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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

#181

Post by zaarn »

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.

Until you want to make it into useful things and then the IRS will be asking how you bought that car and where the money came from. If it came from a laundering pool of bitcoins, tough luck convincing anyone you didn't do money laundering.

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

#182

Post by Lucadg »

davidgerard wrote: post #152
Lucadg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put your seed words in a bank safety deposit box.

Safety deposit boxes turn out not to be secure or guaranteed. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-22/don-t-...

It depends on the country but I agree. Being programmable money I expect better solutions to come in the future. This is a recent and interesting one https://blog.trezor.io/shamir-backup-the-revolution-of-priva...

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

#183

Post by buboard »

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…

Well, if we are going for generalizations, everything is a scam, until it isn't

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

#184

Post by i_am_nomad »

tgv wrote: post #163
criddell wrote: post #10

What was the $1B valuation based on? It seems absurd.

I've discovered a foolproof way to make billions of dollars and take controlling interest in the major corporation of your choice. I'll share my secret with you, since I'm all done using my system (hint: if you want to buy any corporation known by three capital letters... forget it.). Step 1: Find somebody you trust to work with you as your partner. Your wife is a good choice, although in a pinch your pet hamster wil…

Step 6 is the difficult part these days, specifically finding companies not built using this system.

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

#185

Post by heavenlyblue »

michwill wrote: post #127
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…

You know, my first foray into the world of Big Corpo people was when I met this guy studying at .

He was looking for ways to use blockchain to help regions with unstable currencies. Well, he was doing his Ph.D, actually on that topic.

So he would approach people and suggest they all meet up and have this think-tank somewhere in North London.

Now imagine you've got about 20-30 people sitting in the same room: and they are all engineers, regional managers, financiers. Not a single person has _any_ idea what blockchain is.

They were all meeting weekly to have this hours-long discussion about how they could possibly apply this thing blockchain to solving issues in the third world countries.

> 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.

One of his ideas was to create virtual money. But they forget that _secure_ proof-of-work-based money would require the same amount of initial investment (mining hardware) as if you simply went and bought several tons of gold and then issued a currency supported by that gold.

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

#186

Post by buboard »

lemagedurage wrote: post #31

One and a half year ago, I built an (unofficial) bot, Ragebot [0], that would function as spam protection for the many bot accounts joining public Kik groups. The project took off and was added to hundreds of thousands of groups by Kik users. Two days ago, Ted Livingston announced the closure and Kik has been chaos throughout ever since, with people adopting Discord and Telegram to retain their online friend circles.…

There are now multiple apps with lots of private groups. I wonder if a directory of groups like this is useful http://groupchathub.com/

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

#187

Post by xorand »

michwill wrote: post #127
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…

Yes, not scam, but there is none which returns something back to the society. There is therefore no use case.

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

#188

Post by buboard »

feanaro wrote: post #166
baroffoos wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searchable groups are an antifeature to me. They encourage random strangers to come and go which prevents ever building any sense of community. One of the things I like about the group chats I am in are that the same people are there from years ago.

I don't know... It's sometimes nice to be able to meet random strangers instead of remaining in your own filtered little bubble. My formative years were spent on IRC like a few of the other commenters here and I would judge that as a strictly positive experience.

yep, IRC comes to mind as the ultimate walk down an endless street of strangers. It has its place

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

#189

Post by buboard »

lytedev wrote: post #67
injaki wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP meant searchable public group. In discord you need an invite link, and there's no way to search by its name.

But I believe you can search for subreddits as well? The same is true on BAND with searchable, public, joinable communities.

some groups will auto-kick inactive users. or require manual approval to join . that makes them a different use case than subreddits

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

#190

Post by buboard »

harry8 wrote: post #71
injaki wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP meant searchable public group. In discord you need an invite link, and there's no way to search by its name.

so exactly like irc only not irc, which makes it better because, um..?

Searchable (history) and notifiable. Really that's all IRC would need right now to catch up. And a dead simple app, kik was actually pretty close, groups were even named #groups. All other features are gimmicks.
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