Cardano and government approval

So… There has been a lot of talk about how Bitcoin and other alt currencies can be used for criminal activities which is why the government and regulators don’t like it. Is it possible for cardano to solve some of these problems to insure people are not using it for immoral activities? And what about government sanctions or terrifs? One way or another, governments are going to want to control it and I feel like banks have enough purchasing power to ruin Bitcoin. What happens once Bitcoin goes to zero?

I’m a long term investor and I am feeling kind of worried about holding for on to ada for too long just in case Bitcoin fades away…

Thanks!

@Wheisler, really great questions. Lots of fun ideas to explore here. . . .

Is it possible for cardano to solve some of these problems to insure people are not using it for immoral activities?

This is a dangerous slippery slope because “immoral activities” are very subjective and rooted in a system of beliefs that may not be accepted by everyone in a given community. It’s difficult to outlaw vaguely defined “immoral activities” without controlling every aspect of a person’s existence.

Achieving an optimal balance between economic freedom, personal liberty, and a peaceful society requires trade-offs. The essence of one of those trade-offs was succinctly captured in Benjamin Franklin’s quote: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

That same principle applies to cryptocurrencies. The only way to prevent people from doing immoral things is to unleash a morality police on society that can monitor everything we do. We already have manifestations of that today in the form of ubiquitous NSA surveillance, the political correctness police, and social justice warriors, all of which exist to control our thoughts and behavior far beyond the letter of our criminal laws. History has shown (Nazis, Mussolini’s fascists, Stalin’s NKVD/KGB, etc.) that these kinds of socially coercive tactics lead to many forms of tyranny.

How will the morality police define “morality”? How can we be sure they will be fair in their enforcement of the “morality rules”? What recourse do we have if we disagree with their definitions? How do we prevent politicians and powerful entities from using the morality police to censor us and/or block us from engaging in legitimate activities simply because they don’t like what we’re doing?

For all those reasons, the answer to your first question is: We don’t try to prevent “immoral activities” with Cardano because it is fundamentally impossible for Cardano to define and enforce morality in such a way that would be acceptable to every member of the global Cardano Community. As a result, the only thing we can do as individual citizens is to do everything reasonably possible to encourage people to live productive lives that do not infringe on the liberties and freedoms of others and let law enforcement officers enforce each nation’s laws as necessary to preserve the peace.

And what about government sanctions or terrifs?

The system of over 12,000 tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers that exists today in the U.S. is an incoherent patchwork of politically-motivated rules, taxes, and regulations that is already destructive to the global economy. For any country, Cardano can reduce the economic friction where too much friction is killing legitimate economic activity and increase economic friction where neoliberal economic policies are killing the middle class and human labor forces in many countries.

How much or how little friction is applied to a given national economy can be parameterized and adjusted according to the democratic will of each nation’s people. How that “democratic will” is determined is another use case for Cardano.

Over time, Cardano can become the governance platform upon which all national political systems are managed. With Cardano, electoral fraud, gerrymandering, and anti-democratic “winner-take-all” district elections would be abolished. When that day comes, politicians will be technically obsolete and delegative democracy will become a reality. Of course, they won’t like that; so, we can look forward to many forms of oppression and tyranny along the way.

One way or another, governments are going to want to control it and I feel like banks have enough purchasing power to ruin Bitcoin.

Yep, but fortunately, for the first time in human history, the illegitimate use of government power and corrupt laws will not be enough to stop humans from building more equitable and sustainable political and economic systems. The banks are already preparing to wage war on projects like Cardano, but the more they try to control our political and economic systems, the more people will abandon the decrepit fiat banking system and corrupt political systems that are destroying our world today. And where will they go? To Cardano Land, of course. :slight_smile:

What happens once Bitcoin goes to zero?

This is possible, but then Bitcoin will simply be replaced with another cryptocurrency that is more resilient to government attacks and less volatile. More importantly, over the long-run, there is a much higher probability of many major fiat currencies going to zero than gen3 cryptocurrencies like ADA going to zero.

Additionally, there are ways to create less volatile cryptocurrencies, which the Cardano team is already working on; and that will persuade many more people to abandon fiat over time. So, even if Bitcoin ever became worthless, there is very little chance that ADA will become worthless because it is based on a far stronger technical, economic, and philosophical foundation than Bitcoin or any fiat currency on Earth today.

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People have been using cash and coins for illegal activities for centuries, which are untraceable too. Using a digital currency for illegal activities is nothing new and nothing to worry about. The only reason governments want to track money is to control it, which by proxy controls people.

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It’s ok for bitcoin to fade away. Regulation is ok too, to some extent.

If bitcoin fades to nothing, buy ADA with a different currency.
If regulators dont like it, keep being an advocate for it’s use. pay for things with it when you can, use decentralised services. Eventually the governments will be swayed into regulation that works for everyone.

