Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 72 posts

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#61

Post by JumpCrisscross »

thisisit wrote: post #51
Snackchez wrote: post #7

>“All it would take would be one terrorist incident in the U.S. funded by bitcoin for the U.S. regulator to much more seriously step in and take action, he said. “That’s a risk, an unquantifiable risk, bitcoin has that another currency doesn’t." You can't make this up... or maybe I'm not understanding something. So, what's currently funding terrorist attacks?

He is alluding to the anonymous nature of bitcoin. Today even if the funding happens in USD there is trail - to countries and banks. Sanctions can be slapped against countries and banks fined. What about bitcoin? It cannot be fined and the only way to sanction is to "take action"

Bitcoin leaves a permanent trail in a way cash does not. For the IC, Bitcoin is a bonanza.

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#62

Post by PatientTrades »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #60
PatientTrades wrote: post #29

The key aspect of Bitcoin is that buyers/sellers can operate anonymously. Once governments regulate Bitcoin and makes the anonymous nature illegal, Bitcoin will crash and be essentially useless.

No, it will just be illegal. It will still be useful for those who are willing to be illegal. The trick for the government will not be creating regulations or prohibitions. The trick will be enforcement.

The only reason cryptocurrencies are valuable is because buyers/sellers can remain anonymous. Once that aspect is taken away there is literally no use for the currency other than being a hedge against government backed money. Even governments can shut down servers making the currencies useless similar to what china did.

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#63

Post by johnvonneumann »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #57
johnvonneumann wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it right that I get downvoted for asking for someone to back their bullshit opinions up with facts? Enjoy your hyperbole.

Maybe because CyberDildonics asked a couple of questions, and you're asking him/her for facts and sources. People don't need facts to ask questions. That's kind of why you ask - to get facts. You read CyberDildonics' questions as being an attempt to push an opinion (which seems unjustified to me). You might try not assuming the worst about people in the absence of better evidence...

I'm asking him to back his opinion up because his question was a loaded question:

Question: "Why not just use another crypto-currency?"

Load Question: "Why not just use a crypto-currency that isn't clogged by developers trying to make people use their proprietary service?"

He is applying bias to it from the get go, your comment is a bit strange, asking a question doesn't exempt you from asking honest questions that aren't loaded, you don't enter some realm of sanctity just because you're asking a question. You can ask for further clarity as to what the person is asking before answering it.

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#64

Post by AnimalMuppet »

johnvonneumann wrote: post #63
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because CyberDildonics asked a couple of questions, and you're asking him/her for facts and sources. People don't need facts to ask questions. That's kind of why you ask - to get facts. You read CyberDildonics' questions as being an attempt to push an opinion (which seems unjustified to me). You might try not assuming the worst about people in the absence of better evidence...

I'm asking him to back his opinion up because his question was a loaded question: Question: "Why not just use another crypto-currency?" Load Question: "Why not just use a crypto-currency that isn't clogged by developers trying to make people use their proprietary service?" He is applying bias to it from the get go, your comment is a bit strange, asking a question doesn't exempt you from asking honest questions that a…

But the question was about using Bitcoin to back something else. What's the "something else"? It's not Bitcoin. Is it something proprietary? dxhdr (whose post triggered this conversation) doesn't say, but it would almost certainly be more proprietary than Bitcoin.

Why "almost certainly more proprietary than Bitcoin"? Because somebody's using their bitcoin to back something else. That "somebody" creates (and therefore to some degree controls) that "something else".

At that point, CyberDildonics' question isn't loaded. It's a perfectly reasonable question in response to the proposed idea.

And, after all this back and forth, the question remains: Why would I want to use something backed by Bitcoin, when I could just use Bitcoin?

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#65

Post by johnvonneumann »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #8
dxhdr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably at 1 mil per coin it has become our defacto medium of exchange. Actual bitcoins become the new gold bars, sitting untouched in vaults and used as a reserve backing other more efficient means of crypto exchange.

Why would they be used to back anything? Why not just use a crypto-currency that isn't clogged by developers trying to make people use their proprietary service?

Yeah after re-reading this thread I think I've properly gone off the deep end with this one, I've probably misread your initial comment, I think, sorry if I did.

