Hence why I said "Unless the basket of goods Monero can purchase also goes to infinity." I understand the definition of inflation.
-10 karma · joined July 7, 2021
Technology such as atomic swaps mean privacy coins will never be killed by legislation. The best we can do is outlaw their use by the honest, relegating them only to the blackmarket (which is precisely the place you didn't want them in the first place).
I could pressure wash houses for $200 a house everyday and get 100k in less than 2 years. Or bartend, work as a waitress for a few years, whatever. There's plenty of ways people end up with large sums of cash without a SAR or CTR. Some individuals conceivably may pull 2-3k a month out of an ATM for a few years, why would that flag a SAR on you? See this guy, who [1] despite having a bank account had 87k seized by thieves in blue on the side of the road, who meticulously kept ATM statements for most all of it.
> your transactions are private until the court authorizes the police obtain them on the basis of probable cause
What is the court that signs an order, based on probable cause of a crime, for each cash transaction over 10,000? What is the court that orders, based on probable cause, a bank file a SAR when they are suspicious of your transactions. What is the court that signs an order, based on probable cause of a crime, that you declare foreign bank accounts with a combined value above $10k? Can you point me towards the warrants that have been issued for each of these transactions that show the probable cause?
What is the court order, on probable cause, that requires foreign banks to comply with FATCA for Americans abroad?
What is the court order, on probable cause, that requires money transmitters to collect KYC on customers regardless of there being any probable cause whatsoever of a crime?
The idea your transaction are private until ordered by a court is absolute hogwash.
[1] https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/nevada-troopers-t...
Even for those who dearly love and care for their children, it's not a great feeling knowing that the slightest misinterpretation _requires_ that health / mental professional to refer you for prosecution. Instead of helpers, doctors and therapists have to be viewed as threats.
Thank you. Now that we've established that restricting financial tools does not stop the harming of innocent victims, it follows that a state such as El Salvador adopting bitcoin (or for instance, an allegedly untraceable currency such as monero) as legal tender as part of its monetary policy does not lead to increased harming of innocents. Those with desire to harm others, including those in government, could simply borrow or trade fiat from the other ilk who like to harm others.
You now understanding why restricting crypto doesn't prevent the underlying crimes (now a criminal just has to steal your identity or use one of the other gazillion illegal and legal ways to move funds) to transfer his funds abroad instead of using coinbase and a cellphone. Killing the legality of crypto stops the law abiding unbanked from having a very low cost means of international transfer.
You understand now that restricting access to fertilizer to prevent bombs is stupid, because now the common man who grows food can no longer provide the grain stock for the nation. Or restricting guns from the peaceful is asinine because it disarms the innocent against the criminal who can buy a gun readily on the black market virtually anywhere in the world or failing that 3d print a very reliable one for only a few hundred dollars including ammunition out of unrestricted materials even in Europe.
> But you're gonna need to cite some sources!
You're the first person who's ever actually demanded from me I cite the fact that the US has harmed innocents in war, but here you go![1]. That's just one bombing, there's plenty more acts such as as the My Lai massacre but I don't enjoy seeing more pictures of dead 2 year olds which you say is the "will of the people" since it was done by the government. Or perhaps we are a "failed" state?
>Don't project your morality here :)
Is it even a contentious subject that the bombing of innocents is wrong? What about the killing of nuns in El Salvador by US backed regime? Why do you think discussion of morality is off limits? If there is to be a government, is it not just that it at least be used to deal with the most gravest of brutal acts such as the killing of innocents?
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/29/asia/afghanistan-kabul-evacua...
So lets rephrase the question:
Does restriction of financial tools that are used to abet the harming of innocent victims (which virtually everyone else but you refers to as a crime) help reduce the harming of those victims or not?
Unless you have a problem with the Nuremburg trials and you think the holocaust was just a gentleman's disagreement between the Jews and German government, I think you understand the government is capable of crime.
