Wow. Bitcoin is almost $1,500

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preslove

Lifer
Sep 10, 2003
16,754
64
91
Seriously? You think that's the only thing that people can do with blockchain technology?



The fact that people can't differentiate between Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general is part of what inspires comments like this one.

All crypto is stupid

Crypto might be overvalued at the moment. It's exceptionally difficult to know what will be the true market value of something as vast as Ethereum. Ethereum alone could eventually handle the entire transaction volume of SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx once they've moved to the PoS model with sharding and a complementary offchain solution (Plasma or Raiden). And that's before you factor in other applications, private blockchains based off Ethereum, etc. How much is ETH worth? Do you know?

Completely false. Crypto transaction charges are orders of magnitude more expensive than visa transaction charges.

XMR is currently the "darkcoin" of choice. Great for evading the law/IRS and other fun stuff. And how much is XMR worth?

You can't do any of those things with tulips.

Real estate is the most common way to avoid taxes and to launder illicit income. Crypto is FAR WORSE for this because there's always a (digital) paper trail

Bitcoin has failed in its original mission to be "digital cash" as described in Satoshi's whitepaper. BCH will fail that mission once any significant number of people try using it. Ethereum will get there eventually, though it won't be ETH tokens you use as money (you might wind up using stuff like DAI. IOTA might actually be the long-term winner if they can ever get their act together (IOTA isn't even a blockchain; it uses tangles).

People like Sarah Jeong who think cryptocurrency is "digital beanie babies" can't see beyond the hype. That makes her no better than the people trying to buy Bitcoin at $19k. The first goal (and just the first one, mind you) of blockchain tech is to vastly improve the efficiency of existing payment/currency networks. No more SWIFT, no Paypal, no more cumbersome (and often insecure) proprietary payment networks. Instead you will get near-instant transfer of wealth to any part of the world for pennies (and thanks to stuff like PoS, no more running tons of ASICs/graphics cards to secure the network). People today are betting on which technology will win out in the end, or at least make a significant contribution to the future of payment networks and other blockchain-related efforts. Visa/Mastercard/AmEx are putting quite a bit of resources and doing quite a bit of hiring to address this matter; why do you suppose that is? Are they all caught up in the hype, too?

FALSE. Crypto is extremely expensive for transactions. Last I read the transaction fee for bitcoin was $25.

Problem is that many investors do not understand cypto at all. There's a great deal of "stupid money" pouring into the sector. After the S2X debacle, most people should have pulled out of Bitcoin anyway (as well as all its forks), but they didn't. Shows you that the crypto market is infested with a great deal of irrational behavior and territorial thinking.

The important thing to remember is that the meritorious projects with lots of skilled developers behind them haven't even reached version 1.0 yet. None of them are fully-functional at this time. Except Bitcoin. With Bitcoin, what you see is what you get (don't give me that LN/RSK nonsense). Regardless, people are investing a lot of money in unfinished products. The people putting their money in crypto right now are visionaries, gamblers, or suckers. You can't just hold up the suckers and claim the entire thing is a scam.

You haven't actually said a single thing blockchain will actually do better than simple wire transfers and charging far more than credit card companies. Sarah Jeong knows the technology intimately. She reports extensively on cryptography and information security. It's an idiotic fad for the dunning kruger set who hate the government and the federal reserve
 
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zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,841
31,333
146
You haven't actually said a single thing blockchain will actually do better than simple wire transfers and charging far more than credit card companies. Sarah Jeong knows the technology intimately. She reports extensively on cryptography and information security. It's an idiotic fad for the dunning kruger set who hate the government and the federal reserve

Blockchain is a rather brilliant encryption/authorization tech for something like streamlined municipal services that are going more and more digital--citizens within an entirely digital economy that can access all of their citizenship and day-to-day life information and needs (taxes, voting, property information, education, etc--all in one portal).

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic

Estonia uses it as their primary means for each citizen to access and control their "life" accounts, which contain all of this information and allow for nearly all municipal needs to be done online (I think the only thing now that requires in-person participation is signing over physical property). This also allows you, as an American business owner, to incorporate in Estonia if you wish, even if you never personally show up in person. ...I think that does sound a bit shady, but it's a great path to have an EU presence for your business, as it isn't really what one would consider a great tax shelter, lol. Even their justice system is mostly digital now, and local government here runs 10s of millions cheaper per capita, more effectively, and much faster.

But yeah, I think crypto is the fool's money in all of this. blockchain really does have legs
 

destrekor

Lifer
Nov 18, 2005
28,799
359
126
Yes let crypto crash and burn because you have to pay perhaps 100 more for your video gaming card.

I would say the same thing even if I had 0 stake in crypto.

