Technology

isn’t it so convenient how easy it is to launder money with crypto?

Depends on the coin, but the most popular ones have 100% transparent transactions, so it's actually not great for money laundering. There are a lot of obfuscations techniques, but those exist w/ digital fiat transfers as well. The most popular crypto exchanges are KYC, meaning they require a paper trail for any exchanges. There are options to move money between cryptocurrencies w/o using a KYC exchange, but doing anything w/ fiat is a lot more difficult without going through a KYC exchange.

If you want to launder money, it's a lot easier to just deal in cash.

There are cryptocurrencies designed to hide/obfuscate transactions (e.g. Monero or Bitcoin Lightning network), but you still have to interact w/ a KYC exchange at some point, which gives your local tax authority enough details to catch you when you try to cheat on your taxes.

What rights is crypto protecting?

That's the wrong way to look at it IMO.

To me, it provides a check against national monetary policy and the major payment networks. If you live in a country with rapid inflation, your options are basically buy a different store of value (gold, cryptocurrencies, another nation's currency) or get screwed. Likewise, the major payment networks tend to charge 3% for all transactions, perhaps higher for international transactions, whereas cryptocurrencies give you an alternative method of payment.

Cryptocurrencies don't protect rights per se, but using them is an expression of your right to transact with others however you want.

We’re talking about a vehicle where entire governments can pump up the value and reap the inflated price.

That describes fiat a lot more than cryptocurrencies, but in the opposite direction. You're at the mercy of your central bank w/ most fiat currencies, whereas your local government doesn't have any control over cryptocurrencies, they can merely interact like any other market participant can. Yes, they have a lot of money at their disposal, but governments also tend to need to do things transparently, so there are already checks against governments intentionally manipulating values through massive transactions.

Crypto is just another empty, ultra-capitalist “American Dream” promise shrouded in tech.

If you look at the crypto scams that exist, sure. But also remember that any new thing gets jumped on by people looking to make a quick buck. Look at all of those "stock tips" channels on YouTube (or any form of collectible, for that matter), those tend to just be pump-and-dump schemes. The fault here doesn't lie with cryptocurrencies, it's merely that it's very liquid so it's easy for someone to cash out.

That said, it actually has very little to do with capitalism or economics at all, it's more of an anti-government initiative, similar to the whole idea behind the fediverse (can't shut us all down).

When was the last time YOU have "laundered money with crypto"?

Why don't you do it and tell us how it goes?

You have to do serious KYC everywhere before you can even think of withdrawing cash (any serious amount). I know, i had to do few of these in past 18 months just to retain access to few largest exchanges. Bitcoin is not anonymous. On the contrary.

And if you think loundering is converting from BTC to XMR and buying drugs with it, well let's just say that crypto has a very, very long way to go before it comes even remotely close to Dollar.

According to what I understand of what's being proposed here, no taxpayer money would go to purchase any Bitcoin whatsoever. It would all be people paying their taxes in Bitcoin and such. Not actually the purchase of Bitcoin by the state. I do think that we have totally different views on crypto, though, because the right I see it protecting is our right to capital that cannot be seized and controlled by the government. Yes, that enables some bad things. But on a whole, I believe it helps society. If you need to leave an oppressive situation, you can. If your government causes inflation to ruin the value of your money, you can protect your wealth with crypto because they have no control over it. I totally agree that most crypto is indeed a scam. There's no argument for me on that. My argument is that there are legitimate projects doing legitimate things and those should not be thrown out with the bathwater like the baby.

They're saying it's neither progressive nor conservative, it's just a tool that you can use.

I'm just mainly giving resources. I am a pretty hardcore libertarian and so some of the views are incomprehensible to me and others make sense.

I never said I was a progressive and not all crypto uses a ton of power. Look at Ethereum, for example. That uses very little power because of being proof of stake. Or look at Monero, for example, because even though it's proof of work, it's specifically CPU based. On regular computers, which means that it uses no more power than your computer would be using anyway. Since it is CPU based, it is also not worth it to build large mining farms in big warehouses. However, even if you look at Bitcoin specifically, mining needs cheap power, and a lot of cheap power, according to everything I understand, is solar and hydro, which are renewable, and are used a lot. Bitcoin mining also puts off a lot of heat as a byproduct, which could be used to do things like dry clothes, heat pools, heat municipal city buildings, etc. Plus, you're not taking into account the emissions of the banking sector in and of itself. How much stone is mined to build bank buildings? How much gasoline is burned to transport employees to and from work? How much gasoline is burned to use armored cars to transport cash, etc. If you are going to compare the environmental costs, at least make it an objective measure.

Exactly. I used to want digital election, and then I thought about it for half a second a realized how stupid that is.

I'm 100% in the camp of universal mail voting. We can use machines to count votes, statistics and manual counting as a check against bad machines, and individuals can check if their ballot was counted properly. Blockchain can potentially be a part of that, but it should never be the core part.

I don't trust voting machines at all, paper ballots all the way. Maybe eventually we can do public key crypto, but not now.