A lot of Internet companies banned crypto/ICO ads, Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Microsoft, Baidu, MailChimp, Oath, Alibaba’s Taobao, Yandex etc, guess what, they are all planning to launch their own cryptocurrency, is it Quite a possibility, but for the time being it has more to do with no solid crypto regulatory guidelines, with all the scam ICO advertising targeting innocent investors, these companies are just taking a precaution to not get dragged into any legal implications.

Last year, in Novemeber an article was published on Hackernoon titled, The Facebook Cryptocurrency that Mark Zuckerberg Should Launch. It was before Zuckerberg said that he was looking into Blockchain technology. One of the suggestions made by the author,


Yeah, a bit absurd and considering the very centralized business model of corporations, definitely too far-fetched.

Apart from pre-mined, the article also mentions airdrops, Facebook launching their own exchange, buybacks, and a few hypothetical possibilities on how a big corporation like Facebook with more than 2 billion users could build their token economy and monetize it.

A couple of years ago, there were no decentralized alternatives to Facebook/Twitter, but we do have them now, although the userbase is too small. Decentralization is a paradigm shift, but the approach taken by most of the decentralized Blockchain projects to decentralize everything isn't going to show any immediate results, it's a slow process. Yeah, people who don't care about their data privacy, security would use centralized cryptocurrencies backed by the so called corporations, but those who care, now have the choice to use decentralized versions with absolute privacy and security, wouldn't they use it? And as more decentralized platforms targeting different sectors are built, more decentralized choices people are going to have, adoption will be slow, but ultimately there would be a parallel decentralized economy.

https://hackernoon.com/facebook-could-launch-the-ultimate-cryptocurrency-2e6a5b65665b

PS: Not vouching for any centralized shitcoin.

Real businesses/corporations launching their own corporate coins. With an existing revenue-generating business model, well-established reputation and a large user base, McDonald's wouldn't have much issue building a token economy for their business and user engagement would depend on how the use case of their token will be defined, limited to McDonald's only or much broader.

As far as, would these corporate coins add some value or be good for Bitcoin, this analogy might be flawed, but IMO, corporate coins would just be an extension of their corporate shares. Yeah definitely, shares to a cryptocurrency, the whole use case changes and importantly accessibility. It has been reported that Facebook is planning to launch their cryptocurrency. I think there are a good number of crypto users who before entering the crypto market didn't had any experience dealing with stocks/shares. Now hypothetically if Facebook launches their own cryptocurrency would these users buy it? Definitely, it is giving them an opportunity to own a part of a well-established corporation and allowing them to trade it in an emerging volatile crypto market.

I have no idea how the structure of corporate coins would be, too centralized or borderline decentralized, but IMO even with all the data/privacy/censorship issues, a Facebook cryptocurrency will get adopted, the whole crypto market doesn’t work on trust, decentralization, or ideology. Would corporate coins contribute to spreading the word about cryptocurrencies/Blockchain? It's a possibility and in turn could be good for the overall crypto market. With all the regulatory uncertainty, it could be some time before we see a corporate coin.

Horned guys, caskets, skeletons, is it metaphorical dark web or it symbolizes banking trying to get a hold on privacy-centered coins? What is buried in the grave besides the bill? The bill dragging Ripple and Ripple holding on to Bitcoin, that's a bit confusing, centralization holding on to decentralization, no idea how to interpret that. Good work, looking forward to the 3rd part.

The draft bill doesn't prohibit crypto payments, but not consider them as a legitimate means of payment. Apart from Japan, Australia and Germany, no other nation has recognized Bitcoin as a legal tender.


Last year, the Russian Finance Ministry had proposed that mining should be regulated and miners need to register with the government, don't know whether this proposal is included in this draft bill, if yes that's going to be tricky. As Putin has given a deadline of July 1st to implement crypto regulations, this bill finally/probably would become one of the first crypto laws in Russia.

There is a correlation between Bitcoin price and hash rate. Even though Bitcoin price is around $8000 now the hash rate hasn't dropped, it is same or a bit more than what it was when Bitcoin was around $20000. Declining price/hashrate correlation is a bit complex, resistance level. But when you assume that the rate of adoption is going to increase by 10 or 15 times, then definitely the price would increase and here there is no complexity, direct correlation, hashrate following price, the higher the price in USD, miners who stopped mining because it was unprofitable would again deploy their ASICs/new miners, more energy consumption.

Let's assume hashrate, difficulty, blocksize are internal factors, fixed and correlating, price and adoption are external factors then I guess the current mining power is enough to handle 10 or 15 times the number of users. The internal factors adjust to changes in Bitcoin price/rate of adoption. From the security perspective, adoption/increase in network usage would lead to an increase in hashrate to secure the network.

