71–80 of 131 posts
There are a few issues at play here: 1. A lot of newly 'minted' Tether's are being used to buy Bitcoin (so prop it up, the Bitcoin price rises). 2. Possibly as a next step, these now more valuable bitcoins are than sold for real money, and the owners of bitfinex/tether pocket this real earned money as profit. 3. It should be noted that although the total amount of tether is still rising, the total amount of all "stab…
I think it's DAI now.
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"have fun staying poor" I don't understand the notion that bitcoin is making all people rich. It is a transactional system at best. If you cash out you are taking somebody else's money who decided to buy it at higher price. It has no fantastic democratizing magic which will make all people rich. It is. It building new things. I can understand people who are invested in it wanting to perpetuate the positive story so t…
> It has no fantastic democratizing magic which will make all people rich. It is. It building new things. If you prefer to hold bitcoin instead of fiat and are willing to spend a little bit effort on that and digest some transaction costs, I think it is very likely you will become wealthier. However the promise to get rich is something entirely different. Not many people in the world can be rich. You have to take out…
That said, there are still plenty of opportunities in crypto to make "get rich" money. NFTs are one area in particular right now, especially for people capable of learning to code smart contracts. That's not everyone here, but it's most.
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Ah absolutely, the much more tangible short-term example of “guys with guns” is (admittedly ever more militarized) domestic law enforcement. But the implied threat towards anyone who say, started dumping US sovereign debt, or transacting petroleum in EUR, or whatever is very real. Countries have been liberated for less.
China dumped a bunch of US sovereign debt. They haven't been "liberated" yet. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/02/china-drops-us-treasurys-imp... Russia has started transacting petroleum in EUR. They haven't been "liberated" yet. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rosneft-contracts-euro-id... Petroleum transaction only make up a small fraction of worldwide dollar use. It doesn't really matter. https://foreignpolicy.com/2…
I do think it’s interesting to note that both of the examples you used are the only two countries that the US military wouldn’t like to try its hand against. And there is a broader point there: my original point becomes less relevant the further that global US hegemony slips.
There are a few issues at play here: 1. A lot of newly 'minted' Tether's are being used to buy Bitcoin (so prop it up, the Bitcoin price rises). 2. Possibly as a next step, these now more valuable bitcoins are than sold for real money, and the owners of bitfinex/tether pocket this real earned money as profit. 3. It should be noted that although the total amount of tether is still rising, the total amount of all "stab…
A few things.
First off, a "wallet" is really a bank account, albeit one at a shadow bank (i.e., unregulated bank). In the case of the Chivo wallet, I think I read somewhere that it's actually storing the USD not as USD but as Tethers. I don't have independent verification of that off-hand, though.
Secondly, the numbers of users are being quoted by Bukele, without independent verification. I have some skepticism of the veracity. Although I will note that the Google Play Store indicates "1,000,000+" downloads. Opening a Chivo wallet came with a $30 giveaway, which gives a motivation to open one up just to claim a pretty sizeable prize--and also a motivation for scammers to do it for you, hoping you won't notice.
Thirdly, there's evidence that it's being little used. More recently, they "negotiated" with the largest gas stations to give a 20¢/gal discount--suggesting that use without promotional offerings is poor. And 93% of businesses report not having anyone attempt to use it.
Overall, this suggests that the adoption of Bitcoin hasn't been a wildly positive success.
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Crypto-currencies are selling you a service: linearizing database transactions. This is like arguing that Apple could arbitrarily go to zero because the world would find a different phone to use, and while that's true it seems to miss the point that Apple is unlikely to go to zero until after someone makes a better phone or makes phones obsolete. The world of decentralized database transactions--particularly the turi…
...so why is it that the world of "decentralized database transactions" is being used near exclusively for speculative assets like the various cryotocoins and, err, NFTs containing alleged artwork? Also, what real world usage do you actually see for "decentralized database transactions"? Beyond massive speculation and pictures of apes?
Honestly, most centralized databases are used for silly things you would disagree with also, and the ones that aren't are often used for financial services that you are going to claim are somehow not ok when decentralized but totally fine when centralized :/.
FWIW, I've been using it as a fully distributed replacement for the Tor directory servers (which are run by 9 people as a form of charity, with no plan when I have talked to them for how to deal with people coming by with crowbars to threaten them) and then people pay for their bandwidth (allowing for both fair allocation of resources and well as incentivization of supply), which of course fundamentally requires a programmable decentralized currency (which is itself just a program running on the programmable decentralized database).
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Crypto-currencies are selling you a service: linearizing database transactions. This is like arguing that Apple could arbitrarily go to zero because the world would find a different phone to use, and while that's true it seems to miss the point that Apple is unlikely to go to zero until after someone makes a better phone or makes phones obsolete. The world of decentralized database transactions--particularly the turi…
I know tons of people speculating in Ethereum. I know nobody using it as a database.
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I know tons of people speculating in Ethereum. I know nobody using it as a database.
I know a ton of people who speak English and I know literally no one who speaks Swahili: that doesn't mean that no one speaks it :/.
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I've seena crapload more commenters on here putting crypto in a positive light. It's only recently I've started to see some genuine opposition.
It's very easy to search and see HN has been heavily anti-crypto since the beginning, over a decade ago.
The very mixed Bitcoin rollout in El Salvador by an authoritarian govt should also tell us that the fantasy of crypto enabling freedom from oppressive govt is also still unrealized.
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The US government hasn't used their military to force anyone to transact in dollars, or even threatened to do so. The dollar has value primarily because taxes inside the US are denominated in dollars. If you don't pay your taxes with dollars then eventually civilian law enforcement will show up and seize your assets.
Besides the Iraq thing someone mentioned, Gaddafi in Libya got taken out right after he spoke about wanting to sell oil in euros. But most importantly, there's Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has no military except the US military, and Saudi Arabia prices oil in dollars. It isn't conceivable that they could price oil in another currency and still receive protection from the US (i.e., continue to exist). The US kind of "ha…
Source? Specifically, a source that can pinpoint a statement by a Libyan official in the immediate run-up to the intervention in Libya (i.e., late 2010 or early 2011) indicating a desire to switch to selling oil in euros.
The closest I've ever seen to such a source is that one of the cables released in the Wikileaks leak reported that a source close to Sarkozy outlined a few reasons why he wanted to intervene of Libya, one of which was a desire to replace the CFA franc (effectively backed by France) with a gold-based Libyan dinar.