Change of bankers wouldn't matter in 10 weeks I guess. Although, What about international banks and using wire transfers. We were already paying the forex premium over international prices on Zebpay etc.
If an Indian entity decided to shift base to say, Singapore and use a bank there, Would RBI mandate still apply on them? I don't think so.


LOL..You maybe right but this isn't so simple. The number of people who got into cryptocurrency via the forum or for a long time maybe few in numbers but the hordes that came in wanting to 10X their investment and bought Ripple and Tron should be a considerable number.

This petition should be spreading through word of mouth to those people. I bet they'll rally to keep the golden goose alive.

Anybody with enough capital, expertise and the benefit of living in the right country should invest into crypto-mining as a full-time or a side business.
Once set up, it is a potential bet on the future as well as a source for steady income. With incoming regulations and clarity, we will have a much better picture of how things will shape up. Those who take the first-mover advantage will enjoy rewards commensurate to the entrepreneurial risk in this. Once the picture clarifies and the market shoots up, it'll be harder to get in the game with rise in mining equipment cost.

The benefits of more and more smaller, medium sized businesses getting into mining are obvious for bitcoin in general. Now is the right time for anyone planning to do this.

People who have joined in during the later half of 2017 were blinded by the ICO craze. Some by the greed of kickass return, some dazzled by the amazing promises. It looks like both of these benefits were hyped beyond sustainability.

As the market consolidates and leaves majority of the ICO token holders disappointed (Exit-scams, unviable products etc etc.), A lot of people will be left holding token bags while developers will have low liquidity ETH to take care of. The time for hype based growth is gone for good now.

Only a few of these will survive and those too which have actual use cases, working product and user base. Most others will just crumble. Those that remain will then become products in their own right. Those won't really be store of value but will be more like commodities to be traded depending on their uses.
Bitcoin is the only one that can maintain the confidence with people about it's value. The rest will have to prove their worth in terms of BTC.

TLDR; Cryptocurrencies aren't meant to be "Stores of Value". They have been mistaken to be so by the HODL phenomena propagated by dishonest developers to pump the value. They are supposed to be utility tokens to be used as Gas in the real product.

Technology moves and evolves much faster now but the first mobile phones were pretty much a luxury item and very expensive. Once adoption grows or the product proves to have a considerable market, the price will surely come down with scale.

I think it can serve the purpose of actually being an ubiquitous wallet where you keep small amounts that you don't mind being mugged, if it comes to that, lol.. Like we keep our savings and salaries in the bank and only a small part in wallets

This is the guy who:

1. Uses bitcoin.com as a surrogate to misguide people into thinking that "BCash is the real Bitcoin" which is a load of bullshit.
2. Tried using the @bitcoin twitter handle to promote BCash until twitter decided to intervene.
3. Introduces himself with a cringe-inducing "I am the first ever person to invest in bitcoin", "I am a self-made millionaire".
4. Alongwith his co-conspirators like Wu, he has tried attacking the main chain, pumps BCash at crucial moments and uses all sort of underhand tactics to confuse new people coming into bitcoin.

In my opinion, he deserves all the bashing he gets and some more.

Despite the skepticism being shown regarding the potential security and safety aspect for such a device, I think this is a pioneering step and should be welcomed.

We are not talking about people keeping 100 BTC in these devices. I see it more as an easily accessible method of using BTC for transactions where the user want anonymity. This is going to be a first of it's kind model so will be expensive. From the article, it looks like it'll have a physical switch to switch from cold-wallet mode to hot-wallet mode. You could probably load the cold wallet part with some BTC, Transfer some of this amount towards the hot-wallet part and then flip the switch to go online.

This'll all be pretty accessible and remove the usage barrier for normal populations. Though the security will need to be thoroughly tested openly by the community to check for any attack vectors. This can be beneficial for adoption.

These are the typical two sides of opinion young people in India often hold for our government and ruling classes. On one side, we remain extremely frustrated like avikz because of the apathy, unprofessionalism and corruption of our politicans and bureaucrats. The politicians of all hues and nature like to milk the differences for electoral gains while the bureaucracy is content with lording over the ignorant masses.