For the sake of counter argument, the energy consumed by the inefficient banking system and gold mining can be compared with that of Bitcoin mining, there is a substantial difference. There was an article published on Hackernoon, The Bitcoin vs Visa Electricity Consumption Fallacy:


Rough estimates, Bitcoin adoption is still around 1%, comparing the current energy consumption of Bitcoin with that of global banking system doesn't make much sense and if I go by the figures in this article, 28.67 Twh with around 1% adoption and as adoption increases, I don't think it would be wrong to assume that with about 10 to 15% adoption, the Bitcoin energy consumption would be more than that of the global banking system.

Bitcoin does have an energy efficiency problem. Don't know how effective a solution LN would be, but as Andreas Antonopoulos points out in a YouTube video, the solution lies in a significant growth in renewable/alternative energy sector/establishing mining operations on locations with surplus energy.


https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consumption-fallacy-8cf194987a50

https://youtu.be/2T0OUIW89II

There is an update: SC refused to stay RBI circular and no more petitions can be filed against the 6th April circular in any HC of India, all the already-pending petitions will be transferred to the SC, further hearing on 20th of July. On July 5, the RBI circular will come into effect, barring all banks from dealing with exchanges.

https://twitter.com/cryptokanoon

Four petitions, hearings on May 17 and 24, constitutional rights, equality before law and the right to practice any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business. This month probably will decide the fate of fiat to crypto (banks/exchanges) trade in India, even with the fundamental rights involved, I don't think there is much hope. Good thing, the crypto community in India is already gearing up for a crypto-to-crypto ecosystem with exchanges adding more altcoins.

Rule of thumb: If you don't own the private keys, you don't own the Bitcoin. Be your own bank.

About a week ago, Bloomberg published an article on wealthy are hoarding $10 billion of Bitcoin in bunkers, Xapo vaults, about 7%, even some Bitcoiners don't want to be their own bank , the same with people keeping their funds on insured exchanges like Coinbase. With Bitcoin you have the choice to be your own bank or if you are paranoid about the safety of your Bitcoin and don't trust yourself to keep it safe then there are custodians like Xapo or Coinbase and I guess in the near future we might see some new crypto-custodian platforms. Yeah, rather than securing your coins yourself, trusting third-parties does override the concept of be your own bank, but if you have trusted custodians then IMO it might speed up adoption. And like LeGaulois mentioned crypto insurances, it would make cryptos more attractive to investors. Custodians, insurances, the developing infrastructure around Bitcoin might look the traditional one, but I guess it will make Bitcoin more user-friendly.

I guess what OP meant is a button to hide all messages/posts from users with signatures, not hiding the signatures.

Brute way, doesn't make much sense, if you believe 90% of posts from sig users are spam then with a button like this you will miss out on the 10% of genuine posts by sig users. Better use the ignore button.

I guess one more option can be added. Apart from privacy, anonymity, security, ease-of-use, fast, fees (Although Bitcoin fees are fairly low, still not suitable for micro transactions, but with large amounts it beats any traditional mode of payment) and transnational, cryptocurrency transactions are also non-reversible. There is no risk of chargebacks, eliminates chances of fraud.

Since the thread is about medium of exchange, the fifth could be purchasing power.

Yeah, like timerland mentioned apart from medium of exchange, it's store of value/not prone to inflation/be your own bank.

Read an article on Medium, don't think it's going to get much claps, but the subject is a bit thought-provoking. About two billion in the world are unbanked and the major use case of Bitcoin is empowering these people and it's happening in Africa, Indonesia, and a few developing nations. Obviously, they are unbanked because they don't have basic identification documents, no KYC. Now the standard norm every country is adopting in regulating Bitcoin is enforcing KYC/AML laws. It could very well-be argued that you can buy/sell Bitcoin without KYC. About a month ago read a post on Reddit that LBC started doing KYC/AML, but again there are alternatives like Paxful and decentralized platforms like Bisq, but the point is compared to centralized platforms that are KYC/AML compliant the non-KYC ones have less liquidity, significant price difference, chances of getting scammed is very high.


The only ones that will be using Bitcoin will be the criminals part is pure BS, but the unbanked trying to bypass laws not for the sake of anonymity or anything illegal, but regulations leaving them with no other choice. So with centralized licensed exchanges around the corner, would this create an entry barrier for the unbanked or would it establish some big players in decentralized exchanges?

PS: Guess I made contradictory statements , but it's the overall picture.

PS: Typos in the article.

https://medium.com/@manuelpolavieja/kyc-aml-or-how-to-make-bitcoin-the-privilege-of-the-criminals-b825cd822c18

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/8ct9kl/so_localbitcoins_started_doing_kycaml/

There have been a few researches/surveys done that suggests that younger people are more interested in investing in Bitcoin than the older age groups. So there is a correlation between age and interest in Bitcoin and this could be because of a couple of reasons, Bitcoin is a bit complicated to understand, reluctance to change or adopt/learn something new, or even the very volatile nature of Bitcoin/risk-averse.

