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Well the point is with Bitcoin you don't have to trust RBC to not freeze and/or abscond with your $1B.
by grubles 6y ago
Well the point is with Bitcoin you don't have to trust RBC to not freeze and/or abscond with your $1B.
- cycrutchfield 6y agoAre you really going to try to argue that you are less likely to get scammed or hacked with Bitcoin than with a traditional bank?
- sp332 6y agoNot scammed, but maybe a regulator will take an interest in $1B being moved around.
- hendzen 6y agoIs the average person in our society better off in a world where anyone can move $1B anonymously? Why do you think regulators might want to take an interest in such transfers?
- czbond 6y agoBitcoin transactions are already being de-anonymized at least in the U.S. - and if not today, the permanent ledger record means that the 'data exhaust' (hidden data surrounding a transaction) can back into it.
- toss1 6y agoNo the average person is less well off in a world where $1 billion can be moved anonymously. The need to move such funds anonymously is usually due to illegal activities, money laundering, or at least tax evasion (evasion, not avoidance). This leaves every average person at the very least, on the hook to pay for those taxes evaded, or lacking the services they would have provided. If the need is due to criminality beyond tax evasion, every average person suffers the corrosive effect of that criminal activity (e.g., while I'm for most drug legalization, I can't begin to argue that organized criminal drug distribution is anything but a massive destructive tax on society - & in fact, a main point of legalization is to eliminate that corrosive costs of gangs). So, the average person is definitely worse off with the existence of an ability to move & billions anonymously. (edit: avoided/evaded)
- hirako2000 6y agoI'm sorry plenty of people would disagree with our taxing system, 99% of them not being drug Lords. I think most people would be better off with the ability to move billion of dollars anonymously, as it would also give them the ability to move hundreds or thousand of dollars anonymously as well. I fall into that category. Most people I know, and they aren't rich tax avoiders would also fall into that category. Cryptocurrency liberates everyone in so many ways. And yes it liberates criminals as well. But hey are know how to dodge the system anyway.
- toss1 6y agoPerhaps I'm missing something, but I'm seeing you specify the use-case other than 'less-rich people can also move money anonymously'. Other than small-scale tax evasion or nefarious activities, what use cases are you advocating? I also used to be pretty excited about the potential for crypto currencies, still think it may have some, but the security overhead, value volatility, & scalability issues have pretty much rendered it less useful than cash or (ugh) ACH-based services like Venmo, Google Pay, etc., ir just credit cards. Also, you're not addressing losses of tax evasion - one tax evader failing to pay $1B in taxes means a million people need to pay an extra $1000 to make up for his crime. Not victimless.
- sp332 6y agoI don't know, is it that different from being able to send an encrypted message, or lock something securely in a safe?
- retrac 6y agoIs there a difference between expressing moral support for a terrorist organization and sending them $1 million? I was never very compelled with the "money = speech" argument when taken particularly literally.
- sp332 6y agoI didn't mean specifically that money = speech. I mean there are some things we agree should be private even if that means making them less accountable.
- kingo55 6y agoNo, his point seems to be that bitcoin can be transferred without the approval or moral judgement imposed by a third party (e.g. bank). Try sending $1B around the world to your Nigerian uncle and seeing what happens.
- ceejayoz 6y agoVarious governments will be more than happy to apply their large resources to a $1B Bitcoin transaction if they can find a hint that it's in their jurisdiction.
- kingo55 6y agoThey most certainly will... But at least the money was sent. Nothing they can do to stop that.
- Barrin92 6y ago>Try sending $1B around the world to your Nigerian uncle and seeing what happens. I'm sad that I have to inform you that the emails you've been getting aren't actually real
- grubles 6y agoThe point is the entire point of Bitcoin itself is to minimize or hopefully remove completely the requirement of trust.
- throwlogon 6y agoYou still have to trust the counterparty to deliver whatever the Bitcoin is being exchanged for.
- vmception 6y agonot with a multi-signature address acting as escrow. 2013 called and wants its arguments back
- throwlogon 6y agoIn that case you still have to trust the escrow service.
- vmception 6y agoyes. its an adaptation to that economy and allows for mitigating risks. not a panacea the escrow service would be one party of the multisignature transaction. no party can move the funds on their own. you are moving an arbiter to the point of transaction, instead of after a transaction doesn't go as planned.
- grubles 6y agoTrust minimization instead of maximally trusting RBC with all of your money but also the counterparty to deliver.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cletus 6y agoNor can you reverse a transaction when someone steals your Bitcoins. The traditional financial system is far more suitable to people’s needs than Bitcoin is.
