I've always said I'm more comfortable with the folks that are right up front with the con than I am with the folks that obfuscate their intent by hiding behind moral arguments.
I'm not. I'm not comfortable with cons, period. If they hide it, it's worse, but only in that "they were good at not getting caught" way. If you try to con me in my face, I'm going to be pissed and I'm not exactly going to say "well, at least you were up front about it." Or maybe I will say that. After the con has been appropriately punished for being a con.
I didn't say anything about friendship. I merely think that suggesting someone who is corrupt in the open may be (very slightly) better than someone who is corrupt in private, even if true, misplaces emphasis. The corruption matters far, far, far more than its state of hiddenness.
I could make an argument that being openly corrupt is far more damaging than being corrupt in private as well, because it normalizes corruption, removing a lot of the normal social barriers. Aversion to corruption is not merely legal; it is also social. Being corrupt is generally considered a moral failing that is accompanied by a loss in social status. If people are openly corrupt and are not punished socially, others will realize that corruption is socially acceptable, meaning that legality is now the only bar. And we have deliberately placed legal bars quite high in this country in order to avoid convicting the innocent. I don't know if I believe this argument though. I'm satisfied with the lesser argument that corruption is very very bad, and if someone is openly corrupt, that makes it easy to then punish them and ensure they either stop being (openly?) corrupt, or they get thrown out of power.
But, being corrupt IS socially acceptable. We elect them to high office...in fact the highest office in the land...on a regular basis. Folks imagine it's NOT socially acceptable and like to tut tut tut it at Friday afternoon cocktail gatherings, but then go back to teeing up the rubes on Monday morning under cover of social acceptability.
I don't do moralistic debate. Everyone gets to choose what they want. I choose being more comfortable around the openly admitted con. Others can choose their own comfort zone.
Well, I guess it's hard to disagree that it's socially acceptable given that we've elected Clinton, almost elected a second Clinton, Trump, Biden, and Trump again.
Do you remember Biden saying "time to buy BidenBucks? I promise you can spend them just like real bucks."
In the old days to get rich politicians would need to something like establish a "charity" that hired their friends, or write a "memoir" that mysteriously had 2 million copies sold, but there was gigantic skimming by all the middlemen and legitimate employment for the booksellers and publishing houses and charity employees.
How confident are you that in 1,418 days, Trump will not issue an executive order saying he's allowed a third term that no republican in congress will oppose and which the supreme court will decline to decide until May of 2029?
The fact that he will be 82 makes me feel a hell of a lot better, but still concerned. I think he would lose the 2028 election, but I am pretty sure he'd be doing his best to steal it again. And he'd be a lot better at it this time.
Trump secretly feels bad about how shutting down USAID impacted Cambodian prostitutes. The crypto strategy is aimed at helping them bring in more business, making them less reliant on US subsidies.
Steelman: It's just another institution like the lottery. If Trump creates a cryptocurrency reserve (preferably one that is created specifically for that purpose), the only people who will "lose" are the last greater fool who are already keen on gambling on crypto.
Currently, the lottery pays for common goods like education, while acting as a nationalized gambling fund that taxes the minority of people who buy into it. It's better that the government, rather than a private institution serves this need, since it's a stagnant industry that just prints money. It's basically a nationalized vice that serves the public, rather than whoever happens to own the company that sells the product.
If people are keen on gambling on crypto (this is obviously the case), and any 14 year old can create their own shitcoin with barely any effort, then this industry should be nationalized just like the lottery was. Rather than some random scammer benefiting from his local pump-and-dump, it should be a government controlled pump-and-dump, with odds of success slightly better than the current scams. If the EV of government crypto is 0.5-0.9, then people would still "invest" money into it, while the government could strategically sell new coins, spending the money on the public good.
Gambling is basically one of the only use-cases of crypto right now, and there's a pretty strong consensus that there's little downside to taxing or nationalizing gambling. I'd support a strong tax instead, if it wasn't just as for foreign individuals to run things while avoiding being taxed, so nationalization it is.
Minor quibble: cryptocurrency fits every definition of money. You can use bitcoin to buy cars! Calling it “non-money” three separate times seems like wishcasting or a tantrum or something.
