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I feel like its another case of the tech bubble. The projects with real causes and uses will come back from any implosion in the long run.
by slammm 8y ago
I feel like its another case of the tech bubble. The projects with real causes and uses will come back from any implosion in the long run.
- fullshark 8y agoSo illegal transactions and money laundering it is.
- Scoundreller 8y agoIunno, if i were a billionaire, the idea of having $50m under nobody’s control but my own that I can take anywhere, anytime, doesn’t exist anywhere else. I can’t do that with gold. Bank deposits are always available until they aren’t. But Coinbase can’t do this either.
- notJim 8y agoRight, that's money laundering.
- scient 8y agoAnd why would someone put $50m into a highly volatile, unchecked tech, where mediators are mostly known because of their security problems and breaches?
- Scoundreller 8y ago1. Because you can afford to lose it. 2. There’s a chance (however small) that you could lose the other $950m, but keep some of this other $50m.
- jobigoud 8y agoIt's written in the post you are answering to: "Because it's under nobody’s control but my own that I can take anywhere, anytime".
- umanwizard 8y agoEdit: I calculated this wrong, please ignore this comment
- mopeloi 8y agounless you have to cross a border with it?
- moduspol 8y agoLet us know how you get it through airport security.
- xoa 8y ago>Let us know how you get it through airport security. How you get it through what now? Private aircraft don't deal with that. GP did specify "billionaire", and at that level at least fractional ownership in private long distance transportation is not a reach either.
- moduspol 8y agoThe point is that transporting large amounts of money that can be physically confiscated is a problem, even if it somehow fit into a suitcase. Debating the logistics of potentially being able to evade some of those difficulties by having even larger sums of money (to afford private airliners or private security, even in times of unrest) and accepting larger risks misses the point.
- sneak 8y agoI have carried several kilograms of gold through TSA screening checkpoints a half dozen times. I know that GP pre-edit was talking about $50mm but it is practically quite straightforward and entirely legal to fly domestically in the US with $0.5-1mm in gold. The risk of civil asset forfeiture is another matter but in 6-8 times I have never personally felt at risk from such.
- Scoundreller 8y agoPresumably I won’t exchange it all at once, so now i’ll need a mix of coins and bars, taking up more volume. The billionaire looking for security would already have a cache of stone and gold, but would appreciate other new forms of diversification.
- lozaning 8y agoI smirk whenever I walk past the poster in the international jetways at SFO regarding it being a no no to leave the country with more than $10K.
- ceejayoz 8y agoYou misread those posters. It's fine to come in/out with more than $10k. You're required to declare it.
- paulgrant999 8y agoyou're missing the obvious methods, used by the wealthy. and it has the single hallmark, of being the preferred methods - as it is propped by other rich people, also evading taxes. ;) cryptocurrency, is about the pump-and-dump.
- MrEfficiency 8y agoIdk, I buy burritos at taco bell with my Bitcoin Debit Card. I dont trust my local government's always inflating currency.
- spectec 8y ago>non-inflated currency >bitcoin Pick one.
- fastball 8y ago> always inflating > fixed number of Bitcoins Don't think he needs to.
- spectec 8y agoGoogle defines inflation as: “a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money“. Let’s take a step back and remember how Bitcoin’s purchasing power has lost nearly $15,000 since its all-time high. So yes, he does need to.
- sincerely 8y agoBitcoin is also worth almost exactly as much as it was worth a year ago.
- DennisP 8y agoThe number of Bitcoins that currently exist is still increasing, at about 4% annually. They have an eventual cap (assuming that never gets hard-forked away) but for now they still mint 12.5 new bitcoins every 10 minutes.
- headnshoulders 8y agoWhat card do you use? Anything on this list? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DRbTeMCzb4UeXI0YlAzBxMc2u2i0cN_17Ql6eMngK6E/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DRbTeMCzb4UeXI0YlAzB...
- mindfulplay 8y agoThat's exactly what will remain out of this pile of hot steaming garbage.
- leroy_masochist 8y agoThe long-term value of crypto will likely come from use cases made possible by auditable smart contracts that are administered on decentralized databases and run at perfect fidelity, facilitating the efficient flow of information through multiple types of systems (logistics, finance, etc) at a refresh rate / granularity that will be orders of magnitude faster / more detailed than the current status quo. In the meantime it'll be fun to say snarky things about shitcoins, no question about it, but the tech does have some pretty exciting potential.
- castlecrasher2 8y ago>but the tech does have some pretty exciting potential And some terrifying consequences for bugs. Or administrative errors with contracts, or non-binding contracts that you'll need a traditional court to sort out anyway.
- lottin 8y agoThese smart contracts people keep talking about, maybe one day they'll amount to something, but so far I don't know anyone who uses smart contracts, or who wants to use them, or who even knows what they are or what they do.
- lawn 8y agoAnd... * Porn * Donations to wikileaks * Pot * Sending money to Venezuela * Leaving Venezuela with your wealth intact * Payments without giving all transaction info to the credit card companies * Digital payments for the unbanked All legal usage that makes sense.
- ceejayoz 8y agoAll of those items can be done pretty trivially without cryptocurrency (with the sort-of exception of Venezuela, but taking money out of the country is not a legal usage in either case).
- lawn 8y agoExcept credit card companies don't want to touch porn sites (they have to pay a huge markup and go through other middlemen) or pot companies (who accept cash but it's not digital). PayPal froze the donations to wikileaks. That's not possible if you donate using Bitcoin. The corrupt government in Venezuela may deem it illegal but it's not immoral to want to flee the country with your wealth. This is much easier with Bitcoin as you can just remember or write down your seed. The point is cryptocurrencies does this all better. And your definition of "pretty trivial" is for the most part ignorant.
- ceejayoz 8y agoThat's quite a few moved goalposts.
- lawn 8y agoGranted the Venezuela example was a bad example of a legal use. Everything else stands though.
- ceejayoz 8y agoYour markup/middleman argument pretends that Bitcoin didn't fairly recently have massive fees for transactions - for a while, one's $10/month Pornhub subscription would've cost $40+/month. (Side note: said monthly subscriptions are another challenge here for crypto and porn...) Cryptocurrency stored on an exchange can be frozen, just like one's PayPal balance can be. Wikileaks takes PayPal (and credit card, bank transfer, checks, etc.) donations currently on their site.
- yoavm 8y agoThe only question is... what cryptocurrency projects have a real cause and use cases? I have yet to meet a person that bought something using a cryptocurrency, expect for another cryptocurrency.