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Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

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Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#131

Post by peterlk »

dreit1 wrote: post #124
Animats wrote: post #63

Well, we're about to find out if the Bitcoin exchanges in China have all the assets they should. The PBOC told them to stop trading, turn over copies of their records to the PBOC, and refund the balances of their customers. We should know within days which exchanges were stealing customer assets. The exchange executives were told not to try to leave China. (Remember Big Vern? Paul Vernon, CEO of Cryptsy. Took the mon…

People actually knowledgable in the crypto community would have told you literally years ago that the Chinese exchanges were shit. ChangPeng Zhao who now runs binance out of Hong Kong, made a reddit post (now deleted) stating exactly what was going on. The issue of exchanges "investing" client funds was known two years ago, and most people stayed away from these exchanges.

I think this is exactly the point the author is making. There exist regulatory entities to protect people from exactly the kind of logic you are using. If I don't know anything about cryptocurrency, and want to start trading, it would be nice to have entities that I can go to to find out the status of various players in the industry. If I'm new to the scene, what would make me inclined to believe 1337_haxor on some crypto-forum? Excluding everyone without deep knowledge is bad for the industry; including everyone without regulation leads to theft. Somewhere in the middle is probably better than either

Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#132

Post by [deleted] »

swfsql wrote: post #115
Nokinside wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would love it. Anyone would love it. Especially if doing the work includes using technology. Buying your computer, phone or car now and getting it 10 years from now would be ideal for the seller.

I got confused by your previous claim. This doesn't "hurt the economy". Yes, 2027 tends to be more productive than 2017, but this requires an increase of investment, that implies savings. Holding money allows others to use their money to invest , so you actually facilitate productivity to increase. This is "in general", since you allow more good and services to be available to be consumed by others. edit: this animat…

[deleted]

Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#133

Post by CryptoPunk »

calcifer wrote: post #67
darawk wrote: post #66

Most of the author's points are silly. I was a customer of Bitfinex, and I lost a significant sum of money in the hack, but they paid me back. I couldn't be happier with their handling of it. I'm upset that their poor security practices led them to get hacked in the first place, but once it happened, their handling was pretty ideal. I don't know anyone who was a customer of theirs and doesn't approve of how they hand…

So you think the author's very intricately written, detailed arguments are "silly" and all you can offer in retort is an anecdote about how you weren't effected by the Bitfinex hack (which was a tiny part of the author's argument).

There are a lot of lies in the article, and the rest is an intricate hit piece on privacy rights, with the false equivalence between privacy and anarchy/criminality (e.g. the idea that 'only criminals have something to hide'). Ironically the author protects the privacy of his contributors at the end of the article.

Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#134

Post by CryptoPunk »

jamiek88 wrote: post #121
trakout wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a focus on building decentralized exchanges at the moment. Regulation will become more difficult when these become mainstream.

If bitcoin wants to be part of the global financial system avoiding regulation is not the way. That just basically supports the OP. Every thread devolves to how to avoid taxes, kyc etc.

The point of cryptocurrency is to restore privacy in financial matters, not become part of the new centralized financial establishment. The OP doesn't believe in financial privacy, so there is no way cryptocurrency will ever be acceptable to him. He believes in mass surveillance of currency transfers, something which is anathema to a significant segment of the population.

Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#135

Post by argc_argv »

earlz wrote: post #102
walterstucco wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that the cryptocurrency/blockchain space is the next big thing in the world on-par with the internet with the difference that internet worked exactly as planned from the beginning, had a clear goal and solved a real problem.

Did it though? Sure, the base protocol (TCP/IP) has mostly been unchanged up until IPv6, but the early implementations had plenty of bugs and limitations. And the goals solved were less clear back then as well, especially when BBS etc somewhat directly solved the problem of "get some data from another party without leaving your house" quite simply. Remember, there was once a time where there was no standardized image…

writing an Excel macro is HARD

Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#136

Post by gnaritas »

quuquuquu wrote: post #117
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will the police help you when you call them to report it? I highly, HIGHLY doubt it With honest-services and securities fraud, the police are generally there to document, not enforce. If someone stole your WoW gold and you sued, you'd almost certainly have a case. If I were your lawyer (I'm not a lawyer), I'd send a letter to the relevant tax authorities and attorneys general, as a point of leverage during settleme…

I did some Googling. WoW gold theft results in Blizzard suggesting you open a support ticket, despite the fact that WoW gold, like bitcoin, has unofficial street value. I will do more digging but I don't know if anyone has gone to the police for WoW gold theft. I'm not sure why WoW gold is treated differently from Bitcoin, which is apparently an honest to god bonafide US security in the eyes of the law. Re: your poin…

> Why are we going after Big Vern when there are more pressing crimes to deeply investigate?

