Seriously this.

And the wild thing is that no one really is quite sure just how powerful the current atomic artillery is of every nuclear capable country; particularly that of the US.  I mean we only have records of what happened in WWII to actual human beings in terms of the impact and aftermath of dropping nukes.  Plus now everyone isn't just playing with nukes, it's potential thermonuclear warfare... basically meaning nukes on steroids.

If no one has heard of Dan Carlin's podcasts (Hardcore History or Common Sense), I highly recommend listening to both.  They are both really good.  But getting back to my point, if anyone is more interested in a pretty brief period in history where potential nuclear warfare was relevant everyday, his Harcore History podcast does a really good job describing that time in history.  

It's honestly scary to think about us going into a pretty inevitable WWIII with god damn thermonuclear bombs ready to be used at any given time.

Have you ever tried out bitsquare before? Essentially it's a P2P trading platform that you run on your computer to connect to the network (through Tor).  It's actually a really legit system that reduces the cost of trading, lets you trade amongst other people in the currency of your choice (through an escrow w/ a multisig address), and keeps you somewhat anonymous by default.

If you are interested, I'd recommend you checking out the faq section to read up a little more about it; but I highly recommend it: https://bitsquare.io/faq/

Yeah, I get the same thing. Just for clarification sake mine is only for the 21st of April. Just probably some small bug in the API it's using or something, I guess. Thanks for the heads up on that.

I'm curious what is everyone's take on how aeon would fit itself as a major player among the big time cryptocurrency projects? 

Like I understand the relationship of how cryptocurrencies have to fit this "yin and yang" dynamic where they have to coexist with Bitcoin, like how we see Monero being the 'private sector' in relation to Bitcoin, and how some people see Ethereum being the 'app/smart contract sector' in relation to Bitcoin; everything seems to have it's purpose. ... But how does Aeon fit into there?

Like if Monero is already filling in that gap of being the 'private sector' or the 'cash' of cryptocurrencies and is the project where all devs flock too to work on that sort of thing; what makes Aeon stand out?  Is there a legit use case separate of Monero, to have some sort of use case on it's own?  Or is there more of a "yin-yang" relationship going on with Monero itself?

This more or less just sounds like a blacklist of people you don't like/agree with.  What good does that serve? One of the main points of message boards like this are to have debates and challenge ideas.  Plus I mean, I guess it depends on the kind of person you are; but wouldn't it be boring if you essentially put your self in an echo chamber and got the same positive reinforcement all the time? 

Here it is on youtube

Great documentary overall and thanks for recommending it!  When I was watching it I jotted down a couple notes during some moments I found interesting (sorry if some of my notes seem kinda scramble-brained; it's late here):

~11:00:  Seemed like I have had similar conversation with my family members about Bitcoin.  When people of older generations get in conversations with you about Bitcoin, they seem very curious at first, but at the very first hint of trying to understand something that they can't wrap their minds around at first, they seem to disregard it right from the get go.

~12:00: Describes people as anonymous when they aren't. Wallets are tied to banks which makes them tied to their identify.  Seems to be a common misconception in this documentary

~16:30: There is a common theme of anger to people who are being told of Bitcoin.  What people don't understand angers them.  This reminds me of other similar conversations I've had with friends and family, they only trust what they already know.

~21:00: Talks about bringing Bitcoin to undeveloped nations, how could that be when they have no electricity, computers, etc.?  Can't have nodes on phones and be able to mine. ... This really got my attention.  I feel that it is a corner stone of one of the key issues of Bitcoin with trying to get further away from centralization. The importance of people in undeveloped nations being able to access the main network of Bitcoin is paramount in "helping them" and for Bitcoin to "save the world".  If we don't try to solve the issues of pruning and finding ways for people to operate nodes on something as mobile as a phone or tablet, I don't think we will be "helping" these people at all.  We (meaning the people in developed/rich nations) will essentially become the banks; essentially forcing these people to trust third parties (us) to operate nodes through and mine transactions for them... not to mention how hard it will be for these people to have phones in the first place in the really rural areas.  This is already troubling now and you can see how peoples privacy are being left by the way side to connect to remote nodes and trusting third party wallet clients even now in our developed nation state.

~22:00 - High fees compared to western union ... The more and more we let the block issues continue, the more and more we see people wanting to transact Bitcoin, the more and more we will see fees go up and will cross out the Pro check mark of "cheap international payment system" off our Pro and Con list compared to Western Union.

~32:00 - Talks about Tor and it's importance to Bitcoin ... Is the new "Tor" i2p/Kovri?  

~46:00 - Really really liked this comment basically describing the hypocrisy of banks, saying that Bitcoin is only used for drugs when someone can easily go to an ATM and withdraw cash to buy drugs.  I feel that this is largely misunderstood by the masses.