The other side like "Virtual Miner" is hopeful and looks up to examples of countless Indians who have gone abroad and done so well. It's a well known fact that if the same people were to stay back, the work ethic of our national organization would have completely stymied their growth.

RBI has for long been a bastion of prudent management and good decisions. Unfortunately, under the present dispensation, I am not so sure. The government keeps stumbling from one economic disaster to the next social one. RBI decisions look to be along the same lines. A hasty decision taken without careful deliberation or expertise that you expect from an organization like RBI. Like so many other decisions, this one too seems like dependent on superficial issues like "ohhh..black money, ohhh money laundering, ohh terrorism". I call them superficial

The technocrats at RBI could have taken a much more thoughtful approach to this but i feel the government directives would have been to milk the boogeyman first.

There has been a trend of a lot of regulation for cryptocurrencies. When we talk about regulation, we are mostly considering the G-20 countries. It is often being overlooked that a lot of smaller countries are quite bullish on bitcoin. Those are mainly the tax haven, tech-savvy nations that want to be the Switzerland of fiat banking.
There are quite a few territories in the run like Malta, Gibrlatar, Estonia etc. The interest from people in Japan and Korea isn't going to subside anytime soon. The libertarians and cypherpunks in the west can be trusted to always provide a solid base for development and ideological support. Countries declaring "interest in blockchain" will find it almost impossible to use it without the bitcoin connection.

All these fundamentals mean that bitcoin adoption will slowly and steadily rise and so will the price. 100,00 USD in two years is a 5X growth which seems pretty unlikely considering the fact that there still are a lot of pitfalls like miner actions, Bitmain's monopoly, Targeted manipulation, solution of scaling issues with LN adoption etc etc.

Considering all things, a rise to 100,000 seems neither feasible nor healthy.

Right. But this works as long as we are only talking about bitcoin. It's code can be deemed trustworthy because of the level of community engagement. It has been proven to work.

Problem arises when you take up more applications of blockchain, like the article argues about smart contracts. Smart contracts have proven themselves to be buggy. The trustlessness feature of smart-contract is dependent on whether you trust the intention and competence of the people who write the code. (My reply above).

What would be your view on the need to make smart-contracts more accessible??

Banks create money by giving away "credit", a fraction of which they maintain as actual deposits. When we talk about bitcoin, I think this is exactly what people are trying to change. I get your concept about the need to create money out of thin air or make it disappear (lol..why doesn't this sound non-intuitive? oh well, present economic order.. ) to allow for contraction and expansion of economy. My question is why do we need it??

Bitcoin is a potential settlement instrument which can result in sound financial practices without relying on a final arbiter. I wish more economists were talking about it. Have you read this guy who talks about such a settlement system envisaged with bitcoin??


I will just have to wait and see if the article I linked above gives you any different ideas about this..

Dear Endlasuresh. I have seen you posting with a lot of interest and passion whenever there is an accusation about some of the members here. A lot of accounts got negged during late 2017 when certain members decided to take things in their own hands and red tag people who were:

• Abusing bounty campaigns with multiple accounts.
• Posting one liners in 200 page threads to reach the minimum count
• Later started trading merit after merit was introduced.

They decided to hit back with what they had as moderators were unable to handle the flood themselves. A lot of accounts got purged in that time. A lot of those people retaliated against these members and a trend of new meta topic digging up small things started.
During this time, some of the old rivalries among DT members also came to light, especially in the case of Quickseller+OgNasty vs Lauda/aTriz/Pharmacist etc etc.

If you compare the work that people like Lauda have done against what a particularly consistent accuser has done, you can easily make a judgement as to who cared about the forum and spent their time trying to clean this shit up. In the two sides of this debate, people are only believing what they want to believe. This is a game of ego now as those who feel hurt by the "bad english" comments are all on one side. They all just want some of these people on a stake.

