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Ending Bitcoin Support

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Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#501

Post by hluch »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #376
qwerty456127 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relie…

> they will grow substantially as the only way to mitigate the governments efforts to enforce surveillance and regulations Cash comes with substantial privacy benefits. It's also inconvenient. TL; DR Most people trade privacy for convenience.

Wrong. In Germany most people pay with cash.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#502

Post by matt4077 »

uncletammy wrote: post #492
tuna-piano wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that makes sense to me is that Bitcoin is just “Digital Gold”. But I don’t really understand why gold has so much value, so maybe it’s not really a good answer. It’s kind of like saying “Maybe Bitcoins will have value for a long time just like this other non-valuable, non-transaction asset that’s had value for a long time”...

Bitcoin's strategy is exactly that. And it would be a GREAT strategy if there was something about Bitcoin that made it the best "digital gold" available. Sadly, the only property it shares with gold is that it's hard to move. In fact, Bitcoin Cash is functionally identical to Bitcoin and it's easy to move. That's ignoring the hundreds of other digital currencies not named Bitcoin which make a better "digital gold".

Bitcoin doesn't have a strategy. The "value store" narrative is a post-hoc rationalisation for its continued, yet less and less rational, existence.

The proof that Bitcoin was intended as an alternative to cash, and to be used for small, everyday transactions is right there in the name: It's Bit"coin", not Bitgold, or even Bitbill.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#504

Post by joosters »

nulagrithom wrote: post #44
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? I look at it (maybe naively) like a solid gold bar. You're not going to walk in to a convenience store and pay with a bar of solid gold; you might flee the country with one though. Beyond that, I totally agree with your read on the post. Linking the pull request[0] was especially backhanded. It feels like there's some underlying frustration…

'Fraud Protection' ???

I'd love to hear how they think they can justify that.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#505

Post by hluch »

gamblor956 wrote: post #429
smallnamespace wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The government doesn't need to go beyond finding the tumbler. Here's how a sample investigation would go: Honeypot drug purchase, paid via bitcoin to DumbSeller. DumbSeller routes bitcoins to tumbler. Using the NSA backdoor in TOR, they trace DumbSeller to VPN service, who they then subpoena. VPN service either complies or gets charged as accomplice to money laundering and other crimes and gives up customer as part o…

>Using the NSA backdoor in TOR

hurr durr

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#506

Post by zbentley »

_7fvc wrote: post #194

Bitcoin isn't like gold. You cannot launder money or evade tax using gold. No need for trust means no trust. We know what "gold standard" means. You can guess what "bitcoin standard" would mean. Those who think bitcoin is an asset storage are delusional.

> You cannot launder money or evade tax using gold.

You can't? Seems to me it's reasonably handy for that purpose. There are some better alternatives, but gold's not terrible.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#507

Post by forgotmypw »

bparsons wrote: post #382
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…

I think Bitcoin is the AOL of blockchain technology. It was a first mover, it had huge uptake and valuation, but in a few years (or perhaps already) someone is going to build a protocol that is capable of hundreds of thousands of secure transactions a second, and it will make Bitcoin look archaic.

I had a similar thought recently, only I thought MS-DOS. Same difference.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#508

Post by Aunche »

csomar wrote: post #488
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…

The reason is that life is not really that simple. People pick people/assets/things based on reputation and popularity and not technical or practical merit. Gold is used as a store of value despite the fact that it is 1. volatile 2. hard to store 3. hard to buy/sell and 4. hard to transport.

Gold at least has some unique purposes besides a store of value. Over half of it is used for jewelry and commercial reasons, so at worst it can be considered an over-speculated commodity. Bitcoin literally has nothing going for it besides being the current market leader.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#510

Post by jjeaff »

deevolution wrote: post #490
mh- wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[0]: VisaNet handles an average of 150 million transactions every day and is capable of handling more than 24,000 transactions per second. [1]: 65,000 Transaction messages per second [0] https://usa.visa.com/run-your-business/small-business-tools/... [1] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/vi... Also, consider there are other networks like MasterCard: [2]: MasterCard’s 2012 annual report asserts…

Id like to also add that there are an order of magnitude more transaction options provided by cryptocurrencies than there are for fiat payment systems. Id bet money that, collectively, the cryptocurrency ecosystem is able to process more transactions per second than all of the leading fiat processors combined.

Probably, but only because crypto doesn't scan for fraud and abuse among other things. Monero is happy to let someone completely empty your life savings.

Cc processors on the other hand are on the hook for fraud, so they are checking every transaction to make sure it doesn't match certain hueristics that could indicate theft or fraud.

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