Comment by acdha
4 years ago
> Digital assets aided in stopping a predatory crime this year.
I saw you make that claim but that's too vague to evaluate whereas what Nagle described has been well covered for many years and even the Bitcoin salespeople rarely argue that it's commonplace. Even with the extra two paragraphs you added later there's no way to know what this meant, what fraction of the total Bitcoin usage it accounted for, etc.
> These comments never mention the continual reigning supremacy of the US dollar for crime, ever, and never provide any evidence that bitcoin has a higher crime usage ratio than the dollar with less prosecutability.
This is incorrect, and the need for the counterfactual narrative is telling: this comes up frequently and it's usually mentioned in the context of the larger economy. Nobody says that the U.S. dollar isn't used by criminals but it's trivially easy to show enormous amounts of real, non-criminal economic activity — nobody thinks, say, drug cartels are tiny but there's no serious argument that they're anywhere near a majority of the legal economy. If you want to address this claim, try highlighting examples of real economic activity using Bitcoin — real businesses which are not selling Bitcoin. If USD (or just Visa/Mastercard, Paypal, etc.) activity suddenly halted, a ton of people would be unable to engage in their daily business — can you provide any examples of similar Bitcoin dependencies?
> Younger technologists have considerably less opportunity than we did, not more, and the frontier is much smaller. Ruthless negativism doesn't serve them.
I agree that the landscape isn't as good as it used to be but I don't think it's helpful to steer people into false hopes, either. Bitcoin has an inherent conflict of interest built-in since all of the people who've poured money into it for the last decade will have to write that off if they can't find buyers. That lack of utility is the real problem and calling it FUD won't solve it.
I agree with most of your points. If something as real-life meaningful as the stopping of a predatory crime does not satisfy you as a legitimate usage example against people claiming there is essentially none, I'm at a loss and am unsure of what we're actually discussing.
As you may imagine, it's impossible for me to provide the 1,000 page+ documentation trail of an in-progress federal investigation here in order to refute a comment. I understand that my sincerity may be questioned and there's nothing I can do about that.
I'm sorry but as an observer to this thread: there is nothing even remotely compelling to your argument. 'stopping a predatory crime' - one instance? That you can't refer to? Not compelling.
In fact, the sheer number of predatory scams being performed using crypto would surely outweigh the alleged single incident in which Bitcoin had a positive influence?
Your inability to meet any other requests for evidence (businesses that legitimately use and depend on btc) is downright damning.
I hold btc, but every booster simply fails to demonstrate any actual utility for Bitcoin beyond being a speculative vehicle.
I do not hold any meaningful amount of btc. I am not selling bitcoin, I am countering FUD. there is not a single example of my intent in this thread being promotion or marketing. I'm pointing out classical FUD techniques on a public technology forum, not making an argument. There is zero desire to compel you. Your proclamation of damnation is noted here for posterity.
I'm specifically refusing the demand that it's my responsibility to provide evidence of commercial btc usage in order to highlight FUD tactics. The alleged story I mention is likely to receive media exposure in Q3 2022, and it's largely but not completely up to the target.
In your opinion the anecdotal story of aiding in the stopping of a predatory crime is not compelling and does not demonstrate meaningful utility. If you think every human agrees with you that is not compelling, I believe that is an extraordinary statement on your part.
The common hostile attitude here on the subject is what's being captured and addressed, and my response to it is what I'm specifically capturing in my comment history for posterity. It has utility.