Bitcoin as a savings account?

[Crono]

Just how anonymous is bitcoin? If I have an account at a seller, it is well known that it is mine. And since the ledger is supposedly public because of the way blockchain works, how hard is it to track my transactions?

It's only anonymous if none of the transactions can be associated with you. Otherwise it's a very transparent system because all the transactions are recorded on the blockchain, like you said (essentially open books).

People who are concerned do all sorts of (legal or illegal) laundering by way of "mixing" and other techniques to make it harder to trace, but there are increasingly more tools to track and trace webs of transactions.

If you wanted to be anonymous, though, you wouldn't buy bitcoin, you'd only mine it and hide behind layers of security while changing your IP through proxies/VPN, and only use P2P exchanges that aren't tied to your identity.

 

[Staples]

Thanks for confirming, it isn't as easy as you are lead to believe reading all the stories.
I figured mining your own and then keeping it in your own wallet (not a hosted one) while trying to hide your IPs would be the start of making things harder to trace.

 

[Skunk-Works]

If you Google Bitcoin laundering you can find out how. Helix is such a service. I would also use a VPN, Tails and the Electrum wallet.

 

[ultimatebob]

Dammit, it looks like someone rebooted Jesuscoin as a parody coin again. That was my idea!

Man, when will these people learn... Something like a "Holy Coin" would actually stand a chance with the Christian Conservative crowd if they took it seriously. They just need to get one of those megachurches to endorse it as the wholesome alternative to the "evils" of Bitcoin, and you might have a winner.

 

[Crono]

Dammit, it looks like someone rebooted Jesuscoin as a parody coin again. That was my idea!

Man, when will these people learn... Something like a "Holy Coin" would actually stand a chance with the Christian Conservative crowd if they took it seriously. They just need to get one of those megachurches to endorse it as the wholesome alternative to the "evils" of Bitcoin, and you might have a winner.

I like how you think, young man.

 

[John Connor]

The only way to hide. https://getmonero.org/

 

[Mai72]

Watched a 22 year old buy $100k of bitcoin the other day. All money he made on his own. He's worth over $2m. He expects to make $34k from the $100k he put down

I don't know much about bitcoin. Just thought that was a lot of money. Then again, it's all relative.

 

[Printer Bandit]

Just how anonymous is bitcoin? If I have an account at a seller, it is well known that it is mine. And since the ledger is supposedly public because of the way blockchain works, how hard is it to track my transactions?

Everything is public. Anyone that knows your wallet address knows exactly how much you have and all your in/out transactions.

 

[Android_P]

Hey, Skunk-Works. It's a good idea to use bitcoin as a savings account because it's very convenient to use. I made a huge profit and now I'm able to do anything, but where is a disadvantage, it's hard to make transactions because there are a lot of people which might steal your personal data. Fortunately, there are a lot of sites that are making these transactions anonymously, personally I'm using this bitcoin mixer because it's very simple to use and no one will find your personal information. I've never had any problems with it so I think that you won't have any issues too.

 

[TheVrolok]

I'm sorry for posting here but is it worth investing in bitcoin now in order to have savings? I want to know if it's relevant

Absolutely not.

 

[FaaR]

I'm sorry for posting here but is it worth investing in bitcoin now in order to have savings? I want to know if it's relevant

lol You kidding, right?

Only if you hate the idea of having money should you ever buy bitcoin... It's a complete fraud from beginning to the end.

 

[ultimatebob]

I'm sorry for posting here but is it worth investing in bitcoin now in order to have savings? I want to know if it's relevant

"Investing" in Bitcoin isn't savings... it's gambling. You're talking about something can swing in price by as much as 20% in a day... only a lunatic would use that as their rainy day fund.

Now, Coolcoin on the other hand... crypto doesn't get much more stable than that. Pegging the value of the coin to the price of a space kitty t-shirt was economic genius on my part

 

[ponyo]

lol You kidding, right?

Only if you hate the idea of having money should you ever buy bitcoin... It's a complete fraud from beginning to the end.

Bitcoin proved it's here to stay. I would definitely buy bitcoin if it dropped back down near the March lows.

 

[FaaR]

Bitcoin proved it's here to stay.

Yeah, because of all the idiots around the world who think it's going to make them rich, not because BC has proven itself as any kind of useful tool for anything other than for scammers and criminals doing their usual thing.

The network doesn't have the capacity to handle any substantial amount of transactions anyhow, as the overhead is gigantic (and growing, I heard once, but never bothered to check if it's actually true.)

 

[ponyo]

Yeah, because of all the idiots around the world who think it's going to make them rich, not because BC has proven itself as any kind of useful tool for anything other than for scammers and criminals doing their usual thing.

The network doesn't have the capacity to handle any substantial amount of transactions anyhow, as the overhead is gigantic (and growing, I heard once, but never bothered to check if it's actually true.)

Bitcoin futures are traded on Wall St. It's no longer scammers and criminals. You can fucking buy all the physical gold you want at Apmex and pay for it using bitcoin. It's money now. You can buy and sell bitcoin on Robinhood and Square CashApp. You can be a hater all you want but the fact is Bitcoin is now here to stay. It has real value. Like billions of dollars of real value.

