Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> So far with crypto the only use cases seems to be criminal. To buy illegal stuff and for ransomware.

Given that E2EE encrypted messaging apps such as Signal give criminals, extremists and scammers a hiding place such that the messages are totally unreadable by anyone else, does that mean we should tell Google and Amazon to ban Signal off of their servers because they are enabling such a communication service that benefits these criminals, extremists and scammers?

Also how does one 'hide' their transactions on a transparent ledger for everyone to see and trace even if they do use it for ransomware or illegal stuff? Is that why regulators haven't banned those cryptocurrencies yet and instead have targeted privacy-coins in new regulations requiring exchanges to de-list them? [0]

Seems like Stripe [1], Moneygram [2], Checkout.com [3] etc still seem to see that some of them have a use case. Perhaps that explains why they also waited for regulations before proceeding to use them [0].

[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220309IP...

[1] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram...

[3] https://www.checkout.com/solutions/crypto#stablecoin

[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...




I'd be interested to see the ratio of criminal/legitimate activity on Signal as compared to criminal/legitimate BTC transactions.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: