IME, these discussions always reduce down to one set of irreconcilable differences:

Does a government have the legitimate right to impose taxes on its people, and to sanction criminals (and criminal activity) via control of the Financial system?

Anti-crypto people say yes (and in fact the government has a responsibility to fight tax evasion).

Pro-crypto people seem (I’m not one of them) to say no, that people have the right to access to technology to evade these government functions.

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alphazard 2 days ago | parent [-]

I think this is a huge misconception. I certainly don't view this issue as grounded in 'rights' or what governments should or should not do.

It's entirely an issue of what people can and cannot do with this technology. It's a game with sides, and the concern should be that the technology has made playing for one side much easier than playing for the other.

The technology has unlocked total freedom of association, and I don't see a way to reign that in, other than restricting access to computation and the network for the entire population. As long as the average voter wants personal computing to continue, I don't see a way that a government could get the necessary control to shutdown one of these systems.

	▲	lokar 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The government has never been able to enforce all laws even close to 100% of the time. Internet copyright violations never went to zero, and never can. But there is a ceiling on how far any large, organized profit-seeking group can go with it. In the case crypto, there are lots of things they could do to limit the impact. They can forbid government regulated banks (or any corporation) from engaging with it. They can limit all the points where could you, in volume, convert in and out of the normal currency system. So, obviously, the use of crypto can't be forced to zero, but that's not really an interesting point. The question is, does crypto have, on balance, a legitimate use in developed liberal democracies? Or should these states suppress it?