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Just an FYI. This is from the guy who predicted the death of Bitcoin by mid 2014: https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2014-03-02-ShortHistor...
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> The average transaction fee during slow periods is about $5 and it jumps to $20 whenever there is load on the network. When people say this, do they mean $5/$20 per bitcoin or per any transaction whatever size?
Per any transaction, regardless of size.
It costs $5 to spend any amount of Bitcoin?
Is that for real? (I genuinely don't know, that just sounds so high)
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That sounds absolutely terrible. Were you ever able to take legal recourse?
No, not at all. During my asset freeze, I considered trying to take action against my bank to force something to actually happen and facts to come to light. But I also had access to no money, and and my time was better spent working some cash jobs so I didn't have to lean so much on my friends. And then once my assets were unfrozen, I don't think I really have much grounds for recourse..
I’m just shocked; never considered this could happen. Was this related to your employer, and… Well, I should just ask rather than guess :) thank you for sharing, and I’m really sorry that happened.
One of the best decisions I’ve made recently is to set up a company for myself. More specifically, I set up a non profit “for the world” (mostly as an intellectual exercise of “how hard would it be to mimic what openai originally set out to do? Turns out, it’s not hard!) which then put me in a position where I knew exactly how to set up an LLC for myself for consulting, and how to set up a bank account (use https://www.mercury.com — don’t use anything else).
The takeaway is that, if you’re in the US, you can have protection from exactly this sort of thing, for roughly zero cost — in Missouri the filing fee for an LLC was a whopping $50. That’s how much it cost me to set everything up, start to finish.
I now have a business banking account, quickbooks takes care of the taxes (admittedly $24/mo isn’t “totally free” but it’s also “pretty cheap” relatively speaking) — which means that yes, someone could freeze my LLC (hello IRS) or freeze my personal account (hello US Bank, you suck) but it’s highly unlikely both will ever be frozen simultaneously, unless both the business and my personal accounts are under scrutiny simultaneously.
The cure for that is very simple, as long as you’re rigorous: income comes in to your Mercury account; it flows out into your personal account, by paying yourself a salary. Never use the Mercury account for anything else. Congratulations, your LLC is almost impervious from problems. (My famous last words; the fact is, I have no idea what I’m talking about, and this is what I’m expecting to be true as t approaches infinity).
So yes. Bitcoin: good solution. LLC: also good solution. Wish I’d taken advantage of it sooner.
Unsure about outside of the US though, sadly. Though I’ve often toyed with the idea of making a company specializing in setting up one of those offshore bank tax havens, and offering a product like Stripe whose sole purpose is to automate that. :) Then everybody gets the loophole, rather than a rich few.
Anyway, thanks again for sharing that very unexpected story; I hope it never happens to you again!
By that logic, buying a piece of land or real estate or gold is a ponzu scheme.
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Your digital store of value promises to lose around 2% of its buying power every year, and they beat that by a lot this past year.
Indeed, and I don't keep a lot of money for that reason. It's designed to be a relatively temporary store of value. There's no such thing as a guaranteed permanent store of value, because value is driven by markets.
Prove me wrong.
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The fees for Bitcoin are way too high to make sense for citizens in poor authoritarian counties. The average transaction fee during slow periods is about $5 and it jumps to $20 whenever there is load on the network. And the lightning network is a poor solution to this because the LN requires a lot of capital to fund channels, something poor people explicitly don't have. Finally, the fact that Bitcoin proponents have…
> The average transaction fee during slow periods is about $5 and it jumps to $20 whenever there is load on the network. When people say this, do they mean $5/$20 per bitcoin or per any transaction whatever size?
Bitcoin is a store of value. Why is it a store of value? Because people believe it is, much like gold. You can gesture vaguely at the minor utility that gold has, the ability to be made into things of commercial value, but that's a fig leaf as much as it is to point to Bitcoin's potential use for payments. Hashrate and mining investment is a reflection of that belief. Don't take this as advice to buy Bitcoin at 50k.…
Possibly. It is an asset, after all. The problem is that people are buying it because they expect it to appreciate significantly, hence "when lambo." There's a difference between believing something will retain its value and believing it will appreciate.
Bitcoin is a store of value. Why is it a store of value? Because people believe it is, much like gold. You can gesture vaguely at the minor utility that gold has, the ability to be made into things of commercial value, but that's a fig leaf as much as it is to point to Bitcoin's potential use for payments. Hashrate and mining investment is a reflection of that belief. Don't take this as advice to buy Bitcoin at 50k.…
Lol at most of HN thinking Bitcoin is a ponzi and the fractionally reserved US dollar monetary&banking system is not. It's been over a decade guys, try opening your eyes and your minds or you're going to go down with the ship.