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This offers an alternative explanation to the idea of investors waiting to buy in post april 17th which marked the end of the US tax season. Growing demand in asia could easily extend gains to bitcoins price cap. High demand and a quickly growing userbase as experienced by bitcoin were a few of the key arguments against bitcoin being a bubble.
Polls in 2017 claimed 2% of americans had used some form of crypto currency which amounts to around 6 million people. If the USA is any indication of global crypto support, there could be plenty of room for growth. Of course, we all know growth fuels demand and demand in turn fuels capital appreciation and price increases. Greater support and a larger end user base could definitely offset any claims of crypto currencies being overpriced bubbles. For the short term anyway. Perhaps someday in the future bitcoin's price could increase disproportionately to its fundamental metrics and it could become a bubble. Today it probably isn't a bubble, however.
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Hi, I would love to hear your input on this. As I see it, we need crypto wallets installed on every phone possible to ensure the readiness of everyday payment with crypto assets. Once customers are ready to pay, the stores will follow. At least three things needs to happen: 1) Adoption of crypto wallets needs to increase (preferable with pre-funded assets) 2) Each wallet provider needs to agree on a standard protocol for payment (Maybe Payment Request API (W3))? 3) Store owners need a merchant app to receive payment with further integration into multiple accounting systems. Have you seen anyone doing this? Do we need a wallet alliance that can stipulate a standard? What else needs to happen besides regulation? Best crypto greetings, Vindberg https://validators.comAwhile ago, there were headlines in the news regarding "700 million android phones" having backdoors pre-installed on them by china: Pre-installed Backdoor On 700 Million Android Phones Sending Users' Data To ChinaWASHINGTON — For about $50, you can get a smartphone with a high-definition display, fast data service and, according to security contractors, a secret feature: a backdoor that sends all your text messages to China every 72 hours. Security contractors recently discovered preinstalled software in some Android phones that monitors where users go, whom they talk to and what they write in text messages. The American authorities say it is not clear whether this represents secretive data mining for advertising purposes or a Chinese government effort to collect intelligence. International customers and users of disposable or prepaid phones are the people most affected by the software. But the scope is unclear. The Chinese company that wrote the software, Shanghai Adups Technology Company, says its code runs on more than 700 million phones, cars and other smart devices. One American phone manufacturer, BLU Products, said that 120,000 of its phones had been affected and that it had updated the software to eliminate the feature. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/us/politics/china-phones-software-security.html Before cell phones could be utilized as a major hub of finance, a more concentrated effort could be required to secure them. Better standardized practices to better eliminate data mining and backdoors. Of course, this could be impossible given backdoors are sometimes included by state intelligence/surveillance and there is a push for large corporations like apple to utilize weaker encryption standards (or no standards) on products like iphone. I like that someone is thinking about ways to encourage crypto mass adoption. Maybe if every active person on this forum told 10 people they know about bitcoin, and those 10 people each told 10 of their friends about it, some type of viral campaign could be worked out? I've tried to do it in the past. I tried to give people I know bitcoin for free in the hope that they would use it and maybe see its not that bad a thing. Maybe they would even like it and use it in the future. Not a single person accepted the free btc I wanted to give them. lol I guess they are too nice or maybe I look like a nigerian prince? |
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These look to be key parts of the prediction: First, more institutional investors will come to the market, the prices of crypto assets will start to grow sharply, and investors will start to fix profits. This will entail an outflow of capital and a panic sellout. The market will crash by 90%, believes Sebastian Markowsky, a director at GP Bullhound. "I think both are bubbles," he said of bitcoin and ether, but "if I were going to be wrong about one of these, it would be bitcoin." This is the google description for GP Bullhound(those making these predictions):  Image link: http://i67.tinypic.com/25i6txh.jpgThey specialize in: " mergers & acquisitions, capital raising and private placements in the technology sectors". Meaning they could have little or no experience with crypto currencies. They may not even have a background in trading stocks, bonds, precious metals or anything that would give them real experience or a good perspective on the topic. Not that the media cares if they quote people who have no experience in the topic they're commenting on, maybe they're desperate for anything which remotely criticizes bitcoin. |
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Do you think that Nunes, who uses to train together with Tecia Torres (Pennington fiancee), will give some advantage to her opponent? I mean it could possibility the Tecia knows Nunes pretty well that she will tell Nunes strengths and weaknesses to Racquel Pennington? Do you think it will be a factor for this fight specially if the fights goes to championship rounds?
