Senator Posts Cryptocurrency Bill On GitHub, Chaos Ensues (theverge.com) 41
On Wednesday, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) posted her upcoming cryptocurrency regulation bill on GitHub. What she got in return were eight pull requests and lots of trolling. The Verge reports: As of press time, Github users have commented on 24 issues in the bill and made eight pull requests -- some of which have proposed meaningful additions to the bill. One user asked the senators to "increase the value of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies with a tax on mining." Another thread raised concerns about algorithmic backing of stablecoins.
However, the more common response has been trolling. One flagged issue is titled, "You Know You Can Find Someone To Do Findom Using Google, Right." Another is titled only with the eggplant emoji. In a related thread, a user commented, "Feds are not looking post floppa," accompanied by a picture of a popular Russian caracal who has gained an internet following under the name "Big Floppa." The trolling also extends to commit requests, where one user proposed replacing the bill with the source code of the popular first-person shooter Doom. "This bill would do far more to benefit everyday Americans if its text was replaced with the source code of Doom," reads a comment responding to the request. "Devs should merge asap."
However, the more common response has been trolling. One flagged issue is titled, "You Know You Can Find Someone To Do Findom Using Google, Right." Another is titled only with the eggplant emoji. In a related thread, a user commented, "Feds are not looking post floppa," accompanied by a picture of a popular Russian caracal who has gained an internet following under the name "Big Floppa." The trolling also extends to commit requests, where one user proposed replacing the bill with the source code of the popular first-person shooter Doom. "This bill would do far more to benefit everyday Americans if its text was replaced with the source code of Doom," reads a comment responding to the request. "Devs should merge asap."
If you have to algorithmically back a stablecoin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you have to algorithmically back a stablecoi (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
What's the point of a coin backed by and pegged to a government issued fiat currency in the first place? Wasn't the whole point of BitCoin (or cryptocurrency in a general sense) to get away from the possibility of a currency that can be devalued by the whim of whoever controls the printing press?
Devaluing fiat currency is generally more difficult than that. Certainly more difficult than a cryptocurrency fluctuating because of a tweet. Google crypto value musk tweet [google.com]:
- When Elon Musk tweets, crypto prices move [vox.com]
- Bitcoin falls after Elon Musk tweets breakup meme [cnbc.com]
- Bitcoin price rises after Elon Musk tweet on energy use [cnbc.com]
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What's the point of a coin backed by and pegged to a government issued fiat currency
It makes the coin system less of a speculative investment and more of a monetary system. Most people that buy coins aren't using them to buy goods and services. They are holding them hoping they will appreciate.
Govt currencies are generally more stable. Because of tanks of missiles and F35 stealth fighters and the CIA and things like that. Stability in a monetary systems is a good thing. Some might say it's a requirement.
devalued by the whim of whoever controls the printing press?
If you trust the government less than the low lives that run coin exchanges, the algor
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But why not just own the original currency? What's the benefit owning the pegged crypto and hoping and praying the peg isn't a sham?
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Yes, agreed. I think the answer would be something like "if there's going to by crypto, we need to manage it". There's simply no way the govt is going to allow a monetary system that can evade taxes to take over.
It's how you get real money (Score:5, Interesting)
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To be fair, as money laundering (often for criminal enterprises, see ransomware for a prime example) is the primary purpose of crapcoins, making money laundering easier is an improvement. My guess is by now that all the "investors" in crapcoins really only serve as cover-traffic to make it not too easy to follow-the-money for the criminal activities.
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it's not a stablecoin, it's a scam. I mean, these are all scams of one kind or another, but it's a worse scam. You're shifting numbers around to hide the fact that the coin isn't actual backed by a real asset.
Most currencies aren't backed by anything other than (faith in) the government that issued it -- Fiat [investopedia.com] Money [wikipedia.org]. But I agree that pegging a cryptocurrency to an algorithm, rather than simply to one of those, isn't what I'd consider "stable". Otherwise, it may seem like crypto is pegging you ...
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Soooo, the Federal Reserve is "nothing"? Banking regulation is "nothing"? All the trade done and reserves kept in a real currency is "nothing"? What world do you live in? Because it most certainly is not this one here.
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Those aren't nothing, but they're not the something that matters here.
Your confusing currencies backed by a commodity like gold vs a fiat currency [wikipedia.org] which (basically) has value simply because the Government issuing it says it does. US currency is the latter -- "backed by the full faith of the US Government".
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Indeed. All this apparently serves is to obscure the fact it is built on hot air by adding a bit of complexity and obfuscation. Apparently too many people cannot deal with that and believe that "stable" part of the lie.
GitHub common for legislation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GitHub common for legislation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Using a publicly-accessible git repository should be mandatory for legislative purposes. Tracking all the changes to bills and laws is a huge undertaking. Git would make the process trivial.
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Using a publicly-accessible git repository
I assume git doesn't understand whatever document format this things normally get written in (98% chance it's Microsoft Word). So you wouldn't be able to easily see diffs. Git would just see it as a binary file.
I see in this case they posted it in text, but I guarantee they didn't write it in a text editor. No reason why it needs to be anything other than text. But trying telling that to 100 aging senators that learned exactly one software application namely Microsoft Word.
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docx/odt and are actually zipped xml, you can versionize them in git. Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
However I don't really understand the original problem. I hope to god you already had that implemented. A way to check all enacted laws up to date and past versions, also all drafts produced during legislation process, names of those who proposed changes and the fate of the change proposals, all speech transcripts... I can find that easily for my country. I needed it few weeks ago when looking in
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Well, he says in the limitations "loss of rich text". You might be able to see the diffs of a giant scary XML document, but it wouldn't be pretty. XML isn't meant to be human readable.