I'm mostly going to hide behind artistic license here -- I need to be able to use funny phrases for comedic effect -- but I'm also going to point out that you can theoretically use a bushel of apples to buy a car, but that doesn't make apples "money". Yes, Bitcoin is used sometimes for some goods (especially illegal ones), but the others are almost entirely investment products.
Exactly right. In fact, Krugman used this very example to illustrate his point that Bitcoin and gold are both assets that don't really function as money. I know people who are enthusiastic about Bitcoin (don't ask me why), but I have yet to meet someone who bought a car with Bitcoin. https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/crypto-is-for-criming
This is true, if "investment" means continued and nonstop buy in by anonymous "investors" in an entirely opaque trading floor for the "investment" to continue appreciating. I think there's another name for that.
Absolutely; I just think you’re underestimating the degree to which Bitcoin (and to a lesser extent etherium) have become legitimate currencies of exchange, to the point of eclipsing many less-stable national currencies. To argue bitcoin isn’t money, you’d have to start going after the Argentine peso too.
I think every economist will argue that the Argentinian Peso has not been serving the role money should. Neither does Bitcoin though, which has experienced 15% inflation (in terms of real goods) this month alone. It also deflates (semi-randomly) to equivalent amounts, which is not desirable in a currency.
There's also the pesky fact that sometimes large amounts of crypto disappear in online theft. Not Bitcoin...yet...but the stuff doesn't seem to be particularly safe.
Yeah, good luck buying a car with D-level crypto tokens. You've got to be kidding if you are seriously suggesting that these random crypto tokens are functionally the same as actual US currency.
Not all of the random ones, certainly. Bitcoin, however, is an established, trusted currency which can be used to purchase goods and services worldwide.
It is instructive to listen to what Dimon has to say about it. His bank holds it, because in some sense it has to, but his opinion of it is he thinks it's ridiculous and an idiotic play.
The eternal conundrum of the economy: if enough dopes are getting into something and it’s skyrocketing, suddenly you’re the dope for not getting into it.
I really don’t know why you’re resorting to childish name calling here. Would you like me to send you articles showing Argentines using Bitcoin as a currency of exchange?
There's also nothing backing it except the continued trust of those holding it. IN my entire life, I've met a few people who I felt I could trust with anything, including my money. That people would put their trust in thousands of folks they've never seen, met, or even know their names or where they're located...that's something new.
Those that want or need to believe, will believe. Some of it will continue because it is a handy unit of exchange with no way to trace where it all goes. ID numbers are meaningless in this regard. It's entirely opaque. Money isn't.
There’s a debate to be had here. Some people see it as a plus that nobody has control of Bitcoin; the fact that national currencies are subject to the political whims of executives and legislatures is a weakness Bitcoin doesn’t share. I honestly don’t know where I land on it, and again, I’ve never bought cryptocurrency myself.
In this, we agree. As long as everyone continues believing, it's grand. I seem to remember reading about times in the past where folks stopped believing in things.
In the debate, I'll sit on the sidelines watching, just like I do with crypto. I buy the least liquid thing there is; real estate. But, it sits there making money and can't evaporate. I like that.
The "1,418 days" bit made me realize how little time Trump 2.0 has been in office despite everything that has already happened and, just... fuckin' hell, man.
This will improve efficiency in government, wherein The Occupant no longer has to fiddle around with Deutsche Bank and other middlemen taking a slice of the action, and no tawdry details about where the money might be coming from to sully the name of our Great Leader™, and no unpleasant names for it like "laundering".
"[A]nyone anywhere near it will suffer instant ignominy and career death…"
Sadly, that isn't how politics works. The more widespread the buy-in to a colossal fuck-up — say, the invasion of Iraq because of "WMDs", or the 2008 financial disaster — the smaller the effect on anyone's careers. When that many people screw up, people are more likely to fail upwards.
By 2030 most of the current service style jobs will be gone and replaced by AI agents all trading amongst themselves. You think they’ll be using FIAT for that ? These layer 1 cryptos they are proposing all have use cases to integrate with the future of this new world that we’ll be living in. What this means ? Who the fuck knows? You just have to question if you think we’ll be living in a less digital world or a more digital world in the future then make your choice.