Interesting point. I didn't consider whether Tecia Torres and Amanda Nunes training out of american top team florida would be a factor. I don't think it will make a difference, everyone knows Amanda Nunes fighting style, what she's good at and how she lost fights in the past. I think Nunes has to slow the pace of the fight down to avoid tiring and being dead on her feet, late. Nunes can't do a lot of wrestling and grappling (the most tiring and energy consuming things in MMA) or her body will fail on her. If Racquel can make the fight fast paced that would in her favor, unfortunately for Racquel, many of her past fights were are slow paced, she isn't really known for being someone who brawls all the time like Jessica Andrade. Looking at Nunes' losses they were fights where she wrestled and grappled a lot and her cardio didn't hold up. Its hard to say how good Racquel's wrestling and grappling is (she hasn't shown much of it in her figths) and whether she'll want to pursue that type of fight with Nunes. |
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One of the biggest challenges that we will encounter in Bitcoin is the Scalability problem which means there is only limited amount of information that can be contained or its capacity. I'm sure that there will be more people who will going to join the campaign which will result to a possible delay during processing or trading. So how can we provide a solution on this or how to ensure that all the trading done were saved once delayed before bitcoin achieves mainstream adoption?
Scalability applies to the number of transactions per second, bitcoin and other crypto currencies, achieve per second. Credit card companies can sustain thousands of transactions per second. Bitcoin's limit is approximately 3-5 transactions per second. There is a school of thought which claims the disparity in performance is an indication of bitcoin not "scaling". It could be a poor way to describe crypto's limitations in this area. Its like claiming that WIFI routers don't "scale" due to the added overhead and performance malus of introducing a cryptographic abstract. This doesn't represent a scaling issue but rather fundamental principles of encryption which necessitate the factoring of large prime numbers and will likely always be slow by nature. As far as solutions for scaling go, it is possible that the constant and fast pace introduction of new altcoins could eventually provide enough increased network capacity to ease the load of transaction volume on bitcoin's network. Bitcoin will probably never achieve 1,000 transactions per second but if we add 1,000 new altcoins which can achieve 1 transaction per second we can distribute the transactional load in a way which could alleviate those shortcomings. |
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Bitcoin has suffered a 53% collapse since the beginning of the year. Apparently it's because the time is coming for US citizens and businesses to report to the federal tax agency. The proximity of the so-called 'Tax Day', or last day to fulfill its tax obligations, takes place this year on April 17. As the date has approached, the concentration of sales orders has been higher, especially in the last month and a half.
If we analyze the Bitcoin chart from the beginning of the year, we see that it has been bearish until April, and it is only afterwards that it has begun its recovery.
Can we deduce a pattern to be repeated each year, and take advantage of it?
There are many variables and angles, it can be difficult to attribute price trends to a single cause or prime mover. If it is true buyers were waiting for post april tax season to buy, the trend may not constant for next year. The combination of massive short selling on CBOE futures, coupled with big bitcoin dumps we saw near the beginning of 2018 might never happen again. We might never see the same price increase post april if bitcoin isn't devalued again post 2018. Price trends can also become weaker over time. The first bitcoin fork announcement had a significant effect on btc price. The 2nd announcement had less of an effect. 3rd announcement was weaker still. The tightening of tax restrictions we witnessed late 2017 and early 2018 may have caught by surprise. Next year they could have far less of an effect, or no effect at all. Its premature to say which cycles will be consistent and which will be one time things. Only time will tell. |
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WASHINGTON — Record exports trimmed the U.S. trade deficit in March, the first drop in seven months in a massive gap that President Donald Trump is determined to shrink with an aggressive America first policy. The Commerce Department says the trade deficit — the difference between what America sells and what it buys in foreign markets — slid to $49 billion, down from $57.7 billion in February and lowest since September. Trump has vowed to bring down America's massive deficits, which he blames on bad trade agreements and abusive practices by U.S. trading partners. Exports rose in March to a record $208.5 billion, led by shipments of civilian aircraft and soybeans. Imports slipped 1.8 percent to $257.5 billion. The United States ran a $20.5 billion surplus in the trade of services such as education and banking. But that was offset by a $69.5 billion deficit in the trade of goods. Top administration officials are visiting Beijing this week for talks aimed at reducing America's huge trade deficit in goods with China, which fell 11.6 percent in March to $25.9 billion. Trump is threatening to slap tariffs on up to $150 billion in Chinese products, and the Chinese have targeted $50 billion in U.S. products, including soybeans and small aircraft. The administration is also seeking to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, and has slapped tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. Despite the reduction in March, the trade gap is up 18.5 percent to $163.4 billion so far this year. The president views trade deficits as a sign of economic weakness that can be brought down by more aggressive trade policies. Most economists say they are caused by bigger economic forces, mainly the fact that the United States consistently spends more than it produces. The trade gap has continued to rise since Trump entered the White House partly because the U.S. economy is strong and American consumers have an appetite for imported products and the confidence and financial wherewithal to buy them. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/05/03/us-trade-record-exports-cut-deficit/576272002/Good news for a change. Something to offset the: "recession is coming, the stock market is gonna die and zombies are gonna eat us," rhetoric prevalent in the media today. Next months numbers could be crucial in determining whether these positive results will hold true or perhaps even improve as time passes. This positive news, coupled with news of food stamp, welfare, medicaid, disability enrollment all decreasing in the USA could hint at america's economy strengthening and ultimately recovering in the future: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3473152There has also been news of strong job creation over the past year. I'm not certain if the postive news is enough to outweigh the negative outlook some are portraying but at least we do have some rays of sunshine. |
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Right now I'm looking to start a dice site with some new features that isnt implemented on other dice sites.
