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Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

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Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#301

Post by dragontamer »

comboy wrote: post #192
GW150914 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because at some point you have to pay taxes, or break the law. They nailed Al Capone, and you’re not Al Capone. I suppose you could buy it in secret and never liquidate it, spend it, or declare it... and therefore never benefit from it. I guess that’s a “win” in some books? Otherwise the answer to your question is pretty obvious, and ends with you in prison.

I don't see how taxes are in any way relevant to this discussion. Definitely do pay your taxes. I was answering to a specific question, the bad guy here can just as well be somebody who is trying to rob you. But if it helps you, think about some other government, not necessarily the US one. Do you think they all do the right thing? Should you or should you not be able to help your starving family in Venezuela? They r…

The US Government has the ability to extract money from you legally. It holds the power of taxation.

If the US Government, tomorrow, declares a 100% tax on Bitcoin, they can legally posess all of your BTC or... make you a criminal.

See Executive Order 6102 for historical precedent. FDR declared Gold to be illegal and took it from most Americans. At which point, you either gave up your gold, or became a gold smuggler. The US functioned as such until Nixon removed the executive order.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#302

Post by dragontamer »

DINKDINK wrote: post #153
bobthepanda wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, what advantage does it have over gold? Advantages of gold vs. Bitcoin: - gold is pretty easy to find, not that hard to buy for the average consumer; BTC is anything but - gold is physical in form and securing it is not hard; BTC is not physical, exchanges get hacked with losses to accounts, in the event of a natural disaster or some event where power generation and internet is lost you lose access to BTC. (So…

>where power generation and internet is lost you lose access to BTC You don't need the internet nor the power grid to use bitcoin. To use bitcoin via the Lightning Network minimally, you need a CPU and a method to transmit data. CPU: phone Transmit Data: Bluetooth, QR code/camera. Electricity for your phone: Cheap emergency solar panel

> You don't need the internet nor the power grid to use bitcoin.

> To use bitcoin via the Lightning Network minimally, you need a CPU and a method to transmit data.

How do you verify that your opposing party actually has bitcoins to send to you?

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#303

Post by keymone »

api wrote: post #295
keymone wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same monetary policy is appropriate for all nations you're conflating. the concept of nation has nothing to do with the concept of money.

Sure it is. Hard money advocates see the Fed as some kind of parasitic liability on America, but it's quite the opposite. It's a weapon of war. A sovereign currency that can be manipulated is an instrument of empire. Eliminating it in a world where everyone has one would be akin to unilateral disarmament. Generally speaking libertarian idealism is unthinkable until we have had at least 50 years with no war. It won't…

> an instrument of empire

i don't see the word "nation" in here. do you?

i don't care about empires losing their weapons. i would very much invite such an event and would do everything in my power to enable it.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#304

Post by zaarn »

jcranmer wrote: post #294
zaarn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually , not that hard. The speed of sound in tungsten is easily twice that of gold, hitting it with a hammer and analyzing the response on the other hand will easily tell you that it's tungsten or gold. In theory, a smartphone app could do it. You can also test shear forces on the bar, a test you can perform easily at the bank itself (or any of the other material forces tests really). Those do usually require a bi…

> Lastly, you can measure electric resistance. A gold bar will have a different resistance than a tungsten bar, especially if you compare a frequency sweep AC resistance vs DC resistance (if there is a difference, which should be about 20nOhm/m vs 50nOhm/m for Gold/Tungsten, you know the material has a core that is different from the outside). Electric current mostly travels on the surface of a material. Gold-plated…

This is only the case in AC (skin effect). DC penetrates the entire conductor.

The higher the frequency the less you penetrate the material (self-induction in the material forces the electrons outwards).

This enables you to effectively do a sweep of material composition by increasing frequency and measuring the resistance. In theory you could even tell if the core was not conductive at all (due to the resistance not changing despite lower frequency).

So even if the plating was thick, you would be able to tell because the resistance curve begins to change at lower frequencies due to Tungsten having a higher resistance.

If your device is really accurate you could even measure the rough area of the core since skin effect is proportional to the square of the resistivity.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#305

Post by zaarn »

cageface wrote: post #152
chrismorgan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of your points is of dubious validity: fees may not be higher. Fees went very high when the network became congested; but when it’s not congested, they’re much lower than credit card systems are for normal businesses. https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ suggests that right now, what equates to about nine US cents is sufficient for a basic transaction. And if you’re happy to wait an hour, then two cents ought to do you…

One benefit of crypto might be that it lights a fire under the ass of banks to improve their services. There is no technical reason why banks can’t match or exceed the convenience of crypto for making money transfers. They just haven’t had enough competition to make it happen yet.

