Ethereum is easy to change (hard forks often) and so cannot be expected to preserve any key characteristics like emission curve or even the permissionless nature.

In fact, Ethereum's monetary policy did change in the past.

The policy has always been “minimal viable issuance”

what does that mean in practice?

who determines what's minimum and what's viable?

The protocol is still in the early stages of development.

The social contract is that the protocol & monetary policy will ossify after the transition to PoS & sharding is complete.

Incorrect, Ethereum is still using PoW.

The Wired article that the CEO of Mobilecoin is implicitly endorsing in this thread specifically categorizes Mobilecoin as a cryptocurrency. At least, it doesn’t seem to be a distinction worth splitting hairs about (yet).

I don't give a shit about Wired categorization. MobileCoin is a company. It has a fucking CEO. Cryptocurrency is by definition decentralized.

That particular ship has sailed. Much like people calling cryptocurrency "crypto", it's windmills all the way.

How about helping competition to beat FAANG network effects by deregulating everything?

Increasingly, "more regulation" seems to be the go-to solution for any and all societal problems.

There seem to be no free market capitalists left on HN anymore :(

I think you're right. Also, some of the market response is already there (although still very small compared to the big players). A good example is the brave browser which could change a lot of things once a lot of people start using it.

I think it's incredibly unlikely that any of FAANG will be deemed a public utility with corresponding public utility commissions overseeing them.

What would you deregulate to increase competition? What is holding potential competitors back?

There is often a gulf dividing capitalists and free market advocates. Plenty of capitalists are more than willing to embrace regulation if it protects their interests. The likes of Facebook and Twitter may jump at the chance to cement themselves as monopolies via some kind of nationalizing/utility regulation.

At this stage, both major parties in the US seem to be moving in this direction. The Democrats are no surprise - what is a major surprise is how quickly the Republicans and people like Clarence Thomas are moving to agree. But getting these two sides to agree on the details of the implementation will be no small feat. So while I think some regulation is almost inevitable, I can't predict what it will look like.

Good.

You seem to have a very US centric view. There are other 7.5 billion people in the World.

Please help me understand.

Say Monica runs a clothing shop and sells clothes (including face masks and sun glasses) to people she suspects are drug dealers.

And we are not talking a single pair of sun glasses - she is running the clothing shop 8 hours a day, every day, for many years.

Well, she facilitated criminal activity and must go to jail, right?

Go to any small hardware store in Northern California and you'll find a display of turkey bags near the front for bagging pounds of weed.

I've wondered what the manufacturer must have thought when they first realized why demand is so much higher in that region. I guess the FBI would have them and all the owners of those mom and pop stores hauled off to prison.

>Go to any small hardware store in Northern California and you'll find a display of turkey bags near the front for bagging pounds of weed.

And the pawn shop will have sawzalls for stealing cats.

Do you need tools to steal a cat? Just offer it a pile of food and a warm soft place to sleep.

catalytic converter

> That will deter 99% of the potential users from ever trying it out.

Nah, we had this kind of ban on western fiat currencies in communist Poland. And guess what, illegal p2p trading of USD worked just fine.

"just fine" is a funny word for "lands a lot of people in a torture cell"

This will get you nowhere. Already, Monero successfully employs general CPU-s for its PoW. Bitcoin could switch to another PoW algorithm if critically necessary. Decentralized cryptocurrencies are beautiful hydras.

> Just a small group of hyper enthusiasts

You are mistaken, Sir. We are legion.

You’re a legion of a few millions, good for you, but the world is 8bn+ people.