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Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

cointelegraph.com

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Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#151

Post by dadoge »

dadoge wrote: post #110
iamben wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bitcoin over a bank account ? What's the advantage? I mean, if you don't have a bank account - "here, store everything you have on this phone [do you own a smartphone?], that requires an internet connection [can you afford that?]" - seems like a bigger step, no? Unless I'm missing something obvious?

That is a good question that I’ve thought about but haven’t dug enough to have a great answer. Blockstream is working to make internet more accessible there. It’ll be interesting to see how much penetration they get and how much it’ll cost folks there. Doesn’t need to be a brand new iPhone, but I do agree that phones are an initial cost and I’d be interested in seeing what are low-cost smart phone options there. That…

Update! 50% of ES has internet access, and this will only increase with companies like Blockstream coming in

https://megaphone.link/BLOCK5279366544

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#152

Post by ben_w »

127 wrote: post #40
rualca wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BTC is framed as destructive or dangerous and CBDC is their solution. It's hard to refute their point when we've just saw bitcoin tanking and seeing its value drop to half in a few days.

One defining aspect of a free market is destruction. The other is creation. You don't get one without the other.

On the contrary, the core thesis of Wealth of Nations is that a free market in an industrial economy is not zero-sum.

Creation exceeds destruction, and the former does not require the latter.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#153

Post by bidirectional »

ludamad wrote: post #8
Darmody wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or any other fiat currency. I want to see blockchain gone but most legislators don't understand it, they think it should be gone but they are not sure why so they end up with nonsense like this.

It's also a bit ill-timed as Bitcoin is "now a fiat currency", if you go by El Salvador's wiki page

A fiat currency is issued by a government without being backed by a physical commodity. El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin does not make it a fiat currency.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#154

Post by imtringued »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #15
jdmoreira wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically true! But it is backed by a very powerful commercial empire who also happens to have the worlds largest military.

Does that military count towards the US dollar's impact on the climate?

Only partially, because the US military protects more than just the US dollar banking system. For example, the US military protects the united states and everything inside it.

Bitcoin mining only protects the currency and since Bitcoin is exactly like fiat in the sense that it is just a ledger that allocates resources, it is entirely dependent on the physical world that the all the militaries around the world protect. Do we count the US military towards Bitcoin's impact on the climate? It would be justified.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#155

Post by Growling_owl »

emn13 wrote: post #146
Growling_owl wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Elections in America are always close, every race, every candidate is not safe. That's the nature of the 2 party system, hence every vote counts 2) You are getting your data from the wrong source, Coinbase alone has 56 million verified users. And unlike FB those are real , not bot, as every user have to be KYC'eed for AML purposes. That's just one exchange. 3) Also with regards to those millions of users, the situ…

Elections are only close in some states, and its hard to predict which issues voters will care about, especially since nobody has proposed exactly what a "bitcoin ban" would look like. The linked article also mentioned that coinbase number, but it's a little hard to interpret: not everybody having an account will be in the US, nor will they necessarily own any bitcoin, nor, if they own bitcoin, will it necessarily be…

Okay, let's do the reverse.

If you are somebody who wants to win an election, whose vote are you winning by proposing and/or signing a bitcoin ban?

It's not like Bitcoin has a CEO that you can point at in the Forbes billionaires list and claim that you are going against him.

You have to explain and present to people the coins per wallet distribution statistics and convert it to dollars to get to the topic of inequality, then from there trying to equate Wall Street to Bitcoin.

It's not easy, even for a socially competent person, you lose the room and people's attention quite easily. It's far easier to attack Bezos

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#156

Post by defaultname »

dadoge wrote: post #121
defaultname wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with lack of empathy, nor did I make any statement about banking in El Salvador. Your pearl clutching is the rather pathetic, desperate machinations of someone deep in BTC who is resorting to whatever foolish argument they can make to sell it. The vapid moralizing is embarrassing. You used El Salvador to try to legitimize BTC. As a tiny economic "power" (literally 7-11 sized), with a functionally…

Read more about this experiment before jumping to conclusions https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lif... The smallness of the country doesn’t mean this isn’t significant. They have problems, and through an experiment found solutions to those problems and are scaling them up

Again, what "conclusion" do you think I'm jumping to? Modernizing payment systems is having a huge impact across the entire developing world. I spent two years of my life building a system for payments (mobile to mobile) for a variety of African countries. Negligible fees, immediate, robust and reliable. This isn't new or novel.

Bitcoin has shockingly little to do with El Salvador. It is a lightning network being pitched (which could be funded by USD, gold, eggs, turtles...whatever), trying to pump BTC in the process.

So save with the feel good El Salvador story.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#157

Post by dadoge »

danielmg wrote: post #70
dadoge wrote: post #13

“ Cryptocurrencies are not used in regular payment transactions” How can they say that with a straight face knowing what’s going on in El Salvador

It will never be used as a general currency by the man on the street. For example in the UK we have Direct Debits which are backed by the DD Guarantee. If a DD is wrong or fraudulent the bank must refund you without question and they initiate a DDIC (indemnity claim) against the creditor bank. This could not happen with Bitcoin. Same for problems such as push-payment fraud - they are rolling out confirmation of payee…

UK is way better off than El Salvador.

70% if people in ES don’t have a bank acct.

50% have internet.

Take a look at the Bitcoin beach experiment

https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-el-salvador-bitcoin-lif...

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#158

Post by keymone »

MereInterest wrote: post #149
keymone wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Categorically false. Exactly zero energy is required to produce a block. If your statement were true and bitcoin required Switzerland’s worth of energy to produce a block - how on earth did satoshi mine all the early blocks by himself? Your understanding of how it all works is simply flawed. Energy is required to satisfy difficulty requirement, which has to do with chain security, not with transaction processing.

Got it, so you're separating out the energy requirements into two buckets, then pretending that those two are unrelated. I agree that in general, processing transactions is not an energy-intensive task. This is why traditional payment processors with trusted nodes are able to do so efficiently. In the case of cryptocurrency, where the assumption is that all nodes are inherently untrustworthy, the resource requirement…

> When people say "transactions cost X amount to process", they mean "in the current state of bitcoin", not in the past when there were very few transaction validators

there are only so many miners (and so much energy spent) because security of bitcoin is what gives it value. so when people say "transactions cost X amount to process" they are saying something non-sensical, because it's not transactions that cost, it's security of those transactions.

it's important to separate, because there are many kinds of transactions in bitcoin ecosystem with various security characteristics that land anywhere from very low to on-chain settlement with multiple confirmations.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#159

Post by imtringued »

bidirectional wrote: post #153
ludamad wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a bit ill-timed as Bitcoin is "now a fiat currency", if you go by El Salvador's wiki page

A fiat currency is issued by a government without being backed by a physical commodity. El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin does not make it a fiat currency.

I think this is in reference to a US law that states that a "currency" adopted by a foreign country is not classified as an asset but as a currency. This has tax implications but I don't know the details.

Re: Dutch official calls for complete ban on Bitcoin

#160

Post by heywherelogingo »

ganzuul wrote: post #94
heywherelogingo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think young people are using bitcoin for any reason other than to get rich quick. The young these days are highly conformant and compliant - got jabs? It's gen x and older who are thoughtfully rebellious.

You think boomers are thoughtfully rebellious? The generation that presided over the entire planet getting polluted with plastic?

Hindsight is not thoughtful.
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