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Comment by irusensei | Hacker News Reader

Let me guess, your passport cover is painted with the correct color. You probably never had to submit a mountain of paperwork officially translated to English because you committed the crime that is to help your mother back in your home country to pay for medicine. Your bank never blocked your funds and demanded explanations on why you withdraw that cash on an ATM. You've never been through the AML racist and fascist bullshit that subverts the concept of people being innocent into proven guilty. You probably also never lived through the hell of hyperinflation or government mandated confiscation of savings accounts[0].

Did I got right?

[0] https://www.joc.com/brazil-brings-end-its-failed-economic-pl... - "But Ms. Cardoso had no regrets. If necessary, she told O Globo newspaper, she would confiscate the money all over again."

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You don't need bitcoin, you just need better government and to end corruption.

Thanks! I'll make sure to vote harder next time.

You won that exchange, nicely done.

All the things you listed are the impetus to the Bitcoin network foundation.

Cheers!

Saying the only reason Bitcoin is needed is to help facilitate illegal transactions is not exact a resounding endorsement that will enable its widespread adoption. Most people don't want to actively encourage / support the breaking of laws.

You mean USD as that facilitates the largest volume of illegal transactions.

Read the whitepaper my guy, it goes over all of this as the impetus for it's creation.

If you don't like that, then check out what Henry Duncan did in 1810.

People like you shit all over his value proposition and were 100% wrong

Bitcoin doesn't have a defined mechanism for honoring the rule of law when society determines that something bad has happened. That's a pretty fundamental and potentially fatal flaw for some (unless, perhaps, you're a libertarian). For those of us that live in a society where the rule of law provides tangible benefits to our daily lives, that's a problem.

Personally, I'm perfectly happy with the banking system the way it is. I can send modest sums of money to others via an Interac e-Transfer via an email or SMS in a matter of seconds. I can transfer funds using EFT/ACH within 24 hours with no fees thanks to the credit union I use. Bitcoin isn't really an improvement on this situation for me.

You need to understand and accept that there are a non-trivial number of people in society which feel similarly and hold the same belief. Adopting something new just because it's tech is never going to win everyone over, especially when worries about personal wealth are involved. This isn't a simple technical problem that can be easily fixed with a bit more code.

I don't believe it's shitting over the value proposition: to me, adherence to rule of law is a requirement for the financial systems that I use. If someone compromises my credit card or bank account, the bank can reverse the fraudulent transactions. If someone compromises my Bitcoin wallet and transfers the contents out, the funds are gone and I have nobody to turn to for help, and the odds of recovery are negligible. This is a feature of the banking system. To me this is a bug in Bitcoin (not a feature). I'm not "shitting" over the value proposition -- I'm telling you that it doesn't meet my requirements.

You didn't bother to look up Henry Duncan did you.

Go do the proper homework and come back.

This financial network and it's rule of laws did not start that way, learn from history or don't I frankly don't care what you feel/think, you are literally 1 person that does not represent anyone but yourself.

You're entire argument is a strawman, I gave you the hint to understand why but you are too lazy to learn.

GLHF!

I read up on Henry Duncan prior to making my previous post, and it's mostly irrelevant. He created savings and loan entities that were still regulated by the government and had to abide by the rule of law. More importantly, they were run by and employed humans. Humans have incentive to abide by the rule of law which computers (nodes in the Bitcoin network) do not. That's a pretty massive difference between the two approaches to financial transactions which you have not addressed in the slightest.

I've explained what my major concerns are. You have not provided any explanation for how these concerns can / will be addressed. Your claim that Henry Duncan explains things seems to be a very indirect way of stating that laws need to be changed. Great -- let's say the law is changed. How do you retroactively implement governance mechanisms in Bitcoin whereby a transaction can be reversed upon an order by the court? Right now you can't! This is a real concern for myself and others. Hand waving it away is not addressing the problem. Why would I even remotely consider giving money to people that insist upon hand waving concerns about governance issues away?

Please respond with facts and ideas, not vitriol. I really do want to understand how people involved crypto currencies are going to implement the governance that is needed in the real world, as the current approaches appear to be completly ad-hoc and unpredictable to an outsider.

It was completely unregulated when he launched it and he was the proponent of regulation but that didn't come for another 10 years+ after he rolled it out and open sourced the idea.

If you can't see the parallels then meh, it's pretty much the same process any new financial network goes through.

You're entire argument is one big strawman, people will figure out over time how to regulate it, ie custodian solutions are just the beginning, you know all of these funds can be held in escrow.

Your lack of vision is a you problem, not the network's.

Innovate or get left behind, I gave you a clear example from history which refutes your core concept and you just...hand wave it away.

Btw - I genuinely believe that there are applications of blockchains that would improve governance in the real world. Most notably, blockchains as a public ledger tracking the actual ownership of publicly traded stocks and other financial instruments would be a really good idea, as it would enable the verify part of "trust, but verify". Sadly, this is not the application that has captured mainstream attention as of yet.

No but I have been through exchange mandated confiscation of crypto wallets. Be your own bank you say? Keep my own keys you say?

You think the average person from the article would hold their own keys? No the reality is if crypto was adopted en-mass, people would use services to manage their keys and you literally solve zero problems.

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