Machine-generated mathematics output isn't "speech" in the sense of an expressive act of a human person. This is outside the scope of the First Amendment.
Furthermore, speech accompanying a cryptocurrency transaction would be something courts call "commercial speech" -- speech that "proposes a commercial transaction or relates solely to the
speaker’s and the audience’s economic interests" [0] -- which is an established exception to the First Amendment. It's not unprotected from regulation; but it does get a reduced level of protection when there's a legitimate government interest on the other side of the balance. See this explainer from the CRS:
Is it also not "speech" if I use a mathematically defined mechanically engineered product's outputs to arrange my "speech" into ink-soaked shapes that is just a machine-generated output?
Applying your signature (albeit a very complicated one) and hashing some numbers together with it is absolutely an expressive act of a human person. You can show your approval of what others are doing, or to suggest you'd like to signify someone else can now sign for your speech instead of yourself in a way others can see you are allowing them to have unique control of a piece of your speech.
I think we've got it backwards. The freedom to provide credit or debit to others, noted in some record, is speech. It should never have been considered the purview of government to restrict free trade of speech containing negotiation of transaction or record of account. The government should also not be able to compel speech (especially without subpoena) or force private enterprise to conduct search of your effects and documents, so KYC should be out as well.
There's no contradiction between the propositions that (0) the source code of an algorithm is protected speech; and (1) there's specific ways of executing that code, effecting real-world consequences, that would be against the law.
Keep in mind that cryptocurrency algorithms don’t work only on your computer: You have to collaborate with the rest of the network to come to a consensus, and many of those counterparties reside in jurisdictions other than yours. I’m no lawyer but that feels like a pretty straightforward example of interstate commerce, which the federal government has explicit authority to regulate in the US.
Don't look that far. Think about how many politicians and well-connected people have invested in crypto, to do things they want the plebs to do... but not them (like those pesky taxes)
Proof of stake was the missing piece they needed to remove having to bother about things like having a technological innovation seize a larger piece of the pie than what they have.
It won't be in their interest to do that. However, it may be in the interest of China and Russia to reverse their stance about crypto, in case they go on with their invasions/wars and financial sanctions start hurting. See Iran for example.
What's likely to happen is fragmentation, with each large country pushing for the crypto they control.
While they may make money trading personally on crypto, they're in the best place to sell a currency just before they prohibit.
They can make money trading with or without crypto, anyway.
Regardless of the politicians' personal finances, countries are likely to squeeze on cryptocurrency so that their fiat currencies (which lost tons of value in the last 2 years, to fight the lockdowns imposed by the governments) would gain value.
Putin's move is sensible and probably likely to be followed by other countries. The ruble lost quite a bit of value.
It's likely we won't end up with gov backed cryptocurrencies but just a digital rebranding of USD.
China is doing the same thing with the digital renminbi.
> They can make money trading with or without crypto, anyway.
It's not about trading. It's about taxes and bribes. Something that's illegible is in their interest.
> Putin's move is sensible and probably likely to be followed by other countries
For immediate concerns, yes.
Long term, think different: if Russia or China want to overtake the USD, the Ruble or the Yuan have 0 fighting chance, even in their digital version. BTC has at least one.
Of course, a nice crash would reduce the costs in them acquiring sufficient reserves :)
1. Your reading of the first amendment is much more expansive than what is currently upheld in the courts.
2. You could make the same argument about minting currency in general, which has been a thing since long before computers existed. They banned wildcat bank currencies, they can ban crypto.
How is a state going to stop crypto? Prompt the Sun to spew a solar EMP and take the rest of us to cavemanland?
Also, crypto is a response to centralized statism in banking, etc. Any response from nation-states is, by default, defensive, as it must be, as states are inherently regulatory.
You have a seriously dangerous technology here too. What critical mass of 8 billion people is required to adopt a coin such that the currency of standard no longer is?
If you don't control the money, you don't control the power. If you don't control the power, then you are, at best, a figurehead, powerless, no binding authority.
I am not a crypto currency expert nor have I ever used it but I suspect they would regulate the institutions that convert that virtual currency to a countries standard currency such as exchanges. So I suppose they could not stop blockchain without some effort but they might be able to stop pulling money out of the system.
A potential real world example of why this might interest the US government would be to prevent President Vladimir Putin from siphoning his $200 billion from his Oligarch's that are holding all the money for him in US financial institutions. Sanctions could be potentially side-stepped by crypto exchanges and I am sure this has crossed their mind given the recent usage of crypto in Afganistan to get money to some folks that are starving.
