joker
Sr. Member
It's certainly not the first time this discussion has come up, but the recent OnlyFans ban on explicit content has once again raised the issue of whether cryptocurrency can solve modern problems of censorship.
The notion in this case is, payment processors are putting pressure on adult content...and since Mastercard, Visa, Discover, et al., are basically an oligopoly, and they literally control the flow of the money, it's a pretty significant chokepoint if a company gets on their bad side.
In December, Pornhub (and other MindGeek sites) were forced to exclusively accept cryptocurrency (and ACH transfer) as forms of payment due to being cut off by those major processors. It's been suggested that at least Mastercard similarly strong-armed OnlyFans, causing them to ban sexually explicit content.
In that thread, it was suggested that crypto isn't the answer, because government will regulate it into obscurity...
Of course that's the general mode of things. Statists are gonna statist. But what I think the whole "gubbmint gonna regulate crypto down to zero" argument fails to realize is blockchain technology opens too many doors for too many people, meaning there's way too much money to be made and way too much public interest in the capabilities that come with it for it to be stifled in the way doomsayers allege.
You have to remember, at the end of the day, the US (and most Western) governments are largely beholden to corporate interests, and if enough powerful capitalists want something, Washington is largely going to appease. And there's already too much big money with their hands in all sorts of blockchain tech.
So they may largely focus on cryptocurrencies specifically, and more specifically, their usage as "money" (i.e. store of value & medium of exchange). Governments and central banks around the world are scurrying to create their own digital currencies, not only because they are starting to realize the superiority of the technology and that they will be completely left behind, but also because they see it as an avenue for even further control: (imagine if there was no such thing as cash or even credit cards, but rather every single transaction in an economy took place on a government-controlled blockchain. That is power.)
They'll definitely try, but there's a number of problems that will likely cause it to ultimately fail. For one thing, they're too far behind the rest of the industry. By the time they have a CBDC or anything like it remotely close to being usable (let alone at a large scale), it'll be 20+ years from now and the world will already be entrenched in blockchain tech. And using cryptocurrencies will already be mainstream, and there will be no way to take that away from people. Not only because it would be largely equivalent to trying to outlaw/regulate the Internet, and the public just wouldn't have it, but also because it would mean shackling the US in terms of technological advancement and commerce with the rest of the world.
Cryptocurrencies are basically the fuel of blockchains, and it will ultimately be impossibly difficult to try and regulate them in terms of their usage as money without shutting down everything else blockchain tech will be doing. Kind of like how trying to preemptively enforce copyright regulations would essentially shut down the Internet, and the public in turn shut down that kind of regulation.
It's helpful to step back and remember the evolution of the Internet. No one fully understood what it was or what it would be. And pretty much every time some use case or industry popped up using the technology and the government saw a threat to power or the potential to control/exploit it, it was already too late and things were already too far along, and there was too much vested interest for it to be shut down or regulated away. The best they could do is try to find a way to take a cut of profits.
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are just like that...because that technology basically is the next phase of the Internet. Obviously we can't really say for sure until it's already happened and we look back on history and name phases after the fact, but right now it certainly looks like digital ledger technology (DLT) is "Web 3.0".
The notion in this case is, payment processors are putting pressure on adult content...and since Mastercard, Visa, Discover, et al., are basically an oligopoly, and they literally control the flow of the money, it's a pretty significant chokepoint if a company gets on their bad side.
In December, Pornhub (and other MindGeek sites) were forced to exclusively accept cryptocurrency (and ACH transfer) as forms of payment due to being cut off by those major processors. It's been suggested that at least Mastercard similarly strong-armed OnlyFans, causing them to ban sexually explicit content.
In that thread, it was suggested that crypto isn't the answer, because government will regulate it into obscurity...
Of course that's the general mode of things. Statists are gonna statist. But what I think the whole "gubbmint gonna regulate crypto down to zero" argument fails to realize is blockchain technology opens too many doors for too many people, meaning there's way too much money to be made and way too much public interest in the capabilities that come with it for it to be stifled in the way doomsayers allege.
You have to remember, at the end of the day, the US (and most Western) governments are largely beholden to corporate interests, and if enough powerful capitalists want something, Washington is largely going to appease. And there's already too much big money with their hands in all sorts of blockchain tech.
So they may largely focus on cryptocurrencies specifically, and more specifically, their usage as "money" (i.e. store of value & medium of exchange). Governments and central banks around the world are scurrying to create their own digital currencies, not only because they are starting to realize the superiority of the technology and that they will be completely left behind, but also because they see it as an avenue for even further control: (imagine if there was no such thing as cash or even credit cards, but rather every single transaction in an economy took place on a government-controlled blockchain. That is power.)
They'll definitely try, but there's a number of problems that will likely cause it to ultimately fail. For one thing, they're too far behind the rest of the industry. By the time they have a CBDC or anything like it remotely close to being usable (let alone at a large scale), it'll be 20+ years from now and the world will already be entrenched in blockchain tech. And using cryptocurrencies will already be mainstream, and there will be no way to take that away from people. Not only because it would be largely equivalent to trying to outlaw/regulate the Internet, and the public just wouldn't have it, but also because it would mean shackling the US in terms of technological advancement and commerce with the rest of the world.
Cryptocurrencies are basically the fuel of blockchains, and it will ultimately be impossibly difficult to try and regulate them in terms of their usage as money without shutting down everything else blockchain tech will be doing. Kind of like how trying to preemptively enforce copyright regulations would essentially shut down the Internet, and the public in turn shut down that kind of regulation.
It's helpful to step back and remember the evolution of the Internet. No one fully understood what it was or what it would be. And pretty much every time some use case or industry popped up using the technology and the government saw a threat to power or the potential to control/exploit it, it was already too late and things were already too far along, and there was too much vested interest for it to be shut down or regulated away. The best they could do is try to find a way to take a cut of profits.
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are just like that...because that technology basically is the next phase of the Internet. Obviously we can't really say for sure until it's already happened and we look back on history and name phases after the fact, but right now it certainly looks like digital ledger technology (DLT) is "Web 3.0".
