See the first comment in the post.
Munger is right and China was right. They're not wasting tons of precious energy and talent on creating scams, ponzis, casinos, rug pulls, and unlicensed securities.
Grew some balls and ban crypto or at least create clear regulation that the majority of crypto falls in the securities category. It's a disease in its current form.
And you know, it works. No shady drug dealers on the streets (can’t compete with the government), less and less drug consumers each year (because it is totally uncool, and there are people helping you quit).
I don’t understand why Swiss/Portuguese model is not adopted everywhere immediately. It works great.
>No shady drug dealers on the streets
Patently false from my experience, what cities do you have in mind? From my own experience absolutely not the case in Lausanne, Geneva, Montreux, Zürich or Basel. In Lausanne Flon area they will literally line up to offer their wares on Saturday night at around midnight - 1 AM with absolutely no regard for the police. Riponne is even worse hearing from people who still live there.
>Less and less drug consumers each year
Is that like for hard drugs only or in general? Might be true for heroin/crack, absolutely not true if you include weed. In cities like Lausanne the amount of times you smell weed on the streets has gone up massively in the last 10 years.
I have heard that something like this works in Zurich, too.
Re: weed, it is still technically illegal here, but fully decriminalized, and nobody pays any attention if someone smokes it. I think it is a good thing, even though I don’t do it myself.
If it's China and the government owns that energy and talent then yes. If it is a free country, then the government has no businesses telling us how to best invest our resources and talent.
I really don't like crypto, but I don't see why everything I dislike should be illegal. The active harm it causes should be illegal though, but I believe that it's largely the case already.
Besides, crypto bros weren't exactly cracking the atom before crypto became profitable. The rest of our industry is devoted to either making people click ads, or creating toll roads on every human interaction.
So, the case for regulating crypto is that it, sans regulations, crypto harms consumers. Makes sense.
The case for banning it is... what exactly? Charlie didn't bother to make the case. All you say is that it "wastes time and precious energy". But time-wasting is a cornerstone of the modern economy, and there's no way crypto ranks even in the top 100 on that front. And electricity is not a finite resource, so banning a technology just to reduce energy use makes no sense.
What's the actual case for a ban?
All of those exist in the financial derivatives market. And the finance sector in general...