A New Hope
I woke up this morning with two news that pointed in contradictory directions.
I'll start with the bad news so that we can end on a (very) positive note.
The Bad News
On one hand Forbes reported that "Japan's Financial Regulator Is Pushing Crypto Exchanges To Drop 'Altcoins' Favored By Criminals". The 'altcoins' favored by criminals included Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC) and Dash (DASH). This is particularly relevant because Japan's authorities have historically been among the most "crypto-friendly" in the Western world.
With Japan taking an adversarial position, I believe the "privacy-oriented" cryptocurrencies are in an unenviable position of not having any official ally anymore.
I'm not shying away from a bit of hyperbole: the "extreme privacy" altcoins are now in a comparable situation to the gruesome Islamic State in 2014 - 2015. At the top of its power, it had established its domination over a large area and population. But it had no allies whatsoever and had managed to unite everybody against them. No one can win or even survive under such conditions.
While that doesn't necessarily mean XMR, ZEC, DASH will be wiped out, it is hard to see how they can "moon" now. I didn't dither, went straight to Polo and liquidated the little XMR and DASH I was holding. I'd rather get more STEEM instead.
The (Extremely) Good News.
Ok, some of you might not realize how big this is straight away but the more I think about it, more positive ramifications I see.
Here is the news: "UNICEF Is Mining Crypto to Raise Funds for Children" that led me to the above website.
My hesitation had lasted only a few seconds. This was definitely too intriguing. I browsed to The Hope Page and this is what I've seen: UNICEF (the Australian branch to be more precise) has set up a page that invites you to donate by ... mining crypto in the browser!
It might not look like much, but you have to realize that the set of people who donate to UNICEF is almost completely disjoint from the set of people who believe in the transformative power of cryptocurrencies. Moreover, the former set usually tends to hold a very dim view of crypto. Yet here we have a brand, that those people know and trust, and which acts as ... a gateway to the cryptoworld!
UNICEF is an extremely strong brand. And here it is, demonstrating that cryptocurrencies can DO GOOD. Cryptocurrencies, those evil, impenetrable, mysterious, overcomplicated things that criminals use to buy drugs online ... suddenly they become the embodiement of an extraordinary social leap: donating money not from your bank account but from ... the electricity burned by your computer!
There is an easy to understand, three step explanation of how it works.
Cryptomining is here implicitly proposed as an inoffensive trick to .. turn the ad hoc the pair formed by your electricity supplier on one end, and a crypto exchange on the other end, into ... a surrogate of a bank!
The crypto part is hidden from the view and appears completely tamed and non menacing. Once people start getting accustomed to it, the psychological effects cannot be overstated! What to many people had been presented by the media and some authorities as a tiger who had escaped from its cage, UNICEF here is introducing as a ... cat purring with the sound of their computers' fans !...
source
How that happened? "Feel good by doing good" white magic: some extremely powerful emotional messages that "enchant the cryptobeast"
And for those who might be skeptical and harder to be bound by the spell, there is a magistral-in-its-simplicity slider bar to adjust the power consumption of your PC to your tastes from 30%
to 80%
Han Solo
And "The Hope Page" is the closest thing to the Millenium Falcon that I've seen till now!
source
Other posts on cryptocurrencies and society
- The future of society
- The Church of Bitcoin
- Blockchain and the End of the Western Civilization
- Toward a pan-EU blockchain infrastructure
- Small worlds
- Steemit and the Fractal Society
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Thank you for this post, best way to end my day :).
People who are using those privacy coins, don't want them going to the moon ;). If would have to guess, there is a huge party on darknet right now :))).
When Bitcoin went up like crazy, every market added at least two more coins. They need a medium of exchange, not one for investment ;).
UNICEF would have more success with that if they make 50/50 with the donors ;). One small step for UNICEF, a huge step for crypto :). Future sounds better than I hoped.
Well when everything was going up I spread the bets on several alts including a wee bit of XMR and DASH. One never knows. Turns out XMR performed better than BTC so I was right to go diversify into XMR rather than stay in BTC. On the other hand, DASH performed significantly worse than BTC over the same time period.
