Crypto Use Is More Prevalent in Corrupt Countries, IMF Study Finds (thestreet.com) 70
"According to a new International Money Fund (IMF) report, cryptocurrency is much more popular in countries with insecure currencies and corrupt governments..." reports The Street, adding that the report concludes "the best way forward is not fight, but to learn how to better regulate cryptocurrency."
The IMF surveyed more than 110,000 respondents in over 55 countries, polling between 2,000 and 12,000 people in each country, about their cryptocurrency use....
"Crypto usage is empirically associated with higher perceived corruption and more intensive capital controls," the study's authors write. "[...] This evidence adds to the case for regulating crypto usage — for example, by requiring intermediaries to implement know-your-customer procedures."
Bloomberg adds: The report shows why countries might want to require intermediaries, such as digital currency exchanges, to implement know-your-customer procedures — ID verification standards that are designed to prevent fraud, money laundering and terrorism financing, the organization said. Some countries, like the U.S., have already instituted those kinds of controls.
Nations around the world are struggling over the best way to regulate the $2 trillion crypto market, with the level of oversight varying greatly from one country to another. The findings suggest that crypto assets "may be used to transfer corruption proceeds or circumvent capital controls," the organization said, without singling out individual countries.
Bloomberg adds: The report shows why countries might want to require intermediaries, such as digital currency exchanges, to implement know-your-customer procedures — ID verification standards that are designed to prevent fraud, money laundering and terrorism financing, the organization said. Some countries, like the U.S., have already instituted those kinds of controls.
Nations around the world are struggling over the best way to regulate the $2 trillion crypto market, with the level of oversight varying greatly from one country to another. The findings suggest that crypto assets "may be used to transfer corruption proceeds or circumvent capital controls," the organization said, without singling out individual countries.
Re:How much did it cost taxpayers (Score:5, Insightful)
lmfao. -1 because this post doesn't tow the moderator's political line?
Crypto has been touted as anonymous for so long, it wouldn't take a laureate distinction to predict it would be used in hand with corruption.
I'm sorry your digital money revolution didn't "free the world", but instead enabled criminals. I did have high hopes once.
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Nor does it toe the line. "Towing the line would be fishing, "toeing the line" is what soldiers do when standing to order, in rank and file.
Crypocurrency was designed to avoid taxation and support black market trade. The simplest and most effective way to regulate it is to outlaw it entirely.
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To me, "towing the line" means pulling the bullshit along because #reasons. You seem to be coming to this with a military related viewpoint. I'm not sure which is technically correct, but I think we're needlessly disagreeing about about semantics here.
Re "The simplest and most effective way to regulate it is to outlaw it entirely" -- I say: pretty much, yes. I'm a bit surprised that we let this horse out of the barn at all, but at this point I doubt we'll ever wrangle it back inside.
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He is also coming at it from the correct viewpoint; the saying is "toe the line". It's a derivative of the old sayings "toe the mark" and "toe the plank", it goes back to the 1800's at least.
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IIRC toe the line comes from boxing, in the old days the boxers would have to reach a line in the ring at the start of a round.
Hmm (Score:2)
So all countries then?
The United States has a funny relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, we just accept it in high level peons. So 90% of Congress does insider trading + sells us out. We could stop voting for those people, but what are ya gonna do? They just have the best advertisements and rallies.
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It really depends on what you mean by "corruption".
In America, it is not illegal for politicians to accept money from people with an interest in pending legislation, and there are few restrictions on politicians trading on insider information.
If it isn't illegal, is it corruption?
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If it isn't illegal, is it corruption?
Yes.
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If it isn't illegal, is it corruption?
The whole point of the word corruption is that you have criminals writing the laws in lopsided ways favoring the rich and corporations over the rest of society until the rules become so oppressive there's some kind of political discontent, reform or revolution. That's how this has always worked.
Your question is the dumbest shit I've ever heard, how do you suppose rule of law can exist if the people themselves who inhabit the government are criminals? Just because laws exist does not mean they are fair, or
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You ask that as if laws had anything to do with justice.
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In America, it is not illegal for politicians to accept money from people with an interest in pending legislation, and there are few restrictions on politicians trading on insider information.
I disagree.
The right to ethical government can be asserted as arising under the 9th Amendment as a right 'retained by the people' and the 10th Amendment as a right 'reserved to the people'.
Under this right, even the appearance of conflict of interest must be avoided when reasonable alternatives exist - where reasonable is not something that is defined in terms of what the lawyers or politicians think is reasonable (two special interest groups with strong conflicts of interest), but rather the public.
