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Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

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Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#91

Post by arcticbull »

latchkey wrote: post #65
arcticbull wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should just show them wise.com where they can open a US dollar account. Wise today provides that too. The idea that you need a distributed ledger for this is straight up false and this is just trying to dredge up problems to solve for a technology that has not found any meaningful use case despite 15 years of flailing.

> You should just show them wise.com where they can open a US dollar account. These are women in the north of Vietnam who know nothing about US dollar accounts and don't even speak english.

It's localized.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#92

Post by arcticbull »

latchkey wrote: post #90
arcticbull wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why gold is a bad currency. And as an asset, gold is priced dramatically over it's industrial value, and it's un-productive. People shouldn't invest in shiny pebbles anymore than they should invest in digital magic beans, IMO.

How people decide to invest their money, isn't up to you.

I'm not telling people how to invest their money. That's between them and their financial advisor. I'm opining. I've no vested interest at all. I've no crypto position or gold position.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#93

Post by overthrow »

mjburgess wrote: post #81
overthrow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Venezuela already has extensive digital payment systems Sure, but those systems had been sabotaged by a politican/dictator named Nicolás Maduro who rejected the results of an election. > What in this process requires (or even benefits from) blockchain exactly, or cryptocurrency? A decentralized payments system is one that cannot be shut down by Nicolás Maduro. Do you think the Venezuelan crisis was just a big consp…

I think if people have working mobile phones then they're able to be sent electronic cash without a p2p system. Indeed, more easily than having a VPN and relevant skills to received crypto assets. The state here owns the network, rendering all the premises of peer-to-peer systems invalid and thus all of their guarantees. If the government there wanted to prevent receipt of USDC it well could, as much as it can comple…

> I think if people have working mobile phones then they're able to be sent electronic cash without a p2p system. Indeed, more easily than having a VPN and relevant skills to received crypto assets.

Spoken like a true first-world armchair warrior. Maduro shut off the non-p2p systems, as dicussed. He then failed to stop crypto payments. Do you think it was his "preference" all along to fail to control the flow of money?

Don't underestimate people's ability to figure out a VPN. It's not hard, and the prospect of literally starving to death can be quite motivating.

And since you mentioned magic, the real magic would be any country stopping its citizens from accessing the internet. Even in North Korea, there are people with unfiltered satellite internet, because Kim Jong Un has not yet built a Faraday cage around the sky.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#94

Post by latchkey »

arcticbull wrote: post #86
latchkey wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much a snarky troll comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No it isn't. It's a statement of objective reality. That isn't really forbidden under the news guidelines to my knowledge, although I could have expounded as the topic became more divisive so here goes: The system is specifically designed to permit unchecked criminality. That is a fact. Lack of AML, KYC and any oversight, recourse or control that you would use to reduce malicious actor impact in the space is explicit…

Sigh, your anti-crypto trope needs better analogies. We've been through this many times and you just keep repeating the same tired arguments in an effort to sound knowledgable and spread your one sided and often misguided and outdated opinions.

> It's a statement of objective reality.

No, it isn't. USDT, a crypto currency, is pegged to the dollar and doesn't have consistently huge swings in volatility.

> The system is specifically designed to permit unchecked criminality.

Fiat USD will always be the largest, by orders of magnitude, used currency for criminality, on the planet.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#95

Post by latchkey »

arcticbull wrote: post #91
latchkey wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should just show them wise.com where they can open a US dollar account. These are women in the north of Vietnam who know nothing about US dollar accounts and don't even speak english.

It's localized.

and?

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#96

Post by arcticbull »

latchkey wrote: post #94
arcticbull wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. It's a statement of objective reality. That isn't really forbidden under the news guidelines to my knowledge, although I could have expounded as the topic became more divisive so here goes: The system is specifically designed to permit unchecked criminality. That is a fact. Lack of AML, KYC and any oversight, recourse or control that you would use to reduce malicious actor impact in the space is explicit…

Sigh, your anti-crypto trope needs better analogies. We've been through this many times and you just keep repeating the same tired arguments in an effort to sound knowledgable and spread your one sided and often misguided and outdated opinions. > It's a statement of objective reality. No, it isn't. USDT, a crypto currency, is pegged to the dollar and doesn't have consistently huge swings in volatility. > The system i…

> No, it isn't. USDT, a crypto currency, is pegged to the dollar and doesn't have consistently huge swings in volatility.

