Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's actually can be circumvented rather trivially. Wallets are anonymous, and you can just do some mixer transactions off chain. Wallet A pays to mixer M, mixer's address N sends funds to wallets B and C minus comission. In effect A paid B (and C), and nothing links them to each other. Schemes can get even less transparent with Lightning network.
Who owns the mixer?
Bitcoin is a disaster
921–930 of 992 posts
Re: Bitcoin is a disaster
#922Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean sovereignty in the sense of actual control. When you put your money in a bank account, you give up control of it to that bank. The money may legally be yours, but they physically possess it, and can keep you from transacting with it whenever they wish. I in fact just had this issue the other day. I have a company, and due to a clerical error with the state its registered in, my company was listed as being "not…
Ok, that's not sovereignty. Sovereignty refers to the highest authority in a territory. Yes, in traditional banking, customers cede control of the money they deposit with the bank to the bank. They do not cede the ownership of that money, which they continue to own. Now, transferring money without making a deposit is possible with any currency, not just BTC. You make it sound like it's a feature of BTC but it's not.…
Highest authority means actual physical control. When your money is in a bank, the highest authority is the bank. Not you. This is the literal definition of sovereignty, and it's used in many digital contexts, not just crypto. E.g. 'self-sovereign identity'. This isn't a word usage made up by crypto, it's quite common, and this is its meaning.
Re: Bitcoin is a disaster
#923I 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…
You could buy either a stablecoin or ETH (it tends to have more liquidity) and uniswap to a stablecoin like USDC (Owned by Circle and Coinbase, not sketchy, decent liquidity) or USDT (kinda sketchy, insane liquidity). Then you are only really exposed to the volitility for the time it takes to swap, with uniswap that can be literally seconds.
Re: Bitcoin is a disaster
#924Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are they magic beans or just beans? A bitcoin address gives you a unique global address decentralizated that funds can be sent to. There is utility to that function. Using your description the internet is a magic place faeries built that provides no usefulness because it's virtual.
No, Bitcoin provides no value because it's bad at everything it tries to be. It's a bad store of value (-86% swings 3x in the last few years), it's a bad currency (7tx/sec) and it's bad for the environment (as much power consumption as Chile). The internet provides utility. Bitcoin provides speculation and crime.
He maybe bad at what you believe it tries to be, and still be useful. And hence its price.
>Bitcoin provides speculation and crime.
Everything valuable can become a tool, or a reason for criminal activity.
Re: Bitcoin is a disaster
#925Earlier quoted context omitted.
The value of a bitcoin is the rarity of owning a coin is limited and the way it works opens up transactions globally. The price is the market demand.
oooh the rarity of owning a some digital magic beans, right, thanks I'll pass.
"Magic beans" is something you can say about majority of payment tokens humanity has been using. However, once enough people agree they are good for exchange they become good for exchange.
Re: Bitcoin is a disaster
#926Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bitcoin is not a USD replacement. It's more of a gold replacement: finite supply, great malleability, but with modern benefits regarding storage and transfer. This is an opinion that Bitcoin advocates throw out every time someone criticizes Bitcoin's ability to be a currency. As soon as someone criticizes its ability to be an asset, someone trots out that its actually been a currency this whole time. It's bad at bo…
> This is an opinion that Bitcoin advocates throw out every time someone criticizes Bitcoin's ability to be a currency. This 'opinion' comparing Bitcoin properties to Gold appeared before Bitcoin antagonists appeared. It is part of a design.
The white paper is literally titled “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” and the first line of the abstract states “ A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”
For this purpose it is abjectly poorly suited.
Neither the word “gold” nor “store of value” nor anything else of the sort appear in the abstract.
Re: Bitcoin is a disaster
#927Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I should note that I do not necessarily imply in my comment that it would be Bitcoin that would bend the world to its will. Bitcoin is just one member of a larger cluster of cryptocurrencies. There are certainly some cryptocurrencies for which it is not so obvious that governments will be able to enforce exactly the same laws as they enforce now.
That said, even with Bitcoin, I do think it shifted the world ever so slightly in a new direction of financial independence which just wasn't there before. There is something distinctly different about sending money to someone else in any part of the world just by typing their address, with no one being able to stop you. With traditional methods, governments could impose and have regularly interfered and imposed bureaucracy already on this sending step. With Bitcoin they do not do this because it isn't very practical.
Re: Bitcoin is a disaster
#928Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the government can't "just shut down the internet". If any government did that, then the country would suffer extreme economic damages, if such a policy was maintained for a long time. Your argument would be like if someone were to say "actually, the government can stop all theft, now and forever. All it has to do is launch 1 thousand nukes, start world war 3, and kill off 99% of the population". Like, sure. The…
My point was that the government has control of the internet, and thereby all activity on the internet. > extreme economic damages We're talking about Venezuela, which has had extreme economic damages caused by a government trying to maintain control over its population. It seems that they don't care about damage, only power domestically, not internationally. The comment we're replying to said that Bitcoin is valuabl…
> My point was that the government has control of the internet, and thereby all activity on the internet.
Yes, if you're a big enough bully, you have control over many things. However, sometimes the control would imply too much destruction so even the bully chooses not to proceed. This is essentially what is happening right now.
Re: Bitcoin is a disaster
#929Earlier quoted context omitted.
2008 is a great example of why fiat currency is helpful. The government can simply create more to stimulate cash flow and/or prevent a crisis of confidence in a non-government institution.
But when the government 'simply create more', they are not creating any more wealth. They are creating more units of currency to represent the same wealth as before, which eventually makes every unit of currency worth slightly less. The people who have assets in cash end up paying for it. That includes the poor who have most of their net worth in cash as they live paycheck to paycheck, and whose purchasing power has…
If the government "prints" money and immediately distributes it uniformly to the population, it benefits the poor most of all. Especially debtors.
This year was a great example. Mortgage refinancing bonanza. If inflation really takes hold, those debtors will be very happy.
> And that’s not a “rich get richer” kind of thing — the poverty rate fell. And it’s no surprise. Peter Ganong, Pacal Noel, and Joseph Vavra found that under the CARES superdole, “two-thirds of UI eligible workers can receive benefits which exceed lost earnings and one-fifth can receive benefits at least double lost earnings.”
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-cares-superdole-was-a-huge-...
Re: Bitcoin is a disaster
#930Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the Euro was taking over thanks to the 500EU note?
They are not printing any more 500EU notes, but they do remain legal tender for now. They might start being worth more than 500EU over time. Seems like a good note to keep your cash savings in if you live in Europe.
Decline of cash is really a shame. When the $100 was introduced it was worth about $2k in today's dollars, and in my lifetime even it was worth almost $300