Technology designed to actively circumvent the progress we've made in curtailing illicit use is in my opinion a bad thing. This is just wataboutism. Let's stick to one topic at a time huh?
Well, Bitcoin supports total surveillance by default, so I do push back that crypto has solved that problem. Really only Cash and Monero avoid this yeah?
The government should have access to everyone's financial data when presenting a warrant. If the current system doesn't work that way, we should reform the system. Not throw out a useful tool for enforcement of law.
> Bitcoin supports total surveillance by default, so I do push back that crypto has solved that problem.
I agree with you. Bitcoin and most other coins have this flaw and it's a problem.
> Really only Cash and Monero avoid this yeah?
Yes. Right now Monero is closest to the original cryptocurrency dream. It's everything bitcoin should have been. It's a shame that bitcoin is still king.
> The government should have access to everyone's financial data when presenting a warrant.
Warrants are for specific persons, not everyone. Yet the government essentially has full access to everyone's banking records. They're still not satisfied, they keep demanding more.
> Not throw out a useful tool for enforcement of law.
They can't be trusted with these powers. If they want to catch criminals, they should have to go out there and do real police work instead of imposing their abusive surveillance on everyone.
> They can't be trusted with these powers. If they want to catch criminals, they should have to go out there and do real police work instead of imposing their abusive surveillance on everyone.
Real police work like collecting records for transactions to piece together how a crime happened?
Why isn't the future digital for the police? You're creating arbitrary obstacles for no reason. Artifically handicapping the police and preventing them from doing their jobs without really explaining your basis for drawing the line there.
In free societies people have a right to privacy. The government should not have access to any information at all unless there's a good reason. Even then, their access should be as limited as possible. If that enables more crime, so be it. That's the price we pay for freedom.
Governments have proven again and again they won't respect these rights. So people will make subversive technology to defeat them. Cryptography has that kind of power. They'll have to increase their tyranny in order to stop it. Is there a limit to how tyrannical they're willing to become in order to control their subjects? We'll find out.
That's quite a game to play, one of mutually assured destruction. I suggest that instead technology be devised to help expose the information necessary to pursue crime and criminality under mutually reasonably circumstances.
Otherwise you're just surrendering to mad-max anarchy.
> That's quite a game to play, one of mutually assured destruction.
I don't think so. These are arms races and they happen all the time, even in nature. This particular struggle is about principles.
For example: many people, myself included, think advertising is morally wrong. Are we going to ask the billion dollar industry to cease and desist? That'd be pointless. Better to make ad blocking technology that solves the problem whether they want it or not. They develop countermeasures, people develop countermeasures against their countermeasures. It goes on and on. We're winning so far.
In this case, it's a politico-technological arms race. People don't agree with whatever it is the government's doing so they make technology that prevents them from doing it. Government makes new laws to neutralize the technology. People make new technology to work around the new laws. And so on. With every iteration, the government must become more tyrannical in order to maintain the same power it previously enjoyed.
Technologies such as Monero actually bring the world closer to the principles the US was founded on, principles it apparently forgot about. Will the US remember its roots? Or will it turn into China? That's the political choice the existence of this technology forces the government to make.
> I suggest that instead technology be devised to help expose the information necessary to pursue crime and criminality under mutually reasonably circumstances.
That's idealistic. Every day governments prove that they are not fit to have this power. That they'll twist those circumstances until they are no longer mutually reasonable. They are corrupt. They will abuse this access for personal reasons. Global surveillance personnel are frequently caught spying on the people they know for personal gain, including their spouses.
I refuse to give them any power at all if it means even one person will be abused. Suffering at the hands of crime is one thing, suffering at the hands of the people who were supposed to protect you is an indignity without measure.
Were derivatives not possible before? Certainly transaction fees in traditional finance aren't $200-$1000 when you're buying a futures contract. I think it's like $3.
Sure, but it's not trivial to create derivatives in the current system. You'll need to work closely with a financial institution that has the resources and relationships in place to seek regulatory approval. This pretty much restricts the financial space to college-educated people in the first world with wealth and connections.
Right, that's a good thing. Otherwise you get the chimera monster Binance who actively trades against its customers via its insurance fund. There is no world in which they're not trading against their customers to liquidate their positions. You also have flashbots on DeFi platforms - is that still a thing?
> There are no useful cryptocurrencies today, and there will not be any at any time in the near future.
Clearly criminal enterprises have made good use of cryptocurrency in the past few years.