> stablecoins are tokens on a blockchain just like bitcoin and can change hands almost as anonymously as paper currency.
That assertion is questionable for two reasons.
(1), all transactions on the blockchain are pseudonymous and public. If the government wants to investigate your bank transactions, at least in theory they have to get a court order and a warrant. If they want to investigate your blockchain dealings, they don't need anything -- not because the blockchain has some special "guardian of society, watcher of transactions" role for government agents, but because all blockchain transactions are visible to anyone with an Internet connection.
(2), it implicitly implies that people shouldn't be able to anonymously transact. There ought to be some third party -- a credit card company, the government -- approving transactions. If you don't see how this puts an enormous amount of trust in that third party, you're being intentionally myopic.
Is that trust deserved? Will it always be deserved, depending on who's in control of that third party?
What if the credit card company decides not to process your company's payments because your video game offends their sense of morality -- even though nobody disputes it's clearly legal freedom of speech? (This is actually happening right now.)
What if the government decides you aren't allowed to buy food if your citizenship papers aren't in order? (I estimate there's a nonzero chance the current administration will try to implement something like this.)
People should have freedom to financially transact, and blockchain is a great enabler of that freedom.
csense•1h ago
That assertion is questionable for two reasons.
(1), all transactions on the blockchain are pseudonymous and public. If the government wants to investigate your bank transactions, at least in theory they have to get a court order and a warrant. If they want to investigate your blockchain dealings, they don't need anything -- not because the blockchain has some special "guardian of society, watcher of transactions" role for government agents, but because all blockchain transactions are visible to anyone with an Internet connection.
(2), it implicitly implies that people shouldn't be able to anonymously transact. There ought to be some third party -- a credit card company, the government -- approving transactions. If you don't see how this puts an enormous amount of trust in that third party, you're being intentionally myopic.
Is that trust deserved? Will it always be deserved, depending on who's in control of that third party?
What if the credit card company decides not to process your company's payments because your video game offends their sense of morality -- even though nobody disputes it's clearly legal freedom of speech? (This is actually happening right now.)
What if the government decides you aren't allowed to buy food if your citizenship papers aren't in order? (I estimate there's a nonzero chance the current administration will try to implement something like this.)
People should have freedom to financially transact, and blockchain is a great enabler of that freedom.