A few highly successful people like Buffett and Gates have heavily criticized Bitcoin, I wouldn't say they are wrong, their perception or their concept/methods of wealth creation differs from that of Bitcoin/cryptos, wealth creation and transfer with a decentralized governance. I don't think Warren Buffett is ever going to change his opinion about Bitcoin, too attuned to the traditional system and centering Bitcoin just to rat poison, bubbles, speculation, scam without wanting to see the long-term potential and likewise many more who don't see anything new in Bitcoin or feel compelled to use it. But as Bitcoin gets adopted in less developed/inflated nations and more investments in Bitcoin over traditional means starts happening, the disinterested crowd will get curious.

Although over time with adoption, Bitcoin would become much more stable, but when compared to gold there is a bit of difference in supply and demand mechanisms. While Bitcoin's supply schedule is pre-programmed/perfectly inelastic/vertical supply curve, although gold's supply is limited, but no one exactly knows how much of gold is there on earth (not including gold resources on other planets) and gold mining works more along the lines of maintaining a supply-demand equilibrium/price stability, no such mechanism in Bitcoin and that's what makes Bitcoin although a riskier, but better long-term investment than gold. The inelastic supply would always contribute to Bitcoin's volatility, but longer periods of stability will be achieved with further adoption.

Newbie is fudding around.

US banning ban is a highly unlikely scenario. [hypothetically] If it comes to that then it wouldn't be like the China ban, recovery wouldn't be easy, yeah in the long-term it means nothing, but it would be very long, in the short-term Bitcoin would be crippled. If the US bans Bitcoin then countries that have taken a neutral approach towards Bitcoin might probably follow suit, quite possible.

Bitcoin has come a long way from being a niche coin, nerd coin, criminal's coin to being in the process of becoming a mainstream financial investment where a good number of investors neither understand the technology nor the ideology, don't use it as a medium of exchange, but do perceive it as a good investment, maybe for short-term or long-term, weak hands and investors, but US ban will take majority of these people away leaving Bitcoin to where it was maybe a year or two ago. We are still in the very early phase, we don't need bans, but we still need weak hands or people who don't understand Bitcoin or for why it was created to take the momentum forward, for mainstream adoption. If the average Joe isn't able to be a part of Bitcoin because of ban then it would take some time for us, Bitcoin enthusiasts/ideologists/anarchists/libertarians to again build up from niche to achieve further adoption.

Governments can't kill Bitcoin, but they can definitely slow down adoption especially if it's the US government.[hypothetically]

IRS is milking Bitcoiners. Regulations are on the way.

By simply enabling notifications, you will not get notified of all the topics on Announcements (Altcoins), but you have to login and actively visit that board to get notified about new threads.

Physical Bitcoin or spending Bitcoin offline is a topic that has been discussed since 2010, from paper wallets to Casascius Coins to OpenDime. A point-of-sales (POS) terminal called Bitcoin Box was proposed in 2015, offline transactions using NFC, but seems like the project is dead. Offline Bitcoin payments posses a number of security challenges. A paper titled Secure Wallet-Assisted Offline Bitcoin Payments with Double-Spender Revocation was published last year. The paper proposes the first solution for secure Bitcoin offline payments using an offline wallet with several novel security mechanisms to prevent double-spending and to verify the coin validity in offline setting.

There are three phases:

1. Online Bitcoin preloading.

2. Offline Bitcoin payment.

3. Online redemption of coins and revocation of double spending attacks.


A secure offline Bitcoin payment system would be a big boost for adoption.

https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/infk/inst-infsec/system-security-group-dam/research/publications/pub2017/asia084.pdf

http://www.thebitcoinbox.com/

PS: I am not good with technicalities, but did understand the basic outline so hopefully no technical questions

PS: To cover up for my lack of technical knowledge, there was another offline transactions idea proposed in 2013, quite simple to grasp, but might seem a tad absurd, How to use fiat currencies for Bitcoin offline transactions?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=305590.0

A couple of stats, $4 billion dollars were raised through ICOs last year, the number of ICOs hitting their fundraising goals in June was 93% and it gradually declined to around 23% by November, too many scam projects made investors smart and on top of that after September with China ban and then South Korea and persistent SEC warnings there has been a decrease in ICOs. There is also a new trend catching up, reverse ICO, tokenization of existing businesses, corporate coins. With regulations around the corner, it looks like the Wild West days of ICOs are coming to an end and shifting to security token offerings. It's necessary and definitely a far better option than the crypto market getting flooded with worthless tokens and many investors getting scammed in the process, but certainty not at the cost of if regulations create an entry barrier for retail investors.

+1 OP

The decentralization of Bitcoin and non-licensed exchanges like Bitfinex, Binance is far better. The community needs these, but doesn't need backing on illusion. Decentralized, non-licensed, cryptocapitalists, part of the game. USDT rather than USD, easy, convertibility, audit is just a hover in the air. Let the song last forever.