Yes, but that's a fundamental error in crypto currencies that stop block rewards.  There's a known instability in that reward system.  I think that iamnotback has already posted links to public research that demonstrates this.  There's no reason to stop block rewards.  It is an error in bitcoin, litecoin and others, because they stop block rewards to adhere to a principle (sound money doctrine) that doesn't make sense if the "sound money" doesn't have the market monopoly.


But that is in any case an unavoidable evolution, unless the money market keeps on inventing new crypto and old crypto dies off.  Only this continuous turnover, with new coins coming in, and old ones suffering hyper inflation, can avoid "banking" and "centralisation".  Every stable system will always evolve to a centralised banking-type system.  Because of scaling laws.

Who built them ?   Private companies, right ?  What would stop people *that want to* to pay for them on a voluntary basis ?  If you are afraid that Kim comes to shove his flag up to your ass, you're free to join such an association.  And if not, you shouldn't contribute.  If, by doing so, you also protect my ass for free, that's a choice you'll have to make.  Pay voluntarily for it, and give me also a free lunch, or don't pay for it, and run the risk.

There's absolutely no need for any compulsory contribution to anything.  If you want it, organize it and pay for it.  If you don't want it, don't bother, but don't complain.  If you pay for it, and others profit from it, that's their good right.  Up to you.

This is normal, because as of now, it is a greater-fool game.  So everyone is waiting for greater fools to join in !  This is how I understand this call for "adoption": send us more and greater fools, so that "the price goes up and I can make some benefit".  One day, we will run out of greater fools of course.

However, I fail to see the need for adoption, if it is to just do all the work to build another fiat for government (where I understand by "government", not just the public political figures, but the "powers that be" including the Soros-type deciders that tell government what laws to vote).

If the idea is to abide to what the powers that be want, just use their stuff, no ?


The actual sad news is that crypto is simply not used much as a currency, and in those cases where it is used, fiat can just as well be used, unless one needs "illegal" aspects.    Crypto is by far mainly a greater-fool game, in which centralized exchanges play a major role.  But the real usage of crypto, which is the one that is not affected by the existence or not of exchanges, is minuscule.  Anon or not.  And without anon, even totally useless, because exposed to legality.  And when it is exposed to legality, it can be done with fiat too.

Hum, that's a strange statement.   First of all, it would be a good thing that you won't make enough money to be a miner.  Mining was supposed to be distributed, not a centralized business opportunity.  Every node should mine a bit.  But second, if mining is less profitable, normally, difficulty goes down.  If difficulty goes down, the cost of mining goes down, and hence becomes more profitable, no ? 

And if most income comes from transaction fees, there are in any case instabilities in the system, so it can be a good idea that this breaks down right away.  In fact, there should be continuous tail emission in order to stabilise a PoW coin.  And sound money doctrine is in any case flawed in the competitive crypto world.

That would be the best thing that could happen to crypto.  I hope that the Chinese government confiscates all crypto on the Chinese exchanges.  That would put an end to this greater-fool game, and make crypto grassroots again.

True crypto shouldn't even be on exchanges in the first place.

You can measure the "true value" of a crypto when it would be absent from any exchange.  Because that "true value" would be the Fisher's formula sustained price of its usage as a currency, where it is used to buy and sell goods and services.   Close down all centralized exchanges, and you'd measure the true market cap of crypto: it would be infinitesimal.  Maybe bitcoin would reach $10, if it even did.  Monero would be quite below the $1 line.  But it is their true "currency" value.

All the rest of the current market cap is greater-fool game.

This isn't true, actually.  You're thinking of sound money theory, but that is in fact a flawed idea, because it makes a premise that isn't true with crypto: that the "sound money" has at the same time, the monopoly status of money.  If a type of money is just having one market share of the "money market", then the sound money doctrine is broken, because then "shrinking market share" is identical to "money printing".

If the crypto market has continuous creation of new crypto, and if those new coins eat away from the market share of the established crypto, then this IS a from of "new money printing".  Another form of money printing is hard forking (which is in fact nothing else but a specific case of new coin creation).

So no, the "sound money doctrine" has no meaning in a free money market with new coin creation, hard forking and so on.

But the second point is of course even more important.  If the state considers that it needs to print more money, then it will make a legal system in which this is of course possible.  In as much as a crypto is law-abiding, the state will of course find a way to do the same thing with crypto.  There are different ways.  One way can be a systematic confiscation of a percentage of all crypto.  They will want to own all secret keys of all "legal" crypto wallets in the end, so they can easily take a part of every wallet.  As such, they don't break the amount of coin, but just "take them back".
They can impose THEIR crypto: the only allowed crypto could be "state minted crypto" where "mining/minting" by any other entity but a state-approved entity is considered counterfeiting (or is made cryptographically impossible as they have a golden key).
Look at gold: the state couldn't "print gold" either, but they found ways around it, rendered monetary gold possession illegal and so on.  Legal crypto can only go the same way.

