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MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

reuters.com

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Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#831

Post by RealityVoid »

nikolay wrote: post #757
RealityVoid wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think you really do not get it. Why would the loss of ability to mine lead to a price increase of Bitcoin? The mining efforts are driven by the price, not viceversa. I am certain you are familiar with it for a long time, but the way you put the problem kind of points out you are missing something.

Being rewarded coins or earning fees is the same thing - without the incentive to mine, the whole system collapses.

This is correct, but you did not address what I was saying - why would a reduction in hashing power lead to an increase in Bitcoin price, as you were suggesting here:

" the bubble has inflated from $6K to $47K only because it's now harder to steal electricity in China and the rest of the world to mine bitcoins. "

Also, I know who Paul LeRoux is but I find I highly unlikely he is satoshi.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#832

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

arcticbull wrote: post #714
Geee wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. The official inflation rate is wrong and misleading.

Why don’t you provide some data instead of conjecture. We generally don’t accept that the government inflation numbers are just plain wrong without substantiation.

Sometimes common sense trumps data.

You dont need data to know that the sky is blue.

That being said parent did not help himself throwing statements out there without a foundation.

Here is what i believe he should have said:

CPI for goods fails in the following:

Accounting for changes in sizes and quality of certain products (i.e. instead of raising prices vendor will lower quality or amount of product )

Accounting for healthcare costs is fundamentally flawed. This only factors out of pocket costs when the majority of americans are effectively paying 80% of healthcare premiums via reduced grosd wages in the form of "employer contributions"

Accounting for substitutions of products in the cpi itself which are not reliable substitutes, or the exclusion of certain items (housing) which are clearly inflationary.

There is also a lot of criticism made for the boskin commision changes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boskin_Commission to cpi which messed with base prices and thus with true measurement of cpi.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#833

Post by CryptoPunk »

fakedang wrote: post #815
CryptoPunk wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't take much law to make cryptocurrency secure for a person to hold: just protection from home invasion and torture. It can work quite well in otherwise highly dysfunctional societies. Other forms of property ownership are much more fragile, and require a much more sophisticated legal system.

Will that be enough? AFAIK, every country's government (or some warlord) has a monopoly on violence and the law. If they wanted to, they could easily just draft a law mandating crypto to be stored in particular forms else can't be used/traded. Or they could simply invade your home on some bullshit pretext and seize all of your crypto. Both instances have happened before (and have been posted on HN too) and I've seen…

In theory, there is nothing an autocratic government can't do to you.

But leaders pay a political price for instituting draconian enforcement measures, while their country pays an economic price, which makes them less likely. It's one thing to send armed agents to storm the homes of executives of a large private bank to shake down the bank. It's another to do it against end-users at a scale where it becomes effective.

You may be right about the most secure form of property. Many don't have access to jurisdictions that can offer people in their income class that kind of security of property. For them, I think in some situations cryptocurrency can be a very secure form of property comparatively speaking. Cryptocurrency can be thought of as a poor man's offshore bank account, literally speaking.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#834

Post by eek04_ »

nathias wrote: post #808
MrMan wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I called Bitcoin “naive and antisocial”. I perceive a long-standing willingness on the part of crypto proponents to willfully ignore why monetary policy exists and how it is tied to society’s needs. Self-governance cannot be cast aside in favor of a currency managed by a network of miners remote from the Economic output, debt and other expressions of local social economy. I called it evil and I wasn’t bei…

Of course monetary policy is good for the guys implementing it, crypto is here for the rest of us. Making monetary policy tied to a currency and immutable is one of the great benefits of crypto, akin to having monetary policies be part of constitution.

I don't believe it will be a benefit. Current monetary policy is to keep inflation positive and low, while addressing economic shocks that make money velocity low by increasing the supply.

