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EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

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Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#211

Post by mech422 »

mech422 wrote: post #206
acdha wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was technically possible but nobody seriously did it because the transactions were very slow and fees were massive compared to everything else, not to mention that the deflationary design meant that anyone who did would be mocked for not having held on until the value went up. Remember all of those comments about people buying a pizza with what a few years later would have been thousands of dollars? That sealed it…

>>the transactions were very slow and fees were massive compared to everything else I gotta admit, this is my biggest issue with crypto. So far, it's just too slow/expensive to be attractive to me as a day to day tool.

>>*Bitcoin. Transactions on Fantom for example take couple seconds and cost less than a USD cent. Similarly Nano, AVAX, Cardano and many others.

Can't reply to your comment for some reason..

I been in Cardano/ADA for years now, and it generally takes about an hour to get the required confirms for moving between exchanges.

Not familiar with Nano, and AVAX...

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#212

Post by radu_floricica »

acdha wrote: post #178
avnigo wrote: post #148

I've experienced HN to be highly anti-Bitcoin for some reason -- got instantly downvoted for commenting neutrally on it [0]. However, I sort of expected more people on here would sympathize with the Cypherpunk Manifesto [1] and band together against pressures to minimize our privacy. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28114156 [1]: https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

HN tends to have a lot of people who are good at technical analysis and allergic to hyperbolic marketing. By now there's been a decade of Bitcoin proponents endlessly repeating claims which are either untrue or highly aspirational while it continues to very expensively not deliver results. This brings me to the second part: anyone who does care about privacy is _especially_ not going to recommend use of Bitcoin since…

I'm not sure how you can call it worse than the status quo.

Last week my bank informed me that I passed my ATM limit for the year and it's going to give me a small daily allowance for the rest of the year. And then lied me on the phone that it's a requirement from the central bank. This is neither a joke nor a metaphor - this literally happened to me this month (ING in Romania -they're widely considered the best bank here). Ah, they're an ATM-only bank, they have no tellers, so I can simply not take my money out, unless I make an account with another bank and have it transferred. And this just means I'm going to hit another set of limits.

There is a concerted effort to control the financial movements of the population. If you fit within common patterns you don't see it. I'm probably barely at the edge - I've moved on the order of tens of thousands - and I'm hitting it pretty hard. Revolut had my account completely blocked for a couple of months earlier this year, while completely ignoring my calls. Couldn't even close it, since it was not on zero and couldn't take money out of it. And this was for moving around on the order of thousands over a few months, mostly sending money to a few friends. This is not money laundering, this is simply using the money I make very legitimately and paying taxes for.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#214

Post by lottin »

mech422 wrote: post #205
lottin wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's marketed as a store of value. The fact is value can't be stored reliably anywhere. And storing it in a purely imaginary asset, of all things, seems about the dumbest idea.

No different then 'collecting' funko pops, spoons, sneakers, comic books, and a host of other things and hoping they increase in value.

It's different in at least two ways: physical objects provide utility in some way (you can read the book, wear the sneakers...) which means the demand isn't entirely speculative, and they also have a scrap value.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#215

Post by mech422 »

lottin wrote: post #214
mech422 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No different then 'collecting' funko pops, spoons, sneakers, comic books, and a host of other things and hoping they increase in value.

It's different in at least two ways: physical objects provide utility in some way (you can read the book, wear the sneakers...) which means the demand isn't entirely speculative, and they also have a scrap value.

except people routinely pay more then their 'utility' value..so its just as easy to lose money. Not sure what the 'utility' of funco pops are, or the scrap value (same with stamps IIRC - many of them aren't even valid for postage). Stocks typically have no 'scrap' value as well - if a company goes out of biz, the stock is worthless, and these days you generally don't even have the paper certificates to sell for scrap.

