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Comment by JonathanBeuys | Hacker News Reader

Over the last weeks, I have been thinking a lot about how "substantial" cryptocurrencies are.

When I think about a new technology, I like to come up with a "proof" that something is or is not substantial. Something like "Email transfers a message just as well as a letter, but is orders of magnitude faster. Therefore, email has substantial value".

For Bitcoin (and other crypto), I came up with this "proof" that it is not a fad:

You can freely buy all kinds of stuff everywhere. A company can sell you a bag of stones. A hammer. A knife. A pencil. A lamp. But you cannot buy Bitcoin freely anywhere. If you want to buy Bitcoin, the government jumps in and says "Oh no! This is extremely dangerous! Write down the identity of this person. We need to monitor them!".

If Bitcoin is so dangerous to governments, it cannot be just a fad.

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You’re making a strange leap there in the second part of your bitcoin example.

In your email your argument is “email is faster”

In your bitcoin example it is “you can buy (with) bitcoin everywhere” and then suddenly “but governments monitor me so it cannot be a fad.”

That seems a non-sequitur to me. Something is not a fad because a government tracks you.

> “you can buy (with) bitcoin everywhere”

He didn't say that, read his comment againt.

By this logic, banned substances must be banned solely because they present even more of a risk to government (since this is the only reason considered for KYC). Therefore,… meth has even more value?

I did not say anything about value. I said "it cannot be just a fad". Googling for "fad" gives me "A fad is a product that has a very brief product life".

If you used the governments aversion to meth to judge the market size of illegal drugs you would have hit the nail on its head: The worldwide market for illegal drugs is tens of billions of dollars, has been around for centuries and nobody expects it to go away soon.

> tens of billions of dollars

It's actually hundreds of billions.

Citation?

There are a lot of bad things in the world.

Governments attempt to prevent their currencies from financing them. They do this through controls like AML/BSA.

Cryptocurrencies bypass these controls. It’s not just dangerous for governments, as the article points out this makes it dangerous for everyone. It has single-handedly enabled ransomware attacks to be profitable and endemic.

I honestly don’t understand your argument at all.

1. It's so dangerous!

2. It's going to boil the oceans!

3. We officially recognize it as currency.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"

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