Some of this could be handled with just some simple deal making. Like "Sure, we will vote to pass this, but it will only happen when there are ten straight years of budget surplus and five straight years of declining national debt". There is no need to defend this idea, it can be bad, just allow it to pass but with conditions that Republicans couldn't plausibly argue against. Defeating does not mean opposing a bill root and branch. Shrug your shoulders, think about it, and then put some conditions on it to give it that sweet art of the deal flavor. It either wont pass or if it does, will only be invested in when there is so much economic growth and prosperity going on the mood of the country would be very different. Or maybe something like "You can have your fund but only until you get scammed stolen from or lose half the value of the portfolio. That would kill it off so fast they would barely have time to put their pencils in their desk jar before the whole thing would be shut down.
As a Republican who has been one way longer than Trump, I refuse to defend it or anyone who would pass it without larding it down with safeguards that would be both prudent and sure to give us the smallest possible degree of graft or threat. If some yahoo voted for this, and then the agency got scammed out of billions, they could expect to be annihilated for it. A very compromise friendly bill that allows for Trumps cryptobros to get a pyrrhic win and places the risk of failure only on people stupid enough to buy into it would allow the issue to die. Thirty minutes of reasonable negotiation and I predict the whole issue would die because the compromise isn't what people pushing it want.
Look, 100% this is a total crap idea that will benefit shitty grifters, but the “crypto is anonymous and is only used to buy drugs” trope is an incredibly uninformed talking point from 2011.
Crypto uses public blockchain ledgers that show exactly what was transferred between ID numbers OUT IN THE OPEN FOR EVERYONE TO READ FOREVER. So if you want to do illegal transactions, things like bitcoin are a bloody terrible way to pay for it, because the Wizards of the Deep State(TM) can find you pretty easily.
Things like crypto based smart contracts are useful and will be an important part of the tech stack moving forward, but unfortunately the scammy meme coin bullshit is a huge dumb distraction from the real potential.
That cryptocurrency is often used for crime is a well-established fact. Even in this survey of people who buy things with crypto -- which is a study designed to support the notion that crypto is legit because people are more likely to report buying a shirt than they are to buying fentanyl -- 11% said they buy drugs and 15% said they buy weapons.
I will grant that, but you know what else is used mostly for illegal basically untraceable activity? Cash. I mean, the 500 Euro note is called the “Bin Laden” for Christ sakes, and when was the last time you saw a legitimate transaction using a $100 bill?
I would posit that removing cash as a transaction medium is a terrible idea that would hurt more than it helps. The same is very much true about crypto.
Frontiers are always full of weirdos and wacky ideas, and 95% of the stuff that people come up with is crap. Nothing different here, but I do believe that some good things will come out of the chaos.
Interesting article- not sure about the sampling though: 5 years ago “983 people familiar with crypto” is going to skew super libertarian (aka pre Robinhood Super Bowl ads and stimmie checks), so the drug correlation isn’t necessarily a surprise. 😉
I'm not sure if you're intentionally misunderstanding what Jeff means by anonymous or not. Yes, crypto transactions are on blockchain, but the right analogy is having a record of all the phone calls made by a specific phone number. If you don't know whose phone number that is, it's functionally anonymous even though you absolutely can see what phone made those calls. Layer in the fact that you can transfer those bitcoins again and again through multiple different anonymous accounts and you have yourself a money launderer's dream.
People have tried diverting all their stolen bitcoin through extra accounts and mixers and all that, and still get caught when trying to interact with the real world to extract any of it.
Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan had a stolen hoard worth over a billion dollars they sat on for years and then ran through a bunch of extra accounts. They had to resort to physical flights to Kazakhstan and then smuggle the money back in via cash. Then they still had the problem that drug dealers do of "how do I explain this giant pile of cash when I try to deposit it in the bank?" And they got caught.
There are always those that get away with things and others that get caught. The two women were the latter. We can't know of those that succeeded because ....that's the point of crypto. Sometimes, maybe lots of times, it works.
