US senators seek input on their cryptocurrency law via GitHub – and get some The two US senators behind a proposed law to bring order to cryptocurrency finance have published their legislation to Microsoft's GitHub to obtain input from the unruly public. The bill, known as the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, was introduced by Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) on June 7 …
Speaking as a person "represented" (in name only) by Lummis, My experience is that anything she says is, at best a pile of horse shit. More likely, it (yet another) attempt to enrich herself at the cost of, well, everyone else. The immediate closing of the github issue on conflict of interest is proof of that.
I am so sick of this.
Actually, crypto is quite different than Madoff's classic Ponzi scheme. Don't get me wrong. Cryptocurrency is an RBI (Really Bad Idea). But a Ponzi scheme it is not.
My understanding is that what Bernie Madoff did was to claim he had developed a sophisticated investment strategy involving using futures contracts to leverage mundane investments in S&P 500 stocks thereby achieving much higher yields than simply buying and selling the same stocks would yield. The scheme was exceedingly complex. So much so that no one understood it. It probably wouldn't have worked. Didn't matter. Madoff skipped that messy investment step. Buying and selling stock is risky. A man could lose money that way. Instead, he simply paid out "dividends" and withdrawals using money from the incoming investment stream and the existing capital pool.
That's illegal because it can rip off even relatively cautious investors.
Crypto mongers OTOH are quite open about how their business works. You print your own money and "investors" line up to exchange stuff with real world value for your freshly minted notes. But that's nuts? People would have to be crazy to exchange real assets for monopoly money?
Yep. Nobody said the world wasn't full of crazy people.
Crypto is really quite odd. And it's probably imploding. But it's nature is not misrepresented. And it's not illegal (except in China).
"Well, there is one point that makes it ressemble a Ponzi scheme : those who get in first are the most likely to make big wins when the hoi-polloi come rushing in."
That is, however, true of lots of legal things, including every bubble in history and many successful investments. "Ponzi scheme" is a very specific kind of thing, and a lot of people who don't like cryptocurrency haven't bothered to figure out what it is. Just as a lot of enthusiasts of cryptocurrency also haven't bothered to figure out how their thing works, leading them to similar levels of foolishness. Definitions matter, and cryptocurrencies, even the mindnumbingly stupid ones, tend not to be Ponzi schemes. What makes this worse is that there are a small number of things that claim to be cryptocurrencies and are actually Ponzi schemes, and constant misuse of the term can confuse people into thinking that someone is merely a detractor rather than making an important and provable claim.
The problem is many people are ignorant enough to fall for Ponzi schemes. If some magical law were created that prevented fools from being separated from their money by this scheme then a new scheme would be created. There are two solutions: I propose teaching critical thinking in schools to reduce the quantity of fools. A more politically and religiously acceptable solution is to ban education so fools do not have money in the first place.
They are taught "The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States" every day from their first school day.
And if you don't comply they will call the "school police officer" since you are a "disturbance", and you, as a six year old kid, are put into solitary confinement. I.e. you are forced to be in a different room for detention, forced to sit at a table which is build so you cannot see any other pupil in that room, and being verbally tortured by a "teacher" in the best Full Metal Jacket style, and write whatever the teach says. That Simpsons thing Bart does in every opening is not a joke, though he doesn't have to sit at those solitary confinement tables.
We, as German, remember when this was common in Germany. And ISIS ISS and all the other fanatics follow the same logic as US schools do.
(Source: Various "American living in <any EU country>" youtube channels)
"[The Bitcoin] ecosystem is a collection of Rube Goldberg devices designed for the express purpose of making compliance with tax, anti-money laundering, disclosure, liability, and other laws difficult if not impossible. Full stop. There is no baby to throw out with this bath water."
I'll have to remember that one.
It’s too late for regulations.
The principle of Bitcoin is that money paid out equals money paid in, minus losses from the cost of producing, buying and selling Bitcoin, minus the cost of outright fraud. That’s the simple math, and there is no way to get around it.
So by protecting future victims you just punish the ones who are already victimised.
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