Personal Blog
Outright banning bitcoin is a bit blunt and politically inconvenient, but the truth is that small, private and barely noticeable regulatory notices, minor legislation, and memos to infrastructure providers are all that is necessary to bring down the entire corrupt network to its knees so that it can no longer cause public harm.
It’s important to understand that nearly all consumer interactions with bitcoin happen through centralised entities who require domiciled entities within the United States for their continued access to payments infrastructure, banking and customers. This makes them particularly vulnerable to coordinated law enforcement and coercion by their banking relations and payments processor partners.
There is no legitimate economy that transacts in bitcoin. It is an absolutely rubbish means of payment and most customers are simply looking to realise short-term gains in terms of Dollars and Euros as a result of zero-sum speculation on price movements, which is indistinguishable from gambling. They do so through consumer gambling apps (Robinhood Crypto, Cash App, etc) that present a casino-like interface that lets users gamble on the price movements of these hypervolatile pseudo-assets. The app itself relies on a third party service provider for exposure to the market and custody of the underlying assets, however the customers are not able to realise or transfer these underlyings and are only able to convert the marked gains in a virtual dollar account which is settled back-office in real dollars with the service provider. This makes apps like Robinhood Crypto not significantly different than what would traditionally be called bucket shops in normal markets. These markets are highly manipulated by pump and dump schemes and are in aggregate are a net wealth transfer from victims to early stakeholders who manipulate prices, networks and exchanges for their own gain.
