> For this specific application, it's a game (digdig.io), so these 11% might likely be browsers that didn't fully connect to the game, or bots that don't fully support the apis I'm using.
...or people that simply refuse to correctly resolve google analytics' domains, or people who simply block google analytics' IP addresses at the firewall level...
And you know why people do that? Probably because there are developers out there that think it is a good idea to "exfiltrate the data via an http request or websocket and have your server submit the pageview hit directly to GA's servers".
> Someone asking to be paid in cash is inherently suspicious (at a minimum they're probably evading tax, if not an outright scammer).
Maybe to you, but not to me. First, not all countries have widespread low-cost electronic payment systems and not all people have access to those (or banking services, in general). Second, I rather pay with cash just for the fact that it saves me on transaction fees. Third, a vendor might not have a working terminal... does that make the vendor a tax evader or a scammer?
I think your comment may apply in some places/cultures, but it certainly doesn't apply to all places/cultures.
I, for one, certainly don't want to live in a world where cash doesn't exist and I'm forced to have every single transaction I do be recorded. Your mileage may vary, but you should accept that there isn't a consensus: different people have different opinions on this.
> Right, which eliminates the big selling point of bitcoin. Code isn't and can't be law, because law enforcement will enforce the actual law rather than the code.
I'm not sure it does. Bitcoin never claimed to want to replace law or law enforcement, or to be immune from the application of law by courts and law enforcement. The proof is in the pudding... people are using/buying it, so there must be some sort of selling point that hasn't been eliminated.
> Decent people generally prefer to live under a legal system that returns stolen property to its rightful owners rather than "possession is the whole of the law"; yes, there is a risk that the courts might wrongly decide that my property was stolen from someone else and take it from me and give it to them, but you have to weigh that against the risk of my property actually being stolen by someone else.
Sure... and I did not say otherwise. My point is that property rights apply equally to blockchain assets as to other assets, and thus can be seized by a court. Are there cases where a court is unable to seize someone's cash or blockchain assets (or any other assets that can be "hidden")? Yes. Does that make property laws not apply? Not really.
Besides, there are (very popular) crypto assets that can be (and have been) centrally and arbitrarily seized, such as USDC. If someone is concerned about the scenarios you describe, then they can use blockchain assets that (e.g.) are 100% within US jurisdiction (assuming you live in the US) and be sure that their local courts can always "do something about it" if shit hits the fan.
Just like with cash, with crypto assets "posession is [also] nine-tenths of the law": by default, we assume that whoever is in control of something is their legitimate owner (and, just like "in real life", with cash, whoever is in the posession of it can use it for transactions). If that is not the case (i.e. if your property rights have been infringed on somehow), then, as always and as with any other asset, you have to go to a court of law to get "things fixed".
TL;DR: My overall point is... when it comes to "property rights", crypto assets and cash are quite similar... they can complicate enforcement, but they don't make the rights themselves void or completely unenforceable.
> If it's true that blockchain assets can be seized by courts, it should be pretty easy to find hundreds of cases of such seizures.
Well, then... I guess you are right and property rights simply don't apply to blockchain assets. What else can I say? I even sent you a link where US courts/law enforcement explicitly compelled a US company to seize (stolen) blockchain assets... not much more I can say.
Furthermore, if you want more examples of seizures of blockchain assets (and, yes, you will find them, if you look for them), feel free to look them up yourself. I mean, how hard can it be to google "crypto seizure"?
> We have plenty of documented cases of pickpockets that have been arrested and charged with theft, something that should be very rare because according to you it's nearly impossible to prove that a pickpocket has stolen cash or other random items from a member of the public.
Unless you catch him red-handed... yes, it is difficult to prove that the pickpocket stole the money (and from you, specifically). The overwhelming majority of pickpocketing "events" are not caught red-handed and, thus, go unpunished.
Pickpocketers tend to be caught more often because they are more exposed and do it frequently (and often in the same places), over and over again. But because pickpocketers are caught more often than hackers, does it mean that property laws apply to pickpocketers and not hackers? No, it just means that (maybe) those laws are more difficult to enforce: not that they don't exist or apply.
> And yet how many documented cases do we have of courts having seized blockchain assets? Very, very few.
[citation needed]
Seriously... did you even try to google for "crypto seizure" before saying this?
> The only one that you mention is not even a seizure, is it?
Yes, it is (effectively). The entity that issues the (100% USD backed) USDC token basically destroyed/blocked forever the 100 000 USD that were in the hackers token and then minted brand new 100 000 USDC tokens to replace them (but, obviously, didn't send those to the hacker). Effectively, they seized the tokens: they moved 100 000 USDC from the hackers wallet to their own (in practice).
