Is Bitcoin strengthening the state instead of freeing the people?

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Milton Friedman was among the first to predict that one result of the internet would be the development of digital currencies, making it harder for the state to collect taxes. Cyber-anarchists ran with the idea, and for a while, with the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it looked like the libertarian dream was becoming reality. But those that are more familiar with the history and see how things tend to repeat themselves, might have seen what was coming next. New technologies are a threat to the state at first –consider the threat posed by the printing press. But following widespread adoption, political bodies start using the technologies for their own purposes.

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For all its liberatory potential, the Internet has now become an essential tool for China launching its own digital currency to rival the dollar, Middle Eastern autocrats seeking to stifle dissent, and regimes seeking to circumvent Western sanctions. El Salvador, for example, stands out among state actors adopting cryptocurrencies, and it has done so to dodge the restrictions imposed on it by the IMF and World Bank while pursuing authoritarian policies internally.

“What was once imagined as a tool poised to achieve a stateless global arena of contractual individualism is now in the hands of those who wish to free the state from the web of 20th-century liberal internationalism and its institutions."

We are seeing that blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies are once again the tools for the states to govern the people and use their digital mark, instead of having as output a worldwide space in which any people have the same chances to an open market. Maybe there will be solutions to circumvent state control, but if we are going to be real and if we don't want trouble in the country where we are living probably we'll end up offering transparency and reporting for our transactions. In the end, this is what regulation means, and is hard for me to see any way out of it.

I don't see one way to avoid the eyes of the governments, but one way to move the power from centralized institutions to decentralized ones and for me to be able to be part of that. Is it enough for my freedoms? Maybe not, but as long we are living in specific states we need to convey on the regulations from there. Alternative? Move into a more libertarian country if exists, but I think this is not an option for many of us. So I think we need to make the best of it with the tools and regulations we are under and be part of the change and participate in the decentralized revolution of a new financial system. I wonder what are your thoughts on this...?

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43 comments
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Tax has been around a long time, doubt very much countries could survive without income to build, however government are riding into deriving formula for regional blockchain technology which was not the overall idea from the start if I remember correctly.

Excited many years ago with idea in being able to use Bitcoin or the likes to circumvent excessive banking charges in our region, make payment systems more available to those who never could open a banking account. Alas not so!

Do the best you are able protecting yourself and family investing in a variety of forms offered, tax will always finding a way.

@tipu curate

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Yeah, that's right. Make most of it, be part of the change and see where that takes us. Maybe we'll reach some sort of form of freedom in the end.

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Alternative?

Maybe a better technology in the future. Better than Bitcoin (BTC). Or maybe a better wealth distribution (with or without technology). Change of world leadership. And so on. There are many possibilities and theories.

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Right, for the moment I am glad that at least we have the chance to participate in the wealth distribution, and maybe through decentralization, we help make a more fairly financial space.

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Maybe there will be solutions to circumvent state control, but if we are going to be real and if we don't want trouble in the country where we are living probably we'll end up offering transparency and reporting for our transactions.

How about anonymous ID’s like we have on here?

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Not sure if the Hive IDs are so anonymous in the end. First, the question is how you have created your account and if you have supplied any way to identify yourself like a Phone No or Email, and second if the service offering that saves the information or not. And second, with or without the anonymity from here, are you filling for taxes or not?

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Governments, institutions, and Wallstreet bankers will hijack crypto and reap the rewards.
We, early adopters, will benefit greatly because of future price appreciation. And that's all to it.

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I wonder how ‘they’ can hijack a crypto like Hive, 🤔

I like this comment though

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Easily.
One with the money can buy millions of hive on exchanges.

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(Edited)

If such were to happen, such magnitude of purchase will have a huge impact on the price of Hive and draw attention to the buyers account, and will be monitored for the 30days period where such buyers account can’t be used for governance. The buyer will be risking a “justinsun”

Or

if the buyer accumulates over time with several accounts, 🤔it’s so much stress for a task that could fail, they could be loosing money due to dip while they accumulate in stealth, also, until we as a community are faced with some type of threat before we know how we’ll deal with it. Is there really that much money on the table to try to take control of a platform? Maybe.

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Still would be tough. There is a 30 day window before any power up affects governance. Someone might be able to get 15%, maybe even 20%, but to get 50.1% to take over it completely would be tough.

Technically possible but I think overall unrealistic.

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If hive takes over Facebook, tweeter, gaming, etc., like a superior chain government can buy the whole hive supply and destroy it.
It's not gonna happen tho, but it would be easy for them.

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You've said that right and as early adopters we can benefit from the price appreciation and at the same time also hold our positions for providing some influence in the ecosystem we are part of.

