101–110 of 221 posts
I wonder if the dutch government bans Bitcoin, that means that there is no need to declare anything. After all, it doesn't fulfill any function as money, means of payment or store of value.
At least that is the idea, but in reality, it is a long way from that view. The issue is that people don't really buy into a consistent vision on what Bitcoin is and are still trying to figure out how much they value it and do price discovery. Let alone how it should be legislated. That being said, I believe the storage of value is a real problem and Bitcoin, or something like it, could be a valuable financial tool in a decade or so, once the dust has settled.
It reminds be a bit of the Internet back in the early 90s. All kinds of discussions and speculation, most of which ended up being very wrong, but the core technology ended up being dominant.
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Who bribed or put the pressure on El Salvador? Outwardly, it doesn’t make any sense except as a publicity stunt.
22% of their GDP is remittance based. The US treats them like shit since they have the USD as currency. God forbid a country wants more independence 70% of the country has no bank, for Bitcoin all you need is the internet and a simple wallet app.
The delusion regarding crypto has reached parody levels. This reads like something out of an Onion article.
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>the carbon footprint of Bitcoin Still less than the carbon footprint of the people running our current fiat-based financial infrastructure. It's the bankers who have jets, mansions and yachts, not the bitcoiners. Edit to clarify: Not that riches is somehow "wrong" - it's just that with major value comes major costs, which in practice mean major energy usage .
Bitcoin uses far more energy than the jets, mansion and yachts of bankers.
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Remind me the carbon footprint and transaction costs of Bitcoin again, and compare that to the costs from institutional payment gateways?
Zero carbon footprint and zero carbon in transaction costs. You simply don’t understand what is that energy used for. It’s definitely not for processing transactions.
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Yea its really great to be prosecuted for no reason except the whims of the powerful, we should really all be in favor of making everything illegal by default.
No, being prosecuted at the whim of the powerful is horrible, but Bitcoin claims to be a kind of technological "escape hatch" from this kind of abuse. The sooner we find out that it isn't an escape hatch, the better. We can then return to social and political hard work of curbing the powerful, instead of pretending we can just take our cryptocurrencies and escape.
Supporters of Bitcoin should be in favor of making it illegal in as many jurisdictions as possible. It's the only way to be sure it's as resistant to government power as it claims to be.
bitcoins show the nasty nature of the people all about profits, nobody care about solving problems, they just want the price to grow to make profit from their investment
I agree, there is literally not a single wide spread us beyond the aforementioned.
Putting aside for a moment whether this will actually happen, I would like to ask: how? How do you effectively ban circulation of certain types of information? The entertainment industry didn't manage to achieve this over the last 20 years.
Then it’s simply a question of confiscating whatever you turn your Bitcoin into. It’s usually how they deal with criminal gangs as well. “Can’t prove how you managed to buy a million dollar mansion while being unemployed?”, it is now the governments property… The primary reason it doesn’t really work on crime in general is because most of the money doesn’t stay where the drugs are sold, but most Bitcoin speculators/investors aren’t setup to live outside “the law”.
In Holland it could be as easy as simply having the banks confiscate any money that arrive from exchanges and blocking any transfers in the other direction. It wouldn’t exactly end Bitcoin as you point out, but it would make them rather worthless to most people.
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Man, wow. What if, like, you know, solving problems like 70% of the population not having a bank could actually reduce crime. Bitcoin is a pretty easy fix for that problem. And “it’s a tiny country”…like do they not deserve a better life since they have such a small gdp. This is the most inhumane sentiment I keep seeing about this news “who cares, they are a tiny country with small gdp”
Why bitcoin over a bank account ? What's the advantage? I mean, if you don't have a bank account - "here, store everything you have on this phone [do you own a smartphone?], that requires an internet connection [can you afford that?]" - seems like a bigger step, no? Unless I'm missing something obvious?
Blockstream is working to make internet more accessible there. It’ll be interesting to see how much penetration they get and how much it’ll cost folks there.
Doesn’t need to be a brand new iPhone, but I do agree that phones are an initial cost and I’d be interested in seeing what are low-cost smart phone options there.
That said! The Bitcoin Beach experiment there was enough of a success https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lif...