Furthermore, this was something done in collaboration with US courts/law enforcement, so... clearly, US courts/law enforcement disagree with your assessment that property rights don't apply to blockchain assets. Make of that what you will.
> Not to mention USDC is not a normal blockchain asset, being centrally issued, and therefore controlled by a single entity.
Ah, yes... the "no true scotsman" fallacy. I like that one. What makes USDC not a normal blockchain asset? It is an asset, that exists on a blockchain (or, several, actually), that can be easily (and in a decentralized/permissionless) way be used just like any other asset on (e.g.) Ethereum (you can lend, borrow, buy, sell, exchange it, without anyone's prior permission). The only particularity about it is that it is centrally managed/controlled (and that entity that manages it can, if compeled by a court, seize it arbitrarily, as it has happened before): but that doesn't make it "not a normal blockchain asset"... not all blockchains (or blockchain assets) are decentralized.
USDC is currently the 8th biggest blockchain asset (by both market cap and daily trade volume), but I guess (according to you and for some unspecified reason), it's not a "normal" blockchain asset. Sure... let's ignore the fact that, if you look at the top 20 blockchain assets by market cap, at least 4 of them are completely under the control of a single entity.
"Blockchain" doesn't imply "decentralized blockchain" and "crypto assets" doesn't imply "decentralized unseizable crypto assets". But, even if it did... does that make property rights simply not apply, just because it may cause a bit of inconvenience when it comes to enforcement? No. And US courts/law enforcement, at least, seem to agree with my assessment.
My point is that property laws apply equally to cash and to (so called) blockchain assets (and to many other types of assets): if you are within the court's jurisdiction, it can always compel you to give them whatever asset you supposedly stole from someone. If the thief somehow makes that impossible (e.g. hid the money, or hid the key that controls your blockchain assets), then the judge will make the thief's ass rot in jail.
If you are not within the court's jurisdiction, then it is powerless, yes. But that applies equally to cash, blockchain assets or any asset, really.
> The issue isn't that blockchains lack an automated enforcement of property rights, but that property rights are not enforceable at all (either by an automated system or by courts of justice). Why? Because in order to enforce property rights it is necessary that some authority have the power to seize assets from one person and hand them to another person. Blockchains are designed specifically to prevent that.
Blockchains are not designed specifically for that, it's just part of the feature set (if they are decentralized): things cannot be arbitrarily seized. It's a feature, not a bug. The court can seize the assets, but they have to get to the person that has the assets in their posession (through a key), just like for any other asset (i.e. they have to find the asset/key first, or the person that knows where the asset is).
Also, note that blockchains can't prevent a court from jailing you until you "cough up" the assets you stole, if you are within the court's jurisdiction, just like it works for any other asset.
> Cash doesn't have this problem, because it's a physical object and physical objects can be seized.
Yes, and physical objects can also be hidden. How do you seize the thief's loot, then, if it's hidden? Well.. you put him in jail until he coughs up where he hid the loot. Same with crypto assets: "until you cough up the key, you'll be in jail, and your own assets will be liquidated to cover your theft". Simple. How does a blockchain prevent that?
> You seem to be making the point that because sometimes cash is stolen and courts aren't unable to recover it this means that somehow property rights don't apply to cash?
You seem to be making the point that, because sometimes it might be difficult for a court to recover "crypto assets" from a thief, somehow property rights stop existing and don't apply to such assets, and courts become powerless (because "blockchain magic sprinkles"?). Many "crypto people" would like that to be true, but it really isn't.
Blockchains may complicate the work of courts and law enforcement (the same way that the use of cash in drug transactions complicates the work of courts and law enforcement), but that's not the same as saying that "property rights/laws" don't apply to "blockchain assets" (or cash).
EDIT: And, furthermore, because the fact that "blockchain transactions" are permanently recorded and readily available, unlike "cash transactions", it might even be easier to prove the theft in court. How would you prove to a court that the money that is in someone's posession has been pickpocketed from you? Seems more complicated to me, when there probably isn't going to be any register of it (assuming there's no CCTV around).
EDIT2: Also, note that some blockchain assets can be (and have been) centrally and arbitrarily seized by (e.g.) US courts, if they want, as long as the entity that controls the token is within US jurisdiction. Here's an example of Coinbase/Centre, which is within US jurisdiction, blacklisting (i.e. seizing, effectively) 100 000 USDC (i.e. ~100 000 USD) from a thief/hacker, due to a court order or some collaboration with law enforcement: https://cryptobriefing.com/100000-usdc-blacklisted-highlight...
