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MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

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Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#101

Post by highd »

knicholes wrote: post #88
highd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash is cheaper for merchants, but people have only continued to use credit cards more. Further, if crypto becomes attractive from a cost perspective Visa will just be forced to bring down fees and stay competitive. It's pretty near impossible to imagine crypto with costs less than Visa's database.

A wire transfer fee to China would cost me ~$45. Sending it in bitcoin would cost ~$17.

This is a great example of where crypto would be useful. But it's not the same as paying for pizza.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#102

Post by nradov »

highd wrote: post #86
wmf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing cost and price. Let's say the cost of a Visa transaction is 0.1% and the price is 2.5% while the cost and price of a MobileCoin transaction are 0.2%. It costs more but it's still cheaper for merchants.

Cash is cheaper for merchants, but people have only continued to use credit cards more. Further, if crypto becomes attractive from a cost perspective Visa will just be forced to bring down fees and stay competitive. It's pretty near impossible to imagine crypto with costs less than Visa's database.

Cash isn't necessarily cheaper for merchants once you account for handling, security, and theft.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#103

Post by dogma1138 »

celticninja wrote: post #97
dogma1138 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also do so in the UK and virtually every other country I can think off.

Nope. You only have to report capital gains in excess of your annual allowance, which is £11,300 at the moment.

You still have to record them. Also don’t forget that if you have an ISA, other savings and investments that allowance isn’t that big.

As an individual if you mine you have to record the value as it was at the time of mining if you buy you record it at the time of purchase and you pay capital gains if you exchange the crypto for fiat currency or goods or services directly on the difference between the values. It gets more complicated since you can’t select an individual currency unit form your wallet but atm you are allowed to use creative accounting for that.

The fact that you have an allowance doesn’t mean it’s not taxed and if you have any substantial amount you’ll blow throgh that allowance pretty darn fast.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#104

Post by [deleted] »

darawk wrote: post #94
Confiks wrote: post #25

To repeat an earlier comment, this scheme encourages a centralization of trust into a private key managed by processor manufacturers. You might say that by integrating SGX mechanisms into your security model, you create a set of 'feudal lords' [1] who can wield their power over you. A manufacturer may 'legitimately' establish an enclave in your most trusted hardware which you may not audit or even measure. And if tha…

That was my first impression as well. That being said, I have a lot of respect for Moxie and his work, so i'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and am curious to see his response to this point.

[deleted]

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#105

Post by dogma1138 »

dannyw wrote: post #99
dogma1138 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also do so in the UK and virtually every other country I can think off.

The limit is $10k of cost basis in australia. No CGT for anything less.

Is that based on a yearly tax allowance which means it’s tied to other investments or is this for an individual transaction?

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#106

Post by DennisP »

dogma1138 wrote: post #89
DennisP wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On reason, in the U.S. at least, is that you're supposed to pay capital gains on every little bit you spend. There's a bill in Congress right now to exclude crypto transactions under $600 from capital gains, which would be a big help. Even if you do want to hold long term, you could just replenish what you spend along the way, if it weren't a tax reporting nightmare.

You also do so in the UK and virtually every other country I can think off.

In the U.S. there's already a small-purchase exclusion for foreign currencies.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#107

Post by icelancer »

bkolobara wrote: post #67
icelancer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>You are complaining about receiving free money Aside from the fact that this is a terrible line of argumentation ("Person A gave you $100 and then Person B later stole it out of your house, what's your problem with that?"), that is not the point of my comment at all. I suggest you read a bit more specifically in regards to service, transactional security, and the fact that the coin is federated and not decentralize…

You didn't even realise for a long time that you lost access to it. It's like me remembering that I had some BTC, but can't access them anymore and blaming Bitcoin developers for not getting rich. Stellar not being decentralised, even 90% of nodes are not run by the SDF, makes it somehow unsecure? If you have some specific complaint about the security point it out, instead you are just ranting on an anecdote.

>>If you have some specific complaint about the security point it out

I did, in the post. I'm not sure why you are making a big deal about the money I lost. I am certainly not. It is about the mechanism by which it happened and how they didn't take it very seriously.

EDIT: I am also not even sure to this day what the value of XLM is, and don't particularly care. I gather from your post that it has gone up. Congratulations. I think XLM's architecture and use case makes a lot of sense. I also think their developers and support team are quite poor. That is the intent of my post.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#108

Post by monkeywork »

bkolobara wrote: post #50
icelancer wrote: post #32

MobileCoin is backed by XLM/Stellar, which is not decentralized, and so I feel I should note here that I signed up during Stripe's giveaway of Stellar Lumens years ago - and I did indeed get my wallet credited. https://stripe.com/blog/stellar I was given 6000 XLM and I left it in their official wallet for years. On May 12th, 2017 I wrote them an email asking why my wallet, now converted to some newer official wallet,…

You are complaining about receiving free money, but not caring about it until the price went up recently. How is this even remotely Stellar's issue?

How he got the currency has ZERO standing on the issue that he described.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#109

Post by monkeywork »

bkolobara wrote: post #67
icelancer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>You are complaining about receiving free money Aside from the fact that this is a terrible line of argumentation ("Person A gave you $100 and then Person B later stole it out of your house, what's your problem with that?"), that is not the point of my comment at all. I suggest you read a bit more specifically in regards to service, transactional security, and the fact that the coin is federated and not decentralize…

You didn't even realise for a long time that you lost access to it. It's like me remembering that I had some BTC, but can't access them anymore and blaming Bitcoin developers for not getting rich. Stellar not being decentralised, even 90% of nodes are not run by the SDF, makes it somehow unsecure? If you have some specific complaint about the security point it out, instead you are just ranting on an anecdote.

care to disclose what connection you have with Stellar -- your blind defense and smoke screening makes it seem like you have an interest in making sure bad press (legit or not) doesn't come to light.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#110

Post by Asdfbla »

Confiks wrote: post #25

To repeat an earlier comment, this scheme encourages a centralization of trust into a private key managed by processor manufacturers. You might say that by integrating SGX mechanisms into your security model, you create a set of 'feudal lords' [1] who can wield their power over you. A manufacturer may 'legitimately' establish an enclave in your most trusted hardware which you may not audit or even measure. And if tha…

I still think it's an interesting approach. If you want to be more efficient and less wasteful than Bitcoin, at some point trust has to come into play. And reducing your trust to the manufacturers of secure enclaves (whose products can also be audited to a degree) is surely an improvement still, even if it doesn't have the radical threat model of conventional cryptocurrencies (which inevitably run into scaling problems because it mostly requires proof-of-work).

Also, the article mentions the de facto centralization of trust in the current cryptocurrency ecosystem - so pragmatically, it's not much better there. From centralized exchanges, to centralized mining cartels, what does something like Bitcoin have left to offer?

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