Also, the 'value' of art, books, and collectables is rather subjective and fairly volatile. TBH, they seem pretty comparable to cryptos to me. You collect them for fun, hoping the value goes up.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#216

Post by CryptoPunk »

acdha wrote: post #178
avnigo wrote: post #148

I've experienced HN to be highly anti-Bitcoin for some reason -- got instantly downvoted for commenting neutrally on it [0]. However, I sort of expected more people on here would sympathize with the Cypherpunk Manifesto [1] and band together against pressures to minimize our privacy. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28114156 [1]: https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

HN tends to have a lot of people who are good at technical analysis and allergic to hyperbolic marketing. By now there's been a decade of Bitcoin proponents endlessly repeating claims which are either untrue or highly aspirational while it continues to very expensively not deliver results. This brings me to the second part: anyone who does care about privacy is _especially_ not going to recommend use of Bitcoin since…

The privacy comes from the system being censorship resistant, so the platform itself can not require you to KYC yourself to the state in order to use it, or be shut down or blocked by the state.

The irrepudiable public record of transactions is needed to make it censorship resistant, and does indeed come with severe privacy risks, though those can be mitigated with zk-proof cryptography (e.g. https://aztec.network/).

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#217

Post by kimixa »

ilaksh wrote: post #192
NicoJuicy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The governement should know who you are and the bank you are associated too, if that's required to do business with them. Eg. VISA should be able to return my money to my bank account if someone has a chance to abuse the system and target me. I don't want companies to share my information to third parties, this includes the banks about my purchases. And eg. Facebook shouldn't be able to target me because a site added…

Visa is obsolete. That's the first point most people miss in these cryptocurrency discussions. Credit cards require you to disclose your secret credentials that allow withdrawals from your account. Cryptocurrency payments do not because they apply math and computer science to the problem. The banking systems are also mostly obsolete because they are usually on an outdated paradigm without a blockchain. Blockchains ar…

They don't have to though - asymmetric authentication has been a thing for decades.

The issue with current card transactions is the size of the identifier string - 16 digits isn't enough to do anything particularly useful with that can't be near-instantly brute forced.

Chip and pin somewhat improves that, all we need is to completely deprecate the idea of a "16 digit card number" and it opens up a world of possibilities. No "cryptocurrency" or "blockchain" needed.

And for many a "reverse-able" ledger is a bonus not a disadvantage - the "Average Guy On The Street" falls for personal scams or need to do chargebacks waaayyyyy more than fall foul of bank-level fraud.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#218

Post by CryptoPunk »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #183
randomhodler84 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have bought into the debt argument, and loose money. I like hard money. Infinity / 21M

Then you don't understand how currencies work today. It's like saying we should go back to the gold standard. It makes no sense. Labor capacity increases as population grows. Gold does not grow. Should we all exchange slivers of gold? No. That would be nonsensical.

The money supply grew under the gold standard, via debt-based money creation and fractional reserve banking.

The currency shortages and depressions of the gold standard era were due to government intervention in banking, not gold backing of currency: https://www.alt-m.org/2015/06/04/ten-things-every-economist-...

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#219

Post by CryptoPunk »

secondaryacct wrote: post #198
tablespoon wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The crypto world is running out of safe havens. China cracked down, and cut the power to large Bitcoin farms. In the US, the SEC and CFTC have been tightening up on crypto-related things that look like securities and things that look like exchanges. Israel kicked out the binary option crowd, which overlapped with the crypto crowd; they seem to have moved to Bulgaria. Now the EU. Which further proves the idea that c…

Especially since crypto relies on two state monopolies: internet licensed providers and electricity providers. I can cut a tree and trade it around in piece more easily than I can use the internet state-monitored access to ask someone to use the state-monitored energy grid to print me a bitcoin.

Crypto doesn't have to rely on large/detectable draws of electricity, as it can use Proof of Stake instead of Proof of Work.

As for internet access, with encryption, it's very hard if not impossible to discriminate on how people use the internet, so the state will have to either choose to ban people from using encryption, or live with crypto.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#220

Post by ranguna »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #36
liuliu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is an unpopular take, but for sites (like Stackoverflow) that give me options (if they don't, some times I just skip), I will select "strict" and continue. This is probably an improvement from previous status-quo for me.

If they were competent, they would have worked with web browser developers, and made it browser side like other permission dialogs. Imagine what could have been: a standardised prompt that is always the same, persists when clearing cookies, etc. Instead we have full screen modal popups that render 5 seconds after page load and move around while loading.

You mean "do not track"? Good luck with that, even the EU was smart enough to know that that's not an option.
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