- gruez 6y ago>Nor can you reverse a transaction when someone steals your Bitcoins. You're not always able to do that with the traditional banking system. Scammers were able to steal millions from corporations using wire transfers, and they weren't able to reverse them.
- cletus 6y agoSome is still better than none, no?
- gruez 6y agoBut reversibility is provided by the intermediary, and isn't a property of the currency itself. For instance, if you're dealing in cash, there's zero reversibility. Likewise, I don't see the difference between a bank reversing a transaction for you, and the marketplace platform reversing the transaction for you.
- erfgh 6y agoBut at least there is hope.
- parliament32 6y agoExactly, you can't officially reverse wires. You can ask your bank nicely, and they can ask the receiving bank nicely, and if the money's still there, it may or may not be transferred back. But there is no official mechanism for reversing wires, and if the other side withdraws/spends the money before you start the process you're SOL.
- alexpotato 6y agoLibertarians would argue that this is where insurance comes in. Insurance in this example has two functions: 1. Protecting you from losses 2. Applying standards to Bitcoin exchanges etc to help prevent losses. A good example of this is fire insurance. An insurance company will require a potential customer to have fire alarms, use specific materials etc before they decide to cover that company's building.
- orbifold 6y agoAlso good luck getting 1B converted to dollars without a major head-ache. I feel like 1B in bitcoin is as bad if not even worse than 1B in cash. It isn't super useful in that form.
- robjan 6y agoIf you tried to convert it into dollars it would move the market and devalue your holdings. But buying into bitcoin would have also moved the market in the other direction, tbh.
- rudolph9 6y agoIt’s not useful for small payments but I would happily take the equivalent $1k+ in bitcoin as payment.
- compiler-guy 6y ago“The difference between one million dollars and a billion dollars is about one billion dollars.“ 1k transactions and even 1k * 1k transactions are so small relative to this amount that the GP’s point still stands. This is not a very useful way of storing the value.
- electricviolet 6y agoyou've got a typo there, one of your millions should say billion
- compiler-guy 6y agoThanks for the catch. fixed.
- erfgh 6y agoYou do have to trust yourself to have 100% flawless security because one slip and you lose that $1B to a Chinese hacker with no hope of ever getting it back.
- gruez 6y agoIt's not limited to cryptocurrency. eg. companies losing millions from phishing https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/phishing-email-scam-stole-100-million-from-facebook-and-google.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/phishing-email-scam-stole-10...
- andrewzah 6y agoThe point is that there are options available to you when you use i.e. a credit card to spend money, versus bitcoin. With btc you will never, ever have a chance of getting it back once it's spent or if someone takes control of your wallet. To be fair, debit cards and wire transfers have a similar issue. However there are still ways to get your money back in some situations.
- aey 6y agoNot quite. You can bribe the miners with your old private key if you act fast enough :)
- lenwood 6y agoHow do you contact a miner? Can you give an example of this? I've read this before but I'm curious to learn more specifics.
- timcc50 6y agoYou would need to know them personally. There are lots of big mining farms around the world, and many smaller ones. You would need to be friends with the big ones to pull anything like this off.
- 6y ago
- zarkov99 6y agoTrue, but you also have no recourse if the transaction was fradulent, done under duress or an error.
- def8cefe 6y agoYou don't have to trust RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) to not run off with your money because they are regulated by the Canadian government. Canada has one of the most respected and stable banking industries in the world with a proven track record. If somebody breaches your Canadian bank account you get your money back. If somebody steals your money from your bitcoin wallet you start all over again.
- voisin 6y agoYou get your money back up to the CDIC insured limit which is $100k right? Canada’s banking industry avoided the Great Recession only because Canada did not have a housing market reset. Prices continued upward unabated, along with household debt which is now among the highest in the world. They kicked the can down the road, but didn’t avoid the issue permanently.
- def8cefe 6y agoThe United States didn't face a mortgage crisis purely because of housing price collapse, it was a combination of the collapse with widespread use of subprime lending. Instead of having this argument with a random guy on the Internet I suggest you read the vast amount of documentation and analysis from people in the industry. Beyond that, the Canadian banking industry did not start up in 2008, even if that's only as far back as your memory goes. If a Canadian bank runs off with your money you have an actual entity to pursue in court. With Bitcoin you're pretty much SOL. The CDIC insured limit is not money to be reimbursed by the bank, it's by the CDIC in case of bank failure. There are other avenues to take first to recover your funds. Canadian banks are stable because our regulators do not allow them to assume as much risk as banks in other jurisdictions.
- wolco 6y agoCanadian banks are stabler because of the cost and missed opportunity costs are passed on to the customer. Want a mortgage at the current rate? Great you must qualify at 2% points higher. Canada has some of the highest banking fees.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]