Hmm... I only agree that two of these should be illegal, which are alcohol sold to minors and tanks as private vehicles. Every other one has many aspects that I don't want a government involved in. But there's a lot to be written about that.
You can't create accounts to pose as separate persons in an argument, and you can't use HN for flamewar like this. Please stop creating accounts to break the site rules with.
WTF happened here, my new comments are all flagged as dead, why???
I swear I have nothing to do with anything you are implying, why should I reply with a different account when I could have used this one? and BTW my comment had positive upvotes!
that's not me, why in the hell I am being punished for something I haven't done and had no reason to do????
please reverse your decision, you're making a big mistake here.
I have no idea why you assumed that's me, I haven't used my HN account after that comment and looked at it again only today.
Your account appears to be one of a long series of accounts we've previously banned. The holder of these accounts has not only been breaking the site guidelines and getting banned here for years, they've also used multiple accounts in the same threads to appear to be multiple people, which is obviously an abuse in its own right.
First off, I'm not American, nor have I been to the US. Given that you started off with "Americans are savages", I don't really see the point in trying to have any sort of reasonable exchange here...
In Venezuela they haven't banned cryptos, they banned mining, especially if it's done on state funded electricity (for obvious reasons)/and because other cryptos compete with the state backed crypto, the Petro.
> A total of 100 million Petros will be sold, with an initial value set at $60, based on the price of a barrel of Venezuelan crude in mid-January.
Unfortunately we know that its purpose is raise cash because they can't repay their huge national debt.
Which is why every dictator loves cryptos if they can control them as they control state currencies.
The narrative can be shifted to we are all in this together, we live and die together.
If they'd allow bitcoins for the general population (they love them only for themselves) some would become richer, but the country as a whole would not benefit a bit from it.
And failing at that is something no politician can survive.
> Why politicians still think that if they ban something then it will magically go away?
because people don't like to go to jail
> "oh it's banned, I guess I'll stop using it then"
that's exactly what's gonna happen in Turkey though.
But even if it wasn't Turkey which is ruled by an autocrat, a ban would steer away casual users that usually means the thing banned won't succeed in the long run.
imagine if YouTube was banned in some country and the ban would stay even after public protests (admitting that public protests were allowed)
YouTube usage would immediately drop to a number very close to zero.
torrenting illegal material was already illegal, before Netflix.
and France is not Turkey, but no Germany either where the ban on illegal downloads actually works, because they will get you.
In my opinion cause and effect are reversed here: Netflix is going strong because there is a ban on torrents and sharing copyrighted material in general and it worked.
If it was the other way around, Netflix would earn peanuts.
Also, people get around a ban on torrents because there is no risk, the worse thing that can happen is that you won't watch a movie illegally.
Now think about using illegal money and the consequences...
> HADOPI is slowly dying.
again, wrong comparison.
How many people watch YouTube videos in China and how many would if it was not banned?
That's your benchmark.
Look at the ban on guns, where the ban exists the number of guns in people hands is very low.
If it worked as you said, where arms are banned people would use them illegally.
But instead they do not (again: generally speaking).
Think about prostitution, it's legal in Germany where the government estimates the real number may be as high as 400,000 almost 0.5% of the population.
In Italy, where it's practically illegal (it's complicated, but we can safely assume it is not legal as in Germany) the number is estimated at 100,000 or 0,15% of the population.
Bans do work, the fact that not all bans work the same way, doesn't mean that they don't work.
I don't think something that make it worth optimizing for but is intended to optimize criminals activities is really desirable.
Anyway, there's no advantage with crypto, the smuggler didn't smuggle 1 million dollar worth of cocaine from Mexico, cocaine is moved in much larger volumes, if a few pounds are lost, it's part of the business risks, criminals understand it and sometimes facilitate it, so that police can make big splash announcements and everybody is happy.
money is another thing entirely.
that million dollar worth of cocaine has been cut in hundreds of smaller doses, that are being paid mostly in cash.
so now every corner dealer has a pile of cash that use to pay the bigger dealer and so on.
first of all, you can't buy crypto with cash.
