I agree that you have an excellent point in relation to the thread ancestor, but to refocus the debate on the actual matter at hand:
A key difference being that opioids have a very real potential to cause massive, undeniable and observable harm to casual users (like all mind altering drugs including alcohol).
Crypto means that people can trade without having the regulators whitelist all the transactions. Historically speaking, that would appear to be an extremely positive thing for the traders. There are worrying signs about that we are about to repeat the 1920s, 1930s then the 1940s - this is a great time to start working with government-independent money. The Canadian trucker incident alone is a nasty foreshadowing of what we are likely to see more of as energy availability tightens. The government is not governed by compromising liberty-minded types.
The illegal uses of crypto aren't going away, so we may as well make it easy for all the honest people to use it.
And there are people who think that consuming energy is in itself a bad thing. I wonder how they feel about people voluntarily taking holidays, which are a much bigger waste of energy. At some point we have to let people make their own choices about what they value without trying to second guess them based on personal opinions.
> There are worrying signs about that we are about to repeat the 1920s, 1930s then the 1940s
The rest of this comment was not where I thought you'd go with this. You realize the creation of the SEC was a direct result of the stock market crash in 1929 ,due mainly to people's life savings being invested by commercial banks without regards for the underlying economics of the investments, exactly what the SEC is trying to prevent happening with crypto (by regulating it under the same doctrine)
I mean, so? Crypto isn't an investment. I haven't heard a plausible theory why its value would increase over time. It'll be lucky if the equilibrium position is value holding steady.
Crypto is an asset with no yield and a maintenance cost in keeping the network running. That doesn't sound like a very promising investment. If any asset counts an an investment then sure, it is that. But it isn't going to be a money maker.
Over time it is probably going to behave more like savings. The price looks like it might be stabilising with respect to gold which is an interesting thing [0].
Sorry, so the key difference is that opioids have the potential to be useful or harmful, and so should be regulated, while crypto has the potential to be useful or harmful, and so should not be regulated?
A key difference being that opioids have a very real potential to cause massive, undeniable and observable harm to casual users (like all mind altering drugs including alcohol).
Crypto means that people can trade without having the regulators whitelist all the transactions. Historically speaking, that would appear to be an extremely positive thing for the traders. There are worrying signs about that we are about to repeat the 1920s, 1930s then the 1940s - this is a great time to start working with government-independent money. The Canadian trucker incident alone is a nasty foreshadowing of what we are likely to see more of as energy availability tightens. The government is not governed by compromising liberty-minded types.
The illegal uses of crypto aren't going away, so we may as well make it easy for all the honest people to use it.
And there are people who think that consuming energy is in itself a bad thing. I wonder how they feel about people voluntarily taking holidays, which are a much bigger waste of energy. At some point we have to let people make their own choices about what they value without trying to second guess them based on personal opinions.