A bit of API programming (with the merchant's exchange) deals with the custody aspect, and alot of webshops include a web programmer as a part of the team these days anyway (alot of former web programmers open web based commerce sites as they know they can outcompete businesses without in-house web programmers)

And think of it another way; it's only very independent minded web-store owners that are likely to commit to BTC long-term anyhow. The convergence of that characteristic with people that could and would do the necessary work to use BTC pay is probably pretty high.

You're forgetting: Bitpay are less relevant as a result. Lots of businesses started using alternatives to bitpay when they started to add friction to BTC payments. Add to the trend; stop using bitpay, and there won't be anything much to talk about (BTCpay protocol will ultimately dominate payments market I believe, it's the apolitical code-only alternative, as it enables maximum merchant choice)

Anyone who ever said that Bitcoin can replace investment institutions doesn't even understand the most basic facts. Hedge funds, for instance, might be uniquely placed to kick off the first serious blow in a cryptocurrency financial "war": if a serious economic depression left such institutions as the only ones surviving with any capital, they could protect their assets (and their shareholders) by keeping substantial amounts of BTC as reserves, then simply refusing any asset appropriation orders made by courts or statutes.

The fact is that whether it's official or not, trade in Bitcoin by financial institutions will be the beginning of the end for central bank currencies. These institutions are the living embodiment of private sovereignty, and if given he opportunity to take more sovereignty, they will take it. We can safely assume that they're pushing pretty hard for a legal argument to be legally able to hold and trade BTC, and that they're determined to get the timing just right so that they can accumulate as much as possible before that happens (as that event will of course send BTC very high in the short term)

None of the above alters the fact that banks and governments will be screwed in such a situation, which is what anyone sensible has been saying will be the most significant effect of a cryptocurrency dominant world. Stocks, shares and property are valuable assets in just about any economic climate. Debt and currency issuance are very precarious when an entire monetary system is changed.

3 years is still on the long end of possible estimates, even assuming what you're saying above

*ahem*

Brock Pierce, Paedophile king of crypto


Rolling Stone magazine - shame on you for giving this low-life coverage (he's done ZERO in cryptocurrency, is that the story?)

gentlemand, you've been on bitcointalk.org long enough to know about Brock Pierce, what's your excuse to help perpetuate this scumbag?

This demonstrates the value of popular culture as a vehicle for feeding public perception.

Diamonds have only ever had much value when they're large or unique, the smaller ones occur far too frequently in nature to be worth much on a supply/demand basis. But movie plots about stealing diamonds, or red-carpet walks (using borrowed diamond jewellery) have somehow convinced the public that diamonds are valuable, whereas actual jewelers do not agree (unless they're selling to you, not buying from you). Gold and silver are valuable to jewelers, not diamonds.

There's no reason to believe that. A draft for a Schnorr BIP was published a few weeks ago.

Well of course they can always pay back bonds if they just issue new bonds to pay the old bonds! If the Federal Reserve is creating the bonds in the first place, and they're the only people buying them, there's never going to be a problem repaying debt they owe to themself.

But that means everyone else who already holds that debt (the bonds) will sell before the US dollar loses too much value. And that's exactly what's going on in the market for US bonds: big holders have mostly sold them off. And the only solution is to either default on the Fed's debts to itself (which means the end of the institution that supposedly gives the dollar value), or just keep printing new dollars by issuing new bonds. Dollar loses more value. Repeat till hyperinflation.

No, there are probably none. The EU is simply worse than many others (and a step in the direction of centralised power, which is in principle anti-democratic).

Some sympathy for JetCash:

EU are corrupt and undemocratic, and certainly shouldn't be trusted or supported.


On the other hand:

Navigation satellites (and satellite tech in general) is very 1 way in bandwidth terms. Satellites can send alot of data throughput to earth, but there isn't much in the way of receiving capabilities (ask anyone who uses a satellite based internet connection, it's very poor). Even if this satellite constellation was equipped with cameras, there's not alot of activity that can be monitored with just 26 of them (although if the EU were to strategically combine their efforts with global satellite networks operated by the US, China or Russia, then they could increase overall global coverage).

Right.

I heard about Bitcoin in 2010, but dismissed it because Keynsian economics (which I'd learned as simply being the only economics) dismissed it. It was only because the tech sounded interesting that I checked it out again in 2011, and found threads here on Bitcointalk.org talking about Austrian economics and central banks being scammy etc. The latter completely changed my mind about the "conspiracy theory" topics, it's pretty obvious that the whole financial system (fiat banking inclusive) is just a massive scam. Seeing as the "free market" financial system is the basis of the entire Western world narrative, it changed my view of the world alot.

