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Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

forbes.com

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Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#121

Post by WA »

coralreef wrote: post #80
chx wrote: post #78

Cryptocurrencies are scam. End. This is very simple. Yes, they are a new kind of scam, a good name suggested is Nakamoto Scheme. https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ Also notable: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-bu... which doesn't outright call it a scam but certainly points out > Git gives you pretty much everything offered by the business case for blockchains. The one thing…

Right. I'm going to challenge you to: - prevent or reverse any of my transactions - confiscate my bitcoin, or even find out how much I have You can't, and never will. Some cryptocurrencies are scams. But if you're saying all cryptocurrencies are scams, you're simply saying math and economics are a scam.

Calling them currrency is already a scam. They are not a currency. They are hardly money (look up the difference yourself), because you mostly can’t buy stuff with it. And for sure, you can’t pay taxes with them.

I read a great question here on HN a while back to enthusiasts:

If you were the last person in earth to receive coins, would you still like them and endorse them?

So many comments can be traced to the idea of becoming richer. Compare this to the Euro: When the Euro was introduced as a currency in the EU in 2001, people gave zero fucks whether they were first to exchange their old currency for the new one or the last.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#122

Post by Nursie »

jackcodes wrote: post #103
untog wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it depends on percentages. The vast, almost entire majority of leggings are not scams. A notable number of cryptocurrencies are scams.

Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP take up around 80% of total market cap and I’ll class those as legitimate enough to fall in the non-scam category. I’ll also ballpark half of the remaining 20% as not being scams (I know that’s a little debatable too, is a poor business premise a scam for example?), and I’d say that’s not too bad on the whole. If we’re talking about number of projects then I can’t disagree, there’d be no arg…

Most of the activity taking place on them appears to be scams or scam related though, especially as many of the large exchanges appear to either be scams or at least be in on the scams.

It's scams all the way down.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#123

Post by Nursie »

me551ah wrote: post #117
chx wrote: post #78

Cryptocurrencies are scam. End. This is very simple. Yes, they are a new kind of scam, a good name suggested is Nakamoto Scheme. https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ Also notable: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-bu... which doesn't outright call it a scam but certainly points out > Git gives you pretty much everything offered by the business case for blockchains. The one thing…

Do Cryptocurrencies provide value and do something that country backed currencies can't? They do have their own advantages and disadvantages, but it purely boils down to how many people trade in it. Take gold for example, people believe that it has value and trade in it. The price of gold is decided on the basis of market forces of demand and supply. Similarly, a cryptocurrency's worth is decided by the demand for it…

It's not clear how many people actually do trade in cryptocurrency. The sector is so rife with dodgy activities that any estimates of volume on exchanges should be treated as wholly false.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#124

Post by mschuster91 »

reilly3000 wrote: post #68
nikolay wrote: post #63

Kik, Telegram, and Skype has a spam issue. Until they solve it, they are doomed. I have "nikolay" on Telegram and get tends of messages from scammers daily. Same with Skype, and Kik. I don't get spam on Viber and Messenger and that's why I use those. All the rest are not worth my time although I love both Telegram and Skype more than the rest, but don't have the nerves to deal with their basic design issues.

It seems more appropriate to me to start punishing spammers rather than holding platforms accountable for their customer’s behavior.

Good luck trying to punish someone in Macedonia, Nigeria or whatever other place that has Internet but no legal support agreement with a Western state.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#125

Post by Svoka »

jjeaff wrote: post #105
linkregister wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- confiscate my bitcoin, or even find out how much I have Bitcoin's public ledger is especially vulnerable to FBI "follow the money" investigation. Only one end is required to be known, and the entire trail is easily followed. The federal agent who stole a portion of Dread Pirate Roberts' Bitcoin was quickly tracked and prosecuted.

Properly implemented "Laundering" services for crypto currency can make follow-the-money effectively useless. The funds are transferred to a wallet, they are mixed with many other coins, and then they are paid out in different sized transactions to the recipient. Assuming you have a busy enough pool, it should be technically untraceable.

Honestly, it seems like you’re trying to make it sound like a device one would use exclusively for scamming.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#126

Post by mlyle »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #95
coralreef wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I'm going to challenge you to: - prevent or reverse any of my transactions - confiscate my bitcoin, or even find out how much I have You can't, and never will. Some cryptocurrencies are scams. But if you're saying all cryptocurrencies are scams, you're simply saying math and economics are a scam.

