Category: Cryptocurrency

New Technology, New Laws

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July 16, 2023

by Stephen Stofka

This week’s letter is about the impact of the internet and digital technologies on our laws. New technologies introduce new connections between people and institutions. What was once separate when a law was written becomes joined under the new technology. Advocacy groups emerge to pressure policymakers to shape new laws and regulations that incorporate a recent technology.

Over twenty years ago, the increasing volume of internet sales not subject to sales tax challenged the meaning of tax nexus. This was a retailer’s physical presence within a state that required it to collect sales tax on purchases and remit those collections to the state. The Sales Tax Institute has a nice explainer on the various types of nexus and the history of court decisions on the topic. Several characteristics of cryptocurrency have challenged policymakers and legal interpretations.

On Thursday, the stock of the Coinbase exchange shot up 25% on the hope that it will prevail in its attempt to operate outside SEC regulations, those that govern conventional market exchanges and securities brokers. A month ago the agency had charged Coinbase for operating as an unregistered securities exchange. On Thursday, a district court judge in a case involving another blockchain ruled that crypto assets were not securities in many cases. The judge cited the Howey test, a 1946 Supreme Court decision that set forth characteristics that defined a security. This past March an article at Coin Telegraph explained the history of the Howey test.  The key phrase in the Howey decision is that an investment contract is “an investment of money in a common enterprise with profits to come solely from the efforts of others.” Is crypto a “common enterprise” whose profits come “solely” from the efforts of others?

The judge’s ruling strengthens the argument by some that crypto has many characteristics of a collectible, which is not considered a security. Classifications rely on shared as well as distinguishing characteristics. Anomalies challenge classification the way that the platypus challenged biologists’ definition of a mammal. Advocates of crypto claim that it is a trustless system of exchange but let’s examine that claim.

A barter transaction between two people is the only exchange that does not involve a third party in some way. Trust is an implied intermediary in an exchange between two parties. Crypto or cash, there is some third party involved in a transaction. Our cash money may read “In God We Trust” but our trust is really in the Federal Reserve, an agency of the U.S. Government. Crypto exchanges have a fiduciary duty to the owners of the crypto coin the exchange holds. That fiduciary duty invites government regulation and it will be a battle of advocacy groups to shape the laws that create those regulations. This week Coinbase may be confident that it will prevail against SEC regulation but there will be an ongoing effort to impose some regulation to protect owners of crypto. As policy is shaped over the coming years, crypto owners can expect that crypto exchanges will experience similar abrupt reevaluations.  

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Photo by Earl Wilcox on Unsplash

Group Affirmation

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by Stephen Stofka

This week’s letter is about the digital currency proposed in a 2008 paper penned by someone or some group writing under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The two problems that Nakamoto’s proposal targeted have been mitigated by other means. That may explain why there has not been wider adoption of digital currencies as a transaction medium.

Although the idea of a digital currency has gained a fervent loyalty in the public, that was not the intended audience. As electronic payments became a greater share of global payments, chargebacks plagued both merchants and banks. By 2010 electronic payments were 8% of global payments. In a decade, they were an estimated 16%, according to a report from McKinsey and Company, the world’s top consulting firm.

The proposal was a method to “make non-reversible payments for non-reversible services” as Nakamoto stated in the introductory paragraph. I won’t dive into the details of the chargeback-to-transaction ratio but it was a much bigger problem in 2008. By 2017, the chargeback-to-transaction ratio was still 3.76% but has fallen to 1.52% by 2021, according to Midigator. I will refer interested readers to two reports published by Midigator, a subsidiary of Equifax, the credit reporting company. The first is the 2022 report on chargebacks and a 2020 explainer of the Rapid Dispute Resolution system used by participating banks and merchants.

The second problem the paper addressed was the minimum amount set by banks and merchants for debit and credit card transactions. In 2008, a common minimum was $5. Today, many merchants will process a transaction of less than $1. Apple routinely charges customers $0.99 per month for additional cloud data storage.

Cash payments solve a verification problem in transactions between strangers. Cash is a non-reversible exchange of money for goods or services. Transactions without cash involve some form of I.O.U. – a check or debit card, or a credit card. The customer gets the good or service. How can the merchant trust the customer’s I.O.U.? This requires a verification process of the customer’s identity and a commitment by a third party like a bank to pay the I.O.U.

The marginal cost to send one more email or one more http request to a web server is nearly zero. The spread of email in the 1990s exposed millions of people to dishonest actors who could send thousands of emails at little cost. A small number of computers could send thousands of counterfeit http requests to a server to overwhelm its resources in a Denial Of Service (DOS) attack. A countermeasure was to require a proof of honest intent by having the computer show some proof of work. An honest agent would do the proof of work to gain access to the server. Such a scheme would frustrate a dishonest agent trying to make repeated attempts to overwhelm a server’s resources.