I agree like 99% agree with the article. I’m not misunderstanding his take at all, I just don’t agree with the perspective that crypto is only used for crime. Look, I get that they are supposed to be laugh lines, but maybe ask someone who was living in Argentina with a forced confiscatory exchange rate to any hard currency about the positive use cases for crypto.
Boy, every person acting like crypto is "real" money keeps bringing up Argentina. Is there some kind of bullet point list you all get with talking points for defending crypto as anything other than intangible "asset" with no inherent value? No matter what you say, it's simply not the case that crypto is backed by anything; it's entirely speculative because there's no backstop.
OK- so you want a stablecoin then. $USD is pegged to the dollar and backed with actual dollar reserves. It is quite useful for actual businesses to perform transactions that don’t need to go through ACH or the other intentionally slow and expensive financial rails. It is currently used to allow people to make quotes on weekends to hedge any currency risks along with a lot of other things.
Not everything in crypto is a “when lambo” shit coin rug pull casino. (Although LOTS of it is…)
It's hilarious how the right always accused the left of shady, backroom corruption when Trump's corruption is just right there out in the open.
I've always said I'm more comfortable with the folks that are right up front with the con than I am with the folks that obfuscate their intent by hiding behind moral arguments.
I'm not. I'm not comfortable with cons, period. If they hide it, it's worse, but only in that "they were good at not getting caught" way. If you try to con me in my face, I'm going to be pissed and I'm not exactly going to say "well, at least you were up front about it." Or maybe I will say that. After the con has been appropriately punished for being a con.
I didn’t say I’d like the guy and ask them to be my friend. I said I was comfortable with it.
I didn't say anything about friendship. I merely think that suggesting someone who is corrupt in the open may be (very slightly) better than someone who is corrupt in private, even if true, misplaces emphasis. The corruption matters far, far, far more than its state of hiddenness.
I could make an argument that being openly corrupt is far more damaging than being corrupt in private as well, because it normalizes corruption, removing a lot of the normal social barriers. Aversion to corruption is not merely legal; it is also social. Being corrupt is generally considered a moral failing that is accompanied by a loss in social status. If people are openly corrupt and are not punished socially, others will realize that corruption is socially acceptable, meaning that legality is now the only bar. And we have deliberately placed legal bars quite high in this country in order to avoid convicting the innocent. I don't know if I believe this argument though. I'm satisfied with the lesser argument that corruption is very very bad, and if someone is openly corrupt, that makes it easy to then punish them and ensure they either stop being (openly?) corrupt, or they get thrown out of power.
But, being corrupt IS socially acceptable. We elect them to high office...in fact the highest office in the land...on a regular basis. Folks imagine it's NOT socially acceptable and like to tut tut tut it at Friday afternoon cocktail gatherings, but then go back to teeing up the rubes on Monday morning under cover of social acceptability.
I don't do moralistic debate. Everyone gets to choose what they want. I choose being more comfortable around the openly admitted con. Others can choose their own comfort zone.
Well, I guess it's hard to disagree that it's socially acceptable given that we've elected Clinton, almost elected a second Clinton, Trump, Biden, and Trump again.
I disagree with the sentence "The potential for corruption is off the charts." because it implies it hasn't happened yet.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vmym2jvy9o He hawked $TRUMP just before inauguration. Someone pumped a bunch of money in, and then it became another shitcoin.
Do you remember Biden saying "time to buy BidenBucks? I promise you can spend them just like real bucks."
In the old days to get rich politicians would need to something like establish a "charity" that hired their friends, or write a "memoir" that mysteriously had 2 million copies sold, but there was gigantic skimming by all the middlemen and legitimate employment for the booksellers and publishing houses and charity employees.
This is so right.
How confident are you that in 1,418 days, Trump will not issue an executive order saying he's allowed a third term that no republican in congress will oppose and which the supreme court will decline to decide until May of 2029?
Not nearly as confident as I'd like to be.
The fact that he will be 82 makes me feel a hell of a lot better, but still concerned. I think he would lose the 2028 election, but I am pretty sure he'd be doing his best to steal it again. And he'd be a lot better at it this time.
