So what specifically is immoral about cryptocurrencies in your opinion?
Also, throwing grarpamp in the Trump sack was a bit out of the blue? He
had some good points if you just ignore the writing style. Some groups
are ringing bells about cashless societies, for example (last link in
Spanish):
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/24/you-cant-pay-cash-here-how-cashless-society-harms-most-vulnerable
https://collateralbits.net/la-maldicion-del-dinero/
This mailing list always turns hostile for no reason. Since you are
experts, why not educate people when somebody raises a point here?
On 5/22/21 9:18 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
On Sat, May 22, 2021 at 3:32 AM Lee Alley <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Right, so let's look at this by the numbers (or the paragraphs)....
On 21/05/2021 20:02, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
I find the Trotskyite-Libertarianism of the coinsplainers to be a
crushing bore. The arguments are infantile, ignorant and insulting.
Yep, categorise someone into a coalition of the "loathsome". So
far so good ✔
I chaired a conference on Digital Cash, including alt-currencies in
1996. BitCoin is not new, it is merely the latest in a long line of
Ponzi schemes, gold bug schemes, etc. eGold, GoldAge... there were
many and the feds crushed them all.
I coined the term 'coinsplainers' from 'mansplainers' because these
people invariably begin their response to any criticism by telling me
I an ignorant of a field I am generally considered to be one of the
top experts. The assumption being that the only reason someone could
possibly disagree with them is through ignorance.
(Also shows zero clue as to what a Libertarian actually is, vs
what the corporate press ignorantly likes to brand them as)
I am not the only person who finds the self styled 'Libertarians' to
be aggressively authoritarian. The reason I bracket them with the
Trotskyites is that the ideologies are essentially based on the same
notion of ripping up the existing social order so that they can
replace it with a new one more to their liking. At no point do they
show the lightest interest in the consent of those they would govern,
they are merely the 'sheep'.
The fact that Libertarianism is a Trotskyite creed is further
demonstrated by the fact that large numbers of Trotskyites have moved
over. The 'neo-conservatives' began as a Trotskyite faction at NYU,
they switched in the mid 70s as it emerged that they had ratted out
the Communist faction to Hoover's FBI. 'Spiked', the Libertarian rag
heavily promoted by the Koch network is run by the former editors of a
Socialist Worker rag.
Don't be fooled by the techno-babble, these same people have been
at the same old libertopian schemes since the mid 90s. Every time
it is different, every time it is the same. The Feds crushed
e-Gold which was beyond reach of government. Then the Feds
crushed gold age which beyond reach of government. BitCoin is the
reason gas prices soared last week with the Colonial Pipeline
attack. Fixing cybersecurity is expensive. Criminalizing
crypto-currencies is a much cheaper approach.
Create straw man arguments without any context and only tenuous
relevance then burn them (interestingly showing an "I'm on the
govt's side and I'm here to help"* admission) before showing
catastrophically naive economic illiteracy (I've never seen people
accuse dollars of being the reason behind bank robberies or the
reason they got mugged, and I missed that bit in the thread about
the trillions Obama, Trump and Biden have spent/will spend pretty
pointlessly that your grandchildren will have to pay back, to say
nothing of letting your children clean up the inflation heading
our way).✔
* Where help == govt crushing anything that threatens its total
control of everything, or people doing things for themselves
I have done cyber security for 25 years. If an obnoxious group of
people call me stupid and tell me that the government can't crush
them, it amuses me to show governments how to do just that: Go after
the exchanges, go after Tether.
That someone disagrees with your unconventional economic views does
not make them 'naive'. Nor is being on the governments when the
government is trying to stop gangs of international criminals who are
holding critical infrastructure to ransom a bad thing.
BitCoin and company are currently using more electricity than the
entire nation of Argentina. That is not a small country by any
measure. The entire premise of BTC is proof of waste. I find that
offensive. The naked greed that the crypto-currency world shows
putting their crypto wallet ahead of the planet disgusts me. And
calling me names isn't going to discourage me either.
I see absolutely nothing moral in crypto-currencies. Anyone can
prattle on about 'freedom'. Tump's jackbooted goons stormed the
capitol on Jan 6th in the name of 'freedom', they called everyone
who opposed them 'sheep'. By their fruits shall ye know them:
grarpamp's language clearly shows him to be a bully. His only
concept of 'freedom' is there being nothing to stop him bullying
others.
And in the denouement, up the ante on the ad hominem, calling
grarpamp a Trump goon with the implied accusation of fault in all
this. ✔
I did not call him a Trump goon, I merely pointed out that his use of
language is the same, as is yours. You have not set out to address any
issue I raised in good faith, your only interest was to try and bully me.
This is a masterclass in gaslighting but never, ever addresses the
points raised.
You describe your post perfectly.
Faced with a concrete, representative example of the harm done by
BitCoin, your response is whataboutery. BitCoin is the most expensive
means of moving money there is right now. As of today, transactions
cost $22 each which is vastly more than any rival payment scheme.
Absolutely the only reason to use BTC as a payment mechanism is if the
transaction is criminal.
Ransomware would simply not be profitable without 'untraceable' cash.
Internet sales of child abuse, illegal drugs etc. would not be viable
without the same. The only quasi-legitimate use of BTC was using it to
evade China's currency controls which is what was shut down last week.
I don't use the term 'crypto-currency' because cryptography has been
my professional career. I prefer the term criminal-currency.
The Colonial Pipeline event was the beginning of the end for
criminal-currencies. China has been worried about the effect of
evading currency controls for quite a while but Colonial Pipeline was
the event that caused the axe to fall now. Jim Cramer on MSNBC
switched from being a criminal-currency booster telling people to put
5% of their assets in BTC to being strongly opposed boasting that he
has sold out and bought a farm with the profits. The appearance of
NFTs was further evidence that peak crazy had been reached.
I saw exactly the same thing in the early 00s, Back then people would
attack me for pointing out that 'hackers' were causing criminal damage
and they weren't just doing it for fun. Kevin Mitnick had 50,000
stolen credit card numbers on his hard drives when he was caught. And
then people started being hit by emails trying to get their bank
account details and suddenly the reporters got it - these people are
criminals, we should stop interviewing them as folk heroes and start
talking about how to stop Internet crime.
The tide is certainly beginning to turn.
--
GPG: 9C2A AF1D CC91 0A53 AB0A B6A1 C457 0E01 081F 8F91
https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/
--
Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major commercial
search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated:
https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe, change to digest
mode, or change password by emailing [email protected].