You are showing the same bias which is understandable given the rating you got. This is probably not letting you think from an unbiased viewpoint. For example, you quote here:


This thread was an example of what i said above. People trying to get even with these people by randomly connecting anything and trying to make it look suspicious.  


You are asking what is wrong with suchmoon meriting that post. Can't you see the humor in that post? This had become such a trend that it became a standing joke, if Lauda does anything, a thread would be made by some newbie trying to malign them. The people who merited it just did it because it was amusing. There was nothing wrong with it yet you are trying to project it wrongly on suchmoon.

This has been happening on the forum for a long time. This long barrage of accusations (nurtured by two very senior members themselves, though i wonder how one of them ended up supporting the other except this being an "Enemy of my Enemy is a friend" scenario) led to a condition where taking a decision on the aTriz case took too long a time. All this while, people are trying to drag as many people into it as possible.

The case is now settled with aTriz negged or given neutral feedback by several members. Though I doubt that a certain individual are going to let this go ever. This is pretty sad for the forum but hey, this too shall pass.

LOL..Right.The easy conversion to Fiat had turned crypto into this get rich scheme where people were buying BTC as a get-rich quick scheme. Along with that, people have also been buying all sort of 1 cent coins hoping for a quick 10X. It was becoming a silly game of luck and secret telegram, whatsapp groups..Annoying as hell. I had people come up and telling me to buy ripple for "it's the next bitcoin, Bitcoin has some problem". The premine and a 100 billion supply be damned.

At least now the experimenting on trying to make it work the way it was meant to can continue. Though I am not all too sure that the government will not try to do even more hand-holding and provide silly 'guidelines'.

I think the point about trustelssness of smart contracts stands out.

He is not wrong when he says that there is a lot of trust being put into smart contracts to function at various stages like:

1.) The developers are trustworthy and not hide/ ignore bugs in the software.
2.) The publicly auditable software is actually being audited by enough people to be considered reliable.
3.) Even the most robust software will continue to have points of break.

Bitcoin code seems to have been above such failings till now. Though we cannot know a scenario where a fast enough computer would be available to alter the history. You cannot rely on the fact that some secret government somewhere will not fund such a project. All these are plausible scenarios one should consider, if we talk about making the world rely on it.

The solution to this, in my opinion, isn't to shrug shoulders and say, well, blockchain doesn't work because it's too complicated for normal people to understand. The solution, in fact, lies in making the software more accessible and easier to read.
Programming languages have evolved from Binary bits to mnemonics to syntax in English language. Could we, possibly, evolve it into a simple conversational Q&A which will be easy for everyone to understand?
The underlying compiler can be the robust point of trust which could establish itself as  a sort of oracle that can do no wrong and will always give you the right answer. Once you have such a compiler in place, trusted through history of usage and public audit (like bitcoin), you could implement easily understandable smart-contracts on top of it.

---

The other statement that clearly shows lack of understanding and imagination on part of the author is:


The examples are completely unrelated. There is no metaphor-ness in relying on blockchain records to trust whether something actually happened on a product's lifecycle. You are not trusting the farmer's manual record on spraying pesticide. That is what Internet of Things is for. You rely on sensors to upload data onto the blockchain without any human intervention.
If implemented, such a scenario can easily work. Very less human oversight is required to confirm periodically that the systems are indeed being followed to the point.

IOT and Blockchain together can really remove trust/ middle parties from logistics and manufacturing records. It's not like it cannot happen if people like the author find it hard to wrap their heads around it.

It looks like the keys were with Amit Kalra as well as Amitabh Saxena. Amitabh must have been trusted enough to have all the keys at one place even if it was a multi-sig wallet.


The explanations regarding fiat or fractional reserves should be comforting for those who would fear that coinsecure too will shutdown like the other scams going around.


You guys are among the first adopters in India. This incident confirms again that having your funds on an exchange is still not a good idea. The sincerity not withstanding, the lack of professionalism that resulted in this is still worrisome. Frankly, we'd expect better from someone who has cut his teeth on the forum through the initial years.

