Crypto assets in Asia, and some random thoughts on "Eurodollars" vs stablecoins

johnarb said:
I'm having a difficult time to have a discussion with you on this because we do not have a proper baseline and when you bring up similarities to Ledger, I just don't know what to say

You are using hypotheticals to fud the whole crypto assets ecosystem, except Bitcoin,

You've chosen erc-20 Usdt as a basis of what's at risk of being blacklisted and censored by the validators, but just so you know, you've basically fudded the whole Ethereum project

Did you think that blacklisting an Ethereum address is only specific to a single erc-20 token on that address?

To be clear, that applies to all crypto assets on that Ethereum address including nft's and Eth stored on that address

What you're really arguing is that no one should be using Ethereum... and perhaps any blockchain project that has Usdt tokens

--------

To get back to the topic of the thread, which is blockchain crypto assets in Asia... It's working as designed. Crypto users are transferring, trading, using smart contracts

An example is the p2p on binance. Usdt market makers are a buyer and a seller 100 basis points spread

To me, that's a pretty fucked up "business", sure I can do that, too, very easy job, receiving funds (fiat) or transferring funds (fiat) and maybe these guys churn $10K worth each day (I doubt it) but that's $100/day, nah, I'd rather do something else, like read and shitpost on ET

Anyway, since we're back on the thread topic, let's explore on crypto assets operations on the blockchain a bit more

Before stablecoins and even before Ethereum, the native currency and unit of account for the whole cryptos was bitcoin/btc

People experimented with altcoins (Bitcoin OG's did not refer to them as shitcoins until later) and traded to gain more bitcoins in their stack

Fast forward to today, let's be honest, most of the cryptos community unit of account is stablecoins (Usdt). Fiat mindset, but also people from poor country cannot handle the volatility swings of btc, eth, and others

There's also a lot in the community that has chosen Eth as their unit of account

Speaking for myself, my unit of account on store of value (savings) is bitcoin and my unit of account for expenses (checking account) is Usdt and fiat. I need to have enough fiat/Usdt otherwise, I'm being irresponsible for my family

If you're not using crypto assets on the blockchain there is no framework for discussion on the topic of this thread
More...
You of course have way more experience with all of this than I do. Its too bad you don't like my analogies, but I do believe they are solid, at least I think, as a way to illustrate the difference between was is censorship resistant and what may not be.

What I find unfortunate if that you don't acknowledge that if a validator has the ability to reject a transaction, then the claim that its a bearer asset is in jeopardy. I'm not saying its likely, and I'm not saying its happening at even a small scale, but I'm just saying that the ability is there. Would you agree with this?

This is the scenario. You extort money from somebody and collect a $1 million ransom and ask to be paid in USDT. You receive your funds and decide to lay low for a while. A year later you decide to cash out and transfer this money to some exchange in order to get cash. But what you discover is that this exchange blocks the transaction. Maybe its not even the exchange that blocks it, but the validator doesn't process it, so the exchange can't even say they got it. Is this possible?

Contrast this with gold. If you steal a bar of gold, you can likely find someone to buy it, since there is no way to trace it if you file off the serial number. Maybe you melt it down yourself and sell it to a junk gold dealer. It will be impossible to prevent this transaction, right?

And finally with Bitcoin, if you extort someone and get them to send bitcoin to your address and lay low, you can still transfer this amount yourself. If you're smart, you will use your own node and maybe some coin-join service to break it up and mix it. You can likely break the chain analysis people and come out with clean bitcoin on the other side.

All I'm arguing for is the possibility that with ETH going POF and requiring validators that can be ordered to block transactions, USDT has an attack vector. Maybe there are other chains you can transfer on. But since USDT has an issuer, this is a whole other can of worms.

I'm not saying people should be worried, I'm just saying they need to be aware of the limitations, and if you are calling USDT a bearer asset, this isn't the same type as calling bitcoin a bearer asset or gold a bearer asset.
 
NoahA said:
What I find unfortunate if that you don't acknowledge that if a validator has the ability to reject a transaction, then the claim that its a bearer asset is in jeopardy. I'm not saying its likely, and I'm not saying its happening at even a small scale, but I'm just saying that the ability is there. Would you agree with this?