This is a silly argument, it's not an either or situation, law enforcement can and should pursue all crimes. By your logic, why go after any financial crimes where there are still unsolved murder cases? Do you see how absurd you're being?

> The coins were numbers to me, not dollars.

What your feels tell you has no bearing on the law; bitcoin is a commodity of value and like all commodities of value it's subject to law.

Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#137

Post by gnaritas »

quuquuquu wrote: post #119
swfsql wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's correct it's just numbers in the screen. But this is not to say we can't abstract anything form it, or it's worthless. After all, the internet and yourself are "just stuff flying around".

Child porn is a crime committed via Internet. It is vigorously prosecuted. Identity theft is a crime committed via Internet. It is lazily prosecuted. Stock fraud ("securities" fraud) is a crime that is also vigorously prosecuted. Bitcoin and alt coins, just like WoW gold, are not stocks. Therefore how can the state say Big Vern is committing securities fraud, and that we should spend millions of dollars attempting to…

> Bitcoin and alt coins, just like WoW gold, are not stocks.

Not relevant, securities doesn't mean stocks. A security is basically any financial instrument of value, and crytpo's are most certainly securities and obviously always have been.

You need to get over this notion that "new" things are somehow not subject to existing laws. Slapping a new name like bitcoin on a financial security doesn't suddenly make it not a security; the law is not so trivially circumvented, the law doesn't need to mention a thing by name for it to apply to said thing.

Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#138

Post by PretzelPirate »

trakout wrote: post #109
kwelstr wrote: post #107

In my opinion, the regulators should focus on exchanges applying KYC and make the exchanges function the same a stock exchanges. If I buy a stock in the US through a brokerage house, they have my info and every year they send me a 1099 with my profit/loss for the year that I give my accountant to add to my income tax report. Once the exchanges are regulated like that it would be very difficult to launder money or avo…

There is a focus on building decentralized exchanges at the moment. Regulation will become more difficult when these become mainstream.

Decentralized exchanges can make regulation easy. When you cash out, you have to provide the transaction on the blockchain where you purchased those coins, and at what cost basis. If the transaction was private, you have to provide the means for the government to view the private details.

You can choose not to do that, and if you do, the IRS will assume the cost basis was $0.

I'm have been buying crypto for years, and I'm perfectly happy with that - it gives me the option for privacy, but at a cost.

Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#139

Post by PretzelPirate »

nurettin wrote: post #100

What they really won't tell you about is; if you sign your account with a weak password, someone will brute-force it open and transfer your coins. Which is considerably more interesting and exciting than this article.

This really isn't a problem anymore if you don't store coins on an exchange. Just get a hardware wallet and you have incredibly good digital security.

Re: Things cryptocurrency enthusiasts probably won't tell you

#140

Post by gnaritas »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #40
AgentME wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Focus your time and energy on BTC, ETH and an anonymous coin like XMR. Any other offering should be met with skepticism. To elaborate/explain on this point for those less familiar: those three cryptocurrencies actually are based on real technical innovation, and have developer communities producing more technical innovation. There are many other cryptocurrencies that have zero technical innovation (or completely non…

Technical innovation is not the only type of innovation happening in the crypto space. There are tokens being developed whose innovations are financial, social, political, and economic. Don't assume technical innovation is the end all be all, Ethereum's technical innovation allows for the other types of innovation to occur, for example. To strengthen my argument, you wouldn't expect every startup on the Internet to d…

> Technical innovation is not the only type of innovation happening in the crypto space.

It's the only kind that matters; all other innovation should be built on top of those using the technically innovative base as a building block. Launching "new" coins that are merely clones are simply going to lead to failure. Bitcoin is not like Apache, you can't just grab its code and use it and think you've got what bitcoin has. Bitcoin is not its code, Bitcoin is its network, Bitcoin is like Facebook, network effects dominate, and you must use actual Bitcoin, not just launch a Bitcoin clone, to benefit from it.

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