That's just 75% of HN or rather "privacy-focused" tech enthusiasts.

The remaining 25% hide under the disguise of generic security "concern" that usually involves tangential topic.

Case in point:

A: WebUSB has privacy risk, it can fingerprint you.

B: But it already require user consent.

C: ProcesD to pontificate about good user consent UX.

>there is even a .com button, so you don't have to type it out. 1998? Magnificent.

I concur. I always thought HN is a technically-biased community. Not on this section.

The main problem is the malware that makes you lost access to your data. (Pseudo-)anonymous payment (BTC is not fully anonymous) that facilitates the payment is just a side effect.

Backup and threat management directly address the main problem. Banning crypto just like you say, deter the payout potential, but it leaves the malware as is.

It's pretty funny when we talk ransomware payment in term of friction—as if we are talking about new payment method user which user will be inconvenienced.

Criminals doing criminal transaction don't care about 'friction', they will grind through any obstacle to move the money.

You still need to convert crypto into fiat at some point.

A criminal group can just hire poor people to make bitcoin exchange and bank accounts under their identities.

They can use other methods to sucker people into working for them.

So yeah criminals can get around most forms of kyc either through id theft or by employing „volunteers“.

Banning crypto due to ransomware it's like banning strong cryptography due to ransomware.

Yeah sure it will make the problem 'smaller', but do you see the interesting lapse of logic there?

I generally agree and don't support a ban, but cryptography is much more generally useful.

To put it another way: cryptography has many legitimate applications for normal people. Cryptocurrency does not yet (and may never, as long as civilization doesn't collapse).

Cryptocurrency, being a currency has its value tied to its utility (e.g. the usual talk about decentralized, private, and resiliency against inflation which have been beaten to death).

This is clearly an existing use for normal people. Whether it will gain wider adoption for everyday payment remains to be seen.

More importantly, it doesn't need the civilization to collapse. In fact if civilization were to collapse ain't nobody gonna validate your transaction!

Saying that coins have valued tied to their utility is like saying the same thing about Pokemon cards.

It's a speculative asset. Its value is related to its usefulness only in the minds of its users.

A currency fails if it's deflationary, expensive to transact with, extremely volatile, and unusable for most purchases.

There is currently no use-case for crypto for anyone with a functioning government, and non-functioning governments have mostly banned it.

Lol comparing cryptocurrency with pokémon card is new level of... uh creative but not very bright perspective.

OK let us pretend Pokécard has some crypographically proven properties that makes it useful as currency.

Pokecard as a coin is speculative only when compared with fiat; one coin is one coin and its value stays in term of its utilities.

Regardless, further reading is usually very useful before forming strong opinion.

(1) I would argue speculative assets is a concrete use case which is a pros, it's for capital gain. Anyway, your speculative-as'a cons argument crumbles as soon as stablecoin is mentioned. Stablecoin is pegged to stable fiat.

(2) Deflation and inflation mechanism of cryptocurrency varies differently on each coin. BTC itself inflationary by nature due to its halving mechanism. Other coins may have same or diffrent approach.

By now I hope you would see the benefit of forming informed opinion: there are a lot types of Pokécard—I mean cryptocurrencies, reading few sentence about BTC does not mean it encompasses all cryptocurrency . ;)

Finally, since you are so obsessed with cryptocurrency as a way to subvert govt: it's only one of use case.

Stellar or Cardano (I forget) aims to be backbone for scalable, and cheap payment network, Ethereum is not only a currency, it has smart contract that allows you execute your program. Those has zero thing to do with a working govt or not.

Well that is what govs are trying right? No privacy because 'terrorism'.

No. Paypal denied giving any details. It could be 100% because of Tor, could be 100% unrelated to Tor. Who knows, that's what EFF is disputing.

Can you share the secret Konami code? Preparing for possible potential incident..

I feel like rather than glibc, "selinux permission denied", would fit better these days.

..but on second thought, hat's actually selinux doing its job if the executable is a real virus.

PTC (formerly MKS) Integrity

It's a "product lifecycle management" that is basically version control plus issues list tracker. It has horrendous 80-90s-era interface and require clicking for every possible steps. Formatting always involves MS Word style rich-text button with sans-serif font.

Worst: it has to stay Online just to do version control.