I mean, is he wrong? Genuinely the only other application I’ve seen which seems plausible is for use in places like Venezuela where the official currency is worthless.
Well, you just said that's he's wrong. One "killer application" is that it's a "stable" store of value. Not perfectly stable, it can quickly fall by a factor of about 2, and if you buy in the worst bubble it might fall to a fourth of its value. That's decidedly less stable than Western currencies, but it's more stable than some others. And for many people Bitcoin is more accessible than the foreign exchange market. It also tends to rise in value over sufficiently long time scales.
The other use is providing online payments to people who aren't in the banking system. The banking system requires trust, and shuts untrustworthy people out - both at the level of individuals and entire regions. Bitcoin eliminates the need for trust (on the monetary layer) and can thus reach more people.
Both are great applications. They are largely irrelevant in the West because only a tiny fraction of us experience those problems, but that doesn't mean they don't exist elsewhere.
So, it’s stable as long as you understand it is unstable, and helps people without access to banking but with a stable, constant internet connection and perfect operational security, access none of the benefits of having a bank account.
Oh, and it’s actually neither of those but if you wish _reaaaaly_ hard and ignore all the practical problems, it might be, someday.
In absolute terms it's not stable, in relative terms it can be. If you gave me the choice between storing my money in Bitcoin or Turkish Lira I would choose Bitcoin every time. If I have the option to use USD instead the answer is different.
> helps people without access to banking but with a stable, constant internet connection and perfect operational security
You don't need constant internet connection unless you are mining or want to verify a payment right now. And mobile internet and smartphones are surprisingly prevalent in the third world (and among homeless in the first world).
But it’s still a store of value. No store of value is perfect, USD will lose value over time to inflation, stock indices are subject to volatility, gold is subject to theft and volatility, other foreign currencies are subject to government corruption and hyper inflation, fine art is subject to fraud and damage, etc.
So as a store of value Bitcoin actually has a good track record and is trending towards lower volatility as adoption grows.
People really need to stop thinking in absolute terms regarding value storage. It’s analogous to energy storage. Batteries leak energy over time, but we don’t sit around yelling about how they are not stores of energy.
US securities law effects all US citizens. In current state, they act as a moat for the most profitable investments in society. People claim that securities laws are there to prevent grandmas from getting scammed, but grandmas (and many others) still get scammed on the daily. I would rather them lose $5,000 from investing into a high profit potential startup that could 1000x, instead of a call center in a distant country. US securities laws are geared to give the privileged private knowledge and prevent the poor from getting wealthy in their current state.
You are intentionally reversing the direction of the claim to be disingenuous here. By your logic, the number one facilitator of crime/gambling is also breathing air and drinking water, might want to check your facts.
Technically, since the Venezuelan government doesn’t want people laundering money with crypto, most people there are likely committing crimes and tax evasion with it.
Or trying to escape inflation/corruption? Please look into how the government there has brutally mismanaged their currency. People are suffering there because of monetary policy, empathy is a good practice.
You comment this as many major central banks are conducting trial / rollout plans for CBDC. I prefer the decentralized side of cryptocurrency where the rules, censorship, and supply is transparent and limited.
You are not alone. There are lots of folk who have your opinion. You are of course free to have it.
That doesn't change the fact that the only killer app is criminal activity. Of course you -can- do non-criminal things with it, but frankly as a currency it's terrible. It's way too volatile, and transactions are both too expensive and too slow.
I get the goals - decentralisation, limited money supply (which in theory is supposed to limit inflation, but doesn't) and so on. Unfortunately the volatility dwarfs any inflation hedging etc. It's also super-risky right now, so I recommend holding your own coins. Not your keys not your money.
Sure it's different. Sure it's idealistic. But it's also, well, a terrible currency.
Which means mostly it serves as a nice way to do criminal transactions.
Banks work fine now for payments. The only real advantage of crypto over CBDC is that you can more easily sell drugs and guns. No one is losing their bank account for donating to Donald Trump
This was done in USD. Maybe crime wouldn't be whitelist only on a transparent blockchain and that is what is feared? Money is the root of most activity in this world, criminal or good. Transparent transactions bring all crime into the spotlight and for some that is problematic.
> The bias is abundant, it's well known this guy hates crypto.
