651–660 of 910 posts
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Hong Kong and Singapore might be great examples
TBH, I'm ignorant of these countries' regulatory systems. You may be right. What makes them good examples?
Also, IIRC, they both benefited from being trade gateways into the PRC economy, especially when it was more closed than it is now.
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Markets only exist within the context of a political system. They are just a tool to reach a certain policy outcome. The idea of using the free market to replace poor governance is laughable. It's the opposite. You have to set the right policies and incentives and only then will the free market show its true beauty. Markets fail or succeed because of improper or proper governance. It's like a genetic/ML algorithm tha…
Suppose you've got two political systems each vying for legitimacy. They each have their own currency, and their own set of policy outcomes. Is it so laughable that whichever one achieves the best results for its users will be the one to establish both market and political dominance? Is letting such a competition play out via the value of their respective currencies any better than traditional means of resolving this…
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> As long as a country cannot print usd itself, this is a fast shortcut to unemployment, hunger, etc... We don’t even need to make up hypothetical examples. We have a live one in Greece. The Greek citizens went through this exact ordeal for the exact reason you stated. They couldn’t print EUR and the ECB wouldn’t extent monetary support to Greek government.
The Greek citizens went through this because the Greek government has been lying for many years in its financial reports.
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Why would someone give euro against a more risky local money?
hence my question, what does btc change?
It's less regulated so it's more likely people will make poor trades - maybe it's not in their interest as you are implying, but they do it anyway.
Countries can make owning foreign currency illegal. BTC is easier to hide than Euros (cash or electronic). You can trade BTC back to cash without a paper trail by writing down a private key.
In terms of why someone would sell BTC for a failing currency? Maybe they are also a local and have expenses to pay. Otherwise, it's likely the seller is selling for USD or something and there's an intermediate conversion so someone else who needs it ends up with the local currency. It's pretty common to get out of the currency as much as possible (assets, other currencies, BTC) then only dip back in for as little as possible to pay local expenses.
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How do you transact in crypto without internet? Maybe that's musk's long term plan with satellites
What about encryption?
These stories usually spur more enthusiasm for buying cryptocurrency, but ironically those buyers aren’t interested in spending cryptocurrency using their MasterCard. They’re hoping other people will buy cryptocurrency from these announcements, driving the price up. Or, more likely, they’re just hoping other people will buy cryptocurrency and not use it in these spending systems. Spending cryptocurrency would result…
We're not actually certain whether Mastercard will include volatile cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. Reading this article ( https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/mastercard-will-... ), their requirements suggest supporting stablecoins (i.e. USDC). These cryptocurrencies are pegged to the dollar and should be backed by a reserve. In that case, your argument about price movements doesn't apply here.
I'm all for it, if it's properly audited and confirmed that the funds are in place.
I'm a huge proponent of cryptocurrency technology as long as it doesn't:
1) Depend on wasting ever-increasing amounts of electricity doing arbitrary useless proof-of-work
2) Create a new currency out of thin air, when all we really want is a way to move our existing money around. I don't want to have to buy an arbitrary cryptocurrency from some early adopters at an inflated price just to move my USD from point A to point B.
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What's the point of an unstable, volatile, frantically manipulated currency that is susceptible to social media pump and dump schemes (Elon + Doge)? Currency and its exchange rate needs to be relatively stable for the world to put trust into it. Saying that BTC is stable, but the rest of the world's fiat currency is fluctuating makes no sense. US dollar provides stability and security, I feel confident that a cappucc…
Your view must be skewed by privilege of having stable currency. Currency of my country lost 250% of its value over last 7 years. It's not bitcoin-level volatile, but close to it. Thankfully I have an option to use USD to hoard money, but that option is not something that's given, in many countries you just can't exchange for fair price. I agree that for someone living in US or EU there's no much point using BTC.
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It's sad that this aspect of the conversation so often gets replaced by everything else. This is (IMO) the most important point about digital currency - the promise of providing consumers in unstable economies the chance to convert to a more stable currency without government intrusion. We're still not there, but that should be the north star for crypto (again, in my opinion).
Say everyone in an unstable economy were paid in usd. If that country has foreign deficit, if that country has high government debt. What happens? How can the government keep paying its own employees? How does it pay retiree checks? How does it subsidize farming when needed? As long as a country cannot print usd itself, this is a fast shortcut to unemployment, hunger, etc... Strong currencies are not the solution to…
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> BTC might still be a terrible system for international transactions but it's still 168 times faster than the one that exists now. It is 168 times faster than what you currently use . There are services like TransferWise who specialize in fast international money transfers. I could imagine that part of your delay is because the bank your family use (in Croatia) does not themselves handle international transfers, so…
That's a fair comment. I don't use Transferwise, rather just wire money via Chase Bank to an IBAN account. You are right that there is an intermediary bank involved in the process. Also yes, within Europe, an IBAN to IBAN transfer is pretty much instantaneous. However US is not in the IBAN system, so that's a different story. There are probably multiple reasons why the transfer takes a week, but the spirit of my comm…
1. https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-electr...
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> Sure, now you have 10 mln dollars in BTC at all tine high, and 2 mln after price drops but in day to day purchases it doesn't matter. This doesn't track at all, unless it is a safe assumption that the general trend of Bitcoin will always be up, and you are able to time the market to do any major withdrawals at higher prices. Or, you don't have any major withdrawals, and you luck out in that your many small withdraw…
Compare this to wealth of Elon Musk. This month he's the richest person on planet, two months ago he wasn't even in top 10 (I think). Did anything changed for him? No. Can he not be the richest man on the planet in two months? Sure. Will it change anything for him? Still no. I pretty much think about people who got into bitcoin early and they have more than 1000% gain and just hodl because they don't have much use fo…
Which is one of many reasons why we're not going to have a mass switchover to Bitcoin. It wouldn't actually benefit the average person, but it would make early adopters ridiculously wealthy for having clicked the right buy button at the right time and not lost their private key along the way.
In reality, once Bitcoin becomes a mechanism for the early adopters to wield wealth over the later adopters, everyone who didn't get rich early on will switch to playing a different game. No reason to go all-in on Bitcoin if the system is stacked in so far in favor of early adopters that you'll never be one of the wealthy ones.