171–180 of 310 posts
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Ether is more like oil - it is a fuel source used to power smart contracts, token sales, and autonomous organizations.
This analogy is not accurate.
[1] https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-is-meant...
I have a fetish for watching complicated court cases play through. What you realize is a judge in a courtroom has a lot of power. They can take your money, freedom or even kids. However, if I had few hundred thousand in Ethereum encrypted placed into a few random anonymous git hub repros, well, the government can't take it. It is truly yours. No one can take it. That must be horrifying proposition for (some) governme…
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And if you go hide a few million bucks in cash in the middle of a desert, they can't take it either. The hard part has always been getting it out and not getting caught. Nothing is truly yours.
That could work, but cryptocurrencies are more convenient. You could transfer your coins anywhere in the world much easier. For example, you could donate your coins Wikileaks undetected, but it's much harder to do that with cash buried in the desert. It's also possible that the government may declare some bills invalid (what happened in India with larger bills). Also, government could inflate away your wealth by prin…
It's also possible that the government may declare some bills invalid (what happened in India with larger bills). Also, government could inflate away your wealth by printing more currency.
You make mistake of assuming that countries won't put up a global firewall that makes bitcoin/ether network impossible to operate. If China can filter traffic at internet scale, crippling Bitcoin network even if say EU/US/China are on board is trivial.
Currencies are backed by the only thing that matters, its will/trust of the people. And no amount of crypto changes that. Unless of course you have some magical way of baking silicon on your own into processors and other chips used in computers and networking equipment in your backyard.
I would like to make an appeal to the YC community: please reach out and help guide those involved in this rapidly advancing phenomenon. There is a huge amount of instantly-deployable capital in Ethereum and Bitcoin, held by individuals now seeking ways to put it to work. Many technologists will naturally make use of this energy, but so will BS artists and people under the influence of hubris. I am making this appeal…
>Many firms funded by ICOs (or soon to be) have qualified leaders and developers and are developing great ideas, but IMO many are also raising too much money for their own good. No, there aren't. Real money has never been cheaper than it is now. Never in human history. USD, Euros, JPY, etc. Super cheaper. Low single digits to borrow. Anyone doing an 'ICO' is trying to cash out at your expense, big time.
As strange as it sounds, this is indeed the case.
The cost of money is measured in $ per $ (or actually currency per currency) which is a percentage also known as interest rate.
There are no known records of any time in history where interest rates were negative. Sure, only banks can "get" these but they will do and hand them to the next by investing in his asset.
I have a fetish for watching complicated court cases play through. What you realize is a judge in a courtroom has a lot of power. They can take your money, freedom or even kids. However, if I had few hundred thousand in Ethereum encrypted placed into a few random anonymous git hub repros, well, the government can't take it. It is truly yours. No one can take it. That must be horrifying proposition for (some) governme…
How do you turn eth into spendable money without a bank account?
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Well, if money laundering it legitimate to you...
Money laundering, in my opinion, is not only legitimate, but neccessary , given that e.g. European banking transactions end up via SWIFT or implants at the NSA headwuarters. In addition many governments try to move citizens to "electronic payment" (ranging from online banking to NFC credit cards). The reason is once again tracking, and as could be seen during the financial crisis it's easy to just confiscate money wh…
I have a fetish for watching complicated court cases play through. What you realize is a judge in a courtroom has a lot of power. They can take your money, freedom or even kids. However, if I had few hundred thousand in Ethereum encrypted placed into a few random anonymous git hub repros, well, the government can't take it. It is truly yours. No one can take it. That must be horrifying proposition for (some) governme…
And if you go hide a few million bucks in cash in the middle of a desert, they can't take it either. The hard part has always been getting it out and not getting caught. Nothing is truly yours.
People forget that, for that money to have any value, you eventually have to interact with the rest of human society. As another commenter said, we've been dealing with this for centuries--black markets, cartels, smugglers, etc. Everything old is new again.
So this is like buying food vouchers that I can redeem at a store that hasn't yet been built, if indeed it has been given planning permission and even if it does eventually get built, I have no idea how the service and product will taste. And I can't then report any irregularities. Ponzi? No. Unregulated gambling? Of course. Sign me up!
It's worse than that. In some cases, the coins literally serve no purpose. To use your metaphor, it's like buying StoreBucks for a store that hasn't been built yet, with no promise that you'll be able to redeem your StoreBucks for anything at all. For example, a project called Status ( http://status.im/ ) recently held an ICO in which people were tripping over themselves to buy Status's coins. It actually backed up t…
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So the only option is to arrange an in-person meetup with a random stranger from the internet so that they can gouge me with a gigantic markup or just rob me. This sounds terrible even if I have no beef with the government, but totally absurd if I am actually trying to hide money from authorities; for all I know, the person I meet up with is a federal agent or works with them.
It's possible to create a self-executing contract on Ethereum that will automatically send a pre-agreed amount of ether when you make a pre-agreed online bank transfer. In other words, it's possible to have exchange between fiat currencies and cryptocurrency without any need for trust, except in relation to whatever risk there is for each counter-party to report the other for participating in that particular transact…
>the inability to control people. What's horrifying is people thinking like that. We live in societies with rules, with laws that we have agreed upon, and are, for the most part, fair. These same laws and this same governement protects you, gives you at least some basic services. And you're advocating for not holding up your end of the bargain, and removing one big part of the punishment for not holding it up. To peo…
Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. According to political scientists, the average voter has an extremely limited understanding of what their government is doing. The typical person's understanding of economics is similarly extremely limited.
This opens the door to manipulation by demagogues and special interests. The growing control that government exerts over society, seen in everything from the emergence of a mass-surveillance system of unprecedented scope, to the number of regulations on the books, to the percentage of GDP made up of government spending, is not healthy, and needs a counter balance in privacy technology that empowers the individual and limits the Kafkaesque tendencies of collective society.
>And you're advocating for not holding up your end of the bargain, and removing one big part of the punishment for not holding it up.
This is not a bargain one voluntary agrees to. It's not a contract. It's an imposition. It's, ostensibly, majority rule, and nothing more.
>To people advocating that, then I can only hope that since your money cannot be taken away, then more of your freedom will. For the good of all of us.
Your comment genuinely horrifies me. I presume you're saying you want people who don't comply to be put behind bars, for extended lengths of time. And their crime, that you insist is harming the rest us, is to not comply with a plan that the majority imposed on them.
You've justified it in your mind by arguing that these people accepted a bargain, and are now not holding up their end of it.
When seemingly intelligent and articulate people so easily rationalize imprisoning their fellow man and woman, it's horrifying to witness.