Government cant ‘make you’ do anything with your ADA… nor can they stop you paying someone that wants to accept it.

ADALOVE I would argue there are some universal moral laws that govern us and that has been accepted throughout history and throughout different cultures. You shall not kill as an example. However the problem still exists as I am sure any government would not want only to be able to intervine for just universal applied laws. In generel I believe a majority of countries have moral laws (concept from Kant) thus should be followed. There is a reason a majority of people are happy with countries laws in most countries. They are percieved as just and moral. Ofcourse any citizen should be free to object to immoral laws. Kant also suggested ways to judge if something is moral or imoral:
(from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/)
"The force of moral requirements as reasons is that we cannot ignore them no matter how circumstances might conspire against any other consideration. Basic moral requirements retain their reason-giving force under any circumstance, they have universal validity. So, whatever else may be said of basic moral requirements, their content is universal. Only a universal law could be the content of a requirement that has the reason-giving force of morality. "
(Granted this again points to universal moral, but if you look throughout philosophy there are ways to judge moral rules and it IS possible.)

For me it still revolutionary how blockchain works even if regulated and I believe it is the way forward with some regulation.

Understood, but if you kill a burglar that has entered your home and is threatening your family, have you broken a universal law (“thou shalt not kill”)? If you steal a loaf of bread because you have no job and you’re starving to death, have you broken a universal law (“thou shalt not steal”)? When Japanese companies in the 1960s and Chinese companies during the 1980s-2000s stole intellectual property from the West to accelerate their economic development, reduce their poverty, and increase the quality of their citizens’ lives, did they believe they were breaking universal laws or just trying to survive?

We can identify many situations in our world where laws/morals that we think are universal are actually highly subjective and circumstantial. This is not an argument for moral relativism; it’s just an acknowledgement that laws are created by social consensus in every society. That consensus is based on a hierarchy of priorities, principles, and values that are not always prioritized the same way across countries.

Thus, my point was that trying to use Cardano to prevent subjective and vaguely defined “immoral activities” would turn our world into Orwell’s 1984 or the world of Judge Dredd.

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If you kill a burgler in self defence you have not broken a universal law. There where circumstances that conspired that made other considerations (to paraphrase Kant)

My point here being that I believe this is almost universally adopted and there are many more like it. (Punshment for killing, no punishment for self defence in an emergency) They usually differ in small amounts from culture to culture. These are not vaguely defined immoral activites they are mostly accepted throughout the world. What I am trying to say while you argue that there are many situations in the world that are highly subjective and circumstantial my argument is there are many situations that are the opposite - universally accepted and that is even with being created by social concencus. Again there is a reason why most citizens accept its governments laws and why there is global agreements as well. If there where no universal laws this would probably have not happened.

With that said: I agree blockchain has huge potential for tracking every citizens transactions thus this has to be very carefully considered. (As in your 1984 Orwell hintings) When I say some regulation I do not mean full regulation.

A major innovation of Cardano is that it will balance the needs of users with those of regulators, and in doing so combine privacy with regulation. The vision for Cardano is that its new style of regulated computing will bring greater financial inclusion by providing open access for all to fair financial services.

What is Cardano

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On Bitcoin going to zero -
It’s possible that “big money” tries to kill BTC, in fact I think this is what we are seeing happening right now and will in the future. So far they have not been able to break the 9.5k floor (which shows the strength of BTC believers) but if 6-7k floor is broken we could see BTC go to zero and buried for years, not unlike the electric car in the 50s. In this case I don’t think switching to other coins will not be an option, the whole market could shrink to nothingness.

I’m writing “big money” and not governments because despite being super rich, many countries can’t just do w/e they want with their money. Hedge funds I find to be scarier, and of course the “shadow council” that Hollywood loves to portray (who knows right?).

Most cryptofans seem to think that existing power structures will simply relinquish it peacefully. I don’t think so.
Cryptos will have to survive an incubation where they will be accepted as a Trojan horse by existing systems. I will explain -

Standard currency exchanges (for example) who will not give their clients access to virtual markets will lose them. Big investors who will get in the cryptogame will outperform their competition. etc

We will want to encourage this adoption by “big money” despite welcoming “malevolent agents” into our ecosystem by doing so, if this trend continues for a few years “big old money” will find itself trapped in our world. Cryptos will infect all financial DNA, and then we can start really changing things. I hope :smiley:

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I wish Cardano wasn’t connected to Bitcoin. It seems so much better, like the golden grandchild of just an awful grandfather - why should the grandchild have to pay for the grandfather’s short comings?

Hi @Wheisler,

I wish Cardano wasn’t connected to Bitcoin.

Do you mean “connected” as in we currently must buy BTC/ETH/LTC first to then trade those older cryptos for ADA? If so, this is only temporary and I don’t think we have any reason to worry about ADA being dependent upon BTC forever.