This is the scenario. You extort money from somebody and collect a $1 million ransom and ask to be paid in USDT. You receive your funds and decide to lay low for a while. A year later you decide to cash out and transfer this money to some exchange in order to get cash. But what you discover is that this exchange blocks the transaction. Maybe its not even the exchange that blocks it, but the validator doesn't process it, so the exchange can't even say they got it. Is this possible?
More...

Yes I agree validators can censor addresses, due to the PoS design of Ethereum, it adds a bit more pressure for compliance especially the biggest validator nodes/pools are run by big US companies such as Coinbase

But did you understand that this is not a Usdt-specific issue? Even now you pointed at usdt as ransom, why not Eth as ransom, or Usdc or Gusd?

$1M is not enough to get blacklisted, hackers have been doing 10's of millions even hundreds of millions and still able to bypass blockchain restrictions

I know you don't use crypto assets on the blockchain ,but an extortion like that would be quickly bridged to another blockchain, and swapped and transferred to other addresses using dexes and then use other means to break the tie from original address, there's still mixing services out there, I think Tornado cash or a fork is running

$1M is an extremely low bar for fud
 
NoahA said:
I'm not saying people should be worried, I'm just saying they need to be aware of the limitations, and if you are calling USDT a bearer asset, this isn't the same type as calling bitcoin a bearer asset or gold a bearer asset.
More...

As a Bitcoiner, bitcoin is the best bearer asset

But gold??? How are you going to send $1M worth of gold from Canada to South Korea in less than 1 minute?

How are you going to travel from Canada to Asia with $1M worth of gold? Gold is boomer rock asset and this is the crypto assets forum

Can you please forget about your fixation with USDT and really. really think what you're basically arguing against

You are arguing against Ethereum, full stop. You also want to argue against any other blockchain that Usdt runs on and you are arguing against the issuer Tether co

So let's get this to the very point, you are arguing against any crypto assets and their respective blockchains because they are not Bitcoin, do you agree?

But you're disguising it under the Usdt erc-20 umbrella, because of the ET forum hatred for Usdt,

Listen to me: Usdt and Usdc and Uni and every crypto asset fall under the same blockchain operations
 
johnarb said:
But did you understand that this is not a Usdt-specific issue? Even now you pointed at usdt as ransom, why not Eth as ransom, or Usdc or Gusd?
More...
Totally agree here, and I'm glad we can agree on this issue. It can affect many tokens, and I'm sure it will.

johnarb said:
$1M is not enough to get blacklisted, hackers have been doing 10's of millions even hundreds of millions and still able to bypass blockchain restrictions
More...
How do we know that in the future, governments won't attack smaller transactions or even block certain merchants all together? It's all possible once the validating moved to PoS.

johnarb said:
But gold??? How are you going to send $1M worth of gold from Canada to South Korea in less than 1 minute?
More...
Of course the benefits as a whole far outweigh the cons when discussing the pros of blockchains. But all I was illustrating is that simply based on one metric, the degree to which a bearer asset is a bearer asset, gold wins over USDT. For the authorities to stop you from using your gold, they would have to literally catch you with it and take it away from you. But with USDT, if they knew the address for your stash, they could get validators to block it. As unlikely as this scenario is, the possibility is there, and that's what sucks about the move to PoS and why this will always be an issue going forward.

johnarb said:
So let's get this to the very point, you are arguing against any crypto assets and their respective blockchains because they are not Bitcoin, do you agree?

But you're disguising it under the Usdt erc-20 umbrella, because of the ET forum hatred for Usdt,

Listen to me: Usdt and Usdc and Uni and every crypto asset fall under the same blockchain operations
More...
Now that you point this all out, then yes, you are absolutely correct. Anything that requires validators to process transactions, and especially if the majority of those validators are on US soil, or whatever country requests the ban, then the door is wide open for government interference. Perhaps you can just wait for another offshore validator to pick the transaction up, but I can imagine that when courts rule on all this stuff over the next few years, there will be rules put in place that give the possibility of blocked transactions, much like going to court to get a wire tap or permission to enter a residence for a search.

Look, if the Ethereum blockchain having moved to PoS has in-built technology to allow for the censorship of transactions, you can damn well bet the government will want access to this technology.

I do think Ethereum does well in the future, but only after being subject to heavy regulation.
 
