Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are the positive sides of "Evading capital controls"? Also, does POS here mean "piece of shit"?
Point of Sale maybe ...
Well, that makes more sense, thnx.
Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
671–680 of 1001 posts
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#672Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because 98% of the people on here haven't actually used DeFi. The most they've done is bought and sold a little btc or eth on coinbase. The ah-ha moments come from real use.
I'd say the fastest way of making someone have a bad view of Bitcoin is to make them buy something with Bitcoin. I've actually had to buy Bitcoin in order to pay for something that was about $20. Talk about a hassle and fees upon fees.
I've paid tuition twice abroad. Once it took days, multiple forex/bank accounts, and had several annoying surprise fees. The second was in BTC and was settled in five minutes, directly.
It's been said before but the experience is a lot like writing an email versus a letter.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#673Earlier quoted context omitted.
Western Union has been doing this for > 150 years.
Western Union is a nightmare to use. You need send and pickup in a physical location, sometimes the recipient needs specific forms of ID, and the fees are insane. I once sent $100 to someone in South America and it cost me $13. WU is a relic that targets and takes advantage of the less fortunate and those in 3rd world countries.
Now, I agree that WU is a bit of a nightmare, and preying to an extent on the poor, remittances, etc.; and that better fintech alternatives are required, such as TransferWise.
However, part of the costs of course arise from supporting
a) a branch network that also enables those without smartphone to use the service, and
b) all the pesky KYC AML measures that Bitcoin conveniently circumvents.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#674Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…
I tried, I sincerely did. I had many friends who were strong believers in bitcoin. I read articles, I watched videos, and every time it felt like hucksterism. There was no serious discussion of the advantages of bitcoin, no attempt to explain blockchain.
There was a lot of repeating, over and over again, how amazing and revolutionary bitcoin was. "For the first time ever, a computer owns currency!" one youtuber said without the slightest effort to explain why I should care.
Maybe I missed something. Obviously some people did well on it, and if I'd just skipped all those videos, bought a few hundred dollars worth, and then sold those shares a few years later I'd be a lot better off right now.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#675Earlier quoted context omitted.
While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the recipient withdrawing it for cash at a Bitcoin ATM. There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. If people thought a little beyond their personal use cases, they would understand the utility of Bitcoin/crypto for ma…
I'm not claiming that a low-latency, no-borders, truly international digital currency is a bad thing. The main issue with Bitcoin is a complete lack of oversight. As a currency it's dreadful, suffering from tens of thousands of percent in deflation (= value increased relative to the cost of goods). As a trade product it's terrible, suffering from a lack of oversight from e.g. the SEC, opening it up to price manipulat…
Bitcoin is 12 years old. It’s very very young. Problems will be addressed as it matures.
Further, every currency has problems. Is USD perfect in your mind and without it’s own unique set of issues?
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#676This comment is unlikely to win me many friends here, but it is worth considering that while Bitcoin is, nominally at least, decentralized and free from government control, internet access is not. A simple glance at the trend of governments to partially or to fully shut down internet services to certain areas in times of unrest or mass protest means, in the case of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies requiring collect…
Kinda solved https://www.wired.com/story/cypherpunks-bitcoin-ham-radio/
Well ham radio operation, in the USA at least, requires a license. Are you proposing that everyone get ham-radio-licensed as a prerequisite to participating in the new economy?
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#677Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…
“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” -Satoshi Nakamoto Feb. 2009 If this isn’t resonating with you after the past year, I don’t know. I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked t…
> If this isn’t resonating with you after the past year, I don’t know.
On the contrary, it's made me more firm in my position: fiat is better than bitcoin because fiat is responsive to the demands of democracy, while bitcoin is responsive only to a protocol written in the late aughts.
There's a lot of issues with American democracy, but it's still democracy. I can vote, and theoretically any root problems can be fixed with constitutional amendments. The only way to do something similar with bitcoin is a hard fork, which just proliferates additional coins like bitcoin cash.
If global democracy fails and is replaced with authoritarianism I'd be all on board with crypto, but until then I'm happy with a currency where I'm a part of the decision making process, even if it's just a tiny little part.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#678Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin uses as much electricity as Chile and a single transaction has the same carbon footprint as ~700k Visa transactions. This may also be underestimated and account for around half of global data centre energy consumption as per a recent study. [1] [1] - https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
« as much electricity as Chile » Or about as much as a single large hydroelectric dam. Fun fact: many miners are located in places with cheap hydro/wind electricity like Sichuan & Yunnan provinces in China. These provinces abandon 100+ TWh/year of hydropower. They literally run water through the dams without powering the turbines. 100 TWh/year is more than what Bitcoin consumes globally. « single transaction has the…
>Or about as much as a single large hydroelectric dam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_hydroelectric_...
According to this list, there are two dams in the world which generate that much electricity. And if you take the Cambridge estimate, zero dams.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#679I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?
Crypto at this point makes zero sense as any future of finance. It doesn't work. It's pretty much vaporware that has been hyped to the point that people didn't realize it will never work mass-scale as is. The hype drove early holders to massive income (like an MLM scheme) but ledger uses so much massive energy and power to process transactions that it is HORRIBLE for planet earth. Like running Crypo on the global sca…
If everyone on earth used Bitcoin the energy use would not go up. What would go up would be transaction fees because bitcoin only can process like 4 transactions every second.
Proof of work is not the only trustless consensus algorithm and there are already plenty of projects on varieties of proof of stake.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#680Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…
While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the recipient withdrawing it for cash at a Bitcoin ATM. There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. If people thought a little beyond their personal use cases, they would understand the utility of Bitcoin/crypto for ma…
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