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A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

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Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#351

Post by arcticbull »

Semaphor wrote: post #350
arcticbull wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point about intermediaries is that you are paying more to use Bitcoin than I am to use my credit card, and getting a lot less for it. COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.30. I get a 2% rebate, so I paid $10.09, and for that $0.09 I get a one-month interest free loan, chargeback abilities and numerous warranties. COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.30. You have to buy the $10.30 from an exchange for $10…

Eh, if you really want to take cherry pick examples, let's take the lower 0,4% fee I pay to buy BTC. I get 0% cashback for my credit card (cashback is an exception in Germany, not the rule), and Coin Tracking Unlimited for one year is 0.037BTC (~$180.6525) instead of $185 paying with USD. And suddenly the point is 100% reversed and BTC is the clear winner and obviously far superior to Creditcards -.-

IMO I was picking a representative US example, but working one in Germany yields very comparable results. The difference is the interchange is capped 0.3% which means that the cash-back portion is irrelevant.

COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.03. In Germany I would get a 0% rebate, so I would pay $10.03, and for that $0.03 I would get a one-month interest free loan, chargeback abilities and numerous warranties.

COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.03. You have to buy the $10.03 from an exchange for $10.07 (assuming 0.4% fee). You then pay another $1.26 for the BTC transaction and get back nothing, for a total of $11.33. That means your total fees paid are 44X the total fees I paid. No chargebacks, no warranties, no loan, 44X higher fees. In Germany no tax liability is incurred AFAIK when using it as currency. That makes your payment method inferior for any normal, legal purchase. That's one of the reasons buyers don't want it. Sellers don't want it because it exposes them to enormous FOREX risk.

Companies that offer crypto discounts are unicorns. Why would they? It's more expensive and more risky to offer it. The only reason I can think of to offer a crypto discount is if you're not reporting to tax authorities like cash-only restaurants. Your one counter-example is by no means representative, and in Germany, you're even worse off than in the US in the average case, by double.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#352

Post by arcticbull »

arcticbull wrote: post #333
stale2002 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, buying a bunch of miners in order to 51% attack a network is significantly more difficult than making a phone call to a Visa or MasterCard executive. It is also not enough to censor a singular Blockchain. You'd have to get the hardware to attack all the chains, because then people would just move to the other ones. This is still not impossible. That's why I used the words "censorship resistant". But it is cer…

My understanding is 2 or 3 miners in the PRC have all that 51%, and in China, when Beijing says jump you say how high or you may end up escorted from your penthouse at the four seasons in Hong Kong to seek medical treatment on the mainland and never be heard from again ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/worl... )

To circle back 80% of all hashpower is concentrated in 6 pools, 5 of which (>70%) are in the PRC. (https://news.bitcoin.com/chinese-mining-threatens-bitcoin/)

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#353

Post by Semaphor »

arcticbull wrote: post #351
Semaphor wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, if you really want to take cherry pick examples, let's take the lower 0,4% fee I pay to buy BTC. I get 0% cashback for my credit card (cashback is an exception in Germany, not the rule), and Coin Tracking Unlimited for one year is 0.037BTC (~$180.6525) instead of $185 paying with USD. And suddenly the point is 100% reversed and BTC is the clear winner and obviously far superior to Creditcards -.-

IMO I was picking a representative US example, but working one in Germany yields very comparable results. The difference is the interchange is capped 0.3% which means that the cash-back portion is irrelevant. COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.03. In Germany I would get a 0% rebate, so I would pay $10.03, and for that $0.03 I would get a one-month interest free loan, chargeback abilities and numerous warrantie…

> Why would they? It's more expensive and more risky to offer it.

How? Risky? When the customer has literally zero way of doing a chargeback? And most businesses instantly transfer the received amount to cash, so there is no wallet complication.

> Sellers don't want it because it exposes them to enormous FOREX risk.

No, because the time they actually hold crypto is measured in seconds to fractions of them.

A streamer I watch allows you to donate with crypto and buy food for people. The Paypal way gives you less resulting money to buy food for people with because of tx fees. Crypto for them is safer and cheaper.

> In Germany no tax liability is incurred AFAIK when using it as currency.

I wish. You have to hold for 1 year, then whatever you do is tax-free. Before that, anything you do (incl. trading) counts for your income tax.

And FWIW, a) I don't buy anything with BTC, if anything I'd pay with ETH, Nano or any of the alts that have fast and cheap TXs but I'd buy things with a CC anyway because I find it too be simpler. b) Where I work the best tx fee we can get for CC Payment for 10€ is 0.395€

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#354

Post by icey »

arcticbull wrote: post #274
icey wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it's nicer to send money than it is to authorize someone to take money from an account, especially if you're unsure of the recipient's ability or desire to protect that account information (credit card number, bank account info, etc). For me, Bitcoin has effectively replaced cashier's checks.

Popmoney, Venmo, Square Cash all allow you to do that without the massive FOREX risk and tax reporting requirements.

Cool, and I use some of those too; but there have been cases _for me_ where BTC has been a lot easier.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#355

Post by luckydata »

nradov wrote: post #303
luckydata wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge that requirement. Why no single entity can be trusted? It's like saying the banking system doesn't work because no single entity can be trusted with maintaining a database of transactions. That's self evidently false.

