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SEC says it will deregulate cryptocurrencies with 'Project Crypto' (qz.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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In a Thursday speech, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Paul S. Atkins announced “Project Crypto,” an initiative to modernize the country’s securities rules and regulations to move financial markets on-chain.

“Under my leadership, the SEC will not stand idly by and watch innovations develop overseas while our capital markets remain stagnant,” he said at an America First Policy Institute event in Washington D.C. His plan includes measures to reshore crypto businesses that have left the country and to ensure that “archaic rules and regulations do not smother innovation and entrepreneurship in America.”

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[–] 3 points 1 year ago (23 children)

The rest of the ecosystem largely moved on to proof-of-stake validation

Eh. Bitcoin mining alone accounts for about 0.7% of 2024 global CO₂ emissions annually, with 40% of that mining happening in US and Canada. 130.50 Mt is nothing to sneeze at.

The crypto industry was supposed to decarbonize by 2025 – how’s that going? There's evidence the industry has started putting plans into action, but the energy consumption of Bitcoin networks is still higher than countries like Norway and Sweden

Far too little and too late.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (22 children)

    I literally just said:

    Only if Bitcoin remains predominant.

    Yes, Bitcoin still uses proof-of-work. That's because Bitcoin is itself a fossil, its userbase and developers have consciously decided to not adopt new blockchain technologies and remain locked in the current protocol. Other blockchains have continued moving on. Alas, Bitcoin has name recognition and inertia on its side, which will keep it around for a long time. But at some point I expect its obsolescence will catch up with it and overcome that inertia.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    I think it's early to call Bitcoin obsolete, it is still after all the dominant cryptocurrency by every measure.

    Other blockchains have continued moving on.

    So which systems do you see as offering real utility or innovation? Obviously there's etherium, and it has its own issues, but what else out there do you think is really more than a just gimmick or a scheme?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Its technology is obsolete. That doesn't mean it can't still dominate the market share.

    For example, a case could be made that coal power is obsolete. There are still plenty of coal power plants on the grid. Windows 8 is obsolete, but you'll find plenty of computers still running it. And so forth. There's inertia in these things.

    And Bitcoin's current "dominance" is 60%. That's not exactly an overwhelming position.

    So which systems do you see as offering real utility or innovation? Obviously there's etherium

    You answered your own question.

    Ethereum's not just one token, mind you. There's an ecosystem on Ethereum with a lot of innovation that's not directly rooted in Ethereum's advances. That's the benefit of supporting smart contracts, it's a general purpose computer that other stuff can be run on. There are a lot of layer-2 blockchains running on Ethereum, for example Aztec which has Monero-like privacy built into it.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Yes, Etherium is very cool and it can do a whole bunch of really cool things! But on the other hand, it can't replace Bitcoin. It's too heavy, transactions are too large, the network can't hope to handle the number transactions per minute that Bitcoin does. I think most people agree that the two systems compliment each other, they each work well in their niche, but couldn't do the others' job.

    So yeah, I don't see Etherium replacing Bitcoin. Perhaps a layer-2 could, but I have yet to see any that offer the kind of tangible improvements that would really make it stand out.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    the network can't hope to handle the number transactions per minute that Bitcoin does.

    As of this writing, Ethereum is handling 21.1 transactions per second. Bitcoin is handling 4.9 transactions per second. So purely in layer-1 transactions per second Ethereum's got 4.3 times the capacity of Bitcoin.

    Some of those Ethereum transactions are for running layer-2s, as you mention that greatly expands Ethereum's capacity. Ethereum is specifically designed to be able to handle layer-2s well, it has features that were added to make them easier to scale. Bitcoin, on the other hand, was never designed for layer-2s and what it does have are hacked-together bodges like Lightning that are going nowhere.

    I think most people agree that the two systems compliment each other, they each work well in their niche, but couldn't do the others' job.

    What "job" does Bitcoin do that Ethereum can't? And before you say "digital gold", there are literal gold-backed stabletokens on Ethereum if that's what suits your fancy.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    A lot of bitcoin transactions are opening lightning channels so second layer is working there too

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The comment you're responding to linked to a page giving statistics about the Lightning network. The number of channels peaked in 2022 and has been going down ever since then.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Number of channels is decreasing, but the money in each channel increased. In BTC terms the money decreased, but in real terms the money increased.

    Real terms being 2022 dollar value

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (2 children)

    No it hasn't. Again, according to that link I provided, the total capacity of Lightning peaked in December 2024. These are not the graphs of a growing layer 2, it's been stagnant for many years.