 

[FaaR]

Look, you hodlbros can come at me with all the "200 billion flies eat and thrive off of crap" arguments you want, fact is BC is fake, it will always be fake, it's pure market speculation wishful thinking get-rich-quick mirrors and smoke.

Yes it's here to stay (I never said it wouldn't), because the stock market is largely all of the above too these days. Once upon a time it was a legit tool for companies to gather investments in order to grow. Today, the overwhelming focus is as a scheme for stockbrokers to make money for themselves and their clients. The greed has taken over to such a degree it can never be pushed out again, and the greed is what is driving fakery like BC and every other cryptocrap as well.

You CAN'T print money out of nothing (which is what cryptocrap is); the only thing holding BC up is peoples' expectations that they will be able to make more money by holding onto it. That's it. It's a soufflet made of nothing but hot air. And when the next stockmarket crash comes (the big one we just haven't seen yet), BC will be amongst the things which crash the hardest, since there's nothing tangible at all backing it.

 

[ponyo]

Look, you hodlbros can come at me with all the "200 billion flies eat and thrive off of crap" arguments you want, fact is BC is fake, it will always be fake, it's pure market speculation wishful thinking get-rich-quick mirrors and smoke.

Yes it's here to stay (I never said it wouldn't), because the stock market is largely all of the above too these days. Once upon a time it was a legit tool for companies to gather investments in order to grow. Today, the overwhelming focus is as a scheme for stockbrokers to make money for themselves and their clients. The greed has taken over to such a degree it can never be pushed out again, and the greed is what is driving fakery like BC and every other cryptocrap as well.

You CAN'T print money out of nothing (which is what cryptocrap is); the only thing holding BC up is peoples' expectations that they will be able to make more money by holding onto it. That's it. It's a soufflet made of nothing but hot air. And when the next stockmarket crash comes (the big one we just haven't seen yet), BC will be amongst the things which crash the hardest, since there's nothing tangible at all backing it.

The Fed prints money out of nothing everyday. The only reason our dollar is worth something is because people's expectations that they can buy something with it. That's it.

I bought this purse for my wife when we visited Bogota, Colombia. Two Venezuela girls on the street were making and selling these bags out of Venezuelan bolivar. This is what money looks like when people lose confidence in it.

FYI, I have never owned single bitcoin. I missed that train. But I plan to buy some in the future when there is correction. I didn't buy the last correction because I had better use for my money at the time.

And stock market has always been a casino as long as I can remember. If you think today's crazy, you weren't involved in the market during the dotcom days.

 

[FaaR]

The Fed prints money out of nothing everyday.

And that's the big nonsense defense you hodlbros use to delude yourselves that you're not totally buying into a big ole nothing; the Feds ARE BACKED BY A NATION STATE. GOLD RESERVES. FOREIGN CURRENCY RESERVES. OTHER GOVERNMENTS. On and on.

It's NOT just "printing money out of nothing". It really isn't.

BC is, though. So the joke's on you pal.

 

[Ichinisan]

Look, you hodlbros can come at me with all the "200 billion flies eat and thrive off of crap" arguments you want, fact is BC is fake, it will always be fake, it's pure market speculation wishful thinking get-rich-quick mirrors and smoke.

Yes it's here to stay (I never said it wouldn't), because the stock market is largely all of the above too these days. Once upon a time it was a legit tool for companies to gather investments in order to grow. Today, the overwhelming focus is as a scheme for stockbrokers to make money for themselves and their clients. The greed has taken over to such a degree it can never be pushed out again, and the greed is what is driving fakery like BC and every other cryptocrap as well.

You CAN'T print money out of nothing (which is what cryptocrap is); the only thing holding BC up is peoples' expectations that they will be able to make more money by holding onto it. That's it. It's a soufflet made of nothing but hot air. And when the next stockmarket crash comes (the big one we just haven't seen yet), BC will be amongst the things which crash the hardest, since there's nothing tangible at all backing it.

You are ignorant of the fact that nearly all of this criticism also applies to USD and other fiat currencies.

 

[ultimatebob]

I guess that a Bitcoin is basically worth the electricity it requires to mine it. It's insanely difficult to mine a Bitcoin now, to the point where you need specialized equipment and really cheap electricity in order to do it profitably. That is also what is keeping people from mining it with their home computers nowadays.

I kinda miss the days when Bitcoin was a distributed community project. Now, the currency is controlled by a handful of big Bitcoin mining conglomerates. It's probably also why it never really evolved much, and fell behind other cryptocurrency in terms of features.

 

[FaaR]

You are ignorant of the fact that nearly all of this criticism also applies to USD and other fiat currencies.

I addressed that already in my next reply below the one you quoted. Sometimes it helps to finish reading a thread before flying off the handle.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Here in Canada it would be a bad idea. Crypto is heavily taxed here. Transfer CAD to BTC = you pay taxes. BTC to CAD = you pay taxes. Then you also pay capital gains taxes if BTC fluctuates between those transactions. You basically pay taxes 3 times on the same money.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Edit wrong thread