> The state is the will of the people
There's certainly an argument to be made here currency debasement is not necessarily the will of the people, unless you truly think the people of Zimbabwe or Venezuela wanted to see their already inflating bills lose value even faster as the government printed more to fund the wages and ill-gotten gains of corrupt bureaucrats.
Yes I recall the great Swiss Civil War of the 1990s, when the holders of the gold backed Francs fought for spoils of each canton. Perhaps our Polish friend can chime in on the horrors of the refugees he saw.
>no lending or spending would be possible without their assent
Lending and spending shouldn't be possible without the assent from those which the money comes. Involuntarily spending someone else's money is also known as theft.
You are indicting the greater system you think Bitcoin represents (which resembles sort of monarchy or feudalism). You ignore that this system has been overcome even with those transacting in hard currencies. This reads of fear mongering or some desire to emulate Nostradamus.
Taxation is an explicit act that is visible on your paycheck; something you sign on at the end of the year. Debasement is more subtle and the common man who has little in his bank account may not even consider the effect, thus rationally would be more likely to go along with a war based on implicit debasement rather than explicit taxation.
>This is social policy not monetary policy. Japan has a soft monetary system, struggles constantly with deflation and has no army.
War is a social and monetary policy in a fiat currency nation; including a tacit approval for debasement to pay for that which cannot or will not be paid via other means.
In the past you have argued that illegal immigrants / criminals should not be aided with easier monetary tools for their trade. If that point follows, that could be extended to the criminals who authorized the latest Iraq War and last decade of the Afghanistan war as well. Fiat debasement is just one tool in the toolbox of the criminals in legislature and Federal Reserve. [*Note: personally I do not agree with your hypothesis that we should restrict the monetary tools of criminals. I think instead we should focus on the underlying crime itself.]
Of course, the rich already know all this, and seek to hold most of their wealth in assets and then hide any capital gains with any shell game they can.
Likely unbanked people working without any work authorization working for cash can be seen at the hardware store daily where I live. I invite you to come to any major city near a border and see it with your own two eyes. Or maybe they just looked and acted really mexican but didn't want to get a very easily gotten regular job and preferred shit wages by the side of the road? I don't need to "cite" something I have seen with my own two eyes. And do you seriously think illegal movement of hard cash across borders is fanfic? I understand if maybe you live in rich or ethnically homogeneous enclave or are otherwise not exposed to the poors and the illegal immigrants that I see every day; from that perspective maybe it does seem like a distant fiction. Do you really think people working for cash to remit abroad is not a thing? If you do, I admit defeat without so much as a citation.
>I'm gonna need to see some stats on all of this. Everything you've said is theoretical, hypothetical, and I'm going to need an understanding of exactly how often these scenarios play out. If it's just that, then it doesn't matter.
Here ya go![1] Most Salvadorans are unbanked. If your theory that the unbanked are just the people without money (which I dispute below), then it stands that the unbanked are probably most in need of remittance, and get the largest marginal utility from unbanked low transfer cost methods such as crypto (particularly such as LTC and BCH with have only pennies transaction fee).
>Unbanked people are un-banked because they don't have money
Or because they lack documents (even if they are legal citizens). Or because they are an American in a foreign country and no bank there wants to comply with FATCA reporting requirements. Or because they have money, but not _enough_. Or because they have some enemy in government, or lack a permanent address or proof of address. Recently I was rejected for a bank account because I was moving and had no address, despite having good income and assets and a valid passport recognized by the bank and our government as the authoritative identity document. Your view of the unbanked is naive and simplistic.
>Do you know wealthy people without bank accounts?
Not off hand, but there are plenty of Americans with large amounts of unbanked money. Such as this man who had 87k seized by the road side despite doing nothing wrong [3] (he did have a bank account but preferred not to store cash there). You won't have to dig long to find examples of truckers and other folk who keep large stores of cash outside the banking system, that we only know about because their money was seized by some overzealous thief in Blue by the side of the road.
