4 ms·
I bought my first bitcoins using local bitcoins many many years ago, must’ve been around a decade at this point. A guy showed up to a location with a duffel ba
by josh2600 4y ago
I bought my first bitcoins using local bitcoins many many years ago, must’ve been around a decade at this point.
A guy showed up to a location with a duffel bag and a handgun. I put some money into a bag and gave him a public key. We sat there for about 20 minutes and chitchatted while we waited for the BTC to arrive in my wallet.
All you kids with your fancy exchanges and dexes these days!
- smcl 4y agoYou're braver than me. If a stranger who knows I have cash on me shows up with a gun, I'm bailing.
- rattlesnakedave 4y agoThe key is to bring your own gun.
- smcl 4y agoI think I'd rather have a gunless transaction altogether :D
- rationalist 4y agoYou would be just as vulnerable, except without the protection of Mutually Assured Destruction — just whomever is stronger wins if it goes sideways.
- smcl 4y agoYeah, but I don’t want to be in a situation where “mutually assured destruction” is even a thing. I live in a country where I could get a license and get a gun, I’ve never felt the need to as it’s continually safer year after year. If I meet someone here who feels the need to arm themselves for safety in public, I am assuming that person is a little unhinged and that getting involved with them has the potential for trouble. This may be locale-specific though, it could be a totally normal thing to walk around with a gun elsewhere.
- noduerme 4y agoWe all live in a Hobbesian state of nature. Most people are vaguely aware of this but only really get it if they find themselves in a terrible moment when they realize that no one else and no system is coming to save them.
- seanw444 4y agoWhere I live, I wouldn't be surprised if I walked past a handful of people with a gun in their waistband at the grocery store. Or a couple at the gas station. You don't even need a permit to do so here. And I have yet to end up in the middle of a shootout. Probably because the risk is too high for criminals as the barrier to entry for defending yourself is essentially zero, except for the price of a gun and ammo. The nice thing about that is it has a "herd immunity" effect. If many people carry around you, but the criminals don't know which person that is, they're likely to refrain from picking on anybody directly. You don't even have to carry yourself to benefit from it. The only crime that happens often in this city, despite that, is parked & vacant cars getting smashed into and robbed. Because it only happens when nobody's looking.
- smcl 4y agoYeah, I think it’s location-specific, maybe where you are wearing a gun at (say) the local shop is a totally normal thing, but here it would be really fucking weird and possibly even a cause to be worried
- rationalist 4y agoI don't want to be in that kind of situation either. I can't comment any further without going way off-topic from the article about LocalBitcoins.
- smcl 4y agoIf you wanna go off-piste it’s totally fine! This is an interesting topic, in my opinion, and it’s not like there’s any bad blood or conflict. Just people in different places with different norms and experiences.
- ReptileMan 4y agoThey key is to bring your own sniper
- dymk 4y agoI assure all people that I meet up with that the dead man’s switch attached to the tactical nuke in my backpack is fully functional
- Waterluvian 4y agoMy bank experience is severely lacking in handguns. Was Bitcoin the answer all this time?!
- superkuh 4y agoAt the bank the firearms are just hidden from you. They're there.
- Waterluvian 4y agoThere are definitely no firearms at most if not all banks in Canada, aside from the Brinks truck drivers for the ten minutes they’re refilling an ATM. In fact, thinking about it, I’ve never seen a security guard stationed at a bank.
- saurik 4y agoBut guns are extremely restricted in Canada, so that isn't as much of a relevant contrast. Even so: banks have their guns ;P. https://www.westernstandard.news/news/bank-of-canada-was-sticking-to-its-guns-illegally/article_6394b35a-43fb-5d24-b857-b480fd1d2ea0.html https://www.westernstandard.news/news/bank-of-canada-was-sti...
- pleb_nz 4y agoProbably only if you live in dangerous is of the world.
- throwme_123 4y agoNot your gun, not your bitcoin
- EGreg 4y agoNot your DNA, not your gun
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- noveltyaccount 4y agoThis guy Americas
- noduerme 4y agoGood times. I never had the experience of being the one showing up with the cash, which would put a whole other level of paranoid fuck on the situation, but I was aware of people posted at the doors to keep an eye on me when I received it. Once you've done it once or twice with the same trader it gets easier...
- stef25 4y agoSame here, except it was a doctor! He said just make an appointment on my website like a patient would. So I sat there in the waiting room for a while, entered and then did the transaction. He said during his student years he was basically "printing bitcoins". As one of the first in the game he must have had a fuckton.
- vbezhenar 4y agoI mined two blocks (100 btc) when I was a student. It took a month on my PC (CPU mining). It was fun. Few months later I found out that I could actually sell them and immediately did so for $15 and thought that it was a great deal. Now I wish I would write down the blocks I mined. Just for history.
- blitzar 4y agoI used to just take bank transactions on localbitcoins - until the bank shut down my bank account!