[Cryptography] playing lawyer, Incentive Politics

[iang]

On 18/10/2023 19:02, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 8:25 PM Erik <erik at erikgranger.name> wrote:
>
>     Do you support similar policies against cash, considering it is
>     the most commonly used criminal currency?
>     -- Sent from /e/ Mail.
>
>
> That is not the correct comparison.
>
> There is absolutely no measurable legitimate commerce that uses 
> BitCoin or any other pseudo-currency. None, zip, zilch, nada.


It is encouraging that you can't measure it :) but it would be false to 
say that means it isn't there - I know of many people who have used 
crypto for important and significant transactions.


> The online merchants who would let people pay with Bitcoin never 
> really used it, they just had an payment provider that would 
> immediately convert BTC to cash and virtually all of those have 
> quietly dropped it.


Yes, retail is a bad use case.  But you can't tell people what they 
don't want to hear.


> BTC is useless as a payment transmission medium: It is slow, it is 
> hilariously expensive, it cannot be reversed in the case of fraud on 
> the receiver's part.


Ya.  But sometimes when banks fail to serve, it's the way.  And 
increasingly, banks fail to serve.  They just will simply not do a 
transaction or refuse an account or send customers away bc reasons.  
Then crypto provides an alternative.

iang
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