States can make it difficult and criminal to buy and sell crypto for fiat currency. It would probably end up working like drug prohibition, where drugs are still traded and used, but with one key difference: fiat currency is a superior alternative to crypto for almost every transaction a person makes, whereas the alternative to illegal drugs is substantially different (sobriety or alcohol).
Crypto prohibition would have a far greater impact on its users than drug prohibition ever had, IMO.
I suspect it could be entirely constitutional to make it illegal for a business to require a person to become embroiled in crypto, while leaving complete freedom to calculate whatever you like with your hardware.
Bit coin is international trade, even trading with your next door neighbor very heavily involves international partners to complete the transaction. A very heavily regulated field.
While crypto involves very little real cryptography, but it bears the name of an information science field that is subject to arms export restrictions. Try to explain that to a middle/high manager in the business of regulation and looking for ways to pad their resume with more responsibilities. Or to someone in Congress looking to get a bill named after themselves.
Crypto also interferes with with traditional market exchanges. Those regulators are looking at extreme cases of wash trading and market manipulation. Both are very heavily regulated everywhere else.
I would imagine that if bans in democratic countries come, they'll be bans of proof of work. There's quite a bit of precedent that banning inefficient processes is okay.
The gov had no trouble banning certain cryptographic algorithms used for encryption. They did this by classifying the algos as weapons. So I'd say it can be done.
That kind of backfired, though, as it ensure that encryption received protection under the 2nd Amendment… I'm not sure they want to risk formalizing a "right to bear crypto-miners". Though really you can't stop anyone from owning or operating a crypto-miner without infringing various other rights.
All computers run mathematics all the time. They've already placed significant restrictions on what can be run and can't be run through copyright and patent protections. Additionally I believe there are still restrictions on the export of strong crypto. You would think that freedom of expression would cover that but it does not.
The funny thing is about rights guaranteed by the constitution is that the courts continually keep moving towards the idea of, "they're not absolute rights". We slowly build the chain from, "no shouting fire in a crowded theater" to not being able to express a mathematical formula without being regarded as an international arms dealer.
> The funny thing is about rights guaranteed by the constitution is that the courts continually keep moving towards the idea of, "they're not absolute rights". We slowly build the chain from, "no shouting fire in a crowded theater" to not being able to express a mathematical formula without being regarded as an international arms dealer.
>After Holmes' opinions in the Schenck trilogy, the law of the United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and march and petition against it.
> Additionally I believe there are still restrictions on the export of strong crypto. You would think that freedom of expression would cover that but it does not.
There is not. Precisely because the Supreme Court has ruled that code is constitutionally protected speech.
> Additionally I believe there are still restrictions on the export of strong crypto.
That might be true, however exporting strong crypto is easily achieved by publishing the source code in a textbook, which is exactly what the Author of PGP did back in the days. At this point the goverment probably wouldn't dare file criminal charges for exporting strong crypto, because said crypto would probably be published under the 1st amendment.
But it's a red herring, because in present day modern crypto in the sense of a munition is so far ahead of what block chain technology actually uses that it's a moot point. We are developing quantum resistant cryptography that moves away from traditional ideas. Like for example, RSA modular arithmetic that can be done concurrently by a quantum computer.
> You would think that freedom of expression would cover that but it does not.
It does, at least in terms of source code. Same issue with 3D printed firearms, the source code is free expression. However, taking the source code and printing/machining a ghost gun is an entirely different topic. Same goes for blockchain, but it's nuanced. If somebody perceive cryptocoin as a kind of financial "Securities", then the exchange of crypto could be regulated as commerce. But what if the exchange is not financial? What if a blockchain doesn't have any "platform" to regulate, such as services that trade crypto for ccurrency?
What if I use a blockchain to publish a book, for instance the source code of the blockchain itself could be in the blockchain. We start to see paradoxes and circular reasoning. Blockchain schemes have both commercial speech, and regular speech.
There are plenty of people who aren't in the US, and have their own constitutions, your title should probably address that.
Misunderstanding what freedom of expression means in the US is very common. Without weighing in on whether it would, or should, be constitutionally protected in the US, freedom of expression doesn't make sense here. That's like asking whether the FDA allows shoveling snow.
Furthermore, speech accompanying a cryptocurrency transaction would be something courts call "commercial speech" -- speech that "proposes a commercial transaction or relates solely to the speaker’s and the audience’s economic interests" [0] -- which is an established exception to the First Amendment. It's not unprotected from regulation; but it does get a reduced level of protection when there's a legitimate government interest on the other side of the balance. See this explainer from the CRS:
[0] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11072 ("First Amendment: Categories of Speech")