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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#471

Post by 1337biz »

1-6 wrote: post #438
cambalache wrote: post #304

I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…

Why aren’t there any mention of highly popular alt-coins like Litecoin? It’s less volatile for real use as a fiat alternative and transaction speeds are a lot faster because of the low service fee to speed things up. I kinda regretted keeping funds in Litecoin but it was one of the first to fix Bitcoin’s shortcomings.

Litecoin is extremely under the radar right now. With the upcoming MimbleWimble integration it could become a privacy alternative to Monero.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#472

Post by DeafSquid »

majewsky wrote: post #429
rkagerer wrote: post #324

I bought my smartphone from Hong Kong, in part because I wanted a specific variant that would be more likely to work with open-source ROM's. The seller initially requested payment via Transferwise, who sought crazy amounts of personal information and bullied me into a privacy-hostile customer agreement. Days went by and they still hadn't activated my account. Growing frustrated, I convinced the seller to accept Bitco…

Can we have "cash you can email" that doesn't consume as much electricity as several nation states combined?

How much electricity do you think traditional money printing and transfers consume?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#474

Post by [deleted] »

Kaze404 wrote: post #427
bconnorwhite wrote: post #416

Most of the criticisms in this thread seem to be missing that Bitcoin is only layer 1. Bitcoin isn't Visa or cash - its gold. Rather than shipping gold across the Atlantic, large institutions will settle in a few minutes in Bitcoin. L2/L3/L4 solutions (built into Apple Pay, etc.) will allow for instant payments for coffee, allow for privacy similar to physical cash, etc. Before this is possible, the price has to stab…

It's been 12 years.

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#475

Post by baby »

cesarb wrote: post #381
baby wrote: post #31

That’s nonsense. Bitcoin is as good a store of value as gold due to one unique feature: scarcity. Actually, it’s even less power consuming than the gold industry and is much more transparent. I wouldn’t really advise bitcoin for anything else, like day to day transactions, although I and many of my friends have used bitcoin to transact on dark markets and it works. The only argument I’ve heard about gold being better…

Scarcity only matters if there's demand. I could take an A4 sheet and draw a triangle on it. It's scarce (there's only one A4 sheet with that precise badly-drawn triangle), but since nobody wants it, it's worth as much as the paper it was drawn on. The same happens with both Bitcoin and gold. Since they are scarce, as long as there's enough demand their price will increase. However, there's a difference: gold has ind…

Was there an industrial demand when gold rush was a thing? Do we see significant proof that industrial use has a significant impact in gold being used as a store of value (besides theories)? Is that industrial use strongly linked to gold’s high price? Then how do you explain bitcoin replacing gold successfully?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#476

Post by phpwutz »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #282
newdude116 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well bitcoin is as much money as FIAT money, except if you consider money credit. Than indeed, bitcoin would not be money.

The US government would not accept BTC as payment for anything, so it is definitely NOT a fiat money.

The actual only criteria of fiat money I learned in austrian high school was "government will accept taxes in that currency". We have quiet a long history of taxes here, ranging from cows or sacks of grain to gold to gold coins to gulden to reichsmark to schilling to euro. Probably a good measure of centuries more than the US (which basically got kickstarted with the UK system at the time). Funnily enough, the above definition was the only thing holding true through the centuries. Thing is, if your government accepts taxes in a certain currency (even if it's a foreign one, that's perfectly fine too) it creates a stability by itself which fosters the usability (call it user friendlyness if you like) of the currency. In that sense, I'm fairly sure that unless you are personal friends with the president you cannot pay your taxes in Euro the same way you cannot pay them in ₿, Pesos or ¥ because the currency the US claims their taxes in is USD. Please prove me wrong or gib a better definition if I'm wrong :) Happy New Year everyone!

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#477

Post by lumost »

1-6 wrote: post #438
cambalache wrote: post #304

I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…

Why aren’t there any mention of highly popular alt-coins like Litecoin? It’s less volatile for real use as a fiat alternative and transaction speeds are a lot faster because of the low service fee to speed things up. I kinda regretted keeping funds in Litecoin but it was one of the first to fix Bitcoin’s shortcomings.

alt-coins don't have the market depth of Bitcoin. Moving money in LTC will move the market, BTC is approaching institutional market depth.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#478

Post by DethNinja »

Bitcoin is a disaster alright but a disaster for the fiat system and for the parasites who need the fiat system to survive.

Funny thing is bitcoin is only a small technology that will hurt the fiat system, there are more such disruptive technologies on the way but governments are far too stupid to see the writing on the wall.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#479

Post by giardini »

cambalache wrote: post #304

I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…

They could use hawala, a value exchange system which has been around for centuries. Fees are reasonable, the system is extremely trustworthy and use is not limited to Muslims.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#480

Post by ineedasername »

Trasmatta wrote: post #202
37ef_ced3 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many Bitcoin users have read and understand the following extensive list of privacy "pitfalls" (mistakes that can reveal information about unwary Bitcoin users): https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Privacy Are you careful to avoid these numerous privacy pitfalls? If not, you're leaking information about yourself, into the public ledger (blockchain)

It makes me wonder how many people have gotten busted for either buying or selling drugs with cryptocurrencies, thinking it was automatically safe and private.

It's simply an extra layer & bit of effort law enforcement has to jump through, and as understanding of crypto permeates society & law enforcement, even those barriers will be removed.
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