7 years later, this is my conclusion: alot of what gets labelled conspiracy theory is actively encouraged by the corporate/bank/intelligence uberclass as a kind of smokescreen. This is their weapon to make it very difficult to make an informed choice about what's true and what's false. They are likely manufacturing a whole range of fake and true stories using agents controlled by them, so that given a little passage of time, they can manipulate perception about anything (most Americans believe the Oliver Stone version of what happened in the JFK assassination, but one of the source materials for the screenplay of that movie went on to become a UFO person, despite the earlier JFK stuff being far more credible. Maybe this guy was a government agent paid to say something convincing about JFK in the 1980s, then screw his reputation in the 1990s by deliberately by switching to UFO craziness? Stranger things have happened in cases involving government agents)


Plato wrote about this in the year 2200 BC in The Allegory of the Cave, and Aristotle in his appraisal of the abuse of political power. If anyone really believes that Aristotle & Plato were nothing more than ancient Greek conspiracy nuts, maybe you'd believe anything if someone on TV wearing a suit and tie told you (i.e. the Stanley Milgram compliance experiments).

Exactly, a real futures market.

What you're saying demonstrates the problem: the miners doing this must offer a lower price than the current market price for a future delivery contract. Otherwise, why buy at today's market price for something delivered next month, when you could buy for the market price today and receive it instantly? (this is a method for figuring out that ETF prices for any commodity are being manipulated, i.e. futures prices are higher than spot prices) This is the kind of dynamics you get in real futures markets that these BS Chicago exchanges are (at least superficially) missing.

Anyone considered the possibility that Coinbase are lying, and that there is no mystery hedge fund? This is Coinbase after all, and they have many reasons to lie.

It is said "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely"


Using technology/information and business monopolies, governments are getting closer than ever before to having absolute power. Please stop supporting them everybody, history will not judge you well.

That would demonstrate how dysfunctional these so-called "Bitcoin futures markets" are.

The whole point of futures markets is to buy contracts to deliver something at a future price, not today's price. Because the CME and CBOE don't sell contracts to deliver BTC, but the USD equivalent, the BTC price cannot affect the trading on these markets, or vice versa (except perhaps psychologically).

This strongly suggests that there is backroom dealing whereby BTC is delivered to some unnofficial (and undocumented) tier of these futures markets. Who would trade such contracts otherwise? What would be the point of putting up money for weeks and weeks that does nothing to influence the real BTC markets? That would be little different to putting money on a horse (and I think we all know these days that people with alot of money to bet on sporting events have a penchant for trying to meddle with the outcome so that they win their bet).

This whole concept of "trading BTC without touching the dirty BTC markets" is a complete joke, there's no way any real investor would really do something so crude, you may as well get yourself down to the roulette wheel and put everything on black, lol. And after all, these are Chicago-based markets

Quite alot of the 7829 satoshis here is profit, assuming that the Bosworth node opened the minimum number of channels to host 1.01351351 BTC of liquidity (i.e. each channel had the maximum 0.16777216 BTC per channel). If the original outputs used to open the channels were segwit outputs, and if the fees were rock bottom (that part is very likely), then profits are even more likely.

Pennies of profit though, lol!! (but still better than nothing for running a full-node, which is the status quo)


(note that it's impossible to have a conspiracy where the facts are publicly available, conspiracies are secret by definition. Labelling Lightning critics "conspiracy theorists" actually therefore makes you look uneducated)


Indeed, it's very telling how much effort they put into trash talking in comparison to how much they want to add supporting voices to alternative ideas to improve cryptocurrencies.

And the upcoming Schnorr signatures and Confidential Transactions technologies will close the fungibility chapter, more or less.

These people won't be able to fight the cryptocurrency system when that happens. And let's not forget that this is all a big joke anyway, what the G20 really want is for anyone who wants to evade taxes or make "bad" money appear "good" to have to go through their corruption system. Independents aren't allowed, but if you've got the money, these G20 politcians know how to wash it clean for you and who to ask (they know from experience). But cryptocurrency is too powerful a tool for their anti-laundering methods (aka their competition committee, lol) to ever make any difference.

Everyone can now have a Swiss bank account (Obama said it). Everyone can earn money tax free. Everyone can obscure where their money came from. And whether you (or the G20, or whoever) think that's good or bad is completely irrelevant.

People can protest as much as they like, the UK government gangsters will not stop using your taxes to develop weapons and military tech that they will sell to countries like Qatar, and the UK will not stop Qatari imports (most significantly of which is probably oil). Business with government allies in the Middle East is too strategically important to listen to the opinions of the electorate.

Anyone remember how democracy is supposed to be about listening to the electing public? You tell them what you want and they give it to you? That's not what happens with Middle East issues. They won't listen when it screws up their deals (their deals, not your deals)

Strange selection.

The design fundamentals for Ethereum & Dash are pretty terrible, it's amazing they've survived this long (Dash probably only because there's so little transaction activity to abuse).

Litecoin is going to lose any small utility is has on a far shorter timeframe once Lightning becomes more developed & popular.

Ripple doesn't really have much of a use case; it's essentially a SWIFT/ACH competitor, but any problems in SWIFT or ACH-like networks will cause fiat to become less stable, making Bitcoin compare far more attractively (people have mostly heard of Bitcoin, however unsure they are of it, you can't say that for Ripple).

And Monero's not on the list? Strange list (never looked at Cardano, anyone know something about it?)

Can you explain this in more detail