> I wonder if US lawmakers would step in to try to shut down these systems.
It's unecessary to shut down because fiat off-ramps are the Achilles heal. Already there are wallet address banlist [1]; and woe to any instituion who processes transactions which originate from those addresses.
How do those banlists work? If they send a bunch of coins to innocent wallets, are those now completely tainted or are people tracking what percentage of coins in each wallet are "legitimate"?
I always figured the best way to take your filthy crypto lucre to an fiat is through NFTs. Mint something stupid and sell it to your banned wallet for a ridiculous price. If you just send it from one wallet to another there is no plausible deniability and that transaction will be tracked and scrutinized. Just like laundering fiat through fine art you have to have something that can be subjectively valued and sold.
> It's been over half a decade since that stopped mattering, for me.
It's certainly going to matter come tax season to businesses which are/will be forced to convert Monero to local fiat.
> I've bought goods and services directly with Monero plenty of times. I've paid invoices that the merchant put in Bitcoin, while using a third party to pay in Monero, which the third party then paid in Bitcoin.
US businesses and persons pay tax in income no matter what asset it was received in, and report capital gains or losses as well upon liquidation into another asset such as fiat
There is nothing unique about crypto or monero in that regard, what did you have in mind?
It seems like after every media, government, celebrity and politician, who can be bought, has been bought, and every sucker pilfered, then this thing will finally come to its horrible end.
I did not think I would experience a bubble that rivals the Dot Com or Mississippi bubbles. But here we are.
The USD is backed by 11 nuclear aircraft carriers, 68+ nuclear submarines, 8725+ tanks, 1,359,685+ military service members, a police force and one IRS that makes damn sure taxes are paid in USD or "damn would be a shame if the governemnt took your home/car/freedom away"
That’s actually a really solid and novel argument and you might have changed my opinion here (give me some time to think about it). The USD is backed by the military not by gold.
The late David Graeber helped shape grounded ideas on money. His book entitled "Debt: The First 5000 Years" cover the topic, but he also discusses the core ideas in interviews freely available on YouTube.
Is this just protifing on a topical craze or does this have staying power? What experience does in-game NFTs offer to players that they otherwise cannot find in traditional database backed assets?
This is a good point. Black markets are indeed part of the real economy, whether governments and people like it or not. That being said, regulation is inevitible.
Wow. I'm sure you have all the research and experience to vomit that psychoanalytic gem with authority.