In fact, ADA will be available from several more centralized exchanges throughout 2018. And eventually it will be available directly through Daedalus in the form of a decentralized crypto exchange, which will finally eliminate the risks and frustrations associated with all the centralized gatekeepers that currently stand between us and our precious ADA. :heart_eyes:

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Hi dear @rin9s,

I agree with most of this, but I think it’s useful to distinguish between “Big Money” and the “Banking Lobby.” I have to interact with large family offices, hedge funds, and high-net-worth individuals pretty frequently (“Big Money”). Almost all of the ones that I know are aware that the fiat system is collapsing and they would love to escape it if there was a viable alternative that didn’t inject too much volatility into their investment portfolios.

Most of the Big Money are still not comfortable with cryptos’ volatility; so they’re on the sidelines, but of course many Big Money speculators are invested in cryptos to boost their portfolio performance. This is generally a good thing because they bring essential liquidity to our crypto markets.

Now, the Banking Lobby is a different beast altogether. They have already played sinister games with the crypto community by misleading their customers about the nature and value of cryptos, refusing to offer their customers any kind of access to cryptos to suppress the growth of cryptos, and they’re preparing for a blockchain patent war against projects like Cardano.

So, I look forward to educating and partnering with Big Money as our community evolves and matures. In contrast, the Banking Lobby and Big Brother are the real twin villains in our epic journey toward crypto Nirvana. And they can never be trusted because the growth and success of cryptos will make them obsolete and reveal the truth about their existence: Most of them (excluding community banks and credit unions) are a black hole of value, which sucks all the value out of our global economy. Thus, they will fight us to the bitter end, but they cannot win in the long-run for many reasons.

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Basically I agree with every word.
Obviously I wasn’t clear enough about my meaning in “Big Money”. But “Banking Lobby” sounds too narrow. I guess “Big money” is any financial institution or (extremely) wealthy individuals who draw their wealth and power from the exploitation of the financial system. For me that includes hedge-funds. And insurance companies. And investment banks. And possibly Mcdonalds and Faizer and the Illuminati and who knows who else. SMBs never have this kind of money, and there are maybe 2,000 individuals on the planet with enough wealth to matter.
Maybe I should call it “Huge money” instead :smiley:

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Well, that is awesome to know! But what I meant was, bitcoin drops - EVERYTHING drops. Why does it have to be that way?

I don’t have a lot off faith that BTC is going to be around in the next 5-10 years and that has me worried about what will happen to my ada value

@Wheisler, Thank you for asking such a good and honest question. Many people don’t understand this issue. So . . . .

Correlation Risk. In investment portfolio management, there is a concept called “correlation risk.” In this context, that means the price of one asset moves in the same direction as the price of another asset. Assets can be positively or negatively correlated, which determines the direction and magnitude of their price changes. Portfolio mangers do everything possible to mitigate correlation risk.

All Assets Have Correlation Risk. Today, all global markets suffer from correlation risk because virtually all assets worldwide are pegged or intrinsically linked to fiat currencies or some other benchmark. Thus, when the price of fiat currencies or the benchmark changes, the price of everything else changes, too.

BTC’s Influence Over Crypto Markets is Waning. In this case, BTC is the benchmark cryptocurrency simply because it has the first-mover advantage, but BTC’s influence over the market is waning, and will likely become very weak over time. As the cryptocurrency markets grow, diversify, and become more mature, BTC will exert an increasingly smaller influence over all other cryptocurrencies, which means cryptos like ADA will not be as impacted by BTC’s price changes as they are today.

We Can Look Forward to Long-Run ADA Stability. As ADA becomes more widely held, it will emerge as the likely benchmark in the crypto world and in the fiat world for many reasons. In particular, its volatility should be far lower than BTC and other cryptos because the incentive structure embedded within Cardano (Ouroboros) is inherently designed to reward loyalty and long-run savings, which is not the case for BTC and most other cryptos. These same dynamics will probably even result in ADA being less volatile than most fiat currencies over the long-run. This will have a profoundly positive impact on the entire crypto market, and ultimately, the entire global economy.

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Wow, do you work for Cardano? Lol

Yes, and so do you. :slight_smile: Cardano is the Community and the Community is Cardano. Cardano will succeed to the degree that we all take ownership and contribute in whatever way we can.

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Once again @ADALove thank you for contribution to the Cardano community. I wish I had more time to contribute myself. Your thoughtful comments are appreciated. If decentralization is to flourish it will be due to the community willingness to take an active role. This is what makes me want to be more involved in the Cardano community, to increase the probability that financial decentralization becomes a reality in our world. We all have a role in its success. The technological barriers to success at a mass adoption level are huge and I think Cardano has the right approach, but without a healthy active community it will not flourish.

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ADALove have you developed a talk track that you could share that would help evangelize Cardano to high net individuals?

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