81–90 of 203 posts
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If Ethereum can be changed from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake on a "whim", how is it not centralized in some capacity?
On a "whim" in so far as miners agree on the change.
Finance newbie here, but what is a 'security'? I looked it up, but can't grok it despite people's best attempt to describe it. All the articles can't sum it up in an ELI5 way. What's the TL;DR way of describing a security, and how does BTC fare in this? Is BTC a security?
Under US law (Howey test) a security is something that 1. You invest money in 2. Along with others 3. With the expectation of profit 4. Derived from the efforts of others ETA: (the others in #2 need not be the same others in #4)
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while it may be smart from a securities/legal/tax persepctive it also dooms bitcoin to be a useless coin. Transaction speeds abysmal and the energy usage is absurd. These could never be changed
Lightning Network is a layer 2 network on top of Bitcoin that is governed by smart contracts at the base layer and has transaction speed of seconds. It's increasingly used in place of base layer transactions for small to medium sized amounts (e.g. US$1 - $1000). Anything on the order of US$10k+ can reasonably transacted on the base layer, and when I am spending that much I don't mind a 10 minute confirmation time.
The SEC and Wallstreet have been locked in an eternal cat and mouse game for decades. And given that Wallstreet has the money and hence the talent and options it tends to be a step ahead of the SEC. I expect this will be even more true for crypto. While I believe that some regulation might be a good thing as it makes crypto safer for the wider public I am genuinely doubtful that the SEC has the capabilities or the ri…
Most people in Wall Street and the crypto community want clearer regulations so they know what the rules are for specific coins/tokens and transactions. What we have now is a very slow Government trying to catch up with technology coupled with infighting between different regulators defending their own turf.
Fortunately there was a bill introduced in the US Senate (referenced in the article) that would clear up much of this, along with various taxation issues.
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The odds of this happening are effectively 0, federal government is working on a regulatory framework for crypto markets and it definitely doesn’t involve jailing anyone for sales that have previously been considered legal by basically everyone
It would probably run afoul of the Constitutional protection against "ex post facto" laws.[0] If something (in this case, selling Bitcoin) was legal when you did it, but is now a crime, it is unconstitutional to prosecute you for it. [0]: Article I, Section 9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_St... >
Importantly, with agency rules, courts can and have looked at the "intent of the law" authorizing the agency's rules to uphold criminal convictions under newer agency rules that were technically within the scope of the rules at the time the acts were committed.
This happens all the time in the tax world; see for example the Bermudan tax loss harvesting scheme that got a lot of people sent to prison even though the schemes were technically within the rules at the time accounting firms started selling them to clients.
Bitcoin has less foundation- or team-based leadership that have plagued other crypto projects. This leadership (eg Ethereum foundation) gives crypto projects the air of legitimacy, but also the impression, as Hinman put it, that some managerial work and direction is expected, tipping the scale towards security. If the network becomes decentralized to the point where no one party has sway over its direction (even a go…
The idea that Bitcoin has no leaders is a big lie that these regulators should be able to see through. You can take look at any of the well-known whales to see obvious evidence against that claim. They make the claim because it allows them to maintain plausible deniability while manipulating the market as much as they possibly can. I wouldn't trust anyone in finance who says they're not doing managerial work and dire…
Talking about whales is just superstition for people who can't find any alpha in the markets. It's an excuse for why you didn't know the price was going to go in a certain direction. You see it a lot in amateur trading Discords and subreddits.
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They technically could but it doesn’t appear they are going to try which means they either don’t have the votes or think that it’s better to try and wait until after the midterms
They don't have the votes to break a filibuster in the Senate (on nearly anything; Republican party discipline is really strong) or to break the filibuster itself (a handful of Democrats refuse). So almost all votes are just messaging at this point. I also wouldn't assume a federal Act guaranteeing abortion access would survive the supreme court. There's a colourable claim that both healthcare and homicide regulation…
Actions regulating healthcare within one state have at least as much impact on interstate commerce as growing pot or wheat for personal use. Healthcare is not strictly limited to state lines. My insurance does cover visiting doctors in a neighboring state for example.
Reopening Filburn would raise a crazy amount of questions. USDOT regulation of commercial trucking could falter if Filburn was struck down. Until some new clear line on what the limit was, there would be widespread uncertainly about the federal government's ability to regulate things like commercial trucking, flights, drugs, etc, at least for transactions that don't cross state lines.
I doubt they would actually go that far, as the republican party are not actually anti-federalists, despite often pretending to be that way.
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The idea that Bitcoin has no leaders is a big lie that these regulators should be able to see through. You can take look at any of the well-known whales to see obvious evidence against that claim. They make the claim because it allows them to maintain plausible deniability while manipulating the market as much as they possibly can. I wouldn't trust anyone in finance who says they're not doing managerial work and dire…
If there are "leaders" in Bitcoin, it would not be the whales. It is not Proof of Stake where money buys you a voting right.
I agree with this. I have said it's the only crypto worth participating in because it's the only crypto that originated for idealistic reasons. In that capacity it is similar to gold, which in the Golden Age (something everybody talked about in Antiquity and I decided to believe, but I've never encountered anybody else believing in) was openly swapped around as little inventions (you can make all kinds of shit with g…