341–350 of 474 posts
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That's only if the two entities can both interact with the global banking infrastructure (i.e. they hold money in reserve currencies, their accounts aren't frozen, etc.) If someone in Argentina wanted to buy something from anywhere else in the world in 2000, for example, they'd basically have to trade natural resources or gold for access to foreign currency, and then spend that.
In 2000...
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This is the correct answer. People rave about how "cheap" it is to transfer bitcoin. What about actually buying anything with that 'money'? Sure, you might be able to buy some crap on the internet with bitcoin, but it won't put food in your table anytime soon without you having to pay a good % in fees to convert it to real currency.
"it won't put food in your table anytime soon without you having to pay a good % in fees to convert it to real currency" False. Last summer, I ate at EVR, a bar/restaurant in New York City accepting Bitcoin. I paid in bitcoins and their processor (BitPay) only charged a 1% fee. Fees from Bitcoin payment processors are actually quite good compared to credit card fees.
If this same owner splits the holdings up slowly, transfer wallets, and then recombine it again, it might spike up once more. People will definitely catch on, but it might bring up the value a couple hundred dollars in the hype.
Might make millions in the confusion.
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I'm a little offended by the "like in every third world country" statement. Chile is not like that at all, and we are a third world country. In fact, here we are ranked right under (20th) the US (19th) in terms of transparency: http://www.transparency.org/country#CHL http://www.transparency.org/country#USA_DataResearch Argentina is ranked 102: http://www.transparency.org/country#ARG_DataResearch In all of Latin Ameri…
Chile will probably stop being third-world soon enough, though (I heard something about startup accelerators popping up there?) There should be a term for "third-world country that's probably going to stay third-world for the forseeable future, excepting a revolutionary change of government." Maybe... dystopia ? Argentina is a dystopia.
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I think that scenario is pretty unlikely for large exchanges. If someone gave me a copy of a private key, corresponding to some bitcoins, I wouldn't consider it payment, as they still have the private key as well (meaning they could still spend the bitcoins at any time). It's more like a "shared account" at that point.
Not if the private key is stored in a secure hardware token.
I suppose if you try to extract the secret key and the token destroys it, it's pretty secure. Of course, you just lost all your money. I can't think of a non-destructive test.
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I'm a little offended by the "like in every third world country" statement. Chile is not like that at all, and we are a third world country. In fact, here we are ranked right under (20th) the US (19th) in terms of transparency: http://www.transparency.org/country#CHL http://www.transparency.org/country#USA_DataResearch Argentina is ranked 102: http://www.transparency.org/country#ARG_DataResearch In all of Latin Ameri…
"Third-world" is a loaded term and doesn't really have a useful definition anymore.
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I think that scenario is pretty unlikely for large exchanges. If someone gave me a copy of a private key, corresponding to some bitcoins, I wouldn't consider it payment, as they still have the private key as well (meaning they could still spend the bitcoins at any time). It's more like a "shared account" at that point.
Not if the private key is stored in a secure hardware token.
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The difference is Bitcoin can be secured much more cheaply than gold. You can't encrypt gold, setup "n-of-m" multisig transactions, etc. Unless you want to transport gold yourself you're always going to have to trust someone. Hardware wallets should help immensely as well.
From where I stand, this seems to be true of Bitcoin as well. I've never had any Bitcoins personally, but don't you have to store them in a wallet, which you're either going to have to worry about backing up, keeping secure, etc on your own. Or you're going to have to trust someone else to do it for you.