I will bet anyone here that Bitcoin will retain its value. Here are the terms:
- Bet term is 1 years from initiation of bet
- If, at the end of 1 year Bitcoin still has value in US dollars, you owe me 1,000,000 bitcoins
- If, at the end of 1 year Bitcoin is worth $0, I owe you 1,000,000 bitcoins
Let's do this, crypto skeptics!
Trump secretly feels bad about how shutting down USAID impacted Cambodian prostitutes. The crypto strategy is aimed at helping them bring in more business, making them less reliant on US subsidies.
Steelman: It's just another institution like the lottery. If Trump creates a cryptocurrency reserve (preferably one that is created specifically for that purpose), the only people who will "lose" are the last greater fool who are already keen on gambling on crypto.
Currently, the lottery pays for common goods like education, while acting as a nationalized gambling fund that taxes the minority of people who buy into it. It's better that the government, rather than a private institution serves this need, since it's a stagnant industry that just prints money. It's basically a nationalized vice that serves the public, rather than whoever happens to own the company that sells the product.
If people are keen on gambling on crypto (this is obviously the case), and any 14 year old can create their own shitcoin with barely any effort, then this industry should be nationalized just like the lottery was. Rather than some random scammer benefiting from his local pump-and-dump, it should be a government controlled pump-and-dump, with odds of success slightly better than the current scams. If the EV of government crypto is 0.5-0.9, then people would still "invest" money into it, while the government could strategically sell new coins, spending the money on the public good.
Gambling is basically one of the only use-cases of crypto right now, and there's a pretty strong consensus that there's little downside to taxing or nationalizing gambling. I'd support a strong tax instead, if it wasn't just as for foreign individuals to run things while avoiding being taxed, so nationalization it is.
Minor quibble: cryptocurrency fits every definition of money. You can use bitcoin to buy cars! Calling it “non-money” three separate times seems like wishcasting or a tantrum or something.
I'm mostly going to hide behind artistic license here -- I need to be able to use funny phrases for comedic effect -- but I'm also going to point out that you can theoretically use a bushel of apples to buy a car, but that doesn't make apples "money". Yes, Bitcoin is used sometimes for some goods (especially illegal ones), but the others are almost entirely investment products.
Exactly right. In fact, Krugman used this very example to illustrate his point that Bitcoin and gold are both assets that don't really function as money. I know people who are enthusiastic about Bitcoin (don't ask me why), but I have yet to meet someone who bought a car with Bitcoin. https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/crypto-is-for-criming
This is true, if "investment" means continued and nonstop buy in by anonymous "investors" in an entirely opaque trading floor for the "investment" to continue appreciating. I think there's another name for that.
Stablecoins are what to look at for people using them to exchange for goods and services, instead of hoping to find a greater fool.
Yes. Personally, I find money works fine for that. I live in China, and use WeChat so I don't have to handle the stuff.
Absolutely; I just think you’re underestimating the degree to which Bitcoin (and to a lesser extent etherium) have become legitimate currencies of exchange, to the point of eclipsing many less-stable national currencies. To argue bitcoin isn’t money, you’d have to start going after the Argentine peso too.
I think every economist will argue that the Argentinian Peso has not been serving the role money should. Neither does Bitcoin though, which has experienced 15% inflation (in terms of real goods) this month alone. It also deflates (semi-randomly) to equivalent amounts, which is not desirable in a currency.
There's also the pesky fact that sometimes large amounts of crypto disappear in online theft. Not Bitcoin...yet...but the stuff doesn't seem to be particularly safe.
Yeah, good luck buying a car with D-level crypto tokens. You've got to be kidding if you are seriously suggesting that these random crypto tokens are functionally the same as actual US currency.
Not all of the random ones, certainly. Bitcoin, however, is an established, trusted currency which can be used to purchase goods and services worldwide.
Hahahahahahahahaha...INHALE....hahahahahahahaha....
Laugh all you want. Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Bank of America all hold Bitcoin for a reason.
It is instructive to listen to what Dimon has to say about it. His bank holds it, because in some sense it has to, but his opinion of it is he thinks it's ridiculous and an idiotic play.
Dimon is not a dope.
