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Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

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Re: Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

#31

Post by landemva »

troupo wrote: post #28
J_Shelby_J wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those of us fortunate to live within a, mostly, good economic system don’t need cryptocurrency. I don’t have a problem saying that. But I also have the imagination to wonder if it will always be the case. And the empathy to understand that not every human is as fortunate as myself. People making broad statements about a technology seem to do so only from their current perspective. “Crypto is useless” for example, rea…

I've lived in both a bad economy and a good economy. Having your money in USD is always a safer bet in bad economies. > “Crypto is useless” for example, really means: “crypto is useless to me.” No. It means "crypto is useless for every single use case it's advertised as a solution for except illegal money transfers, and even then the number of caveats is as long as the equator"

Nobody can steal my crypto, I don't need a physical vault for gold coins, and I can buy stuff around the world in minutes. Am in North America.

Re: Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

#32

Post by landemva »

troupo wrote: post #27
LatteLazy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has been very stable against the USD for a while now. And that's just bitcoin, stable coins are more reliable. And of course inflation only robs holders, at least volatility goes in your favour half the time. I also would not call it an investment: there is no reason to expect prices to rise. Bitcoin does not grow in the way a company can (making shares an investment) or pay interest like a bond. It's at best…

> Bitcoin has been very stable against the USD for a while now. But isn't stable against itself. People who got in first are infinitely richer than people who would buy it a generation from now.

Same for grandpa who got in first with farmland and just sold to housing developers. At least people a generation from now can go to GitHub and fork the btc or eth open source code and make a run at starting their own chain.

Re: Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

#33

Post by landemva »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #9
monero-xmr wrote: post #5

The article is devoid of substance. > All but two of the top 20 countries for crypto adoption are emerging markets, with countries like Venezuela, El Salvador and Nigeria becoming test beds for whether cryptocurrencies could offer a balm to countries ravaged by inflation and depreciating official currencies. There is a reason why people in Venezuela and Argentina flock to currency different from the wildly inflating…

I always thought the word "contract" in crypto was more of a metaphor than an actual contract. Kind of like how filesystems have "folders" even though the "folders" in a filesystem aren't anything like real folders at all.

The "contract" is just a computer program with the bytecode deployed on-chain.

Re: Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

#35

Post by reducesuffering »

landemva wrote: post #31
troupo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in both a bad economy and a good economy. Having your money in USD is always a safer bet in bad economies. > “Crypto is useless” for example, really means: “crypto is useless to me.” No. It means "crypto is useless for every single use case it's advertised as a solution for except illegal money transfers, and even then the number of caveats is as long as the equator"

Nobody can steal my crypto, I don't need a physical vault for gold coins, and I can buy stuff around the world in minutes. Am in North America.

You sure? Bitcoin Core dev lost all his 200 BTC crypto via hack...

Hope you understand bitcoin security better than him.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-core-developer-claims...

Re: Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

#36

Post by BitwiseFool »

acdha wrote: post #30
klntsky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prevent anyone from hiding from the tax collectors and police Only if you use chains with traceable transactions.

You also have to only buy things available purely on that system from people you are certain don’t collaborate with the government. If all of those assumptions aren’t true, your activity can be tracked with increasing precision and the authorities will see local transactions which you can’t explain otherwise and demand explanations. The schemes Zcash and Monero use have never been tested at scale with a sophisticated…

I like to think the government has a unique and sophisticated rubber-hose attack, just auditing you.

Re: Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

#37

Post by landemva »

reducesuffering wrote: post #35
landemva wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody can steal my crypto, I don't need a physical vault for gold coins, and I can buy stuff around the world in minutes. Am in North America.

You sure? Bitcoin Core dev lost all his 200 BTC crypto via hack... Hope you understand bitcoin security better than him. https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-core-developer-claims...

Really like how the whataboutism adds useful thoughts.

That guy claimed his cloud VM was compromised. Few would consider that to be a secure way to keep a secret, and it could be a boating accident story. Boating accidents do happen.

Re: Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

#38

Post by acdha »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #36
acdha wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to only buy things available purely on that system from people you are certain don’t collaborate with the government. If all of those assumptions aren’t true, your activity can be tracked with increasing precision and the authorities will see local transactions which you can’t explain otherwise and demand explanations. The schemes Zcash and Monero use have never been tested at scale with a sophisticated…

I like to think the government has a unique and sophisticated rubber-hose attack, just auditing you.

That’s one of the big questions here: if repressive governments are in your threat model, does a given system mean a normal person is likely to leave too much data on their devices? It’s really easy to imagine checks on all of the phones seized from protesters, anyone suspected of spending beyond their reported income, etc. so something which doesn’t make it really easy to purge old history is pretty risky - not least because if they catch you hiring anything there’s a nasty problem of convincing them that there’s nothing more still hidden.

Re: Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

#39

Post by Vanit »

landemva wrote: post #37
reducesuffering wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure? Bitcoin Core dev lost all his 200 BTC crypto via hack... Hope you understand bitcoin security better than him. https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-core-developer-claims...

Really like how the whataboutism adds useful thoughts. That guy claimed his cloud VM was compromised. Few would consider that to be a secure way to keep a secret, and it could be a boating accident story. Boating accidents do happen.

Your reaction is how everyone reacts before their own crypto is stolen.

I don't know how crypto proponents think they can simultaneously wave away this level of fraud but still seek economy-wide adoption.

Re: Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

#40

Post by iamericaa »

appleflaxen wrote: post #34

The institution that controls the currency will always fight any alternative currency. That's one big piece of the value proposition of Bitcoin: it is governed by user consensus, not political power.

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