Right. So expecting a social informal construct to be enforced in an automated way is, to put it mildly, difficult.
> Sure, it may be difficult, in some situations, to prove ownership of the stolen cash or to recover it.
How do you exactly prove ownership of money? It seems a bit more than "difficult" to me.
> maybe this explains why many people seem to prefer electronic payments over cash
And just as many people prefer cash over electronic payments. It still doesn't mean that cash is, in any way, fatally flawed.
> It might indicate that indeed cash is perceived as being less safe.
Well... different people have different opinions and perceptions. Just because most people use electronic payments (let's assume) doesn't mean that cash is useless or fatally flawed as a medium of exchange. And just because most people use cash rather than blockchain thingies also doesn't mean that these are necessarily fatally flawed.
> Now, back to blockchains. Blockchains are very inefficient and expensive to run. This is so, because they have to do a whole lot of extra work in order to avoid relying on a central authority that ultimately has the final say on who owns what.
Sure.
> If blockchain users have to go to court to have property rights enforced,
Of course they have to go to court to see their property rights enforced. Rights/laws are always enforced by humans, not by automated systems.
> that means that the courts do have the final say on who owns what, and so the entire purpose of the blockchain, which was to avoid a central authority, is defeated.
Not really, since courts do not have global jurisdiction. If I steal your crypto-assets and we're both in the same country (and you have some proof of ownership and whatnot), then you can go to a court and get your assets back. If we're not in the same country, you probably won't be able to.
The same way that, if someone steals my money (or any other asset) and flees to another jurisdiction, I probably won't be able to do much.
If entities A and B are in the same jurisdiction, then courts can compel A to give something (that was stolen) back to B; if they are not, probably not.
Either way, even a court can't force a (distributed, non-centralized) blockchain to assign ownership of something to a entity B: it has to first find entity A and compel/force them to deliver the keys that control the assets, through the use of force.
> So the courts would be powerless to enforce anything on a blockchain, even if they wanted.
Even if that was the case (and, as I pointed out, it's not clear that it is the case... a court can always compel a person to give out their keys under the threat of force, as long as that person is within their jurisdiction, regardless of blockchain magic sprinkles), that would make blockchain assets more valuable (since that means they can't be easily seized from you against your will), and not less.
> In short, blockchains are designed in a manner that makes them antithetical to property rights.
[citation needed]
As far as I can tell, nothing in blockchains prevents courts from exerting their power within their jurisdiction. In fact, in some sense, it might make it even easier to do so: remember that transactions are irreversibly recorded (i.e. if the courts needs evidence against you, you would be better off having used cash than any blockchain asset).
> I think most people want property rights and therefore will steer clear of blockchains.
Blockchains don't remove or restrict your property rights; they just don't enforce or explicitly encode it, just like any other formal system or physical asset: you always have to rely on an external non-automated system of courts and law enforcement to ensure that your property rights. Blockchains don't change that, and are not supposed to change that, or to replace courts and law enforcement. So-called "smart contracts" are not actual legal contracts and shouldn't be seen as such. Etc.
TL;DR: It seems to me like you are postulating that blockchains need a feature that no other asset or medium of exchange has (i.e. automated enforcement of property laws, without having a court and a judge involved), otherwise it's not useful. If you apply that same threshold of usefulness to other classes of assets, then most (if not all) assets are useless (since they don't encode and can't enforce your property rights over it).
> The blockchain, on the other hand, was invented to keep track of who owns that. That's its only purpose.
Well.. its purpose is to enable transactions between people, and not keep track of legal ownership of things. In fact, these networks usually don't make any claim about who legally owns anything: only about who controls something (i.e. who owns it within the system, not who owns it in the legal sense).
Does physical cash keep track of who actually owns it (and not just "who posesses it")? No. Does that make it useless or fatally flawed for the purpose of "value exchange"? Not really.
If you receive a 10 USD bill from someone as payment, you have to assume that they own that bill (and didn't just steal from anyone else). The bill itself doesn't enforce property law.
Furthermore, if you have lax security and a pickpocket takes your wallet (with 500 USD inside), you also have little recourse or method to enforce your ownership of the stolen cash. In fact, you probably even have less recourse than with things on blockchains: there's no way of tracking where cash goes, after someone steals it from you.
Is the fact that "cash" doesn't encode/enforce your property rights over it a problem that prevents "cash" from being effectively used a medium of value exchange between people? As far as I can tell, no.
Just like with "blockchains", if someone steals your cash, or anything else, you need to go to a court to get things fixed.