And concerning 'bankers', I wouldn't be surprised if in the end, the only legal crypto would be some bank-owned crypto.  In that case, crypto has become fully legal fiat, with the bankers being the state-allowed officers keeping the secret keys and so on, and the customer just doing what he's doing now: contacting his bank.

Well, first of all, to answer your question, no, I never did so, and I wouldn't see any reason to do so.  Because the only reason to do so for me would be to buy something from that person, and strictly legally, I'm not allowed to buy anything from anyone if that person is not a registered business.  There is some *tolerance* for small amounts like on sunday-type second-hand markets, but strictly speaking it is not legal.  You are only supposed to buy stuff from registered businesses, and pay VAT on it (unless there's a legal exception).   You're not supposed to do a donation that is not registered either.  Yes, there is some *tolerance* for small amounts.  But normally you should report it, because the receiver should put it in its income tax declaration.   If you are a registered business, you are legally OBLIGED to possess a bank account attached to your professional activities.  So for strictly legal stuff, there's in fact no possibility to "send 50 dollars to someone that has no bank account" if it is to buy something.   And no, I donate nothing to anybody abroad, why would I ?

Strictly legally, I'm not supposed to buy anything abroad from a country that has no bilateral trade agreement with the country I live in, and most of the time, in that case, similar rules apply: the foreign business must be a registered business, and the payment must be through a bank transfer of some kind.

So most of the time "sending money to someone abroad who doesn't have a bank account" is illegal (but tolerated for small amounts).

The second point is: hell, it is much easier to set up a state bank with just a bank account for these people than doing crypto, isn't it ?  How do these people without an account pay their income tax ? 


In very much most of these cases, these payments are illegal, even if tolerated for small amounts.

But next: what on earth would someone not even having a bank account, do with crypto ?  Don't you think that the infrastructure to give these people fiat bank accounts is way way easier to set up than to have them have a generalized use of crypto ?  There's a huge banking opportunity in these places.  If banks are not interested, then that's mostly because it is probably legally too much of a hassle, but IF it is legally too much of a hassle, that means that most things that people would do with crypto, would probably be illegal.  Otherwise, setting up a bank for these people would be easy too, and then, why is no bank doing so ?


To me, dark markets are not necessarily about drugs, but about any economic relationship that wants to escape taxing or regulation.  Like the 50 dollars mentioned above.  I would rather call them "free markets".

What other usage is there for crypto ?  DM taken in the broader sense of "economic liberty" of course, because that's what DM are: free exchange without govs stealing (taxes), without govs imposing their buddy's certifications, without govs imposing their forms of protectionism, without govs imposing who may trade what with whom against what tariffs, ....

If the economic act you want to do with crypto is fully legal, why not do it with fiat ?

That's exactly my point.  People aiming for "law abiding crypto" are deluded.  In as much as crypto will be law abiding, it will be entirely centralized by government (by compulsory key escrow or whatever so that it is theirs whenever they want to, like on Cyprus) and just a wasteful, clumsy form of fiat.  And all the rest will end up being outlawed in any case.

Why should ordinary Joe use anything else but fiat to buy a cup of coffee ?  It is faster, easier, more legally "protected", there's no crypto hassle, no peer-to-peer hassle, no miners, just your trusted bank which is trusted because it is part of the government/establishment.

There's nothing that can compete with fiat if it is to be totally law abiding, is there ?

Well, point me then to one of your explanations, because I never saw one.  I only saw that each time I asked you, you told me that you weren't going to answer "because you already did so in the past".

My point is that a fully law-abiding crypto has no use over fiat.  So I think that someone who is at the same time claiming that crypto should be fully law-abiding, should not be into crypto, or is making some logical mistake, or is simply in it for the greater-fool game, at which point I think that wanting to attract people into a Ponzi scheme is a dishonest (but potentially lucrative) thing to do.

But everybody in the "gov" camp is avoiding the question: if you want to be law-abiding, why are you in crypto currencies in the first place ? What good is a crypto currency that is fully law abiding have over fiat  What can you do with such a crypto that you can't with fiat ?


(because if you can't do it with fiat, it is because there's a rule against it for some reason... That rule should then sooner or later also apply to law-abiding crypto)

You shouldn't, of course.

You should obtain crypto by selling goods and services.  And use crypto to buy goods and services.  That was the idea, wasn't it ?  

Of course, with an anonymous coin, you may "speed up" your acquisition of crypto by having a one-time buy of some coins, if you want to get started on the "buying" side, and not on the "selling" side.  But there's in principle no point in having (centralized) exchanges.

With a traceable coin such as bitcoin, you must be outright crazy to buy it on an exchange...