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That is also the quandary. Some would want to take profits, and smartly so, yet influence mandates holding on. So it gets to be an interesting situation.

We just need to incentivize more reason to power up and hold HP.

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Yep. That is the future I see for Bitcoin. As for in general, we can keep developing different ones.

But those that are fixed, and can be targeted, will be.

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Certainly decentralization is a way to get around it.

It is the only way to move beyond the existing system.

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That's for sure, spread the governance rather than keep it to only by a few bad actors.

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The challenge with Bitcoin is that it cannot provide money equilibrium. Hence there is never going to be free market surrounding it, especially if it was the only one.

The ability for Wall Street to come in and take over is a concern.

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I think crypto is a tool and can be used by anyone. It has to some extent granted people freedom. I can say for many Nigerians it has despite policies against it in this part of the world.

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That is the problem. What happens if governments create laws that everyone ignores? They can throw everyone in jail.

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No matter,how crypto currency is, people will still survive. China will like to ban things they are not benefiting from and introduce their own for people to use.

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I don't see one way to avoid the eyes of the governments, but one way to move the power from centralized institutions to decentralized ones and for me to be able to be part of that.

I adore the nature and the ideology behind the cryptocurrencies. Even though centralization is an undeniable fact of our lives, we always have freedom-minded people who develop and enrich internet / (it will be) metaverses like Hive devs and Leo team. Though the technological facilities and mass adoption are two major factors taking firm steps, we still need some time to feel the "freedom!" that we are in search of ✌

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That mindset has a strong following within the computer/coding realm. It isnt only crypto. Many looking to decentralize as much about our internet and the things we use as possible.

Open source software is becoming enormous.

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The way it looks right now, there is no way out.

Imagine you have 100 cash cows and one day your cows 20 of them somehow disappeared. Wouldn't you do everything you can to get them back?

Perhaps the next step is to get into to different privacy coins, or maybe just comply, pay the taxes "owed" once regulations are in place. But yeah either way it's hard to see them leaving economic freedoms alone.

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Or privacy layers. I have a feeling there will come a time when we can hop around, through the trailing bots off our trail.

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Isn't there always some sort of loophole to be found or developed?

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When it comes to a bunch of anti-authority people, yes there is. And I believe some have such strong passion that they will bring it to market.

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I hope that by that time I will have set up an apiary with a couple of hundred beehives, set up an automatic honey extractor and it will not matter to me who and how is going to use bitcoins in order to wring our hands behind our backs.

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I think it will be hard but the future will probably be a mix of centralized and decentralized entities. I just hope that more people move towards decentralized blockchains but one downfall of crypto is the transparency. So the people get to choose. I am hopeful that the physical world will be a set of decentralized nation states and we can live in a place where the governments don't have much influence.

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Decentralized nation states? Interesting concept although it goes against the general reason for them.

Ultimately, I feel they will go away. We are going to realize how absurd they are as a governance system.

Give it another 20 years and lets see where things are.

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Maybe if the state eventually becomes totally decentralized, freedom will come from that? We're at a state of being in between, we see the state as evil and controlling and decentralization as democratising and liberating.

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Maybe if the state eventually becomes totally decentralized, freedom will come from that?

How would the state become decentralized? It kind of goes against the premise of why it exists.

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The traditional notion of the state has been that of centralization of power in order to legislate laws and to control the flow of resources. We are seeing more and more examples of situations where the state is pulling back from interfering with economic actions in favour of market forces. Privatisation and neoliberalism have this concept at their core. So the more the state relinquishes influence over the market and the more the market relies on decentralisation, the more decentralised the state becomes.

Countries are looking to keep tax records on blockchain which will eliminate much state interference. From there we can see census taking being performed via blockchain in some Nordic countries, elections being done through decentralised means by localised blockchain. Each of these things are things that the state traditionally regulates. The banking and investment sector is making big strides in decentralised technology. All of these things traditionally contribute to the centralisation of state power. If the sources of its power become decentralised, so will the apparatus of the state. thats what I reckon anyway.

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In all ramifications,the decentralized system has proven itself as a revolution over the centralised system, and in other words decentralized system was the future we hope to be in, in which we are now, and it will be great if it wildly adopted over the centralised system in all states.

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I’ve certainly thought of this myself. I know a guy I respect and listen to for a lot of things when it comes to getting true and honest information points to the very real threat that comes with bitcoin and the CBDC’s they are trying to push: control unlike we’ve ever seen. Thankfully chaos theory does hold true and I think we will still have ways to transact and do things outside of their purview, although it will get a bit more difficult to do so.

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As long as we have governments and corporations over-seeing our lives regardless of what we do it will only be a matter of time before they figure out how to use it to monitor us.
Both New York and Miami have their own crypto coins. Governments can only exist from the labor and money of their population.

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