>It actually doesn't, because if it did, you'd be right, and that law would be unconstitutional.
Actually it says the right of the people, not the right of the militia. I live in a state where I can conceal carry without a license. I do it everyday, and guess what -- no one has ever noticed because it makes zero difference to anyone else unless someone tries to fatally hurt me or my family. If I did it in Hawaii the only difference would be if I ever successfully defended myself or my family I would go to jail for exercising my constitutional rights.
>, I think the law should be respected until changed
And if you were in the US at the time of the American Revolution, you'd be left screaming about how it's against the law to fight the British and how we should all just solicit the King for a change. The law definitely doesn't "work" for the many victims of the drug war, the people in jail for having both a joint and a gun, or the many immigrants not quite as lucky as you that have been deported from the country after performing even military service [2].
I think crime is good when there is no victim and it expands liberty. I think crime is good when the law is unjust. I don't think all criminals are bad, and no I don't agree to your terms. There have been a number of successful, well respected, and honorable men who thought the same.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1011424/el- salvador-bank-account-ownership-rate-type/
[2] https://theconversation.com/deported-veterans-stranded-far-f...
[3] https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/nevada-troopers-t...
From a bank, or a money transmitter, or a traditional employer -- sure. But I could spange on the side of the road or get picked up at a home depot and do some work and get cash without KYC no problem, same for selling some personal goods or goods I buy and then sell at a markup or any number of common cash transactions.
>No, they certainly are not. Any withdrawals or deposits of over 10K USD at a bank will require an ID and get you a CTR or SAR filed. If you tried to get 100K in fiat you will almost certainly get a CTR or SAR filed on you. You'll probably get a call from a bank manager, a compliance officer and/or someone from FinCEN. Ditto on the deposit.
At a bank sure. If you sell a car for $15k you're supposed to report the transaction on the honor system but in reality people could take that cash, buy $15k worth of gold from a variety of sources and there would be no reporting anywhere despite the fact you sold $15k of assets and then bought $15k more of assets.
>Potentially, but unlikely. You cannot get 100K of cash lawfully without presenting ID. If you did, you committed a crime to get it, it was probably laundered, and you probably paid 2-10X that amount to launder it. You're probably a criminal.
Sure you can. I could pressure wash houses for $200 a house and do one everyday for 500 days. Or I could ask for spare change by the side of the road; doing that daily for a few years could probably get you 100k in a rich area and you wouldn't even need to speak English or have an ID or any relationship with a bank whatsoever, just the ability to bury your earnings in a hole somewhere.
>This is part of the reason people do not cross borders with 100K in cash. It's a crime to do so without reporting it, so if found it'll be seized. It's trivial to find $100K in cash strapped to someone or on an Xray.
Yes it is a crime, yet it happens all the time. The US/Mexico border is one of the most porous in the world, and I can tell you as someone has has crossed it multiple times that I have never been X-rayed entering mexico (they do have an X-ray but the guy manning it is asleep/gone/not interested much of the time). And this lack of X-ray is despite the fact the US border patrol has a SERIOUS SERIOUS hair up their ass for me that results in my long detainment everytime I enter the US (I've never broken a law but there's some weird file in my record that I'm a nefarious agent due to some actions in some 3rd world nations.)
>No, crime is not liberty. It's crime
Transferring and owning crypto is not always a crime. And crime is not necessarily bad. For instance, it is a crime to carry a hand gun in public for defense in Hawaii without a virtually unobtainable license, yet the constitution pretty clearly says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. The government says servers have to pay taxes on all their tips, yet sometimes ones struggling to get by opt to not pay to fund imprisoning drug users or blowing up brown people abroad. Sometimes "crime" is liberty. In the US crime does not have to have a victim (like moving 100k in cash across the border) so it is not synonymous with a "violation of your liberties" or rights.
>Again you completely ignore Wise as a much better, less volatile solution to the problem.
