Ending Bitcoin Support • Hacker News Board

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#361

Post by bradleyjg » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

viach wrote: post #327

bradleyjg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lead is useful. Even gold is somewhat useful. Bitcoin is an asset that’s neither productive (stocks, bonds, land) nor useful (oil, wheat, lead). That’s quite unusual.

You can buy Bitcoin worth 50k USD in one country, cross the border and sell it in another, with no documents required . This is useful for a subset of people .

Not sure exactly what you mean by no documents required. You need to find some way to get money to the seller when you are in country A and the buyer needs to the same for you in country B.

There is no reason that same pair of transactions could not have occurred with British bonds.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#362

Post by Jommi » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

glesperance wrote: post #34

brndnmtthws wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked Bitcoin still works fine for transactions.

Have your tried XLM, XRP, LTC, Dash, or pretty much any other cryptocurrency? They're much faster, and considerably cheaper than Bitcoin to use.

That doesn't mean they will be as fast or cheap (or decentralized) when the network size is as big.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#363

Post by qwerty456127 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

avenoir wrote: post #104

koheripbal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't know what use-case remains for Bitcoin. If you have large value transactions you'd probably choose something with privacy like Monero, and if you want something cheap and fast, maybe Bitcoin Cash. In both use-cases, you have a few competing alternatives. In no circumstance is Bitcoin preferable to one of the mature alternatives. ...and if no one is using it as a transaction medium, then acting as a s…

With South Korea trying to regulate anonymous trading on Korean exchanges, makes me wonder how long we have before regulations become more widespread. And if this happens do you think privacy coins even stand a chance?

Not only they will stand a chance, they will grow substantially as the only way to mitigate the governments efforts to enforce surveillance and regulations. Darknet exchanges will emerge if not there yet. People have been dreaming of real electronic cash nobody can know you have or give to somebody for so long and wont give up easily. By the way this can even happen to be the way to the new kind of economy that relies on reputation and competition rather than surveillance and prohibition.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#364

Post by nadam » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

If cryptocurrencies really succeed, we will not need a centralized service like Stripe. Hopefully we will use a 'decentralized Stripe' (as far as I know the Dash Evolution platform will be sometinhg like that. Maybe that is the reason that they did not even mention Dash in the article, despite it being one of the most promising digital Cash system on the market.)

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#365

Post by gist » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it?

Real estate is an asset and you can't 'buy stuff' with it (other than a 1031 exchange in the US of course).

It's an asset if there is a reasonable chance that someone else will buy it from you in the future for money which you can buy things with.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#366

Post by ujal » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #303

ujal wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but not everyone has the privilege of living in a first world country. See for example the Republic of Georgia utilising blockchain tech to secure real estate transactions [0]. Now I am actually less afraid of investing my money as I don't trust their government. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/02/07/the-first-...

It uses a distributed public ledger, not bitcoin.

It does use bitcoin to verify the transactions. Point is, bitcoin - currently being the biggest blockchain deployed - is more trustworthy than most governments and therefore most currencies.

I am not an economist though and regulations seem to be necessary in the real world. Any ideas as to what technology, giving widespread adoption, would make them obsolete?

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#367

Post by drewm1980 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #174

EnFinlay wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading your comment finally made it click to me why cryptocurrencies (specifically Bitcoin) are distinct from a gold bar or other non-currency stores of value. A gold bar is going to remain a gold bar forever, people's perception of its value will change even though the supply will remain mostly steady, but it will stay a gold bar no matter what. Bitcoin may change in value based on perception, it's supply will rema…

To be fair, people could also stop thinking gold is worth much. Maybe a modern-day alchemist finally figures out the formula. I don't know. Probably far less likely than the Bitcoin scenarios though.

Gold is worth a lot less to me now that I've seen what illegal mining of it by narcos is doing to the rainforests in south america.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#368

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #337

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problem with regulating anonymous transactions is you don't know who's doing them Every government has departments of agents adept at tracing cash transactions. Bitcoin offers the advantage of total transactional transparency. Shady wallet? Trace back until you find a known wallet. An exchange, vendor, et cetera . Subpoena, find their counterparty, rinse and repeat. Best case: you find your guy. Consolation: mo…

At the same time, Monero functions basically the same way cash does in this scenario. Most cryptocurrencirs do not, though.

Money launderers are usually caught because they're already under investigation. Others become apparent when lifestyle and reported income disagree.

When thinking about what the government might do in a specific situation involving cryptocurrency, I've found it helps to replace "Bitcoin" with "cash". "I tumbled Bitcoin" becomes "I laundered cash." "I got paid Bitcoin for my car" becomes "I have unexplainable cash because a stranger gave it to me for my car." "I used TOR while being paid Bitcoin" becomes "someone I don't know drops off cash for me in person." "How can they bust everyone using cryptocurrency" becomes "how does the government keep people and businesses more or less honest when it comes to reporting cash business." "Depositing lots of Bitcoin" becomes "depositing lots of unexplained cash." Et cetera

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#369

Post by tempestn » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #336

adventured wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what the authorities will do. In fact it'll be extraordinarily trivial for the G30 to regulate Monero et al. out of common use in larger markets if they want to. If you want to use it, you'll be a financial criminal, 99.9% of people in the G30 will avoid it accordingly.

It's not so simple. You only need one exchange, anywhere in the world, that will exchange Monero for non-banned cryptos, and the market will flow freely.

Except that any exchange trafficking in an illegal coin could be banned as well, and so your transactions with that exchange in other coins (in order to convert to or from Monero) would be traceable and illegal.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#370

Post by vec » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #319

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problem with regulating anonymous transactions is you don't know who's doing them Every government has departments of agents adept at tracing cash transactions. Bitcoin offers the advantage of total transactional transparency. Shady wallet? Trace back until you find a known wallet. An exchange, vendor, et cetera . Subpoena, find their counterparty, rinse and repeat. Best case: you find your guy. Consolation: mo…

Of course with enough effort and investment you can probably stop many things, the point is whether the increasing marginal costs of enforcement are worth it to the government and society. By that same argument, the US could round up every illegal immigrant and deport them, or every casual drug user and lock them up for life. We don't do that because it'd be ruinously expensive (not to mention immoral) and transform…

I think the phrase "motivated individuals" is doing a lot of work there.

I don't currently take any steps to try and obscure my transaction history from the authorities, and I presume that most if not all of the merchants I transact with keep some form of subpoena-able records. I'm not certain why I would expect that to change just because we switched currencies. I don't personally have any desire to violate any financial regulations, so why should I go to all the extra effort?

Anonymity protections aren't of much use if your counterparty isn't also using them, and they're worse than useless if they make you pop out of the statistical background noise for one reason or another.