So any
Re:The United States has a funny relationship (Score:5, Informative)
If it isn't illegal, is it corruption?
Let's see...an act of corrupting or of impairing integrity, virtue, or moral principle; the state of being corrupted or debased; loss of purity or integrity. Hmm, I don't see there anything about things being legal or illegal. So it probably is?
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What is right and what is legal are not necessarily the same. While all corruption is wrong, it stands to reason that some corruption can be legal while some is illegal.
Here in the US, we have legalized certain kinds of bribery, for example.
Not that that matters too much if the corruption is legal or illegal. We don't seem to care about the corruption that happens right out in the open.
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US laws: the best money can buy!
No sir, no corruption at all.
A mayoral candidate stopped by the other day (Score:2)
I don't trust politicians - on either of the politiball teams.
I know some people like to root for one team and pretend the politicians on that team are all lovely people, not power-hungry at all. That's not me.
I can't do much about a president or senator. I can bitch and moan along with everyone else - that doesn't seem to do much good.
The other day, a guy knocked on my front door. He owns a local shop. He's running for mayor. We chatted a bit about the rather hefty budget for the new animal shelter.
I noti
Re:A mayoral candidate stopped by the other day (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm amazed that there are still people out there pushing that "both sides are bad" nonsense. Neither side is perfect, but you'd be a fool to say that they're even remotely in the same class. If can make a car analogy, as is tradition, it's the difference between a parking violation and vehicular homicide. Are you really going to toss your hands up and say "well, they're both criminals!" and call it even?
Whenever possible, I'd rather laws and rules that affect me be made by people whom I can walk up to and say some things, if and when that's needed.
I checked with an astronomer and it turns out that you're not the center of the universe. There are more than 168 million people registered to vote in this country. It would take more than five years to look each of them in the eye if a national politician could manage a person every second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's just not reasonable.
It's not reasonable for your Senators either. Wyoming, the least populous state, has a population of less than 600k. It would take more than a year to meet with all of them for just one minute.
We also don't live in a world where we can divide ourselves into tiny, isolated, self-sufficient communities. Well, not if you want to maintain anything remotely like civilization, let alone modern civilization. Just a moments thought and you'll realize that even large towns have too many people for every eligible voter to personally "size up" the candidates or whatever it is you base your vote on instead of policy. Not that we could have those anyway without nested governance.
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> would take more than five years to look each of them in the eye if a national politician could manage a person every second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's just not reasonable.
If you read that back about four or five times, you might suddenly get the point of the post you replied to.
You would then understand what the founders of the United States understood, and understand why the corruption in US federal politics increased so much roughly around the time of the wheat cases.
You might even unders
Re:The United States has a funny relationship (Score:4, Funny)
I want either less corruption or more of a chance to participate in it.
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Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Every country has corruption, but not all countries are equally corrupt.
An important part of the picture is the conviction that "everyone does it". Most people wont' cheat if they think other people are honest, but if *everyone* is cheating, it's not really cheating anymore, it's just the way things are.
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When I first applied for a business license in America, I went to the city clerk's office and paid the fee at a counter in full view of other applicants. The law said the clerk "will issue", not "may issue", based on the criteria posted on the wall in public view.
When I later applied for a business license in China, I was escorted to a private office, the door was then closed, and various "expediting fees" were discussed.
It wasn't just that one system was corrupt while the other was not, but that one syste
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Sure; and a *normal* person under the corrupt system behaves in a way that he wouldn't dream of in, say, New Zealand or Switzerland.
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"Bribes" are common business transactions in some countries. They're expected, like tips. I saw this first hand in Asia (mostly Korea). What we see as corruption, they may not.
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It's not black and white. It's a Grayscale.
Dark Money Laundry (Score:2)
I figured the government would step in (Score:1)
I underestimated the effects of propaganda on voters and the downstream effects that would have. People are literally opposing the most basic post Great Depression financial regulations now...
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Which government are you talking about?
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Statistically nobody will do that unless they can turn it into rent-paying money
Re: Dark Money Laundry (Score:3)
Canada is so corrupt (Score:4, Insightful)
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And if that doesn't work, there's still Canadian Tire money.