Blockchain is changing the world soon
But screw it right? Gotta play that call of duty

To be fair, GPU mining is not needed for the crypto revolution to continue. It's certainly helping as it does help give a very real baseline value to the coins generated (base/par value is the cost of electricity/resources required to produce a given coin), but I surely would like to see GPUs return to normal prices so I can upgrade at a sane cost.
 

destrekor

Lifer
Nov 18, 2005
28,799
359
126
All crypto is stupid



Completely false. Crypto transaction charges are orders of magnitude more expensive than visa transaction charges.



Real estate is the most common way to avoid taxes and to launder illicit income. Crypto is FAR WORSE for this because there's always a (digital) paper trail



FALSE. Crypto is extremely expensive for transactions. Last I read the transaction fee for bitcoin was $25.



You haven't actually said a single thing blockchain will actually do better than simple wire transfers and charging far more than credit card companies. Sarah Jeong knows the technology intimately. She reports extensively on cryptography and information security. It's an idiotic fad for the dunning kruger set who hate the government and the federal reserve


No sir, all of that is false. You are comparing Bitcoin to the entire crypto market. BTC transactions are stupid expensive right now because the network is not scaling well. Other blockchain solutions are the ones that are pioneering things like inter-bank transfers.

When it comes to laundering, well, what kind of argument is that? And anyway, not all cryptos leave a trail, Monero (XMR) is one such decentralized coin/network that in fact remains untraceable.

You are basing your entire argument on concepts that are known failures of Bitcoin, of which have been addressed or are being addressed by newer projects. And plenty of banks and other institutions around the globe have already committed to blockchain solutions, including some government agencies in Europe and Japan.
 

Train

Lifer
Jun 22, 2000
13,585
81
91
www.bing.com
Yes, but those dividends were already in US dollars (probably a money market fund) and insured by the SIPC.

It sounds like Coinbase is a decent site for trading coins, at least until they're "hacked" and all the money vanishes :)

from coinbase FAQ:
If you are a United States resident, your Coinbase USD Wallet is covered by FDIC insurance, up to a maximum of $250,000
 

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
I will say the whole 'mining' process was very short sighted and dumb to begin with.

It's necessary for the libertarian "down with fiat currency!" distributed scheme behind many coins.

I don't expect it to be used by the megacorps and nation-states that will creating their own ledgers and coins for large-scale transactions. That's one reason why I expect existing coins to lose most or all of their value eventually -- 99.9% of consumers just want to buy something or send money to Grandma in Peru, not "fight the power," and the corporate coin and blockchain railroads will not be paying any royalties to the wild west pioneers they grind under the wheels.
 

pete6032

Diamond Member
Dec 3, 2010
8,125
3,562
136
Crypto transaction charges are orders of magnitude more expensive than visa transaction charges.

That is mostly the case with bitcoin, due to overwhelming demand. With other CryptoCurrency such as litecoin, transaction fees can be a few pennies to send $100.
 

ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
25,134
2,450
126
That is mostly the case with bitcoin, due to overwhelming demand. With other CryptoCurrency such as litecoin, transaction fees can be a few pennies to send $100.

Litecoin was always my favorite to mine. I was mining that stuff with my GPU back when it was just 4 cents... too bad I didn't hold onto it!
 
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Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,502
136

You gotta diversify yo' crypto

Another rapper, Ghostface Killah, of the Wu-Tang Clan, is the chief branding officer for Cream Capital, a company that is looking for $30 million to become the world’s largest distributor of cryptocurrency ATMs. Cream Capital got its name from Wu-Tang’s 1993 hit “C.R.E.A.M.,” which stands for “cash rules everything around me.” It’s now been repurposed to mean “crypto rules everything around me.”
 

destrekor

Lifer
Nov 18, 2005
28,799
359
126
wth is a cryptocurrency ATM? ...a credit card that you load with crypto?

Nah, it's an ATM that instead of swiping a card, you scan your address barcode, and you can either insert cash to fund your digital wallet or withdraw from your wallet and get cash.
Rates are nasty on those suckers.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,841
31,333
146
Nah, it's an ATM that instead of swiping a card, you scan your address barcode, and you can either insert cash to fund your digital wallet or withdraw from your wallet and get cash.
Rates are nasty on those suckers.

how do you shove cryptocurrency into g-strings? did Ghostface even think about what he was doing with this? I think he's going to be mad when his first machine rolls out.
 

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,502
136
how do you shove cryptocurrency into g-strings? did Ghostface even think about what he was doing with this? I think he's going to be mad when his first machine rolls out.

I expect we start seeing crypto QR code tramp stamps to alleviate this particular problem. :D

Keep swiping up to make it rain.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,902
12,971
136
All crypto is stupid

Go onto Twitter and discuss this matter with Vitalik Buterin. Please. Send screencaps.