One interesting legal aspect to gambling is whether it should be considered a game of skill. There are states in america which ban gambling but allow games of skill. The distinction between the two can represent a fine line determining whether something is legal or illegal in some states. Recently there was a case where fantasy sports platforms like fanduel and draftkings claimed they were a game of skill but were said to be gambling by some US states and banned on a state wide level. Merging gambling with games of skill could be one area dice sites could focus on. An example of this could be including the results of mini games in dick win/loss algorithms. For example, let's say there was a pacman mini game. If someone scored higher than 1,000 points their odds for winning could increase and if they scored below 500 points, their odds could flip in the opposite direction. Similar paradigms could bump web platform dice from being hard gambling to representing something more similar to a game of skill, which could allow it to be more widely adopted(and also increase appeal on the basis of originality). Another area that comes to mind is internet dice's "provably fair" concept. Devising a better, more transparent method of ensuring fairness could a long way towards attracting customers, many of whom may not know what provably fair is much less the details of how its supposed to work. |
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Good speech. He addresses politicians and central bankers and how the term unsustainable when utilized to describe state spending generally implies a major crash will be inevitable at some point unless action is taken to reform things. Another angle to this is the tendency nobel prize winning economists like Paul Krugman have to defend govt overspending. Going so far as to say the public is obligated to "kick the can down the road" in terms of continuing support of the type of fiscal policies which led to looming deficits which threaten the stability and welfare of economies and nations. Supporting and continuing destructive economic trends is the side which receives virtually all support from experts, official panels and analysts. |
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At the moment I'm looking at zloadr's upcoming airdop calender https://www.zloadr.com/airdrop-calendar-list/ and I also use https://airdropalert.com(although my knowledge in this area is not good and I might find better sites in the future). (If there are better sites or tools to keep track of airdrops please share btw). There are so many, it is difficult to scout them to figure out which are best to focus on. I realize that airdrops may not be the best utilization of time or best way to accumulate crypto but I'm considering acquiring a collection of altcoins/tokens similar to how people collect stamps or baseball cards. Not necessarily for monetary purposes but more for sentimental value. For profiteering purposes it might be better to buy/sell coins and save time rather than bother with the step by step process of airdrops. That said, which future airdrops or coin/token developments of 2018 are you most looking forward to? It seems as if this could be a hot topic but also a neglected one which does not receive much attention. |
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Can there be a new dot com bubble related to crypto domain names ? Is it worth investing in that ?
France recently tried to steal the france.com domain from its rightful owner. If france is awarded the domain, squatting on domain names could become less lucrative and profitable as there could be a greater precedent for large entities stealing domain names from their rightful owners. The French government is being sued over the way it has sought to take over the France.com web domain. In 2015, France started legal action against Frenchman Jean-Noel Frydman, who had registered France.com in 1994. Two years later, a French court ruled in France's favour and the government began to lobby domain host web.com to take control away from Mr Frydman. And now Mr Frydman, who built a business around the domain, says France has "illegally" seized the site. He says France.com was taken away from him without warning in mid-March. And he has now begun legal action in Virginia in a bid to regain control of it. Mr Frydman is suing the French Republic, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Atout France tourist agency and domain registrar Verisign. He alleges the government did not ask to license or buy the domain and instead "misused" the legal system to seize it. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43949289There are merchants like namecheap.com which sold domain names as low as $0.88. Lower pricing, wider availability and greater domain name flexibility, in terms of there being a wider assortment of standardized domain name prefixes to choose from could make it easier to sidestep people holding on to domain names. Domain name squatting is an old thing. Years and years ago(I'm talking decades), people could buy a domain name like sony.com and sell it to sony for $50,000 to $100,000+. I'm not certain whether that still happens. The golden age of domain name HODL'ing could have ended awhile ago. |
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Numbers like this could hint at wider bitcoin adoption in the future. Well, it doesn't directly suggest that, since Square made most of the profit from acting as a buy/sell platform of BTC and not as a merchant. But it goes without saying that adoption rates are only going to increase in the future, imo. Its embarrassing that I missed that part.  Good read.  Would merit you if I had any left. |
