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A whole world currency that is potentially immune to inflation and government manipulation. No currency conversion fees. The ability to send funds to anyone w

A whole world currency that is potentially immune to inflation and government manipulation. No currency conversion fees. The ability to send funds to anyone with no middle man and no fee (besides the miners). Also the removal of business and corporate surveillance. Right now Banks, Mastercard, stripe, venmo etc. know everything about you. They can then leverage that information in any way that they want. I don't like that. You run for office on an anti banking or big business platform and amazingly its leaked that you have an ongoing monthly subscription to X.

oarsinsync 8y ago
> A whole world currency that is potentially immune to inflation and government manipulation. You said potentially, so I’ll give you this one. > No currency conversion fees. This is a function of the market, not the underlying instruments. It’s also not true of most crypto markets, and I’m not confusing the spread with fees at exchanges. > The ability to send funds to anyone with no middle man and no fee (besides the miners). No fee (besides the miners) isn’t much different to no fee (except this fee). It’s still a fee, and in the case of Bitcoin, the fee has potential to be prohibitive (and already is for some use cases that it was designed for, e.g. buying a cup of coffee). > Also the removal of business and corporate surveillance. Right now Banks, Mastercard, stripe, venmo etc. know everything about you. They can then leverage that information in any way that they want. I don't like that. You run for office on an anti banking or big business platform and amazingly its leaked that you have an ongoing monthly subscription to X. Bitcoin is not anonymous, Monero could be unmasked[1], if you’re leaving a digital footprint, someone will eventually be able to follow it. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.04299.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.04299.pdf
- jeremyt 8y ago
  Look, if you are going to be a critic then you can't stand behind ignorance. The "fees are just too high to buy a cup of coffee" is an old trope that is no longer relevant. One can go download LND 0.5 and use the lightning network to make instant practically free payments for a "cup of coffee" today. The only thing I'll concede is that it is still in beta, but the question of whether it's going to exist or not is no longer a question.
  - badge 8y ago
    The way Lightening Network is designed kills the p2p aspect of the Bitcoin protocol.. LN is predictably to benefit capital holders with enough excess capital to act as the backbone hubs. Normal users will be unable to bypass the Bitcoin banking/payment processor LN hubs and unable to reliably route though peer to peer paths on the LN. This presumably is intended to enrich the Bitcoin oligarchs as a passive way to extract rent and wealth on the network simply for controlling existing capital. This design choice indicates either a comic level of negligence, or intent to shift away from p2p to centralized information control. only a 1% chance of successfully routing a $67 payment on the lightning network: https://i.redd.it/twku0lwslz411.jpg https://i.redd.it/twku0lwslz411.jpg Sending payments using the Lightning Network is cheaper than the regular Bitcoin network, but suffers from routing errors and wallet bugs that make it impractical even for highly technical users. [1] [1] https://medium.com/andreas-tries-blockchain/bitcoin-lightning-network-3-paying-for-goods-and-services-5d9c492b0eb2 https://medium.com/andreas-tries-blockchain/bitcoin-lightnin...
    - jeremyt 8y ago
      This is mostly nonsense. If you don't want to use an LN hub, then create your own. If you don't have enough money, then raise some capital and start a LN hub business. Hell, create a non-profit LN hub! If you don't want to pay for the service of using other LN hubs, then send a direct payment. Of course, this will cost real money, but you always have that option. If I'm sending money to purchase a house, you can bet I'm going to send an actual transaction and not use the lightning network. For cups of coffee, I just don't need the full decentralization. Claiming that we will not be able to solve the routing problem on the lightning network is exactly the same as claiming that we won't be able to solve the routing problem on the Internet. Routing is a solved problem, but is a difficult problem to implement, which is why the clients are in BETA. Your link is bullshit, as I mentioned the network is in BETA. Of course people don't have a bunch of money on the lightning network and can't route large payments like $67. That's because the network is in BETA, and all of the platforms are expressly telling people not to use it for large payments.