You never repeated why you are interested in crypto in the first place, and why on earth you would think it has something to offer over fiat, if the idea is to fully comply to the laws.

Because if crypto is fully complying to the laws, I don't see what advantages it can bring over fiat.  In fact, I can only see problems.  Fiat is much better than crypto if you're fully complying, no ?

Well, there are a few points to be made.  If you want to fight a powerful enemy, you run of course the risk to get hurt (in this case, being put in a cage).  That goes with it.  But the fact that you can get hurt is not always a sufficient reason not to go to war.

So that Indian was right.  He didn't recognize those laws.  Of course, he got hurt, and he lost his battle, but that's no reason not to fight it.  If you're afraid to lose the battle, you shouldn't go to war, and become a slave.  You can also refuse to be a slave and fight.  Of course, chances are you will lose, but there's nothing wrong with that.  That's the name of the game.  The fact that your enemy wins, doesn't mean that you should comply.  But of course in doing so, you take a risk.

My second point, though, is, if you thing you should surrender before even fighting, why on earth are you considering crypto currencies, and why don't you fully comply with fiat ?

There's no problem with a coin dying to be replaced by a technologically better one.  After all, the use of a coin is during its life time, when it is used as an intermediate good to promote economic exchange.  Of course, for that, at a certain point in time, it needs to store value, and it didn't store value at the outset, so the nasty effect of that is that some people will win some value for nothing (seigniorage) which is paid for by those that hold the coins when the coin dies (hyperinflation).  In other words, any monetary asset also goes with a nasty side-effect: the transmission of value from "losers" (at the end, when hyper inflation sets in) to the "winners" (the early adopters).  But this effect should be small compared to the total value displaced in commercial relations during the coin's maturity, in other words, the number of times a coin goes around when its value is stabilized, should ideally be a big number.

But you're wrong in considering that the coin is a "tech stock", unless it is not used as a currency (in which case, this is nothing else but a greater-fool game, that is only interested in the nasty value-tranfer effect from losers to winners I referred to).  I was referring to technology in the sense of weaponry.  If it turns out that better, more efficient weapons against the state's sticky fingers are invented, and if for some reason, the currently used weapon has serious limitations or higher risks in using, then it is normal to switch to the better tech, no ?
I would think that technologically, you have dash which is better tech than bitcoin, and monero which is better tech than dash ; the jury is still out on zcash: zcash contains *in principle* better tech, but for the moment, the way it is put to work is much, much worse than monero (optional anon, which is a no-go ; trusted setup badly put in place ....).  I'm not talking about any economical fraud such as premining or the like.  I'm talking purely about the tech.

The point is that if "crypto should work together with gov" then I don't see the point for crypto.  Anyone can explain to me what's the point of crypto, if it isn't to get back economic freedom states took away ?

Because if crypto is fully legal, then anything you can do with crypto, can just as well be done with fiat, right ?  So what's the point of the hassle of crypto over fiat then ?

Indeed, probably the realistic solution is that states are simply overwhelmed by crypto, try to regulate some aspects of it, but have to give up under the pressure of their populations, a bit like the internet is half regulated, but still allows for much more free speech than centralized, censored media were "back then".  That said, money is a much much more ticklish affair for states than free speech.  They're essentially in it for the money, and free speech was only a nuisance  (even though free speech is sliding back to dark ages  in many "free" places nevertheless), while taking money is their core business.

Well, I think one can perfectly well live in a society without state and law, but only on a contractual basis.  But that's a political opinion, that must sound as strange today as the statement that one could live in a society without a king sounded in the middle ages.

However, that is not the gist of the discussion.  If you think that one should live in a society with state and law, then *there is not a single use case for crypto currencies*.

Because the fundamental principle of a crypto currency is distributed, open trustlessness.  It is the need for this trustlessness which brings all the hassle of it.  If there is state and law, there is a central authority which should have might over everything.  That is in fundamental contradiction with distributed trustlessness.

It is fundamentally impossible to have a "regulated crypto currency" that is at the same time, not totally degenerated into a fiat currency.  Because in order to be regulated, it needs to be traceable, confiscable, stoppable and reversible, by a central authority, something that is totally orthogonal to its conception.  Of course it is possible to alter a cryptocurrency to the point of being regulated, but then it doesn't need to be "crypto" any more.  It is then a hassle to take all that crypto blockchain peer-to-peer stuff with it.  Normal bank computer fiat works 1000 times better for the same purpose.

So yes, maybe money needs/will be regulated.  But then it is useless to have crypto money.  That's my point.

Each time this discussion comes up, people tell me that "you cannot fight the state and law".  But my question is then: why would you want crypto currencies to be adopted in the first place ?  What do they have to offer over fiat ?  My answer is: "nothing but trouble".
What's your answer to the question "what have regulated and hence centralized, traced, cryptocurrencies to offer over regular fiat ?"