~48:00 - Didn't like how it seemed that the only way to be "legitimized" was to go through regulations.  In order for the Bitcoin ecosystem to thrive, there has got to be more emphasis on decentralized exchanges, markets, etc. (e.g. bitsquare)

~55:00 - Good thought about how people failed to learn about not throwing money at "trusted" third parties like in 2008 with banks... People, for some reason, feel more secure by having a company, bank, or whatever take their money to hold it for them; and the pain was felt by all who did that.

~1:11:00 - TIL Ben Lawsky was doing consulting now... idk how I missed that piece of news.  What a scumbag.

This is probably my favorite Bitcoin documentary so far.  I never have seen footage before of the hearing that would inevitably lead to what became the "Bitliscence".  Definitely would recommend anyone to watch it.

What are these "advantages" you speak of? Buying Bitcoin and being verified by ID doesn't do anything in terms of doing "bitcoin-stuff".  What exactly do you mean a "one-night-stand"?

Unfortunatley exchanges are getting more and more invasive with KYC laws and banks are holding exchanges accountable.  I've bought quite a few bitcoins through local bitcoins and have nothing but good experience with them and the people I did business with.  I do, however, recommend that you only use cash deposit rather than something that the payment can be reversed (which ends up with you being scammed) since it's one of the easiest ways to verify that you paid with the site and the person you are buying from.

I actually really like the minimalist design of this forum.  It functions perfectly well and does what it needs to do which is to be a place to discuss cryptocurrencies. 

It just always seems like when a website tries to get too fancy with it's website design, the functionality of the site always goes down. 

The thing about mixing is that technically, it should be considered to be an objective fact that the coins were mixed well or not... but in all reality it comes down to the fact that it's actually very subjective.

The mere fact that with bitcoin it is technically possible for people to see that coins came from wallet A to wallet B presents a massive problem, whether you want to see it that way or not.  Coinbase, or any other exchange, are technically able to shut down your account on the mere assumption that you received coins from a wallet they deem as "sketchy"... that is a major problem in the fundamentals of bitcoin, or any decentralized currency system.  Blockchain analysis will only get worse as time goes by, and if we rely on centralized sources as exchange sites, then we will see major issues with the on/off ramp to bitcoin<->fiat.  Having/holding bitcoin as a store of wealth out of the fiat system is one thing, but to say that it can be used as a fungible currency is nonsense.

I don't know if I have been very ignorant of this or what... I haven't heard anything of this "promise" Trump has supposedly given to "devalue the dollar"... do you have any reference as to where he has said something to this effect?  Or is this something you think he will end up doing as a result of other things?  I just don't remember him making that promise ever on the campaign trail.

While you might be right technically about that aspect, the main problem of the open nature of Bitcoin comes when you think about the end result when you go to cash out Bitcoin back into fiat.  If you receive some payments here and there that might get mixed up with you bitcoin holdings, there is a level of "taint" that goes along with that.  If people who are observing the blockchain (like maybe people at coinbase) see that you got paid from someone on the darkweb, or maybe someone paid you bitcoins he received from a gambling website; you could be denied to cash out and also your coinbase account could be frozen.

That in it's self is where people should be concerned.  It is a very slippery slope to go from preventing people online gambling (like in the US), to totally censoring Bitcoin or censoring people who are donating for a cause they believe in (i.e. Wikileaks, etc.)

Not to mention that US governments are not okay with people gambling in any way, shape, or form that pertains to "luck" or "chance" on casino like games (except in areas like Las Vegas with special "permissions"), but is OK to buy state lotto tickets.  God knows how that money, which is collected to fund in state education, is used.  The funny thing with cash (which is the only way to purchase lotto tickets) is that it is a truly anonymous/fungible physical form of currency; which allows the government to be able to spend it on whatever they chose and to be responsible for whatever they deem fit.

To your point about mixers though, I'm not so sure about that.  A mixer that is "big" and "trusted" is a centralized source where governments can attack.  There are many ways people with resources, like the government, can be able to manipulate the host of the site to comply and cooperate, etc.

If Bitcoin has taught us anything, it is the power of decentralization.  Things always tend to want to centralize... you can even see that today with the centralization of mining, exchange sites, etc. in order to be viewed as "credible", which is just wrong.  I find it important to keep trying to find a system that promotes a truly decentralized way of being able to exchange a currency online without having to worry about having to go to a centralized mixing system in order to remain "anonymous" or have your currency to remain fungible and not associated with past transactions.

So coming from someone who doesn't really quite understand how ETF's would work, I have a couple questions coming from what I highlighted above.

1) So with an ETF (Exchange Traded Funds), you are saying that people who invest into these are investing into a "company's" portfolio (i.e. Winklevoss bitcoin portfolio) rather than buying their own coins for what reasons?  How does this protect their investments?

