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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#751

Post by 55555 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #674
tluyben2 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WU is very expensive though; btc, if you know what you are doing, does not come close. WU is a horrible but unavoidable evil for millions of workers worldwide. This is one of the cases that should be disrupted.

I just checked, it seems that WU charges approximately 1% for transfers relative to the nominal exchange rate. I don't transfer money much, but superficially that doesn't seem too expensive considering the volatility risk to WU due to fluctuating exchange rates combined with the overheads of regulatory requirements. It seems to me that Bitcoin is only as cheap as it is because it sidesteps those regulatory overheads.…

IME, the real fees charged by WU often add up to 10-20%.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#752

Post by xur17 »

mareko wrote: post #656
majewsky wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What about cash that you can send like an SMS on a network that offsets its CO2? Celo is proof of stake based and also issues part of its block rewards to Project Wren. It has a native stablecoin and a decentralized phone verification protocol that lets you send money to any phone number. Check out celo.org and ValoraApp.com

Is this vulnerable to sim swap attacks?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#753

Post by muzika »

This year, more so than before, bitcoin is being used as a store of value - “digital gold”. There are other crypto coins that can be used for making transactions. People are buying bitcoin to hold it long term, not to send it to other people on the most part.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#754

Post by beaner »

ximeng wrote: post #569
beaner wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't, you're right. Historically, inflation always meant inflation of the money supply . Its definition has changed over time and you've been swindled. If you have a name for something, name the root cause, otherwise you're obfuscating its study, and perpetuating the non-identification of the root cause. "Inflation, as this term was always used everywhere and especially in this country, means increasing th…

Isn’t the issue exactly that money supply is increasing decoupled from the real economy? This is why quantitative easing hasn’t particularly increased consumer prices, which are one important indicator of value.

Money supply rarely goes directly to consumers, it first has to be spent by the receiving parties and distributed to the wider economy before consumer prices begin increasing.

But it doesn't happen without the prerequisite of money being printed.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#755

Post by graeme »

jimmaswell wrote: post #670
graeme wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because it was hard to control and ridesharing was clearly better. My point was the experience in functioning countries has not shown this to be true of bitcoin. It has been easy enough for govts to enforce tax and security laws where they’ve tried. What laws have been changed for bitcoin?

The IRS issued official guidance on it but there's no need for new laws around it.

That’s the point! Bitcoin didn’t bend the world to its will. Whereas ridesharing forced legalization of ridesharing.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#756

Post by freewilly1040 »

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…

In payments the 99% case where everyone acts in good faith and no one makes a mistake is the easy part. It's when eg the seller refuses to send the phone that the extra overhead of the traditional payment system comes into play.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#757

Post by graeme »

blake1 wrote: post #653
graeme wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much less? Bitcoin currently powers almost none of the world’s transactions, yet consumes all that energy. The entire us consumes 75 twh in a year, the same as bitcoin’s global energy use. Of that, the entire commercial sector is about 12 twh. That’s not just banks. That’s every company. Banks alone are surely far less. Maybe 2-3 twh? And the us is 15% of global gdp. So, global finance might consume about 14-32 twh.…

The US consumes about 4 PWh/year, so bitcoin isn't comparable with the nation as a whole. However, that is more power consumption than many individual states, so your overall point remains completely valid.

Whoops yeah that should have been 9.4 quadrillion BTU. The online calculator I used for TWH conversion was very wrong. Looks like the correct value is about 2,000 twh for the us commercial sector?

If we assume banks are 10% of that, then it’s 200 twh. 3x bitcoin. But also, handling literally all finance and banking in the US. Vs essentially nothing for bitcoin, compared to the scale of the us economy.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#758

Post by olcor »

ur-whale wrote: post #341
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…

>western union if you don't mind the usury-level fees

Western Union had, hands-down, the best rates and the least hassle for me sending money to my home country. The old reputation of WU just doesn't hold ground any more.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#759

Post by rafaelero »

corty wrote: post #649
gruez wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The miners aren't the only ones enforcing the limit, so is every other bitcoin node out there. Just because you have 51% of the mining capacity doesn't mean everyone else (merchants, users, exchanges)[1] will agree. If they decide to unilaterally change the block reward all that would do is cause them to mine worthless blocks. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority

No, miners are far more powerful than all the other stakeholders. While acceptance by merchants is a relevant factor, miners also have to facilitate any transaction. Any fork without miners is instantly unable to transact, making the coins useless and therefore worthless.

This is not true. Bitcoin can proceed with half its miners or with 3/4 its miners with no consequence aside a decrease in its resilience to attacks.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#760

Post by Scoundreller »

Taek wrote: post #709
rthomas6 wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but, why BTC specifically? Why not ETH or ETH tokens, or any of the hundreds of other cryptocurrencies that are faster and have lower fees?

Bitcoin has the most infrastructure surrounding it. And Bitcoin is the most careful to make life easy for infrastructure providers. Eth is very challenging to operate securely. Breaking updates are frequent, often with little warning. Bitcoin hasn't changed in many years, and new software updates are optional, and don't require you to write any new code or change how you operate. Most other cryptos suffer from the sa…

> and don't require you to write any new code or change how you operate.

This one was fun, but I guess quadrigacx was always going to be insolvent anyway: https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6ettq5/statement_...

(I think the top ranked post can be ignored, it gets good here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6ettq5/statement_... )

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