The one that's not backed? Whose money is supposedly in a bahamian bank run by the man who created Inspector Gadget? The one that settled with the CFTC and the NYAG for being unbacked? How you could possibly recommend this as a beacon of stability is beyond me. Especially when they don't even pay interest but you can get 5% on treasuries, so even if you just held it and they somehow never go under, you're still getting rekt.

However, USDC (or if we pretended there was anything in the vault at USDT) you don't need a blockchain lol. They could just put a portal on their website and you could just move between accounts there. But without the imaginary layer of indirection of the blockchain people would demand AML/KYC.

Those are fully centralized, fully controlled. USDT and USDC can be frozen by government entities and even by Tether themselves arbitrarily. They've done it many times.

This is a silly thing to advocate for.

> Fiat USD will always be the largest, by orders of magnitude, used currency for criminality, on the planet.

But not as a percentage of transactions. That's just a red herring. If you had the ability to wipe out a large pocket of criminality that provided little or zero real world value, why on earth wouldn't you?

What's next, comparing the size of the mob's bank accounts to the treasury as a reason not to pursue? Or because they kill less people than the army they're good to go?

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#97

Post by latchkey »

arcticbull wrote: post #92
latchkey wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How people decide to invest their money, isn't up to you.

I'm not telling people how to invest their money. That's between them and their financial advisor. I'm opining. I've no vested interest at all. I've no crypto position or gold position.

You're ranting nonsense every time there is a crypto post in an effort to continue the anti-crypto stance on HN. It is tired and I don't mind calling you out on it.

Crypto is here to stay, no amount of what you coin as opining, will make it go away. If anything, you're doing a great job driving people to wonder more about it. When people disagree with something so passionately, it drives other people towards it even more.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#98

Post by arcticbull »

latchkey wrote: post #97
arcticbull wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not telling people how to invest their money. That's between them and their financial advisor. I'm opining. I've no vested interest at all. I've no crypto position or gold position.

You're ranting nonsense every time there is a crypto post in an effort to continue the anti-crypto stance on HN. It is tired and I don't mind calling you out on it. Crypto is here to stay, no amount of what you coin as opining, will make it go away. If anything, you're doing a great job driving people to wonder more about it. When people disagree with something so passionately, it drives other people towards it even…

Since you quoted the news guidelines at me earlier I suggest you re-skim them yourself, and then re-read your reply.

> When people disagree with something so passionately, it drives other people towards it even more.

I have no problem with that. That's why we have this site, so people can see different viewpoints. They're free to make up their own minds.

> It is tired and I don't mind calling you out on it.

I'm not tired, are you :)

It's been 15 years and no value outcome whatsoever. If the crypto community develops something useful, I'll be the first to jump on it. But for now, I'm sure OP will deliver, I just have to wait.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#99

Post by ursuscamp »

big_youth wrote: post #71
ursuscamp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin miners don't compete for the same energy as residential and most industrial uses. Mining isn't profitable unless energy is a fraction of the price that typical consumers pay. The effect is that Bitcoin miners act as energy buyers of last resort. In other words, they buy wasted energy. Having a buyer of last resort is good for energy grids (or any product), not bad for them. It incentivizes grid build out. Ins…

Let me get this right, your argument is that miners are better than manufacturing or smelting? So that's how mining is beneficial to the energy grid. You bitcoin clowns are really on something. Did you read a single article. Bitcoin miners ARE raising prices for Texas citizens. Not to mention the noise issues: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-mining-noise-drives-nei... I gave up caring about bitcoin around 2014 a…

Your articles don't say anything about raising electricity prices for consumers, except to speculate about it. At least the NYT piece recently on Bitcoin mining cited a study saying there was a 5% increase in electricity bills because of Bitcoin mining, even if it was using secret data.

Again, I would point out (not for you since your reasoning is clearly motivated, but for anyone else reading it) that Bitcoin miners overwhelmingly use electricity that would go to no other use, and thus is incredibly cheap, and would naturally be expected to have little to no effect on average electricity bills.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#100

Post by bb88 »

deweller wrote: post #69
onionisafruit wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of us earned our right to be curmudgeons by getting excited about it ten years ago only to see it play out very differently from our expectations.

There was a lot of change-the-world ideology around bitcoin ten years ago. No it has not lived up to those perfect visions. I don't think it is irrevocably broken. I for one think there is still a lot of potential in cryptocurrencies and public blockchains. I believe a credibly neutral store of value not in the control of any nation state is something that benefits the world. Why can't we celebrate what is good and t…

Basically your argument is "Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good."

I think the issue I have is the crypto folk haven't wanted to fix any of it -- with the rare exception being ethereum moving to PoS. A lot of the "fixes" would break the "features".

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