A low positive inflation effectively makes all prices that are denominated in a fixed amount of the currency slowly lower. This helps the economy - ie, people and companies acting in the economy - deal with changes more easily, since their contracted prices are going down. It also avoids the problem with deflation: Keeping money to spend in the future makes more sense to an individual, thus money velocity goes down, thus less things happen (and all actors earn less.)

That's also why increasing the money supply for crises is good: It allows the same activity to go on, even if each unit of currency moves less. People can get paid the same even if everybody save up money. If there's a fixed amount of currency, they can't, since the currency that would be used to pay them is now bound up in their savings.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#835

Post by JulianRaphael »

crazydoggers wrote: post #703
JulianRaphael wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the spirit of your comment - that's the actual hacker mindset. Way too many comments on Bitcoin/Crypto-related submissions on HN are just knee-jerk reactions that don't really contribute to a constructive conversation. When I started lurking on HN in 2010, it was a very different culture. I miss these days! Regarding your concern around economic inequality: why do you think that people would fall further behin…

Where were you the other day! Lol. Excellent points. I think like with a lot of tech, if there’s a potential to liberate people, there’s also the potential for it to work against them too. The internet helped foster open communication when it evolved, helping with the fall of the USSR and the lifting of the iron curtain... but it has evolved now in many places as a way to spread more propaganda, and track citizens mo…

Agreed, at the end of the day all technology is but a tool. Technological progress also requires human progress, i.e. we have to upgrade our mental models and values as technology allows us to engage at unprecedented scale. Critical thinking and empathy seem to be the two key missing skills in the 21st century and modern society doesn't place a lot of emphasis on developing these skills. That's where I'm fully with you: the key is to educate, educate and educate. But we also need to upgrade our education system accordingly!

My strongest criticism of the cryptocurrency movement is that there are very few genuine educators. Hackers who truly believe in decentralisation and self-empowerment and are able to communicate the basic concepts in a way that kids and older people can get it. OG Whales who have made a fortune and now could invest into tools and services to make cryptocurrencies accessible to everyone. Or even seed some of the crypto funds that could help drive upward mobility for people from lower income strata. The idea behind cryptocurrencies and the values are so much more important than their price and getting rich quick. But instead of educating and sharing some of their wealth, most prominent cryptocurrency advocates just talk about the price of Bitcoin, engage in ad hominem attacks on folks who don't get it and boast with their wealth.

Imagine what all these millions and billions of wealth could achieve in terms of educating the masses and winning them over for the cause!

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#837

Post by stolsvik »

jkepler wrote: post #395
throwaway1777 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Settle down and have kids. Your problems will be solved.

Not necessarily if one works for a firm that moves you every few years. My family and I have lived in 5 cities in the past six years, due to changing work assignments.

I hope they pay you well. Moving is the worst.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#838

Post by literallycancer »

systemvoltage wrote: post #84
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

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…

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…

scp twice a day to keep the plebs at bay

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#839

Post by simiones »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #806
adrianN wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for very narrow use cases I don't see how the rules you can enforce in a digital space like a blockchain network help when you don't have a stable meatspace system of law. A bitcoin transaction can be mathematically as bullet proof as you want, but that doesn't help make your meatspace assets any more bullet proof.

It doesn't take much law to make cryptocurrency secure for a person to hold: just protection from home invasion and torture. It can work quite well in otherwise highly dysfunctional societies. Other forms of property ownership are much more fragile, and require a much more sophisticated legal system.

Ok, so no one can steal my crypto. But what if they accept my payment, and then they don't give me the items I payed for? Or vice versa - if I'm selling something and I give them the item, but they don't initiate the payment? What if the company I work for isn't transferring the BTC in our contract at the end of the month, because they ran out because their own customers haven't been paying?

With a regular currency, the government can print more money and at least have a chance for things going back to normal once the currency has a chance to go back up in value. But with a currency that's not controlled, you won't get payed in worthless money (inflation), you just won't get payed at all! And instead of getting back your lost value if the currency rises in power, you'll have to hope the contract will be honored at a later date, or massively overload the legal system.

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