No I specifically mentioned that to use Wise without fees it's an issue for the unbanked, which is a major problem in El Salvador. I'm glad the plight of the unbanked is "fanfic" to you. We all know the rich legal citizens who are banked have the financial upper hand including in international transactions.
>No the issue with drug legislation is it impinges on the freedoms of average citizens and directly harms them via prison.
We're in agreement here on the root cause, but unfortunately even marijuana is illegal federally despite many surveys showing the majority of the US does not want it criminalized. Even if drugs were legal, I'm not sure a casual crack user would benefit from going to a crack dealer full of broke people that feel they need it to survive ( I don't even feel all that safe going to some gas stations that people constantly ask for gas money at). But yeah I think crack and heroin should be sold off amazon and drug laws do impinge on the freedoms of average citizens, and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. I don't know why you would rather people buy crack from some street dealer than buy it off an at least superficially vetted dealer on the darknet for whom there are at least reviews stating it's not laced with fentanyl.
> Whatever is built upon it is fruit of the poison tree
To you; to me it's built on the tree of liberty.
>building a darknet marketplace - which solves zero existing problems
The existing problem was that people would show up in cash in person, and often without either parties being vetted. The darkmarket did not totally solve this problem but it did help it, by creating a rating system and allowing people to buy items without needing to put themselves in the vicinity of a potentially dangerous drug den.
Sometimes direct action is more empowering to the common man than legislation. As Cody Wilson said when he made the 3d gun popular, it was a political act that the world just has to deal with. Bringing crypto into this world "legislated" into reality a way to move funds in a way the legislature failed to by blocking the path of those who are conventionally blocked by KYC and AML. I don't know that every El Salvadoran can just wait indefinitely for legislation to pass for their money to come in from their family members working in the US. Every dollar taken away from them from the likes of Western Union et al is money straight out of the mouth of possibly impoverished family members, and we shouldn't begrudge these people the tools to fund their unbanked families at a fair rate.
I know it isn't fruitful here to discuss whether illegal immigrants should exist (maybe we should block all their access to money supply so they and their family can starve). But they do exist, and they will seek out the lowest cost non-KYC options, and crypto looks to be a decent bet. There are other people as well without documents, such as homeless who have long lost them and people born in weird situation where their parents never sought legal documents for their existence.
>Crypto is always available for money launders and criminals, yes.
As are banks and fiat.
Transferring crypto, without KYC (which is a real concern for persons from central america who may not have documentation for a bank account or legal status in the US), for $~3 in transfer fees plus whatever rate they can get face-to-face (which could be near 0% exchange fee) is damn good. I doubt most of these marginalized workers in the US (not all El Salvadorans, I'm sure there are plenty of rich ones with Fidelity accounts who haven't been the utilitarian use case for crypto transfer) could do better without packing up a bundle of cash and travelling to El Salvador on a plane.
I can't tell if this is supposed to be sarcasm, humor, or merely a hilariously misinformed view of the effect of the pandemic on spending and lending behavior (which apparently you think happened instead due to the change in money supply).
>Sorry, but "all else equal" doesn't, and can never, exist.
Which is my point! As your paper explains, these secondary effects from pandemic and other causes help explain the expression of inflation beyond the money supply effects.
I think the only thing cheaper may be to find some company that allows international wire for very cheap, and that normally requires holding a lot of fiat in the bank.
"For excess liquidity to create inflation, it needs to lead to a sustained increase in spending and loan growth. So far, bank lending has been anemic while the global velocity of money and the money multiplier (the ratio of broad money to base money) has fallen more than during the Great Financial Crisis. "
"the secular trends of automation and robotization, declining labor force participation, aging population and high debt levels will continue to suppress inflation over the long-term"
If I'm an el salvadoran with no documentation in the US I can send my $15k wages for like $40 to any individual in El Salvador (who can now use it as currency once on the appropriate local network) without getting rammed by Uncle Sam's large dong while trying to transfer. It's incomparable to Western Union.