181–190 of 448 posts
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BTC, A deflationary currency that lost 75% in value in a year, despite all the problems coming from projects that aren't even BTC.
> A deflationary currency that lost 75% in value in a year I don't know, my BTC is still worth one BTC.
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Somewhere between "internet nerd project for buying drugs" and "every single Super Bowl ad" regulation should have stepped in. That kind of shit gives the scams a legitimacy they can't buy otherwise.
And by definition, a Ponzi must continue to expand, and expand quickly. Regulators are literally waiting until cyrpto completely runs out of possible new customers to intervene. The government is maximizing the damage that crypto does. Thank god we haven't gotten to crypto for kids yet, but crypto bonuses on credit cards is getting very close.
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If "eliminating the need for trust in centralised entities" is an absurd claim and a lie, then it follows that there exists a centralized entity you need to trust to use Bitcoin. What is that centralized entity? PS: When people say that Bitcoin is decentralized, they also mean it in the colloquial sense, not only in the CS academic jargon. Entities like PayPal or the Federal Reserve Bank are centralized and require t…
No, that doesnt follow. But in any case, what is "using" bitcoin? Is it purchasing bitcoin? ...how do I do that? I'd need to rely on the two mining companies, right? And the exchanges? Or not? And can I use bitcoin as currency in any shop? No? If I could, I'd be relying on the state to provide the same rights behind all economic transactions to enable, that right? And what happens if the handful of "wales" decide to…
> Is it purchasing bitcoin? ...how do I do that? I'd need to rely on the two mining companies, right? And the exchanges? Or not?
Transacting on the Bitcoin network: sending BTC from one party to another. There are more than two mining companies, otherwise Bitcoin's security model fails (see 51% attack). Of course, centralized exchanges are... centralized.
> And can I use bitcoin as currency in any shop? No? If I could, I'd be relying on the state to provide the same rights behind all economic transactions to enable, that right?
When people say that Bitcoin doesn't require trust, they don't mean that nothing requires trust anymore. They just mean that they don't have to trust a centralized party to run the Bitcoin network, because there is no such entity.
Beyond that, you indeed still need to trust the people you transact with or trust that you will be able to sue them if they scam you, etc.
> And what happens if the handful of "wales" decide to off-load their coins in the middle of my negotiation when I'm buying my tesla... suddenly, all my deflationary currency has been magically radically inflated by a cabal of SV billionaires.
Yes.
> Money isnt the kind of thing that "centralisation" even applies to in any coherent sense.
Yes it is. Even before Bitcoin, (de)centralization was used to contrast fiat money vs commodity money.
> The value of money, it's "use" in any sense, is subject to provision of economic systems by central authorities, and subject to wild forces of decentralisation and centralisation.
Yes. There is a risk that the use of Bitcoin could be outlawed by some governments, although it would be difficult to enforce in practice.
When Crypto was young it was this cool new technology that mostly interesting because of the underlying tech. But even back then it was mostly valuable for buying drugs online and other illegal stuff. Now it's that and a way to scam people of their life savings. I do hope it dies out, it should have been heavily regulated from the get go. Way too many people saw these high production commercials with their favorite c…
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Ah! I really don't get the idea of a distributed immutable append-only log which is reproduced on all clients and whose integrity is cryptographically guaranteed by recomputing hashes on each append. Nor do I understand anything at all about systems of power, accountability, the political intuitions of the state and the economy. I've no idea how central banks regulate the supply of money; i'm totally at a loss as to…
Well, in the end, at least you admit it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I was playing the part of a crypto-advocate who doesnt know any of those things, and so thinks that a database is going to solve questions about the design of political and economic institutions.
It's a genuinely profoundly misinformed view, exploited by scammers. It's so egregiously misformed it's popularity is incomprehensible.
It's a lot like those on the far-left who think all world problems can be solved by taxing a few billionaires. An ideological fantasy.
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https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume.
You excluded the first part of that paragraph: > We show that the vast majority of Bitcoin transactions between real entities are for trading and speculative purposes. Starting from 2015, 75% of the real bitcoin volume has been linked to exchanges or exchange-like entities such as on-line wallets, OTC desks, and large institutional traders. So 75% of the transactions are just speculative trading, not transactions for…
But remember that "illicit" also includes sending donations to protestors in Canada when the government froze their bank accounts, or sending payments to dissident organizations that have been blacklisted and denied banking services, etc.
We can also say that the primary use case of signal is "illicit" communication -- that is, attempts to skirt eavesdropping by various government security organizations, and this is why Signal received funding from the U.S. government - it was a device to assist in coordinating anti-government protests in nations the US wanted to oppose. For the same reason, the U.S. Navy created and funded Tor.
So this is a two way street -- the ability to send payments and securely communicate even if your government doesn't want you to do that is great when they are used to support dissidents in nations you oppose, but not so great when they are used for similar purposes at home, or when they are used for organized crime. Just because a technology's primary use case is "Illicit" doesn't mean it's not a valuable or useful technology.
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Tether is arguably itself a scam based on their incredibly creative account and likely outright lies about the backing of Tether.
Turtles all the way down. The US central bank backs the US dollar with "The full faith and credit of the US government" https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12770.htm
When Crypto was young it was this cool new technology that mostly interesting because of the underlying tech. But even back then it was mostly valuable for buying drugs online and other illegal stuff. Now it's that and a way to scam people of their life savings. I do hope it dies out, it should have been heavily regulated from the get go. Way too many people saw these high production commercials with their favorite c…
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https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume.
You excluded the first part of that paragraph: > We show that the vast majority of Bitcoin transactions between real entities are for trading and speculative purposes. Starting from 2015, 75% of the real bitcoin volume has been linked to exchanges or exchange-like entities such as on-line wallets, OTC desks, and large institutional traders. So 75% of the transactions are just speculative trading, not transactions for…
In 2019, forex volume was $6.6T per day [2], or $1716T per year. Meanwhile global GDP was only $87.5T [3]. In other words, almost 95% of global currency volume is speculation. Why would anyone use currencies that are mainly used for speculation?
Both the traditional and crypto economies are reflections of human behavior, but because crypto is more transparent, you can see it for yourself. And a lot of people don't like what they see. But it's not a new problem nor unique to new currencies or technologies.
[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/032916/how-big...
[2]: https://www.financemagnates.com/institutional-forex/executio...
[3]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/268750/global-gross-dome...
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The US dollar is used for shady stuff all over the world, but we’re not trying to ban it.
> The US dollar is used for shady stuff all over the world, but we’re not trying to ban it. That is because it is overwhelmingly used for standard non-shady stuff, like trading legal goods and services. Crypto can't make a similar claim.