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We've noted for months how an unknown party has been using bots to bombard the FCC website with entirely bogus support for the agency's planned attack on net neutrality. Inquiries so far have indicated that whatever group or individual is behind the fake support used a bot that automatically pulled names -- in alphabetical order -- from a compromised database of some kind. Earlier this year one reporter actually managed to track down some of these folks -- who say they never filed such comments or in many instances had no idea what net neutrality even is. Earlier this year, some reporters discovered that some of the biggest fans of the FCC's myopic assault on net neutrality appear to be dead: "As the war over the fate of America's free and open internet lumbers on, it appears that opponents of net neutrality will do anything in their power to turn control of the internet over to massive telecom companies—including committing fraud. As detailed in a letter sent to the FCC Thursday morning, people are pissed that their personal information was used without their knowledge to post anti-net neutrality comments to the FCC's website, which includes at least two people who are recently deceased. Others have since continued to dig through the names used to support Ajit Pai's attack on net neutrality -- and continue to find that many of them had never visited the FCC website, had no idea what net neutrality is, or were no longer breathing. Like John Skalski of Sharpsburg, Georgia -- who back in May purportedly submitted this (factually incorrect) comment to the FCC comment proceeding. Note its content is different from the bot-generated comments that had been methodically submitted already:  Image link: https://i.imgur.com/aNWyhp8.jpgWhich is interesting because John is, well, dead: "However, if you go to his house on 11 Tee Pee Row, you will unfortunately speak to a kind person who will tell you that John has been passed away since 2016 and no one else there has the same name. Unfortunately, that is a fake public comment. I found Mr. Skalski’s obituary later:  Image link: https://i.imgur.com/6Dzj0Sn.jpgThis is where we'll remind you that the FCC has shown no interest whatsoever in investigating any of this. Similarly, when I contacted the agency to tell them someone else had written a fraudulent comment in my name supporting the attack on net neutrality, I was told there was simply nothing that could be done. Combined with the agency's apparently fabricated DDoS attack, there's more than a few indicators that the agency is eager to malign the integrity of the public feedback period in order to try and downplay the massive public backlash to its handout to the telecom industry. Since the FCC is expected to unveil its full plan ahead of Thanksgiving for what will likely be a vote right before Christmas, contacting your lawmakers on this subject remains of utmost importance. Should the FCC decide to ignore the public and dismantle the protections anyway, it seems more than likely that this recent necromancy will play a starring role in the inevitable lawsuits to come. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171030/11255938512/dead-people-mysteriously-support-fccs-attack-net-neutrality.shtmlAnother perspective on net neutrality. It appears that many of the comments made against net neutrality on the internet are made from accounts of people who have no real opinion on net neutrality. In some cases, they're being made from accounts of people who literally passed away years ago. This could be a frightening precedent in that many of the comments linked to articles or youtube clips posted on the internet could be bots and there would be no way to differentiate real from fake content. Many may not recognize techdirt as a news media site, back in the day they were one of the most independent and legitimate media sources. Somewhere along the line, they abandoned their independent slant and stopped reporting on topics which went against the pro establishment grain. Now it appears, they might be embracing their former independent selves. |
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Near to a 5% gain in revenue from bitcoin, nice!
Numbers like this could hint at wider bitcoin adoption in the future. As student loan debt, credit card debt, declining real estate demand and similar issues become more desperate for sources of liquidity to maintain demand, and governments seek out new ways to boost tax revenues to ease debt, crypto currencies will be deemed the logical source to tap.
Many large corporations and governments are digging themselves a wide and deep hole. The market cap of crypto coins, and the credit liquidity crypto support could provide, could end up being their only hope for salvation. There is talk of illegalization and banning of crypto currencies but in the end the world may need bitcoin to ease deficit and debt, and boost revenues to stay competitive against rivals, a lot more than bitcoin needs the world.
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I would be interested to know whether the userbase of gold and precious metals is growing or shrinking. Whenever I see someone with gold fever predicting the price of gold will rise, its typically someone who represents older age brackets. Gold and precious metals don't appear to have much support among younger generations. If all of this is true, it could suggest the price of gold will decline. Particularly if turkey and other nations experiencing economic turmoil decide to dump gold they repatriated from the united states.
The price of gold could also be vulnerable to strong manipulation similar to aluminum and steel. Years ago coca cola claimed that aluminum prices which factored into the price of their canning process were being manipulated by goldman sachs and other financial insitutions. There is a split of opinions on this topic and it is controversial. But it might be said that manipulation of aluminum prices aren't so different from what happens in gold markets given the tendency some have to take quantities of gold off the market or in turn adding quantities to move the price in one direction or another.
