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Comment by tw04

13 hours ago

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Yep, the belief that governments would just give up control of money always seemed incredibly naive to me too.

  • On the other hand, doesn't all "wouldn't it be nice if it was like this?" look naive and wild before they were implemented/fought through?

    Things like "Womens right to vote", "Civil rights" or even democracy was seen as completely backwards and naive at one point in history (and still is in some places), but today we kind of see it as something good to strive for, most of the times.

    I'm not saying it's 100% the same for cryptocurrencies, but isn't there a chance it's something similar at least?

> nation is going to give up their self-determination because someone thinks countries having self-control

Nations do not have selves. That's taking the analogy too far. I do agree that they will definitely continue trying to exert control, though. It's kinda their thing.

Unless they personally can profit from the situation anyway. Then they’ll often do perfunctory PR prosecutions while taking kickbacks. See things like prosecutions around prostitution for one usually pretty clear example.

It would also be delusional to think crypto-bros will give up their self-determination to the nation-state.

  • It's really not. 100% of the time the nation state is winning that battle, as evidence by literally all of human history. Crypto-bros make up a fraction of a fraction of the population and most people don't have sympathy for any of them when the primary use cases of crypto today are extortion and black markets in the western world.

    • I don't think there's any shortage of history of people fighting the impossible, mostly getting crucified, and occasionally winning, and occasionally just existing as someone that would take the state more money than it's worth to go after.

      You're expecting crypt-bros to act rationally based on utility of outcome. If they're acting ideologically there's no guarantee that will be the case.

I don’t mind seeing the crypto bros hoisted by their own orange-tinted petard.

They supported an authoritarian because they thought they could buy him off with shitcoin corruption billions. Turns out he’s still an authoritarian after he’s taken the money and done the rug pull.

  • They supported both candidates, and Harris kept talking about crypto in the face of everybody screaming at her that it was losing her votes. She thought being able to afford Beyoncé concerts with crypto bro cash would offset that.

it's another $5 wrench situation

  • Sure but now you need a $5 wrench to essentially force a guy to tell you where he buried the gold, rather than just walking to the bank and taking it. I don't see that as some kind of win for the guy with a wrench, especially when you realize the bank manager is way less likely to be a violent nutter sov-cit.

  • The solution is to store your money on a wallet where you do not have the private key. This way if you cannot access your funds nobody will be able to coerce you.