On Sat, 27 Oct 2018 10:54:30 +0000, Joakim wrote:
> I see, so you want other taxpayers to bail you out for your mistakes, interesting.

One of the major points of having a government is to create these regulations that make it less likely for individuals to suffer from the actions of other people and organizations.

Another major point is to help people in need using the collective efforts of society.

Programs like FDIC in the United States exist to serve both of these: it's an extra set of regulations for banks, and compliant banks will be bailed out if circumstances require. If I choose an FDIC bank and the owners run off with my money, I didn't make an avoidable mistake, any more than being mugged in the street is me making a mistake.

If you oppose that, you're gunning for an eventual repeat of the Great Depression.

>> I think my concerns are rather normal. Judging by adoption, there's some set of concerns that's normal.
> 
> Some of them are popularly held, but most are fairly irrational.
> 
> In any case, whether crypto-currencies ever go mainstream is irrelevant to this thread. They're already fairly popular among techies, from whom the D foundation is soliciting donations. As such, providing a way to accept such donations is literally a no-brainer: the work put into taking them will likely pay for itself many times over.

I suspect more techies use zloty than ethereum.

On Saturday, 27 October 2018 at 14:33:43 UTC, Neia Neutuladh wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Oct 2018 10:54:30 +0000, Joakim wrote:
>> I see, so you want other taxpayers to bail you out for your mistakes, interesting.
>
> One of the major points of having a government is to create these regulations that make it less likely for individuals to suffer from the actions of other people and organizations.
>
> Another major point is to help people in need using the collective efforts of society.
>
> Programs like FDIC in the United States exist to serve both of these: it's an extra set of regulations for banks, and compliant banks will be bailed out if circumstances require. If I choose an FDIC bank and the owners run off with my money, I didn't make an avoidable mistake, any more than being mugged in the street is me making a mistake.
>
> If you oppose that, you're gunning for an eventual repeat of the Great Depression.

Banks are special because of the payments system and because of lending.  In October 2008 Gordon Brown was within two hours of shutting down the banking system and declaring a state of emergency.  If that had happened nobody would have been able to make payments and new lending would have come to a halt.

In 2038 you won't need banks to make payments because cryptocurrencies will be a viable alternative.  And lending is already being provided by asset managers.  So the justification for the combination of leverage and the mismatch in liquidity and risk of banks deposit liabilities and their assets will disappear.  The component of TARP that constituted aid to the financial system made a profit, but nonetheless there will be very little public appetite for a repeat the next time around.

At the request of the UK debt management office, I met the representative of the IMF financial stability review in early 2005.  He had a bee in his bonnet about the dollar yen carry trade and hedge funds: generals always fighting the last war.  I told him to worry about the banks and what they were buying.  He didn't listen.  So regulators have little skill when it comes to understanding systemic risk posed by the asset and liability decisions of banks and so it will be good to make that function redundant.

So cryptocurrencies matter.  They are far from mature right now though and it's not the most important thing if you have limited resources to accept them.  The best way to get the Foundation to accept them might be to do the work to help...

On Friday, 26 October 2018 at 06:19:29 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Friday, 26 October 2018 at 05:47:05 UTC, Neia Neutuladh wrote:
>> On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 02:38:08 +0000, Joakim wrote:
>>> As with D, sometimes the new _is_ better, so perhaps you shouldn't assume old is better either.
>>
>> There's no assuming going on. Cryptocurrencies are worse than credit cards for everything that normal people care about,
>
> Such as? I already noted that they're easier and cheaper, you simply flatly state that "normal people" find them worse.
>
>> and they're better than credit cards for illegal transactions.
>
> Yes, just like cash, and have other benefits that come with cash too.
>
>> This might eventually change, and we can re-evaluate then.
>>
>> If for some reason cryptocurrencies become popular and sufficiently stable to be used as currency, I have no doubt that existing credit card companies will start offering automatic currency exchange, so you can have an account in USD and pay a vendor who accepts only Ethereum, or vice versa. As such, accepting credit card payments is good enough.
>
> I don't know what we'd be waiting for, the tokens I mentioned are all worth billions and widely used, particularly by techies:
>
> https://coinmarketcap.com
>
> Why would I wait for antiquated credit-card companies to accept these tokens? The whole point of these new tokens is to obsolete the credit card companies.

Cryptocurrencies are worse is better for some people in some contexts.  HSBC started the process of shutting down my company bank account because payments to programmers in Russia triggered some alerts and you get caught up in this Kafkaesque maze where there is nobody reasonable to talk to.  I wrote to the Chairman in Hong Kong and only then could I get them to see reason and apologize.  So for making payments to Russia, yes if the other side accepts them, worse is better in this case.  For Venezuela or some African countries worse is obviously better quite a lot of the time. For making smaller payments overseas cryptocurrencies with low fees like BCH can be more efficient than a bank wire, even in the West.

As regards particular currencies, deadalnix, member of the D community and creator of SDC compiler project is the man behind Bitcoin ABC, the largest Bitcoin Cash client, and one of the key people technically for Bitcoin Cash overall.

On Sunday, 28 October 2018 at 13:06:53 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

> Banks are special because of the payments system and because of lending.  In October 2008 Gordon Brown was within two hours of shutting down the banking system and declaring a state of emergency.  If that had happened nobody would have been able to make payments and new lending would have come to a halt.
>
> In 2038 you won't need banks to make payments because cryptocurrencies will be a viable alternative.  And lending is already being provided by asset managers.  So the justification for the combination of leverage and the mismatch in liquidity and risk of banks deposit liabilities and their assets will disappear.

Only one word: Huerta de Soto.

- Paolo