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> The difference between Bitcoin and TradFi shrinks every day.

It has been fascinating to watch society rethink/rebuild financial regulations from first principles and largely end up with the same conclusions. If anything, hopefully getting people to realize that all the rules tradfi institutions follow aren’t just made up for no reason.



That's ultimately why I'm turned off by crypto. I love some of the ideas, from a technical perspective. I do think some aspect of it is going to survive and provide immense value in the future, though I don't know what it will look like.

But right now, you have people, mostly younger, thinking they know how to build a better world by starting over from scratch. In programming, we've all seen (and been) the engineer who sees an old codebase for the first time and thinks they could do a better job with a full rewrite. We know that rarely works. And yet somehow many of those same engineers think they can do the same with a global financial system that's been in existence for centuries.


>But right now, you have people, mostly younger, thinking they know how to build a better world by starting over from scratch. In programming, we've all seen (and been) the engineer who sees an old codebase for the first time and thinks they could do a better job with a full rewrite. We know that rarely works. And yet somehow many of those same engineers think they can do the same with a global financial system that's been in existence for centuries.

How is this any different than the people who are trying to write a whole social media/communications infrastructure from scratch (ie. fediverse), which turns out to be mostly the same as incumbents but worse? There's even an example of "[new system] is speedrunning the history of [old system]", which the recent debacle on mastodon where people were complaining about unfair/arbitrary bans and name impersonation, both of which are well known problems that centralized platforms ran into and they attempted to put a lid on.


It's not different at all. Were you expecting me to disagree? That's exactly the point I'm making.


You mean the rules that got our bank accounts frozen for giving 50 bucks to our trucker buddies to help them protest for the freedoms we thought we had?

Those “regulations“?

This incident alone has forged grim resolve in many people, including myself, to produce systems to grind TradFi to dust.


Yes, those. I made no claim about the morality of said rules. Only that it appears that the logical conclusion is the same in both spaces.

Good luck to you, competition is a good thing.


What evidence do we have that this kind of abuse of power would be impossible in crypto world?

It would only be possible if everyone used anonymous coins like Zcash and Monero from their own wallets. Any use of exchanges or secondary networks like lightning provides levers to turn people off. Any corporation can be subjected to pressure by not just governments but large groups of people.

I don’t see people like the trucker protestors using cryptographic hardware wallets and waiting minutes for transactions to clear on a block chain.

BTW the trucker thing was a line for many people including myself, and I wasn’t anti-vax and did not vote for Trump. Freezing the assets of people for participating in a protest is not okay. The content of the protest is irrelevant.



I imagine due to the transparency that is blockchain, you could create a regulatory system that refused payments from certain wallets as well. ex. This person sent $100 to BLM, make sure not to sell to him Nike.


We can use Monero with our own wallets right now and will continue to do so, nobody can stop that. How is that not evidence? Transactions are occurring right now. It doesnt have to be "everyone" doing it


Do you have a source for someone getting their bank account frozen over $50 to their trucker buddies?


Sounds like "one politician who refuses to prove the person actually exists."

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/02/23/chilliwack-mark-str...


I'm pretty sure they are talking about Canada freezing personal accounts of people during the anti-mandate protests.

No clue on the veracity of the statement, but here it is repeated by news media[0] which is sourcing a member of the Canadian parliament[1].

[0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mp-mark-stra...

[1]: https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1495472037438967808


Did you read your zeroth link? It's not the proof you think it is. In fact, I don't think that it's unreasonable to consider it obvious lying...

>In a tweet on Sunday, Chilliwack-Hope MP Mark Strahl said a woman called Briane, "a single mom from Chilliwack working a minimum wage job," had apparently fallen foul of the Emergencies Act, which was recently invoked by the federal government in a bid to stop protesters occupying streets in downtown Ottawa.

>Vancouver Granville MP Taleeb Noormohamed says he's "quite skeptical" about the claim and has written to Strahl asking for more information, offering to help rectify the situation.

>Strahl has declined to speak to CBC News about the tweet or give any more information about Briane.

>On Monday, the Globe and Mail reported it had been mistakenly sent an email by the Ottawa Police Service, in which a constable said they had gone through the list of donors and found two "Briannes," neither of whom lived in B.C.


> Did you read your zeroth link? It's not the proof you think it is. In fact, I don't think that it's unreasonable to consider it obvious lying...

I mentioned that in my previous reply. I never even made a claim of truth or not, I was just giving context for what I believe they were claiming. Don't shoot the messenger.

> No clue on the veracity of the statement

Also

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Good old Twitter troll Mark Strahl. Just pushing whatever lie suits his agenda.


FYI, I'm an Australian and I had my bank account closed without reason 1 month after a $1000 donation to Wikileaks.


Not sure why you are down voted. Let's hope your hn account wont be closed as well now "they" know what you did.


Because it is a statement without any context or evidence being used to try and back up another point without any evidence. There are reasons besides donating to wikileaks that could result in a bank account being closed in Australia.


>> There are reasons besides donating to wikileaks that could result in a bank account being closed in Australia.

There could be other reasons but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the only reason. Visa and mastercard suspended payment processing for wikileaks.

Some banks were closing accounts if you purchased crypto so it can be even more arbitrary.




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