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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

I think the US will eventually shape the law and regulatory environment to prevent the existence of any cryptocurrency with its own valuation - distributed ledgers denominated in central bank currencies will be all that is allowed at the end.

Existing SEC/CFTC/FinCen rulings seem to point in a very different direction. They've had many opportunities to shut down Bitcoin and have not done it.

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Nobody actually uses bitcoin in the US for anything besides investment speculation and really rare toy applications. It isn't being seen as a threat to anybody's central bank, because for all its enthusiasts and speculators, it hasn't developed into any sort of competition for the existing financial system unless you are doing something really illicit.

> unless you are doing something really illicit.

Actually I wonder if the intelligence agencies of the world like the cryptocurrencies because it lets them find illicit activity more easily.

Nothing like an indestructible globally replicated register of your transactions to help make yourself discoverable

Wasabi and other modern bitcoin wallets run over Tor and have built-in features (like CoinJoin, coin control, etc.) to defeat blockchain analysis companies: https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/why-wasabi/

There are also decentralized, Tor-encrypted exchanges to buy and sell bitcoin like Bisq: https://bisq.network/.

Either it works and you'll find it impossible to defend legalizing cryptocurrencies with money-laundering-as-a-service in front of Congress, or it doesn't work and prosecutors will slap money laundering charges on top of any crime that matters and you'll have a lot more difficult time defending yourself and your intent when you go to such lengths to hide your financial transactions.

> Either it works and you'll find it impossible to defend legalizing cryptocurrencies with money-laundering-as-a-service in front of Congress, or it doesn't work and prosecutors will slap money laundering charges on top of any crime that matters and you'll have a lot more difficult time defending yourself and your intent when you go to such lengths to hide your financial transactions.

Why? In most modern financial systems the ledger is not public. Why would I have to defend attempting to bring that level of privacy to bitcoin? It seems reasonable to want similar levels of privacy across instruments and doesn't seem illegal to use tumbler services, etc. I don't even see how that can be construed as money laundering. I imagine courts disagree but would love to read their reasoning.

It's been a little over 10 years since the first bitcoins were mined and today's market cap is $147,490,754,701. Given that there are now bitcoin investment products like ETFs, some folks have a portion of their 401k's invested in bitcoin.

It certainly will be competition for central banks, especially in countries where the monetary policy is kinda wacky, like Venezuela, where bitcoin is breaking usage records.

Here's an article by a Venezuelan economist: "Bitcoin Has Saved My Family": https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/opinion/sunday/venezuela-....

He was only able to feed his family because he kept his money in bitcoin and not in bolívars, which was experiencing daily inflation of 3.5%.

If I recall correctly, early on in the life of Bitcoin, the United States had to infuse $14 trillion into the economy to save the banks and keep the country from going into a depression.

There's only so long people are going to put up with near zero interest rates or negative interest rates in some countries and with a slow down seemingly around the corner, Bitcoin's algorithmic certainly will look pretty good compared to the somewhat irrational economic policies that have been implemented.

Bitcoins are valued 40 billion dollars right now, it's less that the net worth of Larry Page and less that the GDP of Myanmar, one of the poorest countries in the world.

If some folks risked their 401k on bitcoin it changes nothing.

If you own bitcoins in countries where inflation is double digit and you think they will save your family, think again: they would most probably get you killed or robbed.

> If you own bitcoins in countries where inflation is double digit and you think they will save your family, think again: they would most probably get you killed or robbed.

How so? It's not like correlating who owns which address is easy, and any smart person has their funds distributed across several wallets. So if you rob me of my bitcoins and I give you access to a wallet that doesn't contain all of my funds, how would you know any better?

Also, most people who have considerable wealth in bitcoin has them in a multi signature wallet, like a 3 of 5—spending the money requires the use of 3 of the 5 authorized private keys.

You’re missing a digit—it’s $140+ billion, not $40 billion.

> It certainly will be competition for central banks, especially in countries where the monetary policy is kinda wacky, like Venezuela, where bitcoin is breaking usage records.

Zimbabwe also: https://qz.com/africa/1662753/bitcoin-crypto-soar-in-zimbabw...

There's really quite an opportunity here for Bitcoin to help people in these countries leap their financial markets forward a few stages in development: https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/f12930a4-a78b-43c0-9fe1-...

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