“because in some sense it has to (hold bitcoin)”
The eternal conundrum of the economy: if enough dopes are getting into something and it’s skyrocketing, suddenly you’re the dope for not getting into it.
It's a speculative asset, you dope, not a store of value. All those companies also hold stocks.
I really don’t know why you’re resorting to childish name calling here. Would you like me to send you articles showing Argentines using Bitcoin as a currency of exchange?
It fits every definition of a unit of exchange. It does not fit every definition of “money“.
Sure, yes, there’s no physical bitcoins
There's also nothing backing it except the continued trust of those holding it. IN my entire life, I've met a few people who I felt I could trust with anything, including my money. That people would put their trust in thousands of folks they've never seen, met, or even know their names or where they're located...that's something new.
Those that want or need to believe, will believe. Some of it will continue because it is a handy unit of exchange with no way to trace where it all goes. ID numbers are meaningless in this regard. It's entirely opaque. Money isn't.
There’s a debate to be had here. Some people see it as a plus that nobody has control of Bitcoin; the fact that national currencies are subject to the political whims of executives and legislatures is a weakness Bitcoin doesn’t share. I honestly don’t know where I land on it, and again, I’ve never bought cryptocurrency myself.
In this, we agree. As long as everyone continues believing, it's grand. I seem to remember reading about times in the past where folks stopped believing in things.
In the debate, I'll sit on the sidelines watching, just like I do with crypto. I buy the least liquid thing there is; real estate. But, it sits there making money and can't evaporate. I like that.
The "1,418 days" bit made me realize how little time Trump 2.0 has been in office despite everything that has already happened and, just... fuckin' hell, man.
This will improve efficiency in government, wherein The Occupant no longer has to fiddle around with Deutsche Bank and other middlemen taking a slice of the action, and no tawdry details about where the money might be coming from to sully the name of our Great Leader™, and no unpleasant names for it like "laundering".
Problem solved.
"[A]nyone anywhere near it will suffer instant ignominy and career death…"
Sadly, that isn't how politics works. The more widespread the buy-in to a colossal fuck-up — say, the invasion of Iraq because of "WMDs", or the 2008 financial disaster — the smaller the effect on anyone's careers. When that many people screw up, people are more likely to fail upwards.
Just for what it’s worth
The US already has about $20B worth of magic space bucks that it has seized from criminals
That’s what got Trump thinking about this
He first brought it up at the Bitcoin convention last year as a candidate
So, the plan is probably mainly some version of: don’t sell that — but maybe trade some of it to get the flavors he wants
So: not buying with taxpayer money. Probably. We will see though.
The ultimate defense, it’s what the voters voted for him to do. Pretty simple stuff.
By 2030 most of the current service style jobs will be gone and replaced by AI agents all trading amongst themselves. You think they’ll be using FIAT for that ? These layer 1 cryptos they are proposing all have use cases to integrate with the future of this new world that we’ll be living in. What this means ? Who the fuck knows? You just have to question if you think we’ll be living in a less digital world or a more digital world in the future then make your choice.
Some of this could be handled with just some simple deal making. Like "Sure, we will vote to pass this, but it will only happen when there are ten straight years of budget surplus and five straight years of declining national debt". There is no need to defend this idea, it can be bad, just allow it to pass but with conditions that Republicans couldn't plausibly argue against. Defeating does not mean opposing a bill root and branch. Shrug your shoulders, think about it, and then put some conditions on it to give it that sweet art of the deal flavor. It either wont pass or if it does, will only be invested in when there is so much economic growth and prosperity going on the mood of the country would be very different. Or maybe something like "You can have your fund but only until you get scammed stolen from or lose half the value of the portfolio. That would kill it off so fast they would barely have time to put their pencils in their desk jar before the whole thing would be shut down.
As a Republican who has been one way longer than Trump, I refuse to defend it or anyone who would pass it without larding it down with safeguards that would be both prudent and sure to give us the smallest possible degree of graft or threat. If some yahoo voted for this, and then the agency got scammed out of billions, they could expect to be annihilated for it. A very compromise friendly bill that allows for Trumps cryptobros to get a pyrrhic win and places the risk of failure only on people stupid enough to buy into it would allow the issue to die. Thirty minutes of reasonable negotiation and I predict the whole issue would die because the compromise isn't what people pushing it want.
