Proposed stablecoin legislation will make HBD illegal in the US - unless granted explicit approval by the Department of Treasury.
HBD pretty clearly falls under the provided definition of a fiat-based stablecoin, regardless of being backed by Hive. That is at least if we continue to peg it to USD, or any other fiat currency.
Which "person" issues HBD? Person here includes legal corporations.
HBD is just public writing of debts between consenting "people". It is speach. What gives that Congress the authority to restrict speech?
It's not just issuance, the bill language is broader than that. An argument for a lawyer, but I think what a witness does would easily be able to fit under 'uses, issues or allows use of'. For example, including transactions in blocks is almost certainly 'allows use of'.
I agree with you re: speech, but do we want to bet the farm on the US court system agreeing with that legal argument? In practice many forms of monetary contracts which could be considered speech get regulated by the US government without the courts rejecting that.
It sucks to hear this. I still think enforcing this is going to go as well as keeping kids under 13 off of social media. I was a kid when they created those regulations and many kids were on Facebook before they hit 13. These laws will fail at enforcing.
Hive would benefit immeasurably from any attempt to shut is down.
It would suck for US based witnesses, but this is coming from the fascists they keep allowing into power and the rest of the world is a big place.
Hive is anti-fragile, and will increase in resilience with attacks, but we're not invulnerable. We're decentralized, which reduces surface of attack, but there are still plenty of points to be attacked.
In my view, we are the guerrillas vs conventional army. Robert de Bruce vs. Edward II. We're not likely to win a straight up, conventional fight, especially not a legal one - that's their home turf, they've vastly more resources and they get to make the rules. At least, not until we've won much more on our terms first.
The state has more resources. But their leadership hasn't got a clue, they've only caught on to stablecoins now after years, and tbh it's primarily Tether (and perhaps USDC) in their sights. We have the ability to change quickly, seem insignificant, grow while the state is concerned about other things.
Strategically - yes decentralization makes us harder to attack, but it will be MUCH MUCH more so when Hive is something that's on every smartphone, that the public is already using every day and when attacking it is attacking the public at large. But for now our biggest advantage is not decentralization, but the fact that we can change and adapt, innovate quickly to the point that the state never realizes we're a relevant threat until we're already at that point.
Here's what I'll have built in a few weeks: 2 way Hive to Lightning gateway.
Someone in El Salvador (for example) could convert $10 of Lightning BTC to HBD and save it earning 10% with a 3.5% call. And then convert back to spend it.
And the gateway can be replicated.
The world is a big place and most nations (including close US allies) actually have contrary interests to the US on this issue. Only the US wants to preserve the USD as world reserve currency, which is what this is about.
If the US government wants to try whack a mole against US based witnesses (who can go completely anonymous if required) they will fail.
The most they will do it drive the best and brightest out of the US.
No one knows who many of the biggest Hive whales and witnesses even are.
This will just push US based witnesses to go completely anonymous or leave the US.
Frankly any US person with significant crypto assets should consider getting multiple passports and moving to a low tax, crypto friendly jurisdiction.
Please keep us updated on this! Thanks for the pro tip! Hopefully, this is better defined.
How would a proposal be made to get an experienced law firm on retainer to help guide us in these emerging crypto gray matter legal areas like this or even content management on servers.
But that is a loaded question in a decentralized environment. Still yet, I would like to see some sort of reputable community sponsored law firm on retainer experienced in crypto to help provide support for witnesses operating nodes and to help steer us in to a legally sustainable future. I cant even imagine there are even law firms available to do that if they did exist.
Im just thinking out loud. Probably spoke ignorantly on some matters. If you can kind of follow I'd love your input.
As a lawyer I don't agree.
Let the big centralised stablecoin issuers fight this.
It actually is in Hive's interest if centralized stablecoins are killed off and people have to move to global decentralized ones, where the US government has no jurisdiction or power of enforcement.
I agree with the idea of having a law firm on retainer for Hive. I'm not sure if the DHF can afford it, but it would be useful for more than just this situation.
As for how to implement it, a respected and trusted member of the community would have to contact a firm, work out specific details, especially with regard to costs, discuss it with stakeholders, and when they are confident they have a detailed proposal and support from major stakeholders, then they actually make the proposal post, with the money going to an account that will be exclusively used for the purpose of paying the legal fees.
It would be complicated. But maybe that one person could be a community of the top 20 witnesses with their consensus vote. Maybe based off a dpoll only they can access?
I dont know im really thinking out loud now🤣
But maybe within the top 20 witnesses they do trust one person enough to push them on the community?
Some things should just be one person. Stakeholders as a whole will vote for it if they see the value exceeding the cost, it's a trusted and respected person, and the proposal is detailed wrt costs and scope.
Understand... Love the posts and thanks for your time!
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In my view the most sensible solution, rather than directly cave nor try to fight the US government on this (we are too small at this point to win such a fight), would be to sidestep by defining an index of commodities, and re-peg to the new index.
The index can be defined as an open standard so that other cryptocurrencies may also peg algorithmic stablecoins to it.
Hive Dollars will become their own independent currency, users can treat them like foreign currency (euros, pounds, francs etc) - they may not be exactly 1:1 with their local currency, but they are pretty stable nonetheless, and there is no problem pricing goods/service in these denominations.
This is what needs to happen eventually anyway, right?
In my view yes, it would eventually become necessary if/when USD becomes highly inflationary.
It sounds complicated, but repegging to an index of commodities is actually quite simple technically and requires no changes to consensus rules. The challenge will be getting consensus on actually doing it. The drawback is that it's a little more conceptually difficult for the average user.
I wonder if the exchanges would consider getting together to create some kind of AMM to back it, where users could stake their tokens for a small return.
Or as I have said earlier, perhaps the real usecase for BTC is to back a decentralised industry standard token.
This is not my area, so I am bit sure how it is accomplished.
It really doesn't need anything as complicated as that.
Repegging to an index is something the witnesses can accomplish very easily.
BTW, not sure, not a "bit sure" :)
While I am sure all the legal experts on this post are totally right. (insert eye roll)
I think I'll wait until there is some clarity on the situation before jumping to assumptions and spreading FUD