I understand your argument and accept that such properties of the system could be seen as "design flaws" (though... how could you even fix such design flaws? "law" is not a formal system). On the other hand, if such properties were "fatal design flaws" (for the purpose of a system of value exchange between economical agents), then plain vanilla cash is just as flawed, if not more (since it does not encode or enforce your property rights, and it's even less traceable than blockchain "assets").
Have you ever heard that "posession is nine-tenths of the law"? Well... this is a system in which "posession is ten-tenths of the law".
This has obvious disadvantages (as you pointed out), but it also has a clear advantage: it becomes trivial to figure out who effectively owns something within the system (whoever controls/posesses the associated key).
Just because a system doesn't encode/enforce "property laws", doesn't necessarily mean that it is useless. In fact, few systems (if any) formally encode property laws: that is always something imposed from the outside.
If someone steals your crypto keys, you can still use the (normal) court system to get your assets back (assuming you have some way of proving that you own the assets, and you know who stole them from you).
Does the Internet encode/enforce property laws? No. If someone (e.g.) copies your stuff, you're still forced to go to the court system (just like when someone "steals" crypto from you). Does that make the Internet "not suitable for almost anything", just because it doesn't automatically enforce property laws?
> Oh come on, look at your comment above mine in this thread.
Was that comment addressed at you? Please point out an actual example of me engaging in bad-faith argumentation with you. This is what you said, right? That I was engaging in bad-faith argumentation with you (not a third-party: you).
> You're splitting hairs and trying to find minute flaws in the arguments against you instead of actually arguing the points.
Uh... finding flaws in other people's arguments is how rational people argue. If you have a flaw in your argument, it's not a good argument.
Again, please point out a situation in which I'm needlessly splitting hairs with you and avoiding a question you asked.
> I never said all stablecoins, but some certainly look like they are.
Ah! So now that you figured out how bad your argument is, you decide to move the goalposts. You say "stablecoins are essentially fraud", and I'm supposed to interpret that as "some stablecoins are essentially fraud", rather than "all stablecoins are essentially fraud"? Sigh.
If you're not arguing in bad faith, it sure seems like you're going out of your way to make it seem like you are.
I keep forgetting how I'm not supposed to feed the trolls... ah, well...
Ah, yes. Like the argument that "Tether is being investigated for fraud" thus "every stablecoin is essentially fraud". Seems like a water-tight argument you have there.
> However you are posting from a brand new account,
So, instead of addressing my actual arguments, you're concerned about going through my account history? Great. Note that my account is not "brand new", though: I created the account days ago, to participate in discussions that have nothing to do with "blockchain". You can check it out in my history, if you haven't already.
> continuously splitting hairs rather than confronting the argument head-on
Point one one single argument that you have made to me, that I did not respond to head-on. Just one. I'll wait.
In the meantime, while you look for it, and as a proof that you are indeed argumenting in good faith, feel free to respond head-on to the question I already made 5 times: What if I choose to get my returns in some asset that is pegged to USD (e.g. DAI, USDC), am I still speculating on the value of BTC?
Until you do, I'll keep assuming you are discussing in bad faith and refuse to reply to anything else you write.
> and generally engaging in bad-faith argumentation tactics.
There is exactly one such comment from my side (or one that could be seen as bad-faith, if you consider "pedantry" to be a sign of bad-faith), and it was not directed at you, so I'm not seeing where your complaint comes from. I re-iterate: point out a single example of me engaing in bad-faith argumentation with you. A single actual example. And then, maybe, we can continue the conversation. Until then, and as I already said, hope you have a nice day.
I'm arguing in bad faith, according to you, even though I individually and respectfully tried to address every point you asked/made.
Yet, you are the one doing unbased accusations of fraud ("stablecoins are essentially fraud"), and still haven't replied to the question I made 4 or 5 times already: What if I choose to get my returns in some asset that is pegged to USD (e.g. DAI, USDC), am I still speculating on the value of BTC?
I guess my question is inconvenient.
I'm done here, but I do hope you have a nice day. And, don't worry, I won't bite your bait ever again.
> As far as I know there are legal proceedings ongoing agains Tether - I don't think this is a conspiracy theory.
Even so, how do you go from "there are legal proceedings against Tether" to "there seems to be very credible evidence that Tether and other stablecoins are essentially fraud"?
Being hyperbolic does not help your argument here... it just makes it seem like you don't know what you are talking about (i.e. you don't know the difference between USDT, USDC and DAI, for example).
> I know this is a common argumentative tactic to attempt to get people to change their mind.