Which single entity can be trusted? None beyond the US federal government exists today, and they don't want to do the job. I suppose in theory all of the industry players could get together and establish a joint venture or nonprofit company specifically for the purpose of creating and maintaining an accurate database of provider contact information. But that seems a lot more complex.

Doesn't seem that complex to me. Insurance companies kinda do that already. It's not a technology issue, otherwise Google or Microsoft would have figured it out already, it's a governance and legal issue. Blockchain doesn't seem to be bringing to the table anything valuable in this case.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#356

Post by floodyberry- »

navigatesol wrote: post #189
floodyberry- wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How, exactly, does Bitcoin (and other shitcoins) being nominally 'decentralized', and whose main use after 10 years is still speculation and scams, relate to nazis and right wing trolls occasionally get kicked off twitter?

> How, exactly, does Bitcoin (and other shitcoins) being nominally 'decentralized', and whose main use after 10 years is still speculation and scams, relate to nazis and right wing trolls occasionally get kicked off twitter? Perhaps because the people you label "right-wing trolls" are, sometimes, actually just people with different opinions, and deserve (at least in their minds) some protection? They aren't merely ge…

That doesn't explain why Bitcoin is useful for anything other than relieving stupid people of their money?

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#357

Post by arcticbull »

Semaphor wrote: post #353
arcticbull wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO I was picking a representative US example, but working one in Germany yields very comparable results. The difference is the interchange is capped 0.3% which means that the cash-back portion is irrelevant. COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.03. In Germany I would get a 0% rebate, so I would pay $10.03, and for that $0.03 I would get a one-month interest free loan, chargeback abilities and numerous warrantie…

> Why would they? It's more expensive and more risky to offer it. How? Risky? When the customer has literally zero way of doing a chargeback? And most businesses instantly transfer the received amount to cash, so there is no wallet complication. > Sellers don't want it because it exposes them to enormous FOREX risk. No, because the time they actually hold crypto is measured in seconds to fractions of them. A streamer…

The risk is in holding it for any length of time due to its wild fluctuations and the fact seller taxes are due based on the amount of the purchase at the time it happens, not when the crypto converts to fiat. If they convert it to fiat via payment gateway crypto barely factors into this for them doesn't it? If there was a gateway that accepted goats and gave sellers cash, I mean, it doesn't really matter to the seller. They never see the goats anyways.

Re: the streamer, I don't think you're doing the math right. With a 0.4% + $1.26 transaction fee, PayPal's 3% would break even at ~$45. Whether they buyer or the seller pay the fee is irrelevant, the fee is paid. Either the buyer asks for more or the seller sends less, the net is the same. The difference here is fixed vs. percentage fee payment which reaches a break-even point pretty high up there for most purchases.

I based my tax treatment implications on this article: https://www.bna.com/germany-reaffirms-crypto-n73014476891/ ("But when the digital currency is used as a means of payment, or when it’s exchanged or sold, it will be exempt from Germany’s 19 percent VAT.") but I guess the capital gains still need to be paid?

The alts have even more risk due to their even more wild fluctuations and dreadful past performance.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#358

Post by late2part »

turkeysandwich wrote: post #349
slg wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cross reference this list[1] with this one[2]. I just don't see any evidence for a claims like "Western democracies with hate speech laws are less democratic". [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech

The only thing the democracy index gets right are the broad strokes. But then again, so could a high schooler with wikipedia and a free afternoon. It's not implemented well enough to detect the fine differences between western countries. Hate speech laws reduce the range of discourse. They suppress dissent. That's inherently undemocratic.

I think the reason so many people feel that it's important to allow dissenting and objectionable speech is that the perception of 'harmful' speech is mostly subjective.

Relegating that permissiveness to a particular entity allows that subjectivity to be enforced in perverse ways.

Many people feel it is better to tolerate the objectionable and hurtful speech than to allow a 3rd party to use subjective judgment to censor.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#359

Post by stale2002 »

arcticbull wrote: post #352
arcticbull wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is 2 or 3 miners in the PRC have all that 51%, and in China, when Beijing says jump you say how high or you may end up escorted from your penthouse at the four seasons in Hong Kong to seek medical treatment on the mainland and never be heard from again ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/worl... )

To circle back 80% of all hashpower is concentrated in 6 pools, 5 of which (>70%) are in the PRC. ( https://news.bitcoin.com/chinese-mining-threatens-bitcoin/ )

And yet, those pools aren't censoring anything.

They aren't stopping any transactions, and have never done so, in the 10 years that crypto has been around.

This is in comparison to visa and mastercard which censor people all of the time.

So for whatever reason that those pools aren't censoring anything, and have never done so, but the major finance companies are censoring transactions, is the reason why crypto is valuable.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#360

Post by troquerre »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #114
troquerre wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handshake.org decentralizes the root zone and obsoletes certificate authorities. Basically, it lets you register new TLDs that are censorship-resistant, seizure-resistant, and tamper-proof.

At the expense of no one getting do your site because they don't use a custom DNS server?

The alternative is having your domain shut down for “sensitive” content in pretty much any country outside of the US and Canada.
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