I contend making 50/50 with the donors is beside the point here. If you are in the category of people who browse UNICEF pages looking to donate for the Rohingya kids I bet you have barely heard of Bitcoin, let alone other, more exotic altcoins. Do you see UNICEF starting to educate old rich Australian folks about how to install a Monero wallet and manage their keys ? I don't.
Future not only sounds better but it also seems to be coming faster, much faster than I thought it would !
So if I got this right, Japan forced UNICEF to move their monero mining operation to the Cloud City giving all those children meaningful employment under the management of Lando Calrissian?
=)
Just joking around!!! =)
Nice article I always love a good Star Wars analogy @sorin.cristescu!
Thank you very much for the news!!!
You are welcome! :)
I don't really think privacy coins face an issue of not finding an ally. In fact I think they might need to be part of the ecosystem if we hope of finding more and more adopters for crypto. Blockchain essentially being immutable would will have to define a way for privacy transactions to happen.
We already have complete privacy for transactions. Outside blockchain, through banks. If you need privacy for your transactions why do you need blockchain ? Only you, your counterpart and your bank will know.
And if you tell me "yeah but I don't want the bank to know" then how do we make sure that some Saudi prince is not bankrolling the islamic savages ? Privacy cuts both ways.
And indeed the privacy coins do not face an issue themselves. But those who bought privacy coins as an investment vehicule betting on their appreciation (and not as a vehicule for private transactions) might be facing a biggish issue ...
'We already have complete privacy for transactions' - I think you and I think about privacy as different things. I think a closed door is not privacy but a locked door is. similarly for me a locked door is not security, a sealed door is.
I got you 100%. I see what you mean. It's just that I'm wary of complete privacy. I'm looking at the broad picture - if everyone and anyone can have complete privacy then the overall level of security will be lower for all of us.
You might think that complete privacy allows fully legitimate activities. But I tell you complete privacy also facilitates unsavory things.
Someone who thinks you flirted with his wife can hire a hitman and gun you down and pay for the hit with complete privacy.
I think a majority of people will take security over privacy any time
I see that as well and I am definitely not saying that it is not my concern. It's just that I am wary of the lines that have been encroaching our personal choices in the name of security.
Government scrutiny is necessary for the our security but the problem is that the laws made only for enactment by the government are very prone to be used by private agencies. It won't be far off to say that private entities actually lobby some of these laws so that it might be useful for them in a future date.
My words may sound pompous but if ever a time comes when my security supersedes my freedom I'd rather shed the cloth of my civility.
This is a multi faceted debate and I am choosing to take a side so that the balance and equilibrium is maintained. Peace.
This is indeed a complicated debate that reflects a continuous need to maintain a balance in an inherently unstable situation. A debate that is bit like cycling: you cannot stop lest you fall over
Definitely. The process takes time but if we keep doing it and act within reason I am sure that we can reach a fruitful conclusion.
This is very impressive. Thanks for the information. Sometimes mining cryptos requires high electric power. What's your say about this?
Here you are protected: you can't use more than the what your computer's power supply is sucking from the grid :-) You "donate" in proportion to your PC's power supply. Imagine you have a PSU of 0.75 kW and you keep the page open at 80% for one hour, you increased your electricity usage by a maximum of 0.75kWh which where I live costs about 10 eurocents.
Now if your issue with the fact that doing this on a vast scale will increase the overall power consumption all over the world, I'm not worried but it would take me a full post to explain why.
You are very right. I agree with you.
LOL, I wonder if you put the (parenthesis) around very on account of my old friend Mark Twain!
This is another thought-provoking post, my friend!
Thanks!
CARRY ON!
Absolutely, my friend, I'm under my real name here, I have to stay civil ! No swear words ! :-) Thank you !
That's definitely a good news with Unicef. 🎈
Consider that this is very recent. Since this morning the number of people donating has kept increasing. I took the snapshot in the morning then at noon there were more than 4000 people already and now there are almost 5500 people donating, according to the page ! ...
Coins mentioned in post:
Good boy, @coin.info. Much appreciated!