You seem to be under the impression that people are trying to change your mind, rather than simply pointing out the flaws, leaps-of-faith and speculation in your argumentation.
Trust me... you also did not convince anyone that the value of BTC is literally zero (except the ones that were already convinced).
> For 1 USD = 0 EUR to become a reality, we would have to imagine a massive geopolitical shift has taken place.
Which is a possibility (the same way that 1 BTC = 0 USD is also a possibility; just a very unlikely possibility).
> For 1 BTC = 0 USD, all you need is one government, which has been the victim or ransomware attacks, to regulate BTC out of existence.
Unfortunately, reality proves you wrong. Here [0] is an example of one government regulating BTC out of existence (or trying to)... but I'm sure you can find others.
What's the price of BTC today? (hint: not zero)
I think there's not much point in continuing this discussion, since you seem pretty convinced that the ultimate value of BTC is zero (even though you admit that there probably are legitimate use-cases for such things). If you already pre-decided that it is the case (and you are totally within your right to speculate on the value of BTC), nothing I can say will change it.
Also, thanks for ignoring the rest of my point: What if I choose to get my returns in some asset that is pegged to USD (e.g. DAI, USDC), am I still speculating on the value of BTC?
Who is speculating about the value of things here? Wasn't speculation supposed to be bad?
None of the things you mentioned support the hypothesis that the value of BTC is literally zero (not 0.00000000000001 USD, but literally zero).
> 1) There seems to be very credible evidence that Tether and other stablecoins are essentially fraud, and Tether makes up a massive portion of the BTC market cap
I have a hard time even parsing this ("Tether makes up a massive portion of the BTC market cap"), and it sounds more like an appeal to emotion than an actual argument. Please explain in which ways are DAI and USDC "essentially fraud". Perhaps you should contact US authorities, and complain about the fraudulent Coinbase, if you really believe that to be the case (and if you're not just engaging in unfounded speculation).
Ok. So... if even traditional finance is slowly adopting these things, it kind of becomes hard to hold on to the idea that there aren't actually any use-cases outside of crime and speculation.
EDIT: Just to address your edit...
> On EURUSD, you could look at currency funds (not strictly the same, but as close as it gets)
And will they be willing to talk to a person that only wants to put 100 EUR + 100 USD into it? I seriously doubt it.
A big assumption here. I can also hypothesize that 1 USD = 0 EUR, at some point in the future, and, thus, holding or buying USD is pure speculation and there is no compelling reason to try to acquire more USD.
Under this logic, I shouldn't ever buy or hold anything (forex, stocks, etc.), lest its market value goes to zero.
Also, thanks for ignoring the rest of my point: What if I choose to get my returns in some asset that is pegged to USD (e.g. DAI, USDC), am I still speculating on the value of BTC?
> 1) Granted, but also EURUSD pricing does not work like any AMM [...]
Exactly. So, if I want to put liquidity in EURUSD market, I have no choice but to actively manage it, since traditional financial institutions won't do it for me. That was my point... to bring up examples of use-cases that are not covered by traditional financial institutions.
> 2) Lending can be regulated, so might or might not be ok for you to lend - not a lawyer. What about KYC/AML etc.?
Sure, lending is regulated. But then the problem mostly lies with AAVE (for example), not me (they are the one lending my assets, after all, and the ones possibly subjected to KYC laws), I would assume.
My point is... even if you are willing to go through KYC, and have nothing to hide (e.g. you got your crypto-assets, or whatever you want to call them, legitimately, and file your taxes correctly), there simply is no traditional financial institution that has a "BTC savings account", for example.
> 3) Aren't there specialized prime brokers that do that? (maybe Genesis?)
Probably. But then the argument that "there is no actual use-case for blockchain outside of crime and speculation" kinda breaks down. If you consider Genesis to be part of "traditional finance", then it's clear that "traditional finance" sees value in these things (it's not just vapor). If you consider Genesis to not be part of "traditional finance", then you're just confirming what I implied: there isn't anyone in "traditional finance" providing such services.
Are people that have Bitcoin not allowed to do useful things with what they have? Does it bother you that there are actual legitimate use-cases for these things (as you seemingly admit, by not including my first example in your comment)?
Someone asked for an example, and I provided a few... perhaps you don't see value in the examples I gave, but there are people out there who do.
...or people that simply refuse to correctly resolve google analytics' domains, or people who simply block google analytics' IP addresses at the firewall level...
And you know why people do that? Probably because there are developers out there that think it is a good idea to "exfiltrate the data via an http request or websocket and have your server submit the pageview hit directly to GA's servers".