Re: Canada is so corrupt (Score:2)
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Before banks we had something that might be called "company credit", as in the buyers and sellers would agree to terms on payments with some fees or interest rates attached. For small purchases and short periods of time the credit might just be an IOU kept in a book for the patron to pay back later. Larger purchases would have a more formal process of a contract that would be signed with some terms on assets kept to secure that loan. Another form of company credit would be printed as certificates like mo
The grand master plan of crypto (Score:4, Interesting)
The plan for all cryptocurrencies isn't what they want to make you think it is. It's more sinister than the egalitarian image the crypto boys portray for it.
After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.
But the crypto boys watched closely the result of that meltdown, and formulated their plan: create a new form of currency, and for it a new financial system detached from traditional ones (those burdened by "governments and regulations") - they called it "DeFi" for "Decentralized Finance", but its dirty little secret is that it's really "Deregulated Finance".
Their plan is to make this new money be adopted by the masses, so they start it off with a low price, then gradually increase it, by virtue of them just pulling numbers out of thin air for its value, until it catches the attention of the masses - then it gets more and more "valuable" from the collective faith of its given value ("network effect"), until traditional institutions and the typical "1%" billionaires start to notice and, greedy as they are, want in on the action too.
So now those that got in at the ground floor have gained all this "value" out of thin air, and once they're ready, they'll pull out all pretty much at once - that it'll create a sell-off panic, and a new meltdown is born! And because of their "De[regulated]Fi" system, the bros have already shifted all the risks away from themselves onto others, so they'll make out like bandits, leaving everyone else to "hodl" the bag.
But the bros were really observant about that last meltdown - and noticed all the "bailouts" the big banks got - so as they were shifting the risks to others, they increased their investments into what would get the next bailouts - so in the end they'll make out like bandits twice: the first time from suckering everyone else into their pump-and-dump scam, and again once they benefit from the bailouts that'll get handed out.
And there you have it folks, the real master plan of crypto.
--
"Those who fail to accept it will mod the truth down to -1." -Prof. Feynman
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How many more times are you going to post this dribble?
taxes are the answer (Score:2, Flamebait)
A tax of 95+% on crypto "capital gains" and transaction processing fees, as well as a tax of 5 to 15% on all transactions would deter all the low-level crypto-suckers, the ones who don't have access to effective tax dodging schemes like the rich do.
A crypto-coin energy consumption tax would also be useful.
All these taxes must, of course, be paid in actual money, not crypto pretend money. Payable monthly.
And without all the dumb fucks putting their money in, their won't enough real money in the scam system
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“Please show me on this doll where the crypto hurt you?”
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Yeah, sounds like a progressive viewpoint. That, and they really hate that porn actors and sex workers now have a safe way to get paid without having to worry about banks suddenly taking their money, because they view those things as immoral, that they objectify women and that they promote rape culture. Progressives strongly believe that they should have their money taken away to fund more wholesome things, like social programs and giving multi-million dollar mansions to the leaders of Black Lives Matter ta
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Oh noes, a dickhead is accusing me of hypocrisy - however will i cope with the shame?
No, the solution to that particular problem is laws and regulations that make it illegal for banks to discriminate against any legal activity, coupled with laws decrim
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Oh noes, a dickhead is accusing me of hypocrisy - however will i cope with the shame?
Sucks to be you I guess.
No, the solution to that particular problem is laws and regulations that make it illegal for banks to discriminate against any legal activity, coupled with laws decriminalising sex work (and recreational drugs, and other victimless "crimes").
Not only is one of those not legal, but you already know your fellow progressives would never do that. It's also not just banks, but fintech as well, like i.e. patreon and onlyfans, which also won't provide them services. Of course, the very second progressives hear that this would also mean that gofundme would be forced to host a fundraiser to pay for the legal defense of the next Kyle Rittenhouse, they'll scrap that idea, because people they've summarily judged guilty should be den
Re: taxes are the answer (Score:1)
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You claimed that cryptocurrency is speech and then claimed the parent was a Nazi.
I now know exactly how seriously to take your thoughts and opinions.
Re: taxes are the answer (Score:2)
How is it not speech?
And the whole Nazi side of it was his idea, I merely played into it.
It's funny (Score:2)
We hear people talking about legalizing and regulating drugs such as marijuana, but the moment it is mentioned crypto should be regulated the topic suddenly becomes, "We don't do that here."
Which is fine with me. We'll continue to get a good laugh as we see weekly stories about millions of dollars of crypto stolen because there are no regulations
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Key word is perception (Score:2, Insightful)
The American markets are amazingly corrupt, but the corruption is highly sophisticated and authorities only get involved when it starts to become too obvious [reuters.com]. The average American knows virtually nothing about how big finance work and smugly assumes that our regulators are at least "trying" when they aren't (that link, btw proves it; the DoJ had to sidestep the SEC and do their job for them)
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It would make sense for corruption and encryption to go hand-in-hand though.