      - 8y ago
wheelie_boy 8y ago
> A whole world currency that is potentially immune to inflation and government manipulation. There are lots of ways that powerful governments can still put their thumb on the scale. US taxes still need to be paid with US dollars, and they can squeeze / regulate the exchanges, or influence, for example, the devs working on bitcoin. Also, the design of bitcoin is inherently deflationary, which isn't inflation, but has its own set of problems. Saying that nobody is going to have the power to fix those problems isn't a huge selling point. > No current conversion fees. Well, I guess if everyone in the world settled on a single cryptocurrency. But that's also true of any other currency in the same situation. > The ability to send funds to anyone with no middle man and no fee (besides the miners). What is the importance of not having a middleman? Is it so that you can avoid regulations/fees that you'd otherwise be subject to? To me, this seems like the entire value proposition of cryptocurrency. > Also the removal of business and corporate surveillance. This is a good point.
- vkhorikov 8y ago
  What problems do you see with deflation?
  - riku_iki 8y ago
    It pushes currency holders to hold currency in their pockets to gain interest (sell it later for more), and not put it to economy's circulation.
    - vkhorikov 8y ago
      That's a quite simplistic Keynesian view of economics. Economy != money changing hands. Savings are necessary for economic growth as they represent unspent resources in the economy that can be put into long-term projects and investments.
      - riku_iki 8y ago
        That's the thing with deflation: money holders don't have incentive to put it into "long-term projects".
jasonhansel 8y ago
Maybe I'm just naive, but I suspect that the US government will long outlast SHA-256. Beyond that, I'd much rather put my trust in a democratic process than a plutocratic one.
badge 8y ago
>A whole world currency that is potentially immune to inflation and government manipulation. But completely exposed to private manipulation - malicious coders inserting backdoors into wallets which allow theft of users funds, weak private keys that are later regenerated by the dev, and so on. Or manipulation from exchanges which generate counterfeit accounts and fake volume in order to steal BTC from the market before they exit scam like most of the exchanges in the past have. What do you think about Tether and "stable coins" being generated by the billions for free (and then those operators using the counterfit stablecoins to steal BTC/XMR/ETH)? https://medium.com/@bitfinexed https://medium.com/@bitfinexed The common theory is that Bitfinex, Tether, and most of the Cryptocurrency exchanges are operating as fractional reserve banks - and creating more cryptocoins for free, meanwhile "buying" Bitcoin, Monereo, Ethereum, and so on for free because they operate in the dark. If this is true, it's worse than real central banking, and it's quiet possible Bitfinex and other exchanges have stolen the vast majority of BTC in circulation. Protections for Customer Funds Are Often Limited or Illusory. Generally accepted methods for auditing virtual assets do not exist, and trading platforms lack a consistent and transparent approach to independently auditing the virtual currency purportedly in their possession; several do not claim to do any independent auditing of their virtual currency holdings at all. That makes it difficult or impossible to confirm whether platforms are responsibly holding their customers’ virtual assets as claimed. https://virtualmarkets.ag.ny.gov/ https://virtualmarkets.ag.ny.gov/ https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-09-27/crypto-s-open-secret-its-multibillion-dollar-volume-is-suspect https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-09-27/crypt...