Completely false. Crypto transaction charges are orders of magnitude more expensive than visa transaction charges

No. BCH is currently pretty cheap due to their shortage of actual transactions on their chain. You can send millions of dollars worth of BCH for about a penny right now. You can do the same with ETH for about $.20 or so. The cost does not scale up or down with amount on either chain, so you pay the same basic fee no matter what it is you are sending. ETH is under a lot more pressure right now, but it will wind up in a much better place, possibly by the end of the year. Keep in mind Visa/Mastercard/AmEx have had decades to develop their payment networks. ETH has only been operating any kind of main net since July of 2015.

Regardless, Ethereum using sharding should be able to handle over 10k transactions PER SECOND as opposed to the 14 or so it handles right now. With off-chain payment channels like Raiden, it could probably handle a few hundred thousand (or more?) individual transactions per channel, and each channel would itself constitute only two transactions on the main blockchain. So you are looking at the potential for billions of transactions per second, all on a blockchain with a total transaction cost similar to what you see today. So instead of paying maybe $.20 per transaction, you would pay less than a penny.

Real estate is the most common way to avoid taxes and to launder illicit income. Crypto is FAR WORSE for this because there's always a (digital) paper trail

Visit www.reddit.com/r/monero and get an education. Go on, we'll wait.

The short of it is: you are terribly wrong. XMR leaves no paper trail. At. All.

FALSE. Crypto is extremely expensive for transactions. Last I read the transaction fee for bitcoin was $25.

Right, because all crypto works the same as Bitcoin. Oh wait, no it doesn't. See above; you clearly do not know as much as you think you do.

You haven't actually said a single thing blockchain will actually do better than simple wire transfers and charging far more than credit card companies.

SMART CONTRACTS. Boom. Do you even know how those work?

Sarah Jeong knows the technology intimately.

Then she should stop making a fool of herself.

It's an idiotic fad for the dunning kruger set who hate the government and the federal reserve

You don't know the Ethereum community very well, do you? Now XMR fanatics, yeah, I can see them being those types . . . and certain Bitcoin maximalists. At least the XMR guys are on the ball technologically.

No sir, all of that is false. You are comparing Bitcoin to the entire crypto market. BTC transactions are stupid expensive right now because the network is not scaling well. Other blockchain solutions are the ones that are pioneering things like inter-bank transfers.

When it comes to laundering, well, what kind of argument is that? And anyway, not all cryptos leave a trail, Monero (XMR) is one such decentralized coin/network that in fact remains untraceable.

You are basing your entire argument on concepts that are known failures of Bitcoin, of which have been addressed or are being addressed by newer projects. And plenty of banks and other institutions around the globe have already committed to blockchain solutions, including some government agencies in Europe and Japan.

To add to what you said, there are entire countries rolling out their own blockchain tech. Anyone heard of the "cryptoRuble"?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-russia-issuing-cryptoruble

That is mostly the case with bitcoin, due to overwhelming demand.

Demand for bitcoin transactions is actually not the issue. The Ethereum blockchain is currently handling more transactions per day than all other crypto blockchains combined (this does not count centralized ledger tokens like XRP, which is not a cryptocurrency at all), and manages to do so on a much lower cost basis than Bitcoin. Bitcoin simply doesn't scale well, especially when so many transactions on the Bitcoin chain do not utilize SegWit (admittedly, SegWit transactions are still non-trivially expensive).

wth is a cryptocurrency ATM? ...a credit card that you load with crypto?

http://www.coincloudatm.com/the-d-casino-bitcoin-atm/

As for a credit card that can load crypto:

https://www.tenx.tech/

(that's just one, there are others)

how do you shove cryptocurrency into g-strings? did Ghostface even think about what he was doing with this? I think he's going to be mad when his first machine rolls out.

While it doesn't answer your question directly, I think you need to look up the PINK ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. Not sure if meatspace strippers would use it, since PINK's service appears to be mostly aimed at cam artists.
 
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Zeze

Lifer
Mar 4, 2011
11,395
1,189
126
Vechain rising again. :D

I completed my final cash injection into crypto today.

It's amazing how much mere 30 days makes a difference in crypto world.

If I had spent that same money all at 30 days ago, I'd have 20,000 VEN. (Worth $140,000 if I were to cash out today)

Instead I have a fraction of that.

Anyways it's kind of a relief. All my actions have run out. No more trading or buying. Just sit and watch it go up (or down).

And cash out in few years.
 
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DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,902
12,971
136
Good luck. Hope you don't get dumped on like the early ZRX buyers. They're doing okay now though.