NoahA said:
Totally agree here, and I'm glad we can agree on this issue. It can affect many tokens, and I'm sure it will.


How do we know that in the future, governments won't attack smaller transactions or even block certain merchants all together? It's all possible once the validating moved to PoS.


Of course the benefits as a whole far outweigh the cons when discussing the pros of blockchains. But all I was illustrating is that simply based on one metric, the degree to which a bearer asset is a bearer asset, gold wins over USDT. For the authorities to stop you from using your gold, they would have to literally catch you with it and take it away from you. But with USDT, if they knew the address for your stash, they could get validators to block it. As unlikely as this scenario is, the possibility is there, and that's what sucks about the move to PoS and why this will always be an issue going forward.


Now that you point this all out, then yes, you are absolutely correct. Anything that requires validators to process transactions, and especially if the majority of those validators are on US soil, or whatever country requests the ban, then the door is wide open for government interference. Perhaps you can just wait for another offshore validator to pick the transaction up, but I can imagine that when courts rule on all this stuff over the next few years, there will be rules put in place that give the possibility of blocked transactions, much like going to court to get a wire tap or permission to enter a residence for a search.

Look, if the Ethereum blockchain having moved to PoS has in-built technology to allow for the censorship of transactions, you can damn well bet the government will want access to this technology.

I do think Ethereum does well in the future, but only after being subject to heavy regulation.
More...

We're going to offend a lot of Ethereum fans here but I agree with you on all the risks that you mentioned and validator censorship and blacklisting of addresses affect all crypto assets which includes the base token Eth on the Ethereum blockchain

The conspiracy theory is that the Ethereum project is a (US) govt-captured blockchain which is why it's gotten favorable treatment by the SEC and not declared a security even as it obviously is

[For their part, Vitalik and friends, aka the Ethereum Foundation have had meetings on how to solve the growing concerns of validator censorships through code enforcement, slashing validator funds at stake as punishment]

Binance Smart Chain might be controlled by China even though CZ is Canadian. Other blockchains do not have enough adoption

Tron is also suspected of being a Chinese blockchain

From what I can see where I'm at in Asia as far as cryptos users is that the cryptos market has become the choice for speculative investment and trading market kinda like how the stock market is being used in the US
 
Last edited:
johnarb said:
We're going to offend a lot of Ethereum fans here but I agree with you on all the risks that you mentioned and validator censorship and blacklisting of addresses affect all crypto assets which includes the base token Eth on the Ethereum blockchain
More...
Phew.... We have reached consensus! LOL

I would hate to be on the opposite side of you on a critical issue. I'm actually not in the camp that there can be nothing but bitcoin. The technical innovation of other chains is just too revolutionary to pass up. Things like smart contracts can easily replace many useless jobs that only act as parasites, like jobs in the government. They will even I'm sure lessen corruption to an extent. So this is the future. But none of these chains will have all the necessary elements of hard money and store of value like bitcoin will. Both chains will exist but just do different things, or at least that is my thesis.
 
NoahA said:
Phew.... We have reached consensus! LOL
More...

True, we have! LOL

Ok, but have to revisit and emphasize that validator censorship and blacklisting of addresses are not going to be a major issue for vast majority of the crypto users especially the ones not living in western nations like USA, Canada, Australia, etc

For it to be a concern, you would have to be anti covid vax, or a trucker protestor, or active in politics bullshit

If you are a crypto user living in Asia or other parts of the world, you'd have to be a major scammer or a hacker or criminal, all of which can get you in very big troubles with the local laws and everything has strict AML-KYC so you'd get caught easily

The point is that for all the concerns of possible censorships and blacklisting, it should not be a problem for most and that crypto assets are great bearer assets even the ones on the Ethereum network

For comparison, there is worse censorship in TradFi stuff like bank accounts and Eurodollars
 
johnarb said:
Ok, but have to revisit and emphasize that validator censorship and blacklisting of addresses are not going to be a major issue for vast majority of the crypto users especially the ones not living in western nations like USA, Canada, Australia, etc

For it to be a concern, you would have to be anti covid vax, or a trucker protestor, or active in politics bullshit
More...
Totally agree, and it is crazy that we are at a point where banks actually use political reasons against you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top