
I’ve heard such arguments before, I don’t find them convincing in the least. I don’t believe you’ve thought this through.
You bring up cash? So what? You can use banks for crime as well. I believe one of the major US companies that got rescued in 2008 had several billion USD on the books that no one came to pick up because of disclosure rules.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, there are multiple massive red flags with your arguement that don’t require specialist education/experience/knowledge.
Yes, banks are used for crimes on a massive scale. Usually that’s not available to small time people.
Crypto can be used for criminal activity with a low barrier to entry. There are several use cases where things maybe should not be illegal in the first place. Like buying drugs for example.
Banks too are available for crimes for “small time people” if you know what you are doing.
The direction of this discussion is a red herring. My point was that beyond financial speculation and crime/fraud, crypto has no viable (not purely theoretical) use cases.
sad thing is that it could be great as an alternative to mastercard/visa but crypto fash have just ruined any attempt to make it appealing to anyone other than crypto fascists.
Crypto is not a monopoly, whatever the Maxis say.
As I understand it, cryptocurrency funnily enough works awfully as a means of transaction, because the amount of processing power required to make transactions is ridiculously high.
Only for PoW crypto.
If a cryptocurrency concentrates into the hands of a few, as assets tend to do in capitalism, then wouldn’t proof of stake mean those few control the cryptocurrency anyway?
You don’t need crypto as an alternative to MasterCard/Visa. There are multiple national payment systems that de facto work on a public benefit basis or offer no fees or very low fees.
One major example is India’s UPI:
en.m.wikipedia.org/…/Unified_Payments_Interface
Even in a medium sized developing country like Ukraine, I can send to anyone money (P2P, business payment, business transaction) with minimal or no fees on a near instantaneous basis off my phone.
I am not on top of recent payment infrastructure developments, but from memory this is relatively common.
No need for scam services like PayPal, Venmo.
And this has been avaible for half a decade minimum (was living in another country before then).
Sure sure, is it a sound, decentralized bottom up monetary network built by the people for the people on cryptography rails on an uncensorable network?
bottom up
built by the people for the people
Love your style!
i'm not saying i'd use it or want it; i just meant it could have been had it not basically been relegated to the fringes by the cryptobros that made it unlikeable.
That’s fair. I do agree it has some properties to potentially be used in payment infrastructure systems.
I would argue something like India UPI (we don’t have a name for it in Ukraine) is better in every possible respect than a payment infrastructure based on blockchain tech.
I’ve always maintained that the dude who spent like 10,000 Bitcoin to buy a pizza was the first and last legitimate use of crypto.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 7 months ago
What about paying for censored games?
ZombieMantis@lemmy.world 7 months ago
If it’s censored by the government, it’d fall under use-cade #2.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 7 months ago
True. But the recent itch.io controversy was NGO lead.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 7 months ago
What about it?
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s a 3rd use case.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 7 months ago
No, it’s not a viable use case.
Developers of such games what the broadest market possible and consumers want easy accessibility and stable updates/support.
The groups outlined above are interested in the product and not promotion of some cryptocurrency.
Both these goals are best served using real currencies, not monero. Such payment systems (using real currency, aimed at content with erotica/porn) are widely available and haven in use for 30+ years.
If you don’t want to deal with such payment systems directly (e.g. setup an LLC and other such matters), there are multiple easy to implement distribution approaches that one can launch in ~15 minutes.
This is why I don’t trust crypto promoters.