oarsinsync 8y ago

> A whole world currency that is potentially immune to inflation and government manipulation. You said potentially, so I’ll give you this one. > No currency conversion fees. This is a function of the market, not the underlying instruments. It’s also not true of most crypto markets, and I’m not confusing the spread with fees at exchanges. > The ability to send funds to anyone with no middle man and no fee (besides the miners). No fee (besides the miners) isn’t much different to no fee (except this fee). It’s still a fee, and in the case of Bitcoin, the fee has potential to be prohibitive (and already is for some use cases that it was designed for, e.g. buying a cup of coffee). > Also the removal of business and corporate surveillance. Right now Banks, Mastercard, stripe, venmo etc. know everything about you. They can then leverage that information in any way that they want. I don't like that. You run for office on an anti banking or big business platform and amazingly its leaked that you have an ongoing monthly subscription to X. Bitcoin is not anonymous, Monero could be unmasked[1], if you’re leaving a digital footprint, someone will eventually be able to follow it. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.04299.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.04299.pdf

jeremyt 8y ago
Look, if you are going to be a critic then you can't stand behind ignorance. The "fees are just too high to buy a cup of coffee" is an old trope that is no longer relevant. One can go download LND 0.5 and use the lightning network to make instant practically free payments for a "cup of coffee" today. The only thing I'll concede is that it is still in beta, but the question of whether it's going to exist or not is no longer a question.
- badge 8y ago
  The way Lightening Network is designed kills the p2p aspect of the Bitcoin protocol.. LN is predictably to benefit capital holders with enough excess capital to act as the backbone hubs. Normal users will be unable to bypass the Bitcoin banking/payment processor LN hubs and unable to reliably route though peer to peer paths on the LN. This presumably is intended to enrich the Bitcoin oligarchs as a passive way to extract rent and wealth on the network simply for controlling existing capital. This design choice indicates either a comic level of negligence, or intent to shift away from p2p to centralized information control. only a 1% chance of successfully routing a $67 payment on the lightning network: https://i.redd.it/twku0lwslz411.jpg https://i.redd.it/twku0lwslz411.jpg Sending payments using the Lightning Network is cheaper than the regular Bitcoin network, but suffers from routing errors and wallet bugs that make it impractical even for highly technical users. [1] [1] https://medium.com/andreas-tries-blockchain/bitcoin-lightning-network-3-paying-for-goods-and-services-5d9c492b0eb2 https://medium.com/andreas-tries-blockchain/bitcoin-lightnin...
  - jeremyt 8y ago
    This is mostly nonsense. If you don't want to use an LN hub, then create your own. If you don't have enough money, then raise some capital and start a LN hub business. Hell, create a non-profit LN hub! If you don't want to pay for the service of using other LN hubs, then send a direct payment. Of course, this will cost real money, but you always have that option. If I'm sending money to purchase a house, you can bet I'm going to send an actual transaction and not use the lightning network. For cups of coffee, I just don't need the full decentralization. Claiming that we will not be able to solve the routing problem on the lightning network is exactly the same as claiming that we won't be able to solve the routing problem on the Internet. Routing is a solved problem, but is a difficult problem to implement, which is why the clients are in BETA. Your link is bullshit, as I mentioned the network is in BETA. Of course people don't have a bunch of money on the lightning network and can't route large payments like $67. That's because the network is in BETA, and all of the platforms are expressly telling people not to use it for large payments.
    - 8y ago

wheelie_boy 8y ago

> A whole world currency that is potentially immune to inflation and government manipulation. There are lots of ways that powerful governments can still put their thumb on the scale. US taxes still need to be paid with US dollars, and they can squeeze / regulate the exchanges, or influence, for example, the devs working on bitcoin. Also, the design of bitcoin is inherently deflationary, which isn't inflation, but has its own set of problems. Saying that nobody is going to have the power to fix those problems isn't a huge selling point. > No current conversion fees. Well, I guess if everyone in the world settled on a single cryptocurrency. But that's also true of any other currency in the same situation. > The ability to send funds to anyone with no middle man and no fee (besides the miners). What is the importance of not having a middleman? Is it so that you can avoid regulations/fees that you'd otherwise be subject to? To me, this seems like the entire value proposition of cryptocurrency. > Also the removal of business and corporate surveillance. This is a good point.

vkhorikov 8y ago
What problems do you see with deflation?
- riku_iki 8y ago
  It pushes currency holders to hold currency in their pockets to gain interest (sell it later for more), and not put it to economy's circulation.
  - vkhorikov 8y ago
    That's a quite simplistic Keynesian view of economics. Economy != money changing hands. Savings are necessary for economic growth as they represent unspent resources in the economy that can be put into long-term projects and investments.
    - riku_iki 8y ago
      That's the thing with deflation: money holders don't have incentive to put it into "long-term projects".

jasonhansel 8y ago

Maybe I'm just naive, but I suspect that the US government will long outlast SHA-256. Beyond that, I'd much rather put my trust in a democratic process than a plutocratic one.

badge 8y ago

>A whole world currency that is potentially immune to inflation and government manipulation. But completely exposed to private manipulation - malicious coders inserting backdoors into wallets which allow theft of users funds, weak private keys that are later regenerated by the dev, and so on. Or manipulation from exchanges which generate counterfeit accounts and fake volume in order to steal BTC from the market before they exit scam like most of the exchanges in the past have. What do you think about Tether and "stable coins" being generated by the billions for free (and then those operators using the counterfit stablecoins to steal BTC/XMR/ETH)? https://medium.com/@bitfinexed https://medium.com/@bitfinexed The common theory is that Bitfinex, Tether, and most of the Cryptocurrency exchanges are operating as fractional reserve banks - and creating more cryptocoins for free, meanwhile "buying" Bitcoin, Monereo, Ethereum, and so on for free because they operate in the dark. If this is true, it's worse than real central banking, and it's quiet possible Bitfinex and other exchanges have stolen the vast majority of BTC in circulation. Protections for Customer Funds Are Often Limited or Illusory. Generally accepted methods for auditing virtual assets do not exist, and trading platforms lack a consistent and transparent approach to independently auditing the virtual currency purportedly in their possession; several do not claim to do any independent auditing of their virtual currency holdings at all. That makes it difficult or impossible to confirm whether platforms are responsibly holding their customers’ virtual assets as claimed. https://virtualmarkets.ag.ny.gov/ https://virtualmarkets.ag.ny.gov/ https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-09-27/crypto-s-open-secret-its-multibillion-dollar-volume-is-suspect https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-09-27/crypt...