74 points by billybuckwheat8 days ago | 49 comments
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> Crypto is really only good for gambling, betting the price of this or that crypto is going to go up or down, and, crime
Crime is a pretty broad category. Sure you can use crypto to scam people and dodge taxes, but illegal does not equal immoral. Piracy, leaking evidence of war crimes and police abuse, leaking source code to hurt controversial companies, donations to banned groups, even hosting source code for illegal tools. Not all of them benefit from crypto itself but adjacent technologies that need a blockchain like Arweave and ENS.
Then there are things like drug dealing and prostitution that have real world harms but not everyone agrees they should be criminal. It's great to have a bunch of different payment methods that can be as anonymous as cash (Monero) or fully programmable with smart wallets to protect you from scams, all without any corporate cartel that could block you.
Cyberleek is a great example for both sides of the debate. They used Solana programs and Arweave to make their site uncensorable, but also created a token donation system and market cap goals to make thousands of dollars in the process (a lot for someone probably based in Russia). Is it all morally wrong, or all right, or only wrong for the money side?
The argument that private transactions are only for people with something to hide is one that we should be very careful with.
The same could be said about projects like Tor, which we know for certain is used for all sorts of illegal activities, and really just about any use of cryptography use outside of big tech and systems with law enforcement access. It is exactly the same as the argument that all chat and email providers that cannot intercept and store plaintext data should be outlawed.
Private chats and private value transfers are used by criminals, there's no question about it. We should think of the children. But the slope is slippery and the question is where to draw the line and what type of society we want to live in. To someone who valued abolishing export mode ciphers and key escrow schemes, the Overton window has really shifted on this.
I turned off when he said that Bitcoin is issued by corporations. The interviewer calls him out on it and he doubles down. That's blatantly false, and indicates poor research and / or poor understanding.
It may be true for plenty of other cryptocurrencies, but it's definitely not true for some, including Bitcoin. In fact, 99% of cryptocurrencies are scams, but that's because they can now be created in seconds with little knowledge or skill.
Feels like he's pushing an agenda, especially with the use of the term 'corporations'. Which is amusing, since it's the lack of trust of big-finance that (so the story goes) led to the creation of Bitcoin in the first place - the 2007 GFC in particular. Although electronic money was being dabbled with since the mid-late 90s, and that base formed the foundation of what Bitcoin was built on.
This is probably just advertising for his documentary, really.
> I turned off when he said that Bitcoin is issued by corporations. The interviewer calls him out on it and he doubles down. That's blatantly false, and indicates poor research and / or poor understanding.
He knows how bitcoin works. And what he said wasn't a lie, though you could argue it was a simplification, but he's not addressing the HN crowd with what he's saying and IMO his simplification is perfectly acceptable to the audience he is targeting.
The cost to mine a single BTC in 2026 is > $70k. Random individuals and hobbyists are not spending that kind of money mining bitcoin.
This is the same author that attempted to short bitcoin and lost most of his money. [0] Perhaps that is why he is upset about cryptocurrencies.
But the true scam is the complete debasement of the US dollar and people will slowly realize why the dollar will always be worth less than it was 40 years ago as it continues to be printed to zero and number go up with stocks and crypto.
It is also the reason why some people are crying that $1m is not enough to retire on, and they are right. Because $1m is worth less today than it was 40 years ago.
Hence why people here need >$500k and above a year to live, when in reality, it is the fiat currency becoming more worthless over time.
Ran a full node for a while, checked issuance myself: fixed schedule in the code, halving every 210k blocks, no company can change it without every node operator agreeing to upgrade. Confused issuance with custody - exchanges holding coins isn't the same as a corporation minting them.
Same thing happened with Nader on cars, Snowden on privacy. Credentials came after the crusade, not before. Book plus Senate testimony beats a Wikipedia bio built off IMDb credits.
He's written a book on the subject and testified in front of the US Senate. The fact that he acted in a popular TV show more than twenty years ago isn't particularly relevant.
Every time an individual blanket labels the entirety of Cryptocurrency as a "Ponzi Scheme" just reveals their lack of knowledge. Plenty of them are, and plenty of them aren't in the fact that they aren't scams, or don't even fit the definition of a Ponzi. He can try to pry my Monero from my cold, dead hands.
McKenzie's actually Jim Gordon in Gotham, not just OC guy, but fine, tangent. Bigger nitpick: "issued by corporations" thing from that ABC clip is wrong for Bitcoin specifically, doesn't hold for the point he's making about altcoins.
Crime is a pretty broad category. Sure you can use crypto to scam people and dodge taxes, but illegal does not equal immoral. Piracy, leaking evidence of war crimes and police abuse, leaking source code to hurt controversial companies, donations to banned groups, even hosting source code for illegal tools. Not all of them benefit from crypto itself but adjacent technologies that need a blockchain like Arweave and ENS.
Then there are things like drug dealing and prostitution that have real world harms but not everyone agrees they should be criminal. It's great to have a bunch of different payment methods that can be as anonymous as cash (Monero) or fully programmable with smart wallets to protect you from scams, all without any corporate cartel that could block you.
Cyberleek is a great example for both sides of the debate. They used Solana programs and Arweave to make their site uncensorable, but also created a token donation system and market cap goals to make thousands of dollars in the process (a lot for someone probably based in Russia). Is it all morally wrong, or all right, or only wrong for the money side?