"Nobody wants nukes!" (Score:4, Interesting)
The value in a cryptocurrency is in the cost of the energy to produce or process it. Lower the cost of energy and that will lower the value of these currencies, as well as the costs to produce most anything.
We are running out of easy to get fossil fuels, and while we may never run out of coal and petroleum we could run out of these fuels that are worth the effort to extract. A big factor in the cost of energy is energy returned on energy invested, or EROEI. Look at Table 2 on this link: https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org]
The biggest returns on energy investment, excluding fossil fuels, comes from hydro, wind, and nuclear fission. As the EROEI on fossil fuels falls from consuming the easiest to reach fossil fuels the already high EROEI looks even better.
Another factor on costs is material use, see Figure 2: https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
Also on that page, in Figure 3, is another cost of human lives. Given the safety record of nuclear power we should be using nuclear power on this metric alone. Given the low CO2 emissions of nuclear power that alone is a reason to use nuclear power. Given the lower material and land use that alone is a reason to use nuclear power. Put them all together and we find that we have no path into the future that does not include nuclear power.
I'll have people claim that nuclear power is too this and not enough that, therefore nobody wants it. What is coming is a choice between freezing in the dark or nuclear power. Once that hurdle is cleared on acceptance of nuclear power then we will see energy costs come down all over the world. That may just leave currencies based on the scarcity of energy nearly worthless. People looking for something of value to trade will likely instead revert to previous items of value for trade. Things like precious metals, alcohol, cigarettes, other forms of drugs for medical and recreational use, rare foods, high technology (and not just electronics), and all kinds of commodities of varying degrees of scarcity.
A big problem right now with Ukraine and Russia fighting is an inability to get wheat and fertilizers out of the region. In the USA we will be fine because we produce plenty of both. There's also the option to stop burning food for fuel to get more supply, as in stop the corn ethanol fuel subsidies. That will put more pressure on the energy supply, or maybe not as there's claims that the corn ethanol fuel is a net negative on energy output. Even if corn ethanol is a net positive in energy the use of this fuel still means we are burning food when that time and effort in getting energy could be put towards something that doesn't burn food and gets a higher EROEI.
We will see more nuclear power plants built all over the world. We just need people to feel that squeeze on energy costs to make it clear to them that it is nuclear power or freezing in the dark. People that say "nobody wants nukes" is saying that global warming is preferable to nuclear power. Perhaps that is true. Given that people don't like to freeze in the dark they will prefer nuclear power.
They might not want nuclear power now, but they will demand it later.
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The value in a cryptocurrency is in the cost of the energy to produce or process it.
No, the value is in what the next sucker is willing to pay for it. When cryptocurrency drops in value, miners that can no longer mine profitably will actually turn their rigs off (and the blockchain network automatically adjusts, as it is designed to do).
Cheaper electricity, more efficient mining rigs, none of that makes any difference. Mining is simply a profitability arms race between miners all chasing after the next block reward - which will arrive regardless of whether the network hashrate is produce
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You are right in that, but if we look at it from the electricity consumption angle, it will also go down relatively as the mining rewards will half (automatically as designed). So the bitcoin energy consumption is not accelerating or even going up linearly, but it is slowing down.
This evidence ... (Score:3)
Not for cleaning up corruption?
It's the correlation/causation conundrum. Maybe people are driven to crypto currencies because their governments and central banks are crooked. Are these the people you want regulating crypto as well?
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I'm saving my money for a Ferrari [bsgtractor...nery.co.uk].
Just saying.... (Score:2)
Cryptocurrency is a troll-meme and crime vector (Score:2)
Furthermore it's a massive waste of limited, real resources, all to 'create' something that isn't 'real', doesn't exist, and has no actual value whatsoever. It's a troll-meme, too many of you have fallen for it, and I suspect many of you just double-down on it rather than admit you've been taken for fo
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Yep. DeutscheBank couldn't handle all the dirty cash so the washers invented their own exchange, allowing the dirty money to be washed publically while keeping the paper trail obfuscated.
NWO? (Score:1)
Okay,
So the IMF looks at corrupt governments and sees the citizens who are burdened by this corruption circumventing it by denying those governments the opportunity to be corrupt by using crypto.
And let me get this straight, the "answer" to "this" is "more crypto regulations."
Sounds to me like the IMF is in bed with the corrupt governments.