The Bitcoin Blockchain Visualized in 3D

you're not seeing the forest behind the trees. bitcoin like cash is permissionless, private and fungible (to some extent). these properties enable illegal activities both in cash and in bitcoin. with cash it happens in face to face exchanges, with bitcoin it happens over the network.

> we have strict limits on cash to provide a stop of a complete abuse of it for criminal activities

yeah, that's why there's definitely no illegal activities going on involving cash. /s

> Bitcoins don't seem to have a large practical values beyond the illegal actions

uninflatable, scarce commodity/currency and transaction platform that is impossible to censor. you sure have a high bar for something having "practical value"...

the largest practical value of bitcoin is that i have full ownership of my money, not some ephemeral record in some bank's database which can be destroyed/modified by bank's employees or devalued by monetary policy.

> I am not aware of a large econommy based on Bitcoin transactions.

that you're not aware of it could simply mean that you never looked for it.

Well, and that was the difference I was pointing out to. Bitcoin allows unchecked transactions about the network, this is not possible with cash and international cash transfer is strictly regulated - and when done electronically, carefully watched. That is the significant difference.

yeah, that's why there's definitely no illegal activities going on involving cash. /s

no need for that snotty remark, I have written myself that there are criminal transactions with cash, but they are limited by physical proximity.

uninflatable, scarce commodity/currency and transaction platform that is impossible to censor. you sure have a high bar for something having "practical value"...

it is actually deflatory, which is a bad thing for a currency. This basically bans all commercial use.

the largest practical value of bitcoin is that i have full ownership of my money, not some ephemeral record in some bank's database which can be destroyed/modified by bank's employees or devalued by monetary policy.

Not only do Bitcoin exchanges have a horrible track record about keeping your coins secure, it is grotesque that you fear the monetary policy for your "moneys value", when Bitcoin can collapse to 0 any time enough people lose interest in it for speculation.

that is a very arbitrary difference for you to ignore that there are orders of magnitude more illegal transactions happening in cash than in cryptocurrencies. also "let's ban cryptocurrencies because bad people do bad things" is the same argument as "let's ban cryptography because bad people communicate about bad things".

> it is actually deflatory, which is a bad thing for a currency. This basically bans all commercial use.

gold is strictly speaking deflationary - there is limited amount of it to be mined and bar some large deposit discoveries, "emission rate" will be going down. what gold lacks to be succesfull in economic activities is convenience of not having to transport it around along with transactions, which is something bitcoin has.

deflationary nature argument is not very convincing to me, because there is a feedback loop between valuation and liquidity. the less liquidity there is in an assets - less valuable it becomes, incentivizing hoarders to keep spending.

> Not only do Bitcoin exchanges have a horrible track record about keeping your coins secure

oh boy.. you're arguing about something you haven't spent any significant time researching. it's rule #1 and rule #2 of cryptocurrencies - if you don't own the private key - it's not your crypto!

you've picked literally the worst strawman to attack here. horrible track record of exchanges is exactly the kind of issues of existing financial system that bitcoin prevents, just under magnifying glass:

- when you send crypto to the exchange you trade something you own for a record in a database, but bitcoin can solve that problem with payment channels and multisignature wallets - something you cannot do with traditional currencies without trusting some third party

- there is little to no transparency about actual holdings of cryptocurreny - again, bitcoin solves that problem because you can cryptographically prove how much you have access to with digital signatures, something you again cannot do with traditional currencies without trusting a third party

- exchange's assets can be seized by government where it resides - something that bitcoin solves by design - nobody can take your bitcoins without knowing your private key, again not possible with traditional currencies - also by design

> it is grotesque that you fear the monetary policy for your "moneys value", when Bitcoin can collapse to 0 any time enough people lose interest in it for speculation

guess what, USD can go to 0 for all the same reasons Bitcoin can, plus one more - printing trillions of it. can't print trillions of Bitcoin by design, which is exactly why i and plenty others value it.

hopefully i gave you something new to consider.

And the freakiest thing is that I have no idea what sorts of investigations some of my personas might be part of. I'm a decent guy, myself. And much of my Bitcoin came from writing, mostly for IVPN.

But I've also done some consulting with other anonymous cowards. I'm adamant about not wanting to know anything about what clients are doing. But I gotta wonder, sometimes.

So anyway, keeping online and meatspace finances totally separate is just part of my OPSEC.