Look, 100% this is a total crap idea that will benefit shitty grifters, but the “crypto is anonymous and is only used to buy drugs” trope is an incredibly uninformed talking point from 2011.
Crypto uses public blockchain ledgers that show exactly what was transferred between ID numbers OUT IN THE OPEN FOR EVERYONE TO READ FOREVER. So if you want to do illegal transactions, things like bitcoin are a bloody terrible way to pay for it, because the Wizards of the Deep State(TM) can find you pretty easily.
Things like crypto based smart contracts are useful and will be an important part of the tech stack moving forward, but unfortunately the scammy meme coin bullshit is a huge dumb distraction from the real potential.
Disclosure: I am long $Melania FOREVER
That cryptocurrency is often used for crime is a well-established fact. Even in this survey of people who buy things with crypto -- which is a study designed to support the notion that crypto is legit because people are more likely to report buying a shirt than they are to buying fentanyl -- 11% said they buy drugs and 15% said they buy weapons.
https://bitcoinist.com/cryptocurrency-primary-use-to-buy-illegal-stuff-is-myth-study-finds/
I will grant that, but you know what else is used mostly for illegal basically untraceable activity? Cash. I mean, the 500 Euro note is called the “Bin Laden” for Christ sakes, and when was the last time you saw a legitimate transaction using a $100 bill?
I would posit that removing cash as a transaction medium is a terrible idea that would hurt more than it helps. The same is very much true about crypto.
Frontiers are always full of weirdos and wacky ideas, and 95% of the stuff that people come up with is crap. Nothing different here, but I do believe that some good things will come out of the chaos.
Interesting article- not sure about the sampling though: 5 years ago “983 people familiar with crypto” is going to skew super libertarian (aka pre Robinhood Super Bowl ads and stimmie checks), so the drug correlation isn’t necessarily a surprise. 😉
I'm not sure if you're intentionally misunderstanding what Jeff means by anonymous or not. Yes, crypto transactions are on blockchain, but the right analogy is having a record of all the phone calls made by a specific phone number. If you don't know whose phone number that is, it's functionally anonymous even though you absolutely can see what phone made those calls. Layer in the fact that you can transfer those bitcoins again and again through multiple different anonymous accounts and you have yourself a money launderer's dream.
People have tried diverting all their stolen bitcoin through extra accounts and mixers and all that, and still get caught when trying to interact with the real world to extract any of it.
Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan had a stolen hoard worth over a billion dollars they sat on for years and then ran through a bunch of extra accounts. They had to resort to physical flights to Kazakhstan and then smuggle the money back in via cash. Then they still had the problem that drug dealers do of "how do I explain this giant pile of cash when I try to deposit it in the bank?" And they got caught.
There are always those that get away with things and others that get caught. The two women were the latter. We can't know of those that succeeded because ....that's the point of crypto. Sometimes, maybe lots of times, it works.
100% this. As soon as you try to take your money out- you expose yourself to the financial system and are no longer “anonymous”.
Crypto is a total shit way to do illicit transactions, but of course people are going to do it anyway.
I agree like 99% agree with the article. I’m not misunderstanding his take at all, I just don’t agree with the perspective that crypto is only used for crime. Look, I get that they are supposed to be laugh lines, but maybe ask someone who was living in Argentina with a forced confiscatory exchange rate to any hard currency about the positive use cases for crypto.
Boy, every person acting like crypto is "real" money keeps bringing up Argentina. Is there some kind of bullet point list you all get with talking points for defending crypto as anything other than intangible "asset" with no inherent value? No matter what you say, it's simply not the case that crypto is backed by anything; it's entirely speculative because there's no backstop.
OK- so you want a stablecoin then. $USD is pegged to the dollar and backed with actual dollar reserves. It is quite useful for actual businesses to perform transactions that don’t need to go through ACH or the other intentionally slow and expensive financial rails. It is currently used to allow people to make quotes on weekends to hedge any currency risks along with a lot of other things.
Not everything in crypto is a “when lambo” shit coin rug pull casino. (Although LOTS of it is…)
Exactly.