Topic: [2021-02-23] Yellen sounds warning about ‘extremely inefficient’ bitcoin (Read 320 times)

It appears that Janet Yellen has a supporter in the Senate and also an old woman like her hehehe, senator Elizabeth Warren. Everyone should also know that Elizabeth Warren is in the senate finance committee and the senate banking committee. This implies that not there will only be executive orders against the cryptospace. There might also be legislation created against it.



U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) backed recent negative comments on bitcoin (BTC, +3.87%) by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday.

Asked if she agreed with Yellen’s comments made last month that the cryptocurrency was a “speculative” asset, Warren did not give a direct answer, saying, “I think Janet’s a really smart woman.”

When pressed, she said, “‘Speculative in nature and going to end badly’ – I don’t think Janet left a lot of room for ambiguity.”

Source https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-warren-yellen-speculative-nature

They know that cryptocurrency activity can't be made illegal or unlawful. That's why they are trying to scare away the investors. After the repeated statements by Yellen, today we had Elizabeth Warren going ballistic about Bitcoin. But the timing is wrong. They should have made these statements during a crash in the exchange rates. If they had done that, then at least some people would have taken them seriously. Now when the Bitcoin prices are up, they are coming up with such ridiculous statements.

Bitcoin created a completely new business industry out of the blue and the companies that belong to this ecosystem earn money and pay taxes to their respective jurisdictions. How on Earth what they make all this unlawful as this is a perfectly working virtuos cycle?
Of course Bitcoin is decentralized by its own nature but they cannot do anything about it. Better to play the game fair, am I right? 

It is a difficult choice for the governments. They know that rising popularity of Bitcoin is a threat to their power. But at the same time, they realize that they can't ban Bitcoin because it is completely decentralized. By arresting a few masterminds or raiding mining farms, they can't destroy Bitcoin. There is only one way to put down Bitcoin, and that is to destroy internet altogether. I really doubt whether they will go that far.

You mentioned two major risks here: so far regulation, both on the tax and the licenses side, has not been able to circumvent or direct bitcoin advancements.
Bitcoin is still running on its own and late-adopters (institutional, banks, wealth managers etc.) are jumping onboard to avoid missing the party.
Surely, this is a never-ending fight and I sincerely hope that bitcoin will keep running no matter how tough the external circumstances may be.
 

@acquafredda. However, the policies created under the Biden administration might still not be good for bitcoin even if she herself knows that what she has been telling everyone is wrong. She does not care if she is wrong. She only wants her billions of campaign funds against bitcoin.

As I have mentioned, higher taxes and stricter licenses for miners in America will be the beginning. I also predict that in America, Asic resistant cryptocoins will become more popular for miners.

So, Yellen last week called bitcoin "an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions" and a highly speculative asset: and we all know that.
I would have never imagined who could have possibly given her a better answer for that: please enter Miami Mayor Francis Suarez who replied
"It doesn't surprise me at all that a Treasury secretary would find a decentralized potential currency ... to be hostile to a currency that they control."
Chapeau

It also appears that the Biden administration is creating another push for the storyboard that bitcoin is wasting electricity. I predict higher taxes for miners in America and millions of keyboard typing attacks on bitcoin users from liberal social justice warriors in social media. Bitcoiners would wish it was Trump.

Bitcoin is currently a hot topic of discussion, as well as an acquisition for personal needs.  The finance minister is partly right to talk about transactions, but not for long.  Bitcoin is relatively new to use, so it  caught on.

I think you are right with the "if ever...".   As long as she is on the payroll of the gangsters currently in DC - err, politicians in DC - she'll never admit it.

This sounds so much Jamie Dimon 2017...
At least he admitted lately that he was wrong. Let's see how long will she need for admitting that.. if ever...

Those in power would need to maintain a clear distinction between those who follow them and the others. It is a matter of surviving and self-reproducing which is what powers does constantly. Also, it is very important to put labels on people so that they also get to know the others and do not have to spend too much time too recognize friends or foes.
It is very sad but this is the state of things in 2021.

The US government do have some educated folks and they understand that it is not possible to shut down the cryptocurrency market. If they close down the KYC-enabled mainstream exchanges, the trade will simply shift to P2P platforms. So although they would like to "curtail" the Bitcoin activity, they will not attempt to do that right now. But that doesn't mean that individuals such as Yellen will stop spewing venom directed towards cryptocurrency on a regular basis.

Anyone who wants to be left alone to make their own choices for themselves and not be under the boot of the statists - whether fascist, socialist, communist or any other form of authoritarian - is now a "far right extremist."  It is the method of attempting to shut people up and technologies down without actually having to have a rational discussing about what the alternative is.

Exactly.  Yellen knows the threat that bitcoin poses to fiat and consequently to the Federal Reserve.  All the statists know it and know it will then threaten their hegemony in many areas.

All studies show Bitcoin is barely used for crime at all, same goes for mixer traffic, and yet they keep spewing this BS. Doesn't take a genius that they're preparing the ground for the introduction of some draconian measures when the time is the most convenient, perhaps after some high-profile criminal gets connected to some BTC transaction, or under similar circumstances.

I told a lot of people who were cheering thinking the new democrat wave will be "good for bitcoin" that it might now be the case and slowly, step by step the new people in charge seem to be the worse, and one single event that a probably most of us are unaware or don't give a damn might trigger something really really bad.

Yellen has already mentioned bitcoin a number of times and accused it of being a tool if terrorist and criminals, there was a release by the DOJ on how North Korea is financing its nuclear program with cryptocurrency,  and the little snowball I was talking about:


And here is the effect:
https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hhrg-117-ba10-wstate-brooksl-20210225.pdf


Once they've started with the terrorism and far-right extremist narrative nothing good will come out of it.

But surely, if it was "extremely inefficient", it wouldn't need "curtailing"?  I mean... which is it?   

For the two "well-known" points, I would have to disagree that they may be "well-known" but not necessarily accurate.

First as far as the power consumption goes, one really needs to compare bitcoin's power consumption with the entire fiat ecosystem world wide, from the banks, branches, trucks to move fiat around, printing, paper, design, security, human cost in the ability of the power-hungry to skim off 3-300% of the value of everyone's assets every year, the millions of computers running at every place that handles fiat etc.  So it is debatable which would be more power efficient.

Second, you need to clearly define this:
"...how speed a transaction can be done at least compared to Visa or Mastercard..."

Because if you truly mean "done" as in "completed" then bitcoin is many orders of magnitude faster since Visa and Mastercard can be reversed for months.  Bitcoin reversed for, perhaps an a few hours if one got extremely lucky.  If you mean "done" as in the transaction is started, then bitcoin and Visa/MC are fast and give the illusion of a transaction being "completed" when in reality it is similar to it being in the mempool.  Lightning and other second level  can make things significantly faster from a "initial confirmation" perspective and from an irreversibility perspective giving you both the confidence that it will instantly (1 -2 seconds) become locked in.  Lightning is more akin to handing someone cash or having an irreversible credit card. 

:-)

We seem to have real Bitcoin believers in some key places - first that young man appears behind Yellen with the sign "Buy Bitcoin", and then the whole payment platform crashes for as long as 3 hours. Someone can call it "operational error", but I would say that someone is sending a very clear message - I just hope that for this case they will not blame North Korea or Iran as the culprits on duty for all the problems in the world.