However I don't really understand the original problem.
They obviously have a versioning system they use for such documents already. I think what happened is her intern told her she'd get nerd votes if she dumped it into github.
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I assume git doesn't understand whatever document format this things normally get written in....
You're probably right, and git is probably not the most effective way to track legislative revisions. But I would love to have a tool that shows legislative changes, who voted for them, and discussions about the changes.
Re:GitHub common for legislation? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you conveniently forgetting about all the legislation written by unions? Particularly at the state level, the government employee unions and teacher unions author a great deal of the legislation put forth by Democrats. If you're going to go after "big" something on one side, be sure to be honest and include the "big" something on the other side. We need to get the parasites out of writing legislation and having our elected officials just be bought and paid for rubber stamps. And that's for both side
Re: GitHub common for legislation? (Score:2)
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Most cases don't need git in the same way that most cases don't need a blockchain: decentralization is not a feature when the central authority is the point.
The Office of Law Revision Counsel already exists: https://uscode.house.gov/brows... [house.gov]
They even have twitter account announcing updates: https://twitter.com/uscode [twitter.com]
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I though of the opposite. It's a great way to include only software engineers into the legislation. You need to learn git and command-line, this is out of reach for most regular citizen. it's like you are open to all suggestions as long as presented in the form of a 1:200 scale copy of the Statue of LIberty with your proposal engraved into the book in her hands. I would say it's super easy to sculpt for anyone with minimal knowledge of art willing to learn.
I can only compare with a few countries I know, as
Re:GitHub common for legislation? (Score:5, Informative)
"I though of the opposite. It's a great way to include only software engineers into the legislation. You need to learn git and command-line, this is out of reach for most regular citizen."
I think your point is undercut by the fact that there are links to the repository in the summary. Anyone can view documents in question and submit changes from their web browser or phone, you don't need any command lines or any specific knowledge of git.
Re:GitHub common for legislation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Alright, thanks for noting it's about posting comments on the web interface. Then it's not much about a git repository then, it's about an issue tracker. Same could have been obtained on a personal blog or social media page where, very importantly, many of his fellow citizen already have an account and a application running. I still think there is a sort of elitism in choosing the network that is exclusively used by professional engineers.
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I meant "Alright, thanks for giving me the the information I missed". I meant to thank you, not to be sarcastic.
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I still think there is a sort of elitism in choosing the network that is exclusively used by professional engineers.
What? Tons of people go to github just to download software, or to file bug reports. It is literally provably not exclusively used by professional engineers.
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submit changes from their web browser or phone, you don't need any command lines or any specific knowledge of git.
Even just using the web interface, one can make a comment, but to actually submit a pull request is not trivial and I wouldn't trust any but the highly tech savvy to do so. Git absolutely needs to be understood, even if you don't use the command line.
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That's not true, you can do a pull request by simply browsing the code in the GitHub UI and editing it - there's no need to clone the repo or do anything with the command line. I've submitted numerous pull requests to projects this way because it's convenient
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You need to learn git and command-line, this is out of reach for most regular citizen.
Git is the underlying technology. You can slap whatever interface you want on top of it. You don't need to learn git to use github to browse things.
Anyway, clicking on the "commits" link isn't too hard.
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I though of the opposite. It's a great way to include only software engineers into the legislation. You need to learn git and command-line, this is out of reach for most regular citizen.
I'm rather curious why you think you need a command-line tool to access this web page: https://github.com/responsible... [github.com]
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What mislead me is that the original sentence puts emphasis on underlying technology git, not that the senator put it on some page on the web (that happens to be github and happens to use git as a storage layer) for people to post comments.
It's not the right choice of tool. The web interface to create pull requests is not really trivial, it's a complicated presentation for technical people to do a technical task. And it needs an account. One of the many existing Wiki solutions would be much more apt to incl
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It's a great way to include only software engineers into the legislation.
It's not a bug, it's a feature. It would be a huge improvement over only lawyers getting included in the legislation process, finally people who at least occasionally have to deal with real life applications would be involved instead of people masturbating in an ivory tower.
If GitHub was using the blockchain... (Score:2)
Then every commit was in one project, one branch. Would be fun. And of course very revolutionary.
open access (Score:3)
> Civil comments and criticisms welcome. Please share widely. We want to get this right. Help us iterate publicly on policy.
I can't find any fault with that. I'm not saying this bill is good or that I support it, just saying that I can appreciate an open access approach. How many politicians actually want to invite this kind of conversation?
And on the other end (Score:2)
of those who don't want regulation, are a bunch of people who lost a lot of money in the crypto crash and they want answers. If you complain to the government, guess what you get? Yup - regulation.
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And that's also what they want. It's what people usually want when they finally got showed that they're too stupid to take care of themselves.
People only want freedom until they notice that it comes with a healthy dose of personal responsibility. And they don't want that. They want to eat all the ice cream in the world, but someone else should have to deal with the brain freeze.
Twas ever thus (Score:2)
The South Sea Bubble was a major scam in the English financial markets of:
1720
resulting in various restrictions on their operation. Of course one of the down sides of this is that people assume that a product is safe because it's legal - and are then surprised when they lose money...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Chaos really? (Score:1)
What's the new definition of chaos? Some people disagree and comment on the topic?