> If it helps understand my seemingly heartless position: I have exactly as much sympathy and empathy for somebody spending $4bil on crypto, as for investing $4bil in Phillip Morris or another tobacco company a couple of decades ago.
This did help, thank you.
Your gambling metaphor is useful, but incomplete. Consider this instead: You come across your fellow citizens gambling in a casino. You decide they must stop what they are doing for reasons. My original question was basically how do you shutdown the casino in a fair and orderly way?
You seem to be saying that when people lose money playing casino games, that is their problem, they signed up for it when they entered the casino. I agree.
However, suppose gambling were made illegal today. Do you think everyone currently seated at a table, people who entered the casino legally, should lose the money they brought into the casino with them?
I think "increased regulations" is a wide spectrum. Extremes (I believe) are rarely a good thing.
"Confiscate money from all people in Casino" / "Confiscate all Bitcoin" are, I believe, extremes.both
"Issue licenses for gambling, provide oversight, age restrict, run information campaigns about dangers of gambling, create support and help programs", is, I think, reasonable (and we can further discuss details, and we do; "Are loot boxes gambling"; "should state / group X run casinos"; who and how should be able to gamble, what is the right amount if disclosure, what is an informed responsible consenting adult, etc. All good things for us as society to honestly discuss).
"Ensure bitcoin income is taxed (like every other investment), that it follows disclosure rules (like every other investment), that it is open and transparent and licensed, etc cetera", is I think reasonable and merely catches up the playing field and closes off loopholes that EVERYbody knew were temporary loopholes (and smarter people than me can discuss details). "Government should not spend gazillion dollars blindly investing into this technology hoping to find problem to solve" is also, I think, a statement I'd stand behind. And not unique - there are MILLION fads or technologies or endevours I don't want government to invest in, so don't feel picked on :)
IF that latter option still somehow causes everybody involved to lose money... well ain't that just food for thought though, right? It means people were literally banking/hoping/assuming they can do things without oversight and through magical loopholes forever. I don't want to say "illegally" because there may or may not have been a law in time with new technology. But crypto and bitcoin are almost as much fun to discuss as religion with a Christian apologetic - it gets all shifty very quickly; it is and isn't investment, or a transactional system, or currency, or stable, or volatile, or private or public,or efficient, or safe, reversible or fixed, etc etc depending on needs of the moment and which point we're trying to make.
I don't see anything synonymous with "Confiscate" in that letter. I see it as a small attempt to counterpoint the massive over-enthusiasm, bluster, lobbying, and tall tales that abound around crypto (there may or may not be a nugget of useful technology, use case, future approaches in blockchain; willing to discuss that; but anybody that rejects the observable amount of scam and dishonesty in today's actual crypto implementations, investments, sales pitches and pushes and frankly disinformation campaigns, is not having an honest conversation with me and/or is trying to sell me something and/or has been sold/swindled themselves).
I don't think there's a need or way to "shut down all blockchain / crypto / bitcoin". I don't think anybody seriously proposes that. The letter certainly does not. So the analogy of somebody coming in and taking the gamblers' money doesn't apply - not sure how that would even work in terms of confiscation (though the value of any given chain or crypto currency certainly can, and usually should approach zero, but that's empathically not "somebody else stealing my money":).
But I've been in any number of conferences / meetings / governing bodies where a blockchain / crypto evangelist comes in, flashes couple of dozen slides of essentially nothing, and the non-technically astute leaders get hyper excited about something and get all "Shut up and take my money!" ("In the morning, you'll be picked up in a self-driving car powered by blockchain!" is literally the sentence that was uttered - to wide applause. I felt in a Twilight zone of unquestioning zombies). This TERRIFIES me. Governments adopting bitcoin for alternative currency or inserting crypto where it doesn't belong TERRIFIES me. Because yes, eventually it'll be "too big to fail" and we'll now start propping up stupid-ass systems because "Companies invested $4bil into them and we can't let it evaporate into smoke that it should". And now I and mine will be stuck with stupid-ass stuff.
I'm happy to let blockchain and bitcoin and crypto exist. Let them exist in the same regulated ecosystem and world that all of us exist in. Let the enthusiasts enthuse and investors invest and gamblers gamble. But for the love of all that is holly, let's temper that enthusiasm and counter the immense lobbying and hype before it all gets too far down the black rabbit hole of no return and no sanity.
This did help, thank you.
Your gambling metaphor is useful, but incomplete. Consider this instead: You come across your fellow citizens gambling in a casino. You decide they must stop what they are doing for reasons. My original question was basically how do you shutdown the casino in a fair and orderly way?
You seem to be saying that when people lose money playing casino games, that is their problem, they signed up for it when they entered the casino. I agree.
However, suppose gambling were made illegal today. Do you think everyone currently seated at a table, people who entered the casino legally, should lose the money they brought into the casino with them?