This $5 wrench says otherwise. https://xkcd.com/538/
Torture only works if you are sure of the existence of such a thing. It's easy to order the police to go from home to home, confiscating valuables. It's a lot harder to know if someone has bitcoin, and if so how much they have. Even if you can get them to admit they have it, and give you access to n wallets, they may always have n+1
You don' need evidence, just hit them with a wrench until bitcoins come out or they stop moving.
That's not a counterpoint but a confirmation of the first part of the original argument. You just listed two examples of such apps that fail to influence America despite being huge in other countries. To make a counterpoint you need to find something popular in USA with no uptake outside of it or something that influenced USA but came from outside.
Honestly, the iPhone is a perfect "counterpoint" if you're looking for one. Dominant in the US, but relatively marginal worldwide.
It's also supposedly (I can't remember where I heard that, some tech channel on YT) the only non-Chinese brand that's popular at all in China.
[0] Admittedly I have no idea for context of the picture and had to get it from google pictures since I couldn't visit business insider, I keep getting redirected to a Polish version of business insider that has NO TEXT AT ALL (?!).
Also, what do people find so wrong with me pointing out that "here's 2 apps popular out of US but not in it" strengthens the "USA influences the world but not vice versa"?
A home can be searched and caches found. A foreign account is difficult to open. It's not hard to see why bitcoin has its appeal, no?
Actually yes it is. Physical currency inside a country is hardly the same things as Physical or digital currency outside a country. Having bitcoins (etc) inside a country is arguably less secure and far easier to confiscate.
You'll have to explain digital currency "inside" vs "outside" a country... XD
Zimbabwe looks poor but I'm 100% certain that thousands of people have billions and trillions of dollars stored at home https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Zi...
Yeah it is probably Zimbabwe that helped bitcoin increase in value. A country that has 16 billion GDP and $600 GDP per capita [1]
Even if all the people in Zimbabwe tried to buy bitcoin that day, the value of bitcoin would remain the same.
This $5 wrench says otherwise. https://xkcd.com/538/
Torture only works if you are sure of the existence of such a thing. It's easy to order the police to go from home to home, confiscating valuables. It's a lot harder to know if someone has bitcoin, and if so how much they have. Even if you can get them to admit they have it, and give you access to n wallets, they may always have n+1
> Torture only works if you are sure of the existence of such a thing.
I don't think you comprehend the workings of "mass terror". Here's how it goes: we'll make you watch while we beat up your wife and kids until you tell us something worth knowing.
No evidence necessary. Pretty much everybody has some valuables, or knows someone who does, and if not who cares? It's your funeral.
Once again, the nerdy preconception that thugs somehow operate on a legalistic or technical basis is just completely wrong. You'll be the one "giving" the valuables to them, to make it stop.
This $5 wrench says otherwise. https://xkcd.com/538/
doesn't scale to all citizens of Zimbabwe :)
Surely when these hypothetical thugs are going around beating people up and confiscating their paper money, they can spare a few moments to beat people up and take their Bitcoin while they're at it?
How else can wire transfers become a serious means of payment??
Do you pay online with wire transfer? My vision is a decentralised coin that is as fast as VISA is perceived but a lot cheaper to transact. Obviously that's not the vision of Bitcoin though?
Please don't start on the "Vision" rhetoric, look at the pipeline of core, there is a clear path to VISA scale tx but it is an engineering challenge, unfortunately the majority of people complaining and talking about scaling blocksize (right now, with a terrible straight-up hard-fork) are (bad) Operations people who are more than happy to shitcan half the benefits of a decentralised, privacy focused system for a frankenstein system that in reality still won't compete with VISA. Protip, if you're competing against a behemoth incumbent, it's not enough to simply match their capabilities, you have to surpass them. Lightning network fees will be cheaper than VISA, a lot cheaper. Scaling a $120b financial network on a whim without a real engineering team is not only a bad idea, it's downright fucking deplorable to put users at risk.