2) If they can add more shares willingly to dilute their stocks enough to make it affordable, why even bother?  You can buy as much or as little Bitcoin as you want on regular exchanges.

...

Idk, I'm trying to see it from the side of the "non-techie guy" in trying to come up with reasons to invest in the ETF rather than just the asset itself, and can't really see why?  I understand this is primarily due to me not understanding how ETF's work IRL on the regular markets, but it gets confusing to me after looking up what an ETF is and seeing it's investing in a 'portfolio', when in this case it's just a portfolio of Bitcoin. (?)

While I understand what you are saying here... let me play devil's advocate for a second.  You could argue that when email was coming out and people didn't quite understand the importance of communication over the internet, the governments probably saw email in this same light.  They didn't know how to control it because they didn't understand the technology.  Essentially all postal services are/were controlled by the government at the time as well, and as time went on, people in the government grew to understand it's importance of being able to control and monitor email communications.  So now they give incentives to companies like yahoo and google to be able to monitor email accounts.

You could argue the same thing will happen to Banks and Bitcoin.  Governments have allowed banks to get "too big to fail".  It is no secret that banks and government go hand in hand with one another.  Bitcoin is "decentralized", sure, but everything on the blockchain can be observed and tracked by the government in real time.  You think governments won't want to capitalize on that?  Bitcoin isn't anonymous, it is pseudonymous; and being that the governments have good relations with the big banks, it will be relatively simple for governments to see what people buy and who they pay in real time, because people mostly move money in and out of Bitcoin through their banks.

Exactly... I mean if you think about the way the current economic system is set up, people will most certainly always need to get loans to start businesses and other things such as cars, houses, etc. from a reliable source with a decent interest tied to it.  That part I think will be the "parcel services" to keep the postal service/bank correlation going on.  It will hurt the banks at the beginning very badly; mainly the "too big to fail banks" (hopefully) at the beginning and will continue to allow other banks to continue offering services to offer people financial help if they need it.

True, I bump up the fees I would "normally" have to pay by atleast X3 more if I am attempting to moving funds or purchasing something that needs to be confirmed relatively quickly.  Fees have gotten to be pretty ridiculous over the years, even though that was one of the key selling points to using Bitcoin to transfer wealth across border lines.

... Then again, it still remains the cheaper alternative by far compared to other companies to move money abroad.  I'd much rather spend $2-3 in Bitcoin fees right now still imo

Haha, I mean, I dislike Hillary as much as the next guy... but c'mon.  You can charge her for a list of countless stuff throughout her years doing her corrupt version of "public service", but this article is indicating that we should "lock her up" because she was having dinner with someone.

There are plenty of stuff Hillary Clinton has done that would 'make you sick', having dinner with someone is definitely not one of those things.

Yeah, agreed... you definitely want to research what you are getting yourself into first.  If it's illegal, then yeah... it's best to just avoid that.  But if it's for the purpose of moving money privately just for privacy sake (for whatever reason) then just make sure you are looking at the terms and conditions your bank has in regards to accepting deposits from online exchanges.

Also, you really might want to look into bitsquare... using a decentralized, P2P system straight up to put money in and take money out is always the best option.

Depends really on how serious you are in wanting to leave no trace behind, or "break the link".  You will definitely need to be doing more than just transferring your cash into Bitcoins and then back into cash, you need to dedicate an external hard drive of some sort with tails, or maybe just a thumbdrive to boot up tails.  It will also be in your best interest to use some sort of a VPN to connect to the internet with.  Take all the necessary, "typical" precautions of securing your internet communications.

Also in terms of trying to "break the link" between the initial bank account and you receiving cash at the end... you will need to use a different cryptocurrency other than just Bitcoin.  This will surely piss off some people just from saying this, but I would highly recommend transferring the Bitcoins you purchase to Monero and send it through a couple of wallets you control with private keys.  Use a high mixin of around >6 and transfer Bitcoin to your exchange wallet through using the website xmr.to  ... Using Bitcoins alone isn't a very good option because your bank account will be linked to the Bitcoins you purchased, and using mixers aren't very secure and/or trust worthy, since you are using a third party.

This is the best option to "break the link" hands down.  Don't take my word for it, do your research and figure out a plan that you are comfortable with.

I mean, if you think about it... you always have to "trust a third party" with cryptos in some way or the other.  For example, if you don't run your own node and use a client to connect to other nodes with your wallet, you are "trusting a third party".  Also, don't forget that we are all "trusting a third party" just by using the Bitcoin software (unless you are a dev and can understand what's going on and edit the code).

If you don't understand the ends and outs of everything that you are using, you are very well trusting someone that it won't be some scam.