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#66

Post by XR0CSWV3h3kZWg »

samsonradu wrote: post #50
rahulkapil wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it is not that easy to ban. The Bitcoin code is open source. Anyone from anywhere can download the code and run a local copy. Your coins are securely stored across computers all over the world. Your balance cannot be frozen by any authority. Maybe central exchanges that convert fiat to Bitcoin could be regulated, but mining cannot be stopped, transactions cannot be stopped. Unless governments all over the wo…

> Your coins are securely stored across computers all over the world. Please lets not start this debate. Times and times again it has been proven that software is not secure. OpenSSL was also thought to be secure for quite some time too..

Agreed. In this case there is an implicit, very large, bug bounty that anyone can cash in. So far there has been one creation of new bitcoin bug and zero spending other people's bitcoin bugs.

That does not mean it's secure, but at this point it's looking more secure every day.

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#67

Post by XR0CSWV3h3kZWg »

> Bitcoin has also not reached the critical mass to be considered a viable currency to invest in, UBS’s Mark Haefele said in an interview. The total sum of all cryptocurrencies is “not even the size of some of the smaller currencies" that UBS would allocate to, he said.

> “All it would take would be one terrorist incident in the U.S. funded by bitcoin for the U.S. regulator to much more seriously step in and take action, he said. “That’s a risk, an unquantifiable risk, bitcoin has that another currency doesn’t."

These two taken together seem to paint two very different pictures for bitcoin.

1) Bitcoin makes it past the point where a couple singular bad acts pushes governments to crush it. Bitcoin sheds almost all of the value that was there as speculation. Value potentially crashes all the way down to ~1USD, prices before mtgox trading really started. Bitcoin continues to run, more and more over encrypted channels or TOR. Mining is prosecuted and only done in some states, or clandestinely (see mining in Venezuela). Bitcoin continues to be used on the dark markets of the internet.

2) Bitcoin is adopted by wallstreet, action against bitcoin is prevented and tempered by lobbyists with deep pockets. Price increases dramatically.

Either future is amazing to me. Either gritty cyberpunk or vanilla sci-fi. Glad to see this happen in my lifetime.

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#68

Post by joosters »

corporateslave6 wrote: post #5
imustbeevil wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the best case scenario is Bitcoin hits $1,000,000 per coin and never moves again, why would anyone ever put more money into it? The only value Bitcoin has is appreciation. If it ever becomes stable it will necessarily be worthless.

this isnt true, when countries have massive instability and currency manipulation (see Zimbabwe), people can buy bitcoin as an alternative store of value.

Zimbabwe uses the US dollar.

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#69

Post by samsonradu »

XR0CSWV3h3kZWg wrote: post #66
samsonradu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your coins are securely stored across computers all over the world. Please lets not start this debate. Times and times again it has been proven that software is not secure. OpenSSL was also thought to be secure for quite some time too..

Agreed. In this case there is an implicit, very large, bug bounty that anyone can cash in. So far there has been one creation of new bitcoin bug and zero spending other people's bitcoin bugs. That does not mean it's secure, but at this point it's looking more secure every day.

The more centralized bitcoin becomes, and it will, the more vulnerable it will be. As time goes by a few exchanges will become huge BTC storage centers. What if it’s an inside attack and someone steals the data from the servers? Is there any insurance/rollback mechanism in place?

Re: The World's Biggest Wealth Manager Won't Touch Bitcoin

#70

Post by lukevdp »

rahulkapil wrote: post #48
lukevdp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying it's fragile in that the US Government could ban it and the value of the coin disappears overnight. It's very easy to ban - make it illegal to sell Bitcoin, force ISPs to block international sites that do.

Actually it is not that easy to ban. The Bitcoin code is open source. Anyone from anywhere can download the code and run a local copy. Your coins are securely stored across computers all over the world. Your balance cannot be frozen by any authority. Maybe central exchanges that convert fiat to Bitcoin could be regulated, but mining cannot be stopped, transactions cannot be stopped. Unless governments all over the wo…

Unless you can pay taxes in Bitcoin, people will always need to be able to convert Bitcoin to fiat.

Bitcoin itself cannot be stopped, but it's utility as a currency (or, as it is now, a speculative investment) can be.

Post reply on HN