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posted by janrinok on Sunday December 18 2022, @02:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the regulating-self-regulation dept.

Germany wants countries to regulate the crypto industry after the FTX and Bankman-Fried debacle- Technology News, Firstpost:

Germany's top regulator this week called for global regulation of the cryptocurrency industry to protect consumers, prevent money laundering and preserve financial stability.

Mark Branson, the president of Germany's financial market regulator BaFin, also known as the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority of Germany, said a that hands-off approach that would "just let the industry grow as a playground for grownups" was the wrong tactic.

"We've seen the self-regulated world. It will not work," Branson told journalists in Frankfurt on Tuesday evening.

Branson was speaking hours after U.S. prosecutors accused Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, of misappropriating billions of dollars and violating campaign laws in what has been described as potentially one of America's biggest financial frauds.

[...] Regulation of the industry has been loose and patchwork at best. Germany requires licences for banks to deal with cryptocurrency.

[...] The European Union has been working on a new Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) that some, including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, say would need to be broadened out in a future iteration and branded "MiCA 2".


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Sunday December 18 2022, @03:22PM (3 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Sunday December 18 2022, @03:22PM (#1283005)

    Because if you're trying to confuse people into making stupid decisions, the techniques are the same whether you're trying to get them to part with their money, part with their bodily autonomy, or simply back a particular political candidate.

    The technique, in a nutshell: Bypass their higher-order brain functions with appeals to deep emotions like parents' love of their children. The first ask is always something small, so they'll be likely to say yes to it. Apply guilt and shame as needed to convince them to say yes to it. Once they say yes to it, slowly ramp up what you're asking of them, and tell them it's all OK in service of a good cause. Repeat until they're willingly turning over their life savings, or signing 1-million-year contracts, or other ridiculous stuff.

    --
    "Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 18 2022, @08:14PM (2 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Sunday December 18 2022, @08:14PM (#1283038) Journal

    It also has to do with gathering the sorts of people vulnerable to emotional manipulation. In short, finding the suckers. Part of that works includes weeding out those who ask too many probing questions that get them on the right track to figuring out what is really going on. Such members are pushed out as soon as possible, before they can tell anyone else in the group what they've learned, and preferably before they themselves have it entirely figured out. In recent times, the US Republican Party has gone down that path. It is now a giant coalition of suckers.

    The demagogues and similar ilk, to make these cons more effective, attack education itself. Well educated people, with learning firmly grounded in science and rational thinking and not the religious indoctrination that the demagogues falsely label as education, are a lot harder to con. Another reason is that young people are of course far less experienced with cons, as well as not yet finished with formal education, and are therefore more vulnerable. A third reason is that science that gives the lie to their cons must be answered somehow, and their preferred methods are to bury it, keep the suckers from ever hearing it, and where that fails, go on the attack, try to discredit scientists and science and education itself, employing any bull that might stick in the minds of the suckers. The ones running these cons don't just find and gather suckers, they also try to make suckers.

    How this age old con with a thousand faces can finally be shut down forever, is the question. I think that actually, we're closer than ever to the end of it. Yes, recent political events had these forces enjoy a brief ascendancy, but ultimately their time in power served mainly to further educate the public on what they really are, bigoted hypocrites, and what fascism really is. Meanwhile, typical superstitions of the 19th century and earlier have been reduced to mere entertainment. Paranormal woo enjoyed a short burst of popularity and serious consideration some 60 years ago, but that faded. Scientists of the 17th century had to labor under a cloud of oppressive religious thinking, ever having to worry whether a discovery might be considered blasphemous, and constraining their inquiries to avoid that sort of trouble. Today, that is not completely gone, but it is much lessened. In recent times, pretty much only the stem cell researchers had to tiptoe around religion. Information showing what evil frauds and liars these demagogic leaders are is more copious and accessible than ever. Incidents such as the Jonestown mass suicide are hugely infamous and well documented. The mass murders perpetrated in the Holocaust are also extremely well documented. There surely were many mass suicides before the 20th century, but I'm guessing most have been forgotten. Some of the Crusades could be considered mass suicides. At any rate, the whole idea of Crusading lost credibility as it became impossible to explain why God had allowed so many of them to fail horribly, why they didn't appear to be divinely favored after all. For centuries, it's been all downhill for irrationality. For the purely financial cons, such as the infamous Ponzi scheme, Madoff's fraudulent investment fund, and now this crypto currency collapse, not only is there more recorded information about it all, there is also more study and analysis of it.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 19 2022, @07:13AM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 19 2022, @07:13AM (#1283127) Journal

      How this age old con with a thousand faces can finally be shut down forever, is the question.

      End all sentient life. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

      This is just a standard outcome of an environment with free-willed entities and conflicts of interest. There's no magic sauce that can get rid of it altogether. You can merely attach some level of negative consequences to the behavior and mitigate it.

      Keep in mind that some of those conmen are in government making the laws. And unlike you, I'm not going to just blame one party for it.

      • (Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday December 20 2022, @05:35PM

        by quietus (6328) on Tuesday December 20 2022, @05:35PM (#1283367) Journal

        Government (and, as a consequence, regulation) has at least a majority voting system to prevent the conmen of getting their way too easily.