Why does the left hate crypto so much?

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
The crypto bank (technically still a lending platform, pending regulatory definition) I use makes it virtually impossible to be in a position of debt. Also no such thing as credit scores to take out a loan. Marvelously liquid assets being borrowed and leveraged (if even too precariously, but how can we expect otherwise).

Deposit crypto assets as collateral, instantly borrow fiat/stablecoins at a loan-to-value ratio which varies from asset to asset, platform to platform, and if the value of the collateral depreciates below the value your outstanding loan, incremental liquidations are automatically triggered.

In principle, this makes the institution more resistant to runs, but I suppose there are manifold other factors to consider before such a conclusion is reached. My thinking is that if their assets - specifically the interest paid by borrowers - can be instantly claimed in a time of crisis (edit: a time of crisis being defined by the borrower being underwater, rather than the institution just seizing collateral to cover themselves), their risk is diminished to such an extent, rather than if they needed to manually procure the money owed them. I'm unaware of how traditional banks would operate here.

I don't think the revolutionary potential lies in crypto assets as new systematic currency, at least not in the short term. I think the shorter term revolutionary potential is in smart contracts.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
My only real political stance is experiment, experiment, experiment. Human beings are complex, and idealistic top-down interventions have a bad habit of failing to the tune of ten million lives. Let people bottom-up adopt and tinker with, slowly scale up, new systems. States as the laboratory of democracy, as they say in US Gov textbooks—which, incidentally, is why gay marriage, and soon cannabis, got any political traction here to begin with.

We have a word for this: anarkiddy.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
the left broadly speaking is a particular section of the middle class who consider money and the pursuit of money and
talking about money to be crass.

100% True. Although there's a significant flaw in bitcoin, and that's lack of direct equivalent exchangeability. That's why it'll never become real money, if and until this flaw is dealt with. It's good for day trades but disastrous for long 10 year+ investments. What this means is you are exchanging your money not for bitcoin but for token. This is fine is you're keeping a near daily record of it's exchange rate but if you aren't, it's completely disastrous if you wish to cache in all your BTC when things are not looking good, because you do not possess material assets equivalent to X amount of dollars, but merely indirect representations in the form of token which has purchased the coins.

For bitcoin to work optimally one will have to do direct exchange like coinbase, but that approach makes it far from what the libertarian knobheads are imagining.
 
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sus

Well-known member
It's actually hysterical I advocated for experimenting with new governance structures and you read that as "anarchism." It's almost exactly the opposite.
 

sus

Well-known member
Never said you were an anarchist, I merely observed that someone parrotting that line in the UK is called an anarkiddy.
You're trying to undermine my stance by "typifying" it—there's a "type of guy" who has my opinions, and thus, as a "known factor" they can be dismissed.

In fact calling someone an anarkiddy is the exact opposite of calling them an anarchist.
It really isn't, and the Internet means that I can actually call you out on this "here in England" bullshit.
 

sus

Well-known member
What I wonder is where the epistemological basis for your advocated political positions comes from. Did you host 100 civilizations, randomly assigning a form to each, and controlling all the relevant variables like natural resource allocation, geographic position, etc, and notice that your preferred system flourished? Or do you just have a... hunch?

You know, hunches are useful sometimes, and surprisingly predictive. They've done studies, Gary Klein has, and Gigerenzer. For instance, firefighters who have put out blazes in apartment complexes for decades—their intuition for spotting ceiling/floor collapses is impeccable.

Hunches in lieu of lifetimes of experience in the problem domain... Well, those correct about as often as broken clocks. (Or Zizek, huh??)
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
100% True. Although there's a significant flaw in bitcoin, and that's lack of direct equivalent exchangeability. That's why it'll never become real money, if and until this flaw is dealt with. It's good for day trades but disastrous for long 10 year+ investments. What this means is you are exchanging your money not for bitcoin but for token. This is fine is you're keeping a near daily record of it's exchange rate but if you aren't, it's completely disastrous if you wish to cache in all your BTC when things are not looking good, because you do not possess material assets equivalent to X amount of dollars, but merely indirect representations in the form of token which has purchased the coins.

For bitcoin to work optimally one will have to do direct exchange like coinbase, but that approach makes it far from what the libertarian knobheads are imagining.
Yeah bitcoin is hardly the salvation it is vaunted as, but I do think its significance largely boils down to introducing the technical possibility of a decentralized financial system, if even only somewhat decentralized.

And I have doubts about its prospects as a hedge against inflation, but so long as it preserves popular confidence, it may yet work as a medium of exchange, if even one that doesn't scale globally.

Plus, we have stablecoins, which address some of the issues of Bitcoin and other speculative crypto assets may not be able to, i.e. stable stores of value, and medium of exchange, that can benefit from the T-0 transaction times and lower fees that blockchains can enable.

And yeah coinbase is antithetical to the libertarian knobhead promise, but this is where I think centralization can work, unless coinbase's BTC liquidity pool eventually amasses a significant enough portion of the supply to warrant a convenient "hack".
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
You're trying to undermine my stance by "typifying" it—there's a "type of guy" who has my opinions, and thus, as a "known factor" they can be dismissed.


It really isn't, and the Internet means that I can actually call you out on this "here in England" bullshit.

Funny then that the internet verifies me and not you. Experimentation for the sake of experimentation is the height of immaturity. It exists in the minds of potential politicos and noone else.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
What I wonder is where the epistemological basis for your advocated political positions comes from. Did you host 100 civilizations, randomly assigning a form to each, and controlling all the relevant variables like natural resource allocation, geographic position, etc, and notice that your preferred system flourished? Or do you just have a... hunch?

You know, hunches are useful sometimes, and surprisingly predictive. They've done studies, Gary Klein has, and Gigerenzer. For instance, firefighters who have put out blazes in apartment complexes for decades—their intuition for spotting ceiling/floor collapses is impeccable.

Hunches in lieu of lifetimes of experience in the problem domain... Well, those correct about as often as broken clocks. (Or Zizek, huh??)

I reject politics as a gossips club. That's something you will never be able to understand with me.

Insofar as political life is said to exist, it only exists in relation to violent tension, not administration. You want to transfer your fetish onto me, however I am no psychoanalyst.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Which isn;t to say that stablecoins are technically sound yet. Still unclear on it myself, but as I understand it some stablecoins are backed back fiat, while others are algorithmically pegged to a stable value by other means, which I don't understand.

Rumor has it that Tether, the largest stablecoin by daily volume, is sketchy and poorly audited.
 

sus

Well-known member
Funny then that the internet verifies me and not you. Experimentation for the sake of experimentation is the height of immaturity. It exists in the minds of potential politicos and noone else.
I see. Instead of asking "Are you being ungenerous, or can you not read" I should've just assumed both.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Funny then that the internet verifies me and not you. Experimentation for the sake of experimentation is the height of immaturity. It exists in the minds of potential politicos and noone else.
I'm not sure @suspended views experimentation as its own end, but I am inclined to think he supports political innovation as opposed to, what, a stricter originalism and insistence on the old ways.
 

sus

Well-known member
People want stability, not experimentation. Revolutions precisely occur when that stability cannot be maintained.
You really can't read! Like literally can't!

My entire experimentation stance is anti-revolutionary.

Human beings are complex, and idealistic top-down interventions have a bad habit of failing to the tune of ten million lives.
For instance, the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution, the Cultural Revolution
 
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