[liberationtech] The bitcoin terrorists of Idlib are learning new tricks

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Sun, May 23, 2021 at 2:06 AM Marc Sunet <msunet at shellblade.net> wrote:

> So what specifically is immoral about cryptocurrencies in your opinion?
>
> Also, throwing grarpamp in the Trump sack was a bit out of the blue? He
> had some good points if you just ignore the writing style. Some groups are
> ringing bells about cashless societies, for example (last link in Spanish):
>
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/24/you-cant-pay-cash-here-how-cashless-society-harms-most-vulnerable
>
> https://collateralbits.net/la-maldicion-del-dinero/
>
> This mailing list always turns hostile for no reason. Since you are
> experts, why not educate people when somebody raises a point here?
>
Well first off, this is not the only list on which grarpamp has shared his
opinions. I have found him to be long on accusatory language (everyone I
don't like is a statist) and short on facts. He stopped posting on the
Cryptography list after being repeatedly schooled for stating that
professional cryptographers with decades of experience who have been
discussing BTC since it was launched there need to 'educate themselves'.

I find accusing people of being statists, pro government, etc. as a
bullying tactic. That is all grarpamp has and its all Trump ever had. Use
Trumper tactics, get thrown in the Trump sack, seems fair to me.

The aggressive gaslighting and coinsplaining is of course entirely self
interested. Anyone who holds BitCoin is by definition a person with a
vested interest in finding a greater fool to sell their cowrie shells onto.
That is the second reason to throw them in the Trump sack - they are con
artists trying to put your money in their pockets. I don't think that is
moral behavior.

I am a big fan of the cashless society, I have spent a large part of my 29
year career in designing and deploying payment systems. I have been trying
to develop a micropayments scheme for buying Web content since 1992. None
of the current ledger bases schemes is remotely close to serving that need
with the possible exception of Dogecoin which can't meet that need at
scale.

And here we get to the fact that the only thing we have learned about
BitCoin after 12 years of deployment experience is that it is impossible to
change the deployed infrastructure. We are long past the early days of
criminal-currencies. What you see now is all you are going to get. Repeated
attempts to change the infrastructure have failed. So the fact that it
costs $22 to make a BTC transaction today is really significant. That is
vastly more than any other payment system except SWIFT. And if you factor
in the cost of converting hard currency into and out of BTC, the cost of
using BTC to make an uninsured, irrevocable transfer is five to ten times
the cost of an insured transfer via SWIFT and vastly more than other means.

So this is a ruinously expensive payment system that cannot be improved
after deployment. Does it provide any advantages? Not unless you want to
buy drugs, images of children being raped, collect ransomware extortion or
evade exchange controls. The only selling point of BTC as a payment scheme
is that it enables criminal behavior. And with the exception of evading
exchange controls, the criminal behavior in question is despicable.

BTC is not decentralized, that is pure propaganda. While the ledger itself
is decentralized in theory, Network effects have led to the creation of
mining cartels and the practical difficulties of managing crypto and the
cost of transactions have led to most of the float being held on exchanges.

None of the criminality is acknowledged by BitCoin boosters. They poo-poo
the fact that BTC accounts for a negligible fraction of global commerce and
the majority of major financial frauds. One-coin Quadrifinex, Mount Gox,
The most profitable way to run an exchange is to run it as a Ponzi scheme.

Nor is the fact that proof of waste is a despicable principle on which to
assign value. The criminal-currency world creates no value. They consume
more electricity than the entire nation of Argentina. They can't argue with
that fact so they instead pretend that the miners are using renewable
energy, a flat out lie. Who else lies on that scale? Well Trump of course,
back in the Trump sack again.

There is much more that could be said on the immorality of criminal
currencies but the verdict is clear: These are despicable instruments being
peddled by despicable, greedy people who cloak their immorality with fine
talk of 'freedom' and vicious personal attacks on anyone who dares tell the
truth.
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