SEPA Inst is planned to offer <10 second transactions for most SEPA banks by end of the year. The transaction costs about 10 cents at my bank (normal SEPA is free).

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#306

Post by keymone »

dragontamer wrote: post #298
keymone wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(bangs head on the wall) > what advantage does it have over gold? can you point me to words "store", "of" and "value" in the above question? > order of magnitude more skill and overhead to handle only if you assume handling gold means dropping the gold bar in your basement and never touching it again?

> can you point me to words "store", "of" and "value" in the above question? Bitcoin is up the past couple of weeks. So inevitably, the BTC community will be calling it a store of value. I think the general community is just reacting to the moving goalposts. When BTC's value is up, its a store of value. When its value is down, BTC's value is its transactions.

the question was what advantages bitcoin has over gold. one of the answers was divisibility. that answer was rejected by GP's comment because "irrelevant to store of value aspect" i'm just pointing out that this reason for rejection of a valid argument is plain dumb.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#307

Post by dragontamer »

salawat wrote: post #198
tedunangst wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how switching to bitcoin for currency would prevent Enron.

I'm not saying it would. I was using Enron as an example of a case where people ended up losing a ton of value in terms of life savings disappearing. Bitcoin if anything exacerbates the "poof' likelihood of value.

> I'm not saying it would. I was using Enron as an example of a case where people ended up losing a ton of value in terms of life savings disappearing.

You mean like MT. Gox?

Because people are still losing tons of money over Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#308

Post by lawn »

jonny_eh wrote: post #2

When can we call Bitcoin a failed experiment? And don't tell me it was "always about storing value", that's not in the original paper.

Everyone should differ between Bitcoin the idea and Bitcoin the coin, only one of many cryptocurrencies.

I don't think cryptocurrencies are ever going away. It's simply too good to be able to accept digital money anywhere from anyone quickly and with low fees. Dark markets for example will always use cryptocurrencies.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#309

Post by keymone »

nebolo wrote: post #299
keymone wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exaggerating a bit? bitcoin syncs within couple hours unless you run it on the computer you'd gain your decades of experience on :) every mobile bitcoin app is a lightweight client - it only syncs block headers, much faster but not great for large sums of money. so for a person that can't tell "browser" from "internet" there's no difference between introducing them to paypal or to bitcoin - it's just an app on your p…

Yes, but for that person the all advantages of Bitcoin that are typically mentioned (trust-less, secure, etc.) go out of the window.

trustlessness goes out a window a bit. everything else stays the same.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#310

Post by tyree731 »

lawn wrote: post #297
briatx wrote: post #10

It has been clear for a while now that Bitcoin is an inferior payment system for the consumer: * The fees are higher. * The risk to the consumer is higher. * The difficulty of use is higher. * It is accepted at an extremely low amount of vendors and even that is falling. So you really how to wonder why people ever thought consumers would use it en masse.

Fees are only higher in Bitcoin which the developers have crippled. Look at Bitcoin Cash or other cryptocurrencies for much lower fees. Here are some reasons why cryptocurrencies is a superior payment system, even for the consumer: * The fees are lower (VISA and PayPal fees are priced into the cost, and they are much higher) * It's anonymous (see Monero for example) * You can send money easily to anywhere in the worl…

Some counterpoints:

* You don't need a bank's permission. There are many unbanked people in the world.

Do we imagine those unbanked people being likely to have bitcoin wallets?

* Eliminates credit charge back fraud, which is a very big problem

That a problem, for sure, but in exchange consumers have no recourse if they legitimately need to chargeback a vendor. This is an anti-consumer feature of bitcoin.

* Nobody can freeze your accounts, like PayPal has done on numerous occasions

Unless you can somehow always keep your money in bitcoin until you exchange it for goods and services, you'll need an exchange to your currency of choice, at which point governments have all the ability in the world to effectively freeze your assets.

* Any business can accept money digitally, for example porn sites and marijuana businesses have had a lot of problems accepting credit cards

There isn't any technical reason that websites can't accept bitcoin today, and yet the number of websites that are offering bitcoin payments is shrinking, for well discussed reasons. I feel it's fair to say that that business have had more (and different) problems accepting bitcoins.

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