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Electric currency could trash cash (1999)
- osrec 9y agoTo a certain extent it has. Living in London, I can't remember the last time I paid with cash! Now cryptocurrency is a whole other kettle of fish...
- OnlineCourage 9y agoI believe their definition of electric cash, although fuzzy, included the attribute of being not tied to a bank. Are there cashless payments in London which do not in some way tie to a bank? Asking as someone not from London.
- osrec 9y agoEverything is tied to a bank at the moment, but in mid January a new directive called PSD2 lands - this will make banks and bank account information much more open (and hopefully start to shake the monopoly banks have on our money and information).
- KamelAufAbwegen 9y agoThank you .. now knows just my bank what's on my accounts. From next year on, if you give access to somebody over PSD2, you just can give full access to your account. So they see everything. A lot of companys will have access to a lot of data with PSD2. 1,2,3 next leak ..
- osrec 9y agoIt's about creating an open API, but you control who has access and who doesn't - why is that a bad thing? Also many people hand over their actual bank login details to services such as yodlee which is even less desirable (I believe it even breaches the bank ac's terms of service)!
- KamelAufAbwegen 9y agoIt's just possible to give full access with PSD2. Even a third company just has access to pay a bill with your account, they can see each transaction on your account. The idea behind PSD2 is, as far I understand, a lot of services should have access to your account, to make it easy to pay with smarthones ond third party cards.
- pwaai 9y agoThis is a fact that cryptocurrency maximalists love to conveniently forget. Despite all the ramblings about how corrupt and centralized, they are cashing out through a centralized bank. The noose is tightening on all fronts and I believe we will see offical cryptocurrency backed by a large famous bank....not some phantom coin where majority of supply is owned by a small group of individuals that rely on the banking & legal system that protects them but which they also publicly bash to get more naive people to buy in.
- chrisco255 9y agoPermissionless, trustless transactions are one of the primary benefits of crypto/blockchain/bitcoin technology.
- vkou 9y agoIt's not a benefit that has materialized, nor is there a roadmap to materializing it. Segwit will not make buying coffee with BTC any less reliant on trusting centralized merchant services/exchanges.
- chrisco255 9y agoSure it has. The fact that Starbucks hasn't implemented it yet doesn't change that tens of thousands of transactions per day are occurring with BTC. It certainly hasn't hit Visa scale for daily use yet, but either it or another crypto will within the decade.
- pwaai 9y agocurious, where are these tends of thousands of transactions occuring directly from consumer to paying for a product at a brick and mortar location? Let's not count bitcoin mixers and drug transactions.
- madspindel 9y agoSame in Sweden. Sweden will probably be the first cashless country in the world. Our central bank has started to look into cryptocurrency (e-krona).
- otp124 9y agoI live in London too and use cash all the time! You should visit a food market — London has some of the best food markets I’ve been to! They are almost all “cash”. And generally, if you buy less than £10 at a local store, they inform you it’s cash only.
- osrec 9y agoInteresting... I live quite centrally, and the markets round me accept contactless card payments. Also, even if I'm buying chewing gum at my local corner shop, the owner accepts payment by debit card (however that may be because I'm a regular).
- otp124 9y agoHmm, interesting — I’m Zone 1 as well. Check out the Sunday Upmarket in Shoreditch and you’ll see what I mean =)
- pjc50 9y agoThe original Chaum digital cash paper dates from 1982 ... the idea has been around for a long time. The two companies beanz and flooz mentioned in the article have, of course, gone bankrupt long ago.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoOne way to destroy Bitcoin would be to convince governments to launch a 51% attack against it. An organized, worldwide campaign against BTC, complete with double-spends, would flatten the price. I wonder if it's still feasible? Eventually it will be too hard to mine, but perhaps not yet. A benefit of this attack is that once executed, other miners will switch away from BTC. Meaning BTC won't be able to spring up again: no one will be able to get more than the ~90% hash rate the government controls.
- sidyom 9y agoDoesn't the FBI already own one of the largest wallets after seizing Silk Roak assets?
- foobarbecue 9y agoThey were rushing to sell it a few weeks ago, hopefully they managed before the decline
- Franciscouzo 9y agoAnd? It doesn't matters how many coins you've got to perform a 51% attack, only thing that matters is how many hashes you can perform per second.
- heatmiser 9y agoI think they’re asking: why destroy value of an asset that they currently hold/own?
- sillysaurus3 9y agoWell, it's a relatively small sum. And if it grows into a large and valuable asset relative to the government's budget, that's a bad sign: it means the government-backed dollar is losing steam relative to crypto. It's in the government's interest to lop off the head of its biggest existential threat. Also, Satoshi presumably passed his coins to his heirs. Who controls 6% of all wealth? I wonder.
- otakucode 9y agoI have been wondering recently... how unlikely is it that a major IT failure/hack/whatever occurs which produces a tremendous lack of faith in our existing traditional-currency-backed systems, leaving cryptocurrencies with the only PROVABLE form of money? Walmart says they made $5 billion? Why should we trust that they're telling the truth about that? They rely completely upon swiss-cheese computer systems built on sand and wishful thinking. They build their empire on slapped-together garbage full of holes and push it further than it was ever intended to go, adamantly refusing to slow down or devote the resources to building a dependable, reliable system. How unlikely is it that this will eventually bite them and the mathematical provability of cryptocurrency becomes of paramount, and nigh sole, value? Not as unlikely as those who have convinced bank computers to read large numbers for their balance, I expect.
- stephen_g 9y agoI really think for normal people the chance is close to zero... Walmart’s accounts have to reconcile to their bank’s, the bank’s accounts need to reconcile with their accounts at the central bank... There are checks and balances, fraud tends to be found out eventually when things don’t match, and at the end of the day, 99% or the population don’t understand proof-of-work or proof-of-stake anyway... I think some of the problems of the current system are overstated (dare I say some are even imagined?) by crypto-enthusiasts. There’s no doubt that blockchain is fascinating and useful technology, but the idea that it’s a perfect and complete replacement for a crumbling system just doesn’t actually map to reality...
- pjc50 9y agoCrypto currency also relies on slapped together systems; it makes it easier to lose all your money to a browser flaw or wallet problem.