761–770 of 1001 posts
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My advice is always: Just hodl some bitcoin, but not in amounts that make you cry when you loose it. It's been better for me so far than normal savings accounts.
well i would hope so, a normal savings account has 0 risk. im not sure this is a great argument to hold some bitcoin lol
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It has proven neither to be a store of value nor medium of exchange though it is being used extensively for criminal activities.
Monero is used for criminal activities, not Bitcoin. How do I know? I monitor crime, mostly but not exclusively drug crime, on Tor's hidden services: https://rnsaffn.com/zg4/ Monero is the cryptocurrency of choice.
Most of it is tax and sanctions evasion.
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I've never understood crypto, however I'm long term Bitcoin fan and user, and don't consider it "crypto". I think Bitcoin is pretty much opposite what the typical crypto project is.
I worked in crypto for five years, and this resonates. Sure, you can make money hustling some hype coin, but chances are you are more likely to lose money/time in the process. Outside of very specific supply chain blockchains, 99% of the actual value I see in order of value: 1) Stablecoins [faster than ACH!], 2) Bitcoin, and in certain places, 3) Ethereum has its uses. Even Bitcoin though is not a panacea though, as…
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They could have worked for Stripe/Ramp/Brex/Mercury for example. They'd still be rich but with non-speculative impact.
And Stripe ironically is making a blockchain itself to facilitate stablecoin settlements globally So you're back to square one
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> I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. Bitcoin has a great mythology associated with it. People over emphasize the technical aspects, i think its the "story" that made it succeed. Its about taking back "control" from the man. People love an underdog story, people love a rebellion story. Lots of people in the tech space are anti-establishment…
You say bitcoin is "so silly". Please give me an example of anything better for nation states to hold as reserves and to transact with other nations with. I'll even allow you an imaginary thing as long as it's constrained by the real world.
It's good to know everyone here is weary of crypto scams, but I don't see anyone accurately describing the significance of these technologies. Bitcoin failed as a currency, and as that became realized, institutional investors pivoted to the "digital gold" scam, to keep people long, while they divest or hedge. The two reasons why it failed as a currency are transaction latency, and lack of fungibility. Transaction pri…
Distributed technologies have largely been useful to actors that wish to remain anonymous (Napster, Tor). Money transmission probably shouldn't be (if we want to avoid scams as a society).
Anonymous cash is good, but BTC is not really digital cash either - it doesn't work in a warzone without internet for example. Any real alternative to cash would have to work offline. And any real alternative to bank transfers would have to be regulated.
It's good to know everyone here is weary of crypto scams, but I don't see anyone accurately describing the significance of these technologies. Bitcoin failed as a currency, and as that became realized, institutional investors pivoted to the "digital gold" scam, to keep people long, while they divest or hedge. The two reasons why it failed as a currency are transaction latency, and lack of fungibility. Transaction pri…
Does a government have the legitimate right to impose taxes on its people, and to sanction criminals (and criminal activity) via control of the Financial system?
Anti-crypto people say yes (and in fact the government has a responsibility to fight tax evasion).
Pro-crypto people seem (I’m not one of them) to say no, that people have the right to access to technology to evade these government functions.
It's good to know everyone here is weary of crypto scams, but I don't see anyone accurately describing the significance of these technologies. Bitcoin failed as a currency, and as that became realized, institutional investors pivoted to the "digital gold" scam, to keep people long, while they divest or hedge. The two reasons why it failed as a currency are transaction latency, and lack of fungibility. Transaction pri…
Bitcoin, and really all crypto 'currencies' were never meant to be currencies at all. Maybe a couple naive people who created them originally believed that, but it was never the goal. They are speculative assets for gambling with. They have been since day 1.
To be fair, there is a significant amount of disagreement about what a "currency" is supposed to be, and there is a large subset of people who believe that the desirable traits in a currency are exactly those things that make it function well as a speculative asset (notably, on average over a long time, value with respect to goods is at least flat and preferrably increasing) while simultaneously not thinking the things that another large group of people sees as desirable for a currency (e.g., lack of extreme short-term volatility) are important.
I can't speak to the original designer of Bitcoin, but I wouldn't be surprised if it and most cryptocurrencies were designed to be currencies, just by people who have a very specific (and, IMV, wrong) idea of what a currency ought to be.
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I worked in blockchain ("builder") for 5 years. I started 'eh, there are speculators, whatever, I build good tech' but finished 'holy crap speculators completely dominate and distort everything, nobody cares about good tech'
> nobody cares about good tech Indeed. For example: Chia is arguably decent tech (better than Bitcoin), built by Bram Cohen (of BitTorrent fame), innovative PoSpace+Time. But nobody cares, it's at #450 in market cap, way down below Doge (#10), $TRUMP (#72), Fartcoin (#144), Melania (#375).
There are still some 0 gas fees innovations happening in stablecoin marketplaces which is going to be interesting to see how that pans out.
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What's the incentive for keeping these "robust" databases online, if not for making a lot of money by running scams?
Imagine you have a home on Airbnb , your guest sends you a payment, but its not directly to you, the payment goes through the payment rails stipulated and controlled by airbnb. This amounts to what is often 25-35% of your listening fee (payment charges, visa network, listing fee, etc, etc.) This is the middle men crypto is supposed to replace. Only a trustworthy network can replace the current system, it must be some…