Nakamoto proposed a currency based on a proof-of-work system rather than trust in a central agency. In a peer-to-peer network, verification is done by consensus. If each voter were defined as an IP address, a malicious actor could simply accumulate a lot of IP addresses then legitimate a fraudulent transaction. To combat that problem, Nakamoto proposed that a voter be defined by CPU, not IP address. Any actor who could amass enough computing power to defeat the system would find it more profitable to use that power to honestly make new digital coin.

Digital currencies have evolved beyond their original purpose. Nakamoto’s currency was designed to combat flaws in electronic payment systems that presented problems for merchants and bank intermediaries. Since 2008 the industry has developed other methods to reduce or resolve chargebacks and fraud. Meanwhile, Nakamoto’s proposal has become a favored security for some investors. Its adoption as a collectible like investment has introduced a pricing volatility that subverts its original purpose as a non-reversible payment, a digital form of cash.

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Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash

Keywords: Nakamoto, crypto  

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Honesty, Power and Crypto

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July 2, 2023

by Stephen Stofka

This week’s letter is about lying and some types of lies, the key part they play in our society and the steps we take to uncover and counter lying. This week’s picture by David Clode on Unsplash is that of a butterfly wing, not an owl.

Like many animals, humans survive by signaling. A growl, the curl of a tail or a frown on a face are forms of signaling. Lying is a signaling tool that we use to get something we want. We may want protection from some threat so we lie. We may want approval from others so we lie. Lies come in several colors. Lies told for some social or public purpose are called white lies. In the 1969 Frazier v. Cupp decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the police could make false statements to gain a confession. These are known as blue lies. There are red lies told to hurt someone or their reputation. We tell green lies to gain some financial advantage.

People are so good at lying that public agencies and private companies spend billions per year to prevent fraudulent claims. As Jennifer Pahlka (2023) noted in her book Recoding America, policymakers will spend far more than a $1 to prevent paying out $1 of a fraudulent claim even if it means that legitimate claimants have to wait longer to receive their benefits. Policymakers are rarely as responsive to people’s needs as they were during the pandemic. In a rush to serve millions of people laid off during the pandemic, many fraudulent claims flooded state unemployment offices. According to an indictment filed in May, recently elected Congressman George Santos (R-NY) was one of those who made a fraudulent claim with New York State and received $24,000 while already employed.

Politicians like Santos attract news coverage but it is not clear that they are any more dishonest than the population in general. It is true that those who are uncomfortable with lying are cautioned not to run for office. Lying is an accepted tactic to confound the opposition, gain a policy foothold or some electoral advantage. Within a democracy, the electoral process is a competition of lies and boasts that political scientists call branding. There is no “truth in advertising” standard that politicians must adhere to when they run for office. It is the voters who must beware when they “buy” whatever ideological concoction a politician is selling. The voters are supposed to act as a giant sieve, straining out the fabrications, the incompetent and crackpots. It is not a perfect system.

The Bitcoin algorithm was designed to “crowd-source” property claims, spreading the verification process to the many nodes in a historical transaction chain. Yet the 15 year history of Bitcoin and other digital currencies has been punctuated with episodes of large scale fraud. According to a Justice Dept. investigation, in 2011, customers of Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox learned that most of the bitcoin stored on the exchange had disappeared. Over a three year period, Russian hackers with unauthorized access to the exchange’s server had stolen most of the Bitcoin stored there. Dishonesty 1, digital security 0.

Forms of digital communication like email allowed scammers to send a lie for a fraction of a penny, far below the cost of bulk mailing. The Federal Trade Commission reported that consumers lost $8.8 billion to fraudsters in 2022. Money transfers, both legitimate and criminal, happen with the flip of some ones and zeroes. Digital currencies can be stolen at far less personal risk than holding up a physical bank so it is surprising that more crypto is not stolen each year. CNN reported an estimate that $3.8 billion worth of digital currency, most of it DeFi, not Bitcoin, was stolen in 2022. That’s just 0.45% of the $840 billion in the market cap of cryptocurrencies at the end of 2022, as tracked by Coin Gecko. The technology that underlies digital currencies could be adapted to verify other forms of transactions.

A century from now, we may put digital currencies in the same historical bucket with the worthless stock certificates of hundreds of railroads and mines issued in the 19th and early 20th century. History is littered with broken dreams destroyed by deceit. Dig down to the ideological foundations of digital currency, however, and there is an enduring idea that will outlast whatever the current form of digital currency trading and transfer. That idea is as old as the Constitution – checks and balances. Money is information and information is power. Unless that power is checked, it accrues into an autocratic regime or an economic monopoly. Digital currency represents a yearning for a check on the accumulation of economic and political power. That idea will not go out of fashion.

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Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Keywords: honesty, crypto, Bitcoin,

Pahlka, J. (2023). Recoding America: Why government is failing in the Digital age and how we can do better. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company.