    Bitcoin simply wasn't designed for this sort of application, and Bitcoin's foundation layer is absolutely frozen due to the ideology of its users and developers so I don't expect the situation will improve. If you want to do a layer 2 then why not use a blockchain that's specifically designed to support it? If you use Ethereum you can even use token-wrapped Bitcoin as your medium of exchange. There's $14.4 billion dollars worth of WBTC on Ethereum available for exchange, as opposed to the $440 million worth in Lightning channels.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    If bitcoin is worth more, you need to move fewer bitcoins to achieve the same result. If there USD value moved in lightning never increases then I would agree it's a failure

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I was specifically speaking in USD terms, take a look at the page I linked above. It has graphs with both USD and Bitcoin on them. In Bitcoin terms Lightning's capacity peaked in early 2023. In dollar terms it was December 2024. The line is squiggly and has a general long-term upward trend overall on the net dollar capacity, but it really doesn't look very impressive compared to Ethereum's layer-2 architecture. And that's the only line where I see a long-term rise, the rest have been stagnant or declining for years.

    I stand by my overall view that Bitcoin's technology is simply obsolete. It doesn't do anything, it just sits there being valuable because it's valuable. I don't think that's going to endure forever.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Other blockchains have continued moving on

    Sure. But they're relegated to the realm of highly sketchy pre-mining schemes and pump-and-dump market gambits. There's no serious third party mining community for these boutique coins.

    I expect its obsolescence will catch up with it and overcome that inertia.

    We still have people digging yellow rocks out of the ground and shoving them in big vaults to store fiscal value.

    If that's not obsolete, I'm not holding my breath on Bitcoin.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Ether has a market cap of $450 billion, and that doesn't count all the other tokens running on the Ethereum blockchain. It's been running since 2013. If you call that a "boutique coin" based on "pump-and-dump" then clearly you've either got a highly biased or highly ignorant view of cryptocurrency.

    If that's not obsolete, I'm not holding my breath on Bitcoin.

    There are technical flaws in Bitcoin that could literally crash it if they aren't patched out before they become exploitable, as in it's at zero value and will never recover. That's not something that can happen to gold.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (9 children)

    the Ethereum blockchain

    Ah, yes. The fine folks that gave us NFTs.

    No pump and dumps to be found over there

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (7 children)

    To be fair, the concept of an NFT was very cool when it was first imagined, but then all people used NFTs for was stupid gifs to be sold like trading cards or fucking pogs...

    But the concept is cool if you actually use it for something. For instance, you can create an NFT as a digital key (like a literal key that unlocks something) or as a legal deed that proves ownership of something. Then you have a digital asset that can be resold or folded into a smart contract, where the digital item actually controls something physical. For instance, you could design an NFT to be the actual key that can unlock and start a car. If you sell this digital asset, you will not be able to start the car, but the new owner will. That is cool, monkey gifs are stupid bullshit. And if you try to convince people to buy bullshit, that makes you a scammer.

    But Etherium didn't invent the stupid bullshit, they just created a system that made more interesting things possible. And then with the power to do anything, some people made the stupidest shit in the world. It's like, you can hand someone a pencil and paper and some people will use that to prove a theorem, some people will sketch a landscape, and some people will draw a huge cock and balls... But you don't blame the people that created the pencil and paper.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (6 children)

    the concept of an NFT was very cool when it was first imagined

    Going to have to agree to disagree.

    It was always vaporware. A bunch of empty promises that predicted a digital monoculture. Feel like I have to carve "Ready Player One was a Dystopia!" on a baseball bat and hit people with it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    So I'm hearing that perhaps the idea I talked about in my example didn't sound cool to you. But it was cool to a lot of people, and your opinion doesn't speak for everyone. And it does work, like today.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    it was cool to a lot of people

    So were pogs

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    So you really think the ability to trade digital keys is useless? That's honestly weird.

    I mean there are so many instances of people actively using digital keys right now, so clearly that part of the functionality has value. Surely there are situations where one might want to sell access to something, and the ability to transfer a digital key with a single transaction would be useful.

    I think you're being overly dismissive based on preconceived notions.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    So you really think the ability to trade digital keys is useless?

    When the keys cost several hundred dollars to generate? I'd say the price vastly outstrips the reward.

    I mean there are so many instances of people actively using digital keys right now

    Bailey: "Cryptocurrency is useful."

    Moot: "Oh, so you think cryptography is useless?!"

    I think you’re being overly dismissive

    That's fine. I don't really value your opinion.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    When the keys cost several hundred dollars to generate? I'd say the price vastly outstrips the reward.

    It does not necessarily have to cost that much... But even if it did, the key to my Honda cost a couple hundred dollars to copy, so that's not really different.

    I don't expect to change your mind, but it seems worth pointing out that the things you're saying are pretty dumb.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    It does not necessarily have to cost that much…

    And yet that's the selling point behind proof-of-work cryptocurrency models. The whole reason they have value is the raw material cost to fabricate a new key.

    Absent that cost, it's not cryptocurrency. It's just cryptography.

    things you’re saying are pretty dumb

    Hey, good luck out there.

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