Does that make him wrong? Or somehow not a reliable commentator on the thinking at the SEC (which is what the actual article is about), given his having worked there? Bias could be an issue if he were speaking about crypto per se, but this is about the SEC.
Negative comments don't indicate bias. There are many alternative explanations. If I say 'Charles Manson murdered several people', that doesn't indicate bias. If I say it's raining, that's not bias against the weather.
Hopefully you can see the absolutist nature of his comment and come to the realization that crime is a universal aspect of money, so of course any form of money would be a facilitator of it.
> crime is a universal aspect of money, so of course any form of money would be a facilitator of it.
That's irrelevant. The question is whether crypto in particular facilitates crime, and it does. All airplanes facilitate passenger death, but some are far more dangerous than others. If I'm considering boarding a plane, don't tell me 'well, any plane might crash' - I don't care, I care about this plane, this pilot, etc.
Cash has been used for facilitating crime since currency was invented and it will always be far easier to commit crimes with cash than with anything else and that will never change until humans find a better way to fund crime.
Bitcoin may be an attempt to make funding crime easier but it hasn't been very successful. USD is still king for funding any criminal endeavors.
> Cash has been used for facilitating crime since currency was invented
How is that relevant? Silver and papyrus were once popular too.
> it will always be far easier to commit crimes with cash than with anything else
It's not easy if I want to pay someone who isn't local to me, or whom I don't want to meet in person, or if I don't want to possess physical criminal assets.
> it will always be far easier to commit crimes with cash than with anything else and that will never change until humans find a better way to fund crime.
wolverine876: The question is whether crypto in particular facilitates crime, and it does.
evandale: Cash has been used for facilitating crime since currency was invented
wolverine876: How is that relevant?
The question obviously isn't whether crypto facilitates crime because USD facilitates crime better. If the ability to facilitate crime was a question of whether you should use a currency or not then we wouldn't be using USD anymore.
> It's not easy if I want to pay someone who isn't local to me, or whom I don't want to meet in person, or if I don't want to possess physical criminal assets.
No idea what you're trying to say here but it doesn't seem like you're arguing in good faith. Everybody will accept USD for any good or service anywhere in the world and USD is less traceable and more anonymous than bitcoin which defeats another "bitcoin is only used for crime" argument. No. It isn't only used for crime. It's actually a terrible thing to use for crime because of how traceable it is.
I'm not sure how refuting a weak augment is a personal attack but I strongly encourage you to contact dang if you feel like I was disrespectful and he'll give me the talking to I deserve and possibly ban me. He's a really friendly moderator.
opinions on the merits aren't necessarily important in assessing the behavior of a regulatory agency
crypto can hypothetically be every bit a brilliant new wheel paradigm as the marketers would suggest (it isn't, but whatever) and that won't stop entities with legal authority to eviscerate all current corporate entities associated with it from doing so (they are).
ya'll wanna believe that binance and coinbase can fight the massive legal assault on their business practices and come out on top simply by virtue of the nobility of the crypto ideal, go right ahead
Do we expect experts to not have informed opinions? You may disagree with his conclusions but I believe we want expert witnesses to tell us what they think. As a former crypto-optimist I think this is a totally reasonable conclusion to make about crypto given a decade of evidence.
Other than crime the only other use-case I've seen for crypto is for getting money into Russia because the sanctions mean my English teacher friend in Vladivostok can't use normal banks to accept payments for the online distance teaching thing he does. But I could oversimplify this to "bypassing international sanctions" which might be a crime? Crypto mainly seems to be useful to people who can't or won't use normal banks, and those people are mostly criminals. People in Russia prefer bitcoin over rubles (even before the sanctions) but that's more an indictment of the ruble than an endorsement of bitcoin.
What am I missing here? What are the cool things bitcoin does that something like visa cannot? I've read Satoshi's paper and Vitalik Buterin's book. I want crypto to work, and I'm really searching hard for a problem crypto solves for which we don't already have a better solution.
I've heard that crypto transactions can be more secure but I've also heard that securing information on the blockchain is basically impossible because it is a publicly available ledger. How does bitcoin opsec work exactly?
The killer app is financial freedom. If people chose to use that to commit crimes then that only proves they are criminals. Any sufficiently powerful tool can be used for good or evil.
"The only killer app for crypto that seems tangible is its excellent use to orchestrate global crimes."
The bias is abundant, it's well known this guy hates crypto.