Work

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April 1, 2018

by Steve Stofka

This week I’ll look at several aspects of work, from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, to the minimum wage.

What is work? In general science or physics, the subject of “work” pictured a horse hitched to a pulley lifting a weight (an example). In one minute, the horse could lift so many pounds a foot in the air and that equaled so much horsepower. Thus we could reduce our definition of work to three components: weight, distance and time.

Even this mechanical definition of work illustrates a problem. If the horse lifted the weight, then let it down again, how would we know that the horse did any work? Should we give the horse a few cups of oats, or have we got a lazy horse?

A variation on that problem – I cut my lawn. My neighbor looks at my lawn and sees that work was done. In a week or two the grass has grown and time has erased any sign that I did work.

Thus, we need a way of recording work done. The product of the work performed may serve as a record. A big pyramid sitting on a desert is a permanent record that work was done. If workers dig holes in the ground, then fill the holes, how do we know any work was done? If they have dug up gold from those holes.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (crypto) are assets like gold. They recognize that some work was done. Equipment, technology and workers were needed to dig up gold. Likewise, electricity was an important resource needed to generate a bitcoin, and even more electricity will be needed to generate a replacement bitcoin if one were lost.

This Politico article is an account of a crypto mining boom in a rural area in Washington state. The electricity consumed is enormous. The mighty Columbia River nearby provides electricity at a fifth of the average cost in the country. By the end of this year, there will be enough electrical capacity in this small area to power the equivalent of a tenth of the homes in Los Angeles. Shipping containers house computer servers which generate so much heat that the exhausted air melts the snow around the containers. As gold records the digging of dirt, a bitcoin records the expenditure of some quantity of electricity.

Assets can represent past work, future work, or a combination of the two. Precious metals, jewels, books and artistic works represent work done in the past. On the other hand, a machine represents future work. Other assets include stocks and bonds, both of which are claims on future work. A bond is a fixed limit claim on a company’s assets. In contrast, a share of stock is an undying claim on a portion of a company’s assets.

The blockchain algorithm behind crypto requires agreement among many parties to confirm a property right to the crypto. The recording of property rights might seem rather ordinary to a reader in the U.S. In some countries, however, property deeds are more easily altered by those in power. In contrast, a blockchain system of recording property rights prevents forgery and alteration.

As a record of work done, money relies on a relatively stable value. High inflation damages the money record of work done. Consequently, high inflation can fracture the social bonds among people. As an example, I cut someone’s lawn on Saturday and am paid. When I spend the money on Sunday, it is worth half the amount. In effect, the money has only recorded that I cut half a lawn. Examples of this hyper-inflation are Zimbabwe in the 2000s, and Yugoslavia in the 1990s (Wikipedia article). Look no further than Venezuela for a current example of the destruction that inflationary policies can have on a society.

Let’s turn from the recording of work done to the doing of it. New unemployment claims are at a 45 year low. A decade ago, job seekers despaired. In contrast, employees today are confident they will quickly find new employment. To illustrate, the quit rate is at the same pace as the mid-2000s, at the height of the housing boom. As a percent of the labor force, new unemployment claims are the lowest ever recorded. Last week’s numbers broke the record set in April 2000 at the height of the dot-com boom.

Equally important to the strength of a job market is the fate of marginal workers who are most vulnerable to the shifting tides of the economy. This includes disabled people who want to work. During the recession, the unemployment rate for disabled men of working age reached almost 20%. Today it is half that.

Let’s turn to another disadvantaged sector of the job market – those who work for minimum wage. The 1930s depression put many employers at an advantage in the job market. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) enacted a wage floor, but many workers were not subject to the new law. In 1955, almost twenty years after passage of the law, “retail workers, service workers, agricultural workers, and construction workers were still not required to be paid at least the minimum wage” (article).

The minimum wage affects many lower paid workers who are making more than minimum wage. In some union jobs, starting wages for helpers are set by contract at a percentage above minimum wage. The understanding may be non-written in some cases. In 1966, the rate was increased from $1.25 per hour to $1.60 per hour. Non-union clerks at a NYC hospital who had been making $1.70 per hour now complained that they were making minimum wage. As a result of their pressure on management, they got a raise within a few months.

Here’s a chart showing the annual increases in the minimum wage for each period since 1950.

MinWagePctInc

In the three decades after World War 2, annual increases in the minimum wage exceeded inflation. Since 1977, the minimum wage standard has not kept pace with inflation.

MinWageLessCPI

If Congress truly represented all of their constituents, they would make the minimum wage adjust automatically with inflation. On the contrary, Congress represents only a small portion of their constituents, and the minimum wage is used as a political football.

Finally, there is the destruction of the record of past work by war. Every minute of every day, living requires calories, another measure of work. Therefore, each of us is a record of work done.  War destroys too many human records, and the unliving records of work like buildings, roads and bridges. Perhaps one day we will fight our battles in video games and stop destroying all those work records.