The decision to indemnify crypto funds, if taken, would be a landmark for coinsecure. It'll take a lot of heart and I think is the only way you can win back trust of the community and really mean those words when you say "defend this technology that we have lived and breathed for".

If the users are left to fend for themselves, then these will just be hollow politician words that we in India, nowadays, are finding it ever so easy to throw at each other.

Some questions:
Can you provide any details about how the keys were being stored?
How long has Amitabh been out of touch with coinsecure now?

Hello jrian. Good thread. I am waiting for some hardware to arrive to start working on an LN node myself. Saw your post history and it seems like you will be a good source for information and help, in case i need any.

So I am doing you a solid for the amount of sMerit I had to spare. Remember this when i ask for your help..LOL.. Thanks in advance.

Also, would you care to explain the reason behind contemplating about becoming the biggest LN node. Wouldn't that be a lot of spare BTC plus you'd need to have an equal amount of parties interested to open a channel with you too (with some balance committed from the other side).

Is that even possible until you are, say, an exchange or a major seller?

It is great that you did not explain any logic behind your prediction. That clearly shows that you understand that the price cannot be predicted!!

But i can predict one thing for sure. In 3 months and for every month afterwards, 1 BTC = 1 BTC.

Sorry I can't seem to find the Neo and Morpheus meme..

EDIT: Found it. Haven't logged in so couldn't embed.

https://imgur.com/gallery/gE8hDnY

As far as I could find, that report about Jiocoin was just another report based on other reports hyped by media. Livemint published an article and then everyone just reiterated the same thing.

Isn't Akash Ambani the kid who was busy losing weight last year and is now getting married. Where do you think he has the time to put together a 50-member team and work on Blockchain technology. LOL..If you have any authentic sources, do share.

As far as the speculation regarding jiocoin goes, I think it does hold merit. Suppose they launch this coin with which you can access Jio services. Banks suddenly ban everything but allow this one  because it has, say, a license to offer cryptocurrencies, faithfully awarded by Narendra Bhai.. They already dropped the whole telecom market into his kitty in one go by making all the other operators bend to the rules for enabling MNP.
Had it not been for TRAI intervention, it wouldn't have been such smooth sailing for Jio Telecom. This would be completely manipulative but we will be able to do shit about it.

Its Ambani and Modi afterall. They do what they want to.

Depending on where you live, you may have people interested in using bitcoin for the purpose it was meant for. Exchanging value without need of a currency backed by a central authority.

A simple bitcoin business would be to start offering small items for sale against bitcoin. You could try to implement it with the latest developments like using a SegWit address and a lightning node. Maybe not immediately but such a business would grab eyeballs and respect from the bitcoin community in the long run.

Integrating bitcoin acceptance with your current business or even just offering things for sale against bitcoin is a great bitcoin business any day.

You need to improve your comprehension skills to meet the demands of globalized English and decentralized bitcoin. We won't improve our usage. Mind it..LOL!!

To the OP, we all hate pyramid schemes. Especially when seemingly smarter people decide to take advantage of the naivete of their fellow poor people in developing countries rather than help them.
Everyone wants a secure way out of their impoverished lives and the promise of quick returns attached with the tag of "bitcoin" and "cryptocurrencies" is too alluring for many. All we can do is educate people when you come across one of these and hope for the best..

There was an idea to have decentralized exchanges. BitShares is one of the old ones that came up with the idea of having decentralized exchanges. The guys behind bitshares was pretty good too as far as I could tell from their blog posts etc.

The problem is that decentralized exchanges too need some initial funding. This is where banks come in. People could just voluntarily bankroll them with anonymous donations in the beginning I suppose. Even then decentralized exchanges wouldn't work with the fiat linkage. They need something like bitcoin to be established.

As the oldies here say all the time, Bitcoin is actually meant to be peer to peer. We need to sell and buy from each other. If you go to the marketplace section, you'll see that it has been made possible in the west quite a lot. People in developing countries have just been introduced and most of us simply skipped the peer-to-peer part when we bought our first bitcoins from an exchange.

The problems and regulations though seem far from over and we may yet get a chance to experience the old days.