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Comment by BatFastard | Hacker News Reader

I can see only one reason why any government would ALLOW cryptocurrencies. While they could someday be used as a digital currency, right now they have very little positive value, and significant negative value. So the ONE reason I can see why government support them is for their own nefarious needs.

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Bingo. Blockchain systems are ideal for tracking & control, even beyond credit cards and the like. Bitcoin is simply so much more accessible.

Blockchain is amazing. Its use in cryptocurrencies is just the cat that got out of the bag...

The centralized use case (not run by arbitrary nodes) might have some use cases but the decentralized versions run on untrusted nodes which are all the craze are ridiculously uneconomical.

Here is an article estimating Google (one of the most profitable software companies) hardware expenditure at 5 billion a quarter [0], or 20 billion a year. With their 20 billion in profit a year, a doubling of server costs would make one of the most profitable software companies uneconomical.

Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies rely on everyone processing every computation which is insanely cost heavy which is why bitcoin processes a fraction of what visa does but costs the electricity of a small country.

Google's server requirements would obviously be uneconomical with that architecture but can any architecture that relies on untrusted nodes to do the computation be economical when a company such as Google could not run on twice the infrastructure costs?

And thats just one of the downsides with decentralized cryptocurrencies of which there are many.

[0]: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/07/23/from-...

Cryptocurrencies don't require you to give away your computing power for free, the blockchain gives them rewards for securing the network.

That reward needs to be sold to pay for the infrastructure costs of running that node which comes from increasing the supply of your cryptocurrency which decreases the value of each cryptocurrency token.

Blockchain systems enable structures very different from what we're used to, much like proprietary and open source models can differ greatly.

Instead of needing a healthy profit margin for server operation as in your Google example, blockchain servers can be run much closer to cost or even at a loss. Benefits may be realized elsewhere and do not necessarily have to be financial.

I can think of a couple other reasons:

1. With cryptocurrencies now blackhats have a buyer that isn't a corrupt foreign government. A lot of organizations are quietly paying ransoms right now. It's better than the alternative.

2. Who is this Satoshi, really? Colour me a little bit skeptical that someone was able to pull off this level of anonymity for this long. I'm not saying it is likely (<5% chance), but it is at least possible that Bitcoin is the American answer to the declining power of the greenback against the Euro and Yuan over the next couple decades.

3. Map out the crime networks and scoop them all up all at once then ban or regulate cryptocurrencies. Essentially what you said.

But I agree, it doesn't make sense for governments to cede this amount of power, and the small positive value that they enable (like actually being able to reliably send money to friends overseas) is dwarfed by the corruption they enable.

Just the fact that it's remained a secret for almost a decade is proof that the US government had nothing to do with the development of bitcoin. It can't even keep its warcrimes, perpetrated in secure military installations, a secret.

Good point; why sell drugs or arms to fund your black budgets when you can move digital funny money in a shell game? Or in some places it could be a version of, “Letting a hundred flowers blossom...” with a similar, if less fatal, end.

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