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Comment by kabes | Hacker News Reader

So much for the: 'not controlled by a government' argument of cryptocurrencies.

That's a strange argument.

Them not being directly controlled by governments doesn't mean that they exist in a vacuum. At the end of the day, it's people creating/buying/selling them, so obviously they're affected by: governments, natural disasters, wars, ...

That’s true but this was a standard point of bitcoin marketing for years, and a big reason why it was popular in libertarian circles. It was never true but a lot of people wanted to believe — basically the economic equivalent of the guys who think using strong encryption on their data means that a government will give up.

> basically the economic equivalent of the guys who think using strong encryption on their data means that a government will give up.

Or Batman dressing like a bat because "criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot."

Regulations will only affect organisations who have to operate within the confines of hose regulations. Bitcoin was designed specifically to operate outside of regulations. Crypto exchanges were never part of the plan. Nor was speculation by the likes of Goldman Sachs. Their involvement has been detrimental to Bitcoin and has brought with it the very worst of investment-culture. It's been the wild west for bad players for too long. That's going to stop. And that's a good thing.

Bitcoin will survive for the simple fact that as long as something somewhere is illegal, Bitcoin will have value.

Except that there are cryptocurrencies gaining traction that have far more utility in that regard.

Monero, for example, uses ring signatures to enable a greater degree of anonymity by having x% of block transactions be complete gobbledygook. Sending someone a transaction doesn't unmask your transaction activity for them to see (unlike Bitcoin), values transmitted are obscured to people browsing the blockchain (unlike Bitcoin), etc.

Bitcoin isn't the best, or even a particularly good cryptocurrency for engaging in extra-legal activities.

>not controlled by a government

This has so many meanings that you can be both right and wrong at the same time.

Okay, but I've been hearing for a decade now how cryptocurrencies are immune to regulation. That, by their very nature, they're going to prevent existing governments from being able to exercise some types of power that libertarians find objectionable.

What I haven't been able to get a straight answer on is exactly which specific types of power. Because as far as I can tell, a government could still levy taxes in BTC. They could still impose whatever financial regulations they wanted on top of BTC. They couldn't force or prevent transactions, but they could still observe them and impose fines (and, ultimately, jail time or asset seizure) on entities who didn't follow the regulations. They could still demand record keeping and reporting from any businesses they wanted, and would still be able to perform audits to ensure compliance. Given that most of the blockchain implementations allow a third party to easily reconstruct transaction histories, quite a few types of regulation seem like they would actually be easier to enforce.

As far as I can tell, the only governmental function that cryptocurrencies actually disallow is central banking. That may or may not be a good thing, but either way it doesn't feel to me like a world shaking reclaiming of some fundamental liberty from the clutching tentacles of the Leviathan, and it doesn't seem like it would fundamentally alter the day-to-day experience of participating in the economy.

So, what am I missing? What should "not controlled by the government" actually imply, specifically? Or, if that's the wrong way to express the underlying sentiment, what would be a correct statement of the idea?

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