The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

Post by antepodius » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 6:54 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #251

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's serving as shorthand for "in a country halfway around the world, with a government that isn't going to intervene on your behalf as a foreigner even if you figure out who did it and hand them the evidence on a silver platter".

Right, it wasn't necessarily hateful on purpose, but as another poster pointed out, what does it mean that we default to using one specific group of people for that example? If they'd said "PRC hacker" it'd be a different story, but the word "Chinese" conflates a nationality and heritage. It does this, by the way, in written Chinese as well, hence a lot of arguments I've had in the past with PRC-citizen exchange stud…

Post by Klinky » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

blackrock wrote: post #264

Damorian wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote, but I once ran a blog for many years. Country breakdown for traffic was roughly 30% China, 30% Russia, and 30% US. Almost 100% of requests out of China and Russia were hacking attempts, I assume mostly by bots. They've earned a reputation and there's nothing wrong pointing it out. If you operate a website, unless China and Russia are part of your market/audience, I'd suggest blocking them altogether.

What if all the hacking actually originated from America? They just compromised a bunch of random computers in China and Russia, running an old copy of Windows XP, and built themselves a botnet. What further evidence do you have, other than an IP address?

Post by louwrentius » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

tomlagier wrote: post #267

I'm a Bitcoin skeptic, and much of my skepticism is around the practicality of use for day-to-day transactions. Seeing low fees is very encouraging to me - the last I had checked, fees were in the several to many dollars range. Now if they can hammer out the volatility, figure out a simple UX, encourage adoption at most places of business, and increase trust in exchanges for USD conversions, I'm on board.

Post by antepodius » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

moksly wrote: post #225

koonsolo wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to know much about banking and large sums of money in practice. Let me give you an example which I know exists: EU airliner buys an airplane at Boeing. How do you transfer the money? This is how they do it today: They are at Boeing where the transfer needs to go through. The money needs to be transferred then and there. So airliner calls their bank to transfer the money. But there is a 9 hour differenc…

That’s not how large transfers work at all though. Banks have international agreements, or go through 3rd parties that have. You’ll also never be expected to pay right then and there, if you’re a respectable enterprise entity, the other part will expect you to pay and the funds to arrive within reasonable time, which can be half a year later. As for the transfers themselves, they are typically free. You’re such a big…

Post by stale2002 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

ipython wrote: post #39

Unpopular opinion: why do we care so much about making it cheaper for rich people to move money around? Do we think somehow that will “trickle down” to us mere mortals and put western union and their ilk out of business?