You should go through another person who already owns enough to sell them to you, which means another breadcrumb that could lead back to you in case that other person is caught.
also, cash has some disadvantages over a usb pendrive, but one big advantage is that it's harder to lose a briefcase than a usb drive and they don't break as easily.
so the smaller dealers have no incentive to do it.
the average dealer has no incentive on buying crypto to pay the larger dealer, because he gets rid of the cash pretty fast and keeps his cut that invests into criminal but legal activities so that the facade is clean.
the larger dealers have now a pile of cash that need to handle anyway, they can't ignore it and make it disappear just because it takes too much space.
let's go back to the smuggler (probably a cartel man) that moved cocaine from Mexico to Chicago
they have bank accounts in Panama and don't care about moving large sum of money anonymously or through perfectly clean American front men.
The system already works, there was an article the other day on front page titled "The war against money laundering is being lost" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26786810), so why change it for an asset that has not even a stable value?
I guess they tried at one point, but there's too much attention on them now, so criminals with capital C dropped them and let only their kids play with it so they can pay for their college expenses.
We are still talking about criminals. By "well worth optimizing", I meant worth to them.
I'm not defending that Bitcoin is a solution to moving money, I'm attacking what I perceived to be an argument that it's not a problem for dealers because they can just do to cash as they do to drugs.
it looks pretty complicated for a person who wants to send money (illegally) out of China and clean it up.
The easiest thing for China would be monitor crypto transactions and stop them from happening.
But suppose you are Chinese and have a good friend in UK who's going to report as legit income the result of your criminal activity in China (criminal as in simply hiding the money from the government, for whatever reason) on your behalf.
Why should you set this complex scheme up when you could simply fly to UK to visit your artist friend, buy one of his artwork with your yuan and you're done?
Or better yet, invite your UK friend to China and give him the money, that he can then deposit on his account.
Purchasing mining hardware or artworks with your money that can be trace back to you it's the exact same thing.
> Why should you set this complex scheme up when you could simply fly to UK to visit your artist friend, buy one of his artwork with your yuan and you're done?
> Or better yet, invite your UK friend to China and give him the money, that he can then deposit on his account.
China has capital controls and dual currencies to prevent these common scenarios. The yuan that the Chinese resident can get from a Chinese bank is devalued outside of China, and it is forbidden to move large quantities anyway (much less than the 1M USD mentioned in the thread).
> China has capital controls and dual currencies to prevent these common scenarios
that's why you buy stuff in yuan and sell the stuff for dollars/euro or other currencies
BTW we are talking about criminal activities here (money laundering), of course there's a price to pay and that price usually is in the 20-40% range (I've checked CNY and CNH and they are being traded at very similar rates right now [1][2])
there's no need to buy hundreds of GPU to mine crypto to do what the OP intended to do
unless OP meant btc it's a cheaper and safer way to launder money, which is a good reason why people could think it's a scam
Nobody is all those things, all the time, consistently, over a life time.
Being a leader in the real World is mostly about being in the political position of influencing the decision of the entity you lead, being it a small team of developers, the local sports team or a corporation.
Look at Steve Jobs, he was capable of being a terrible human being, but was also able to put a lot of money in investors' pockets and so they kept him.
Also, having no technical skill has never stopped anybody from being involved in technical roles. They simply end up working where the bar is lower or were management doesn't care.
If what you say was true, posts like this would not exist.
Yes. Exactly.
What's the problem with that?
Yes, you have the right to do what you want, but No, you should not do the wrong things.
Have you the right to drive?
Yes.
Have you the right to run over pedestrians?
No.
It's simply how societies work.
freedom starts where ignorance ends
the freedom of one ends where the right of another begins.
and hundreds other similar quotes...