Irreversibility of transactions is not a feature I want. If someone wants to rob you of all your bitcoin, they can hold a gun to your head until you give it to them. A bank, on the other hand, has transaction limits. If I buy something online with a credit card and soon after discover it's fraudulent (which has happened to me on multiple occasions), I can reverse that too.

Note that the property we're talking about isn't really irreversibility of individual transactions. We can come up with whatever policy about what can show up in a ledger, including "undo" transactions.

But what we want is that once transactions are recorded to a ledger, that it's not possible to remove that record.

This durability is a highly valuable property for financial transactions and other things where non-repudiation is desired. However, it's a possibly scary property, too (what if something copyrighted or illegal ends up in the forever-durable and public ledger?)

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#127

Post by michwill »

chx wrote: post #78

Cryptocurrencies are scam. End. This is very simple. Yes, they are a new kind of scam, a good name suggested is Nakamoto Scheme. https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ Also notable: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-bu... which doesn't outright call it a scam but certainly points out > Git gives you pretty much everything offered by the business case for blockchains. The one thing…

Sorry, but this looks like a completely uneducated opinion.

There were many attempts to create virtual money which cannot be shit down, and all of them dated before Bitcoin failed due to government intervention. Bitcoin solved that, and the simplest solution was the wasteful proof of work.

Of course, when someone is using the same principle for something centrally controlled, which can be done by a database, that is a different story.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#128

Post by michwill »

WA wrote: post #121
coralreef wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I'm going to challenge you to: - prevent or reverse any of my transactions - confiscate my bitcoin, or even find out how much I have You can't, and never will. Some cryptocurrencies are scams. But if you're saying all cryptocurrencies are scams, you're simply saying math and economics are a scam.

Calling them currrency is already a scam. They are not a currency. They are hardly money (look up the difference yourself), because you mostly can’t buy stuff with it. And for sure, you can’t pay taxes with them. I read a great question here on HN a while back to enthusiasts: If you were the last person in earth to receive coins, would you still like them and endorse them? So many comments can be traced to the idea o…

> you mostly can’t buy stuff with it

Sometimes I cannot buy legitimate stuff without them. Just today, I bought some books for which US credit/debit cards refused to work. And I see that every week.

> you can’t pay taxes with them

https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/25/ohio-becomes-the-first-sta...

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#129

Post by Janeman544 »

chx wrote: post #78

Cryptocurrencies are scam. End. This is very simple. Yes, they are a new kind of scam, a good name suggested is Nakamoto Scheme. https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ Also notable: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-bu... which doesn't outright call it a scam but certainly points out > Git gives you pretty much everything offered by the business case for blockchains. The one thing…

This is purely idiotic opinion and should not have a place on a forum like HN of all places.

A lot of things like Linux or Open Office started purely out of hardwork of handful passionate people. Most of those people did not make much money in the process either but the y were purely driven by the joy of building something interesting. THAT is the nerd culture.

Bitcoin idea was floated by and contributed to by many folks who were not interested in making money but rather in solving interesting problems. Cryptocurrency is not a very hard tech but anyone remotely into tech will be able to appreciate all the theoretical and practical work that has gone into it.

Now, people engaging in bitcoin trading thinking it will make them filthy rich might be stupid but then that does not make the technology or its creators a scam.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#130

Post by Lucadg »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #95
coralreef wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I'm going to challenge you to: - prevent or reverse any of my transactions - confiscate my bitcoin, or even find out how much I have You can't, and never will. Some cryptocurrencies are scams. But if you're saying all cryptocurrencies are scams, you're simply saying math and economics are a scam.

Irreversibility of transactions is not a feature I want. If someone wants to rob you of all your bitcoin, they can hold a gun to your head until you give it to them. A bank, on the other hand, has transaction limits. If I buy something online with a credit card and soon after discover it's fraudulent (which has happened to me on multiple occasions), I can reverse that too.

You'd keep in yourself a small amount of Bitcoin. You'd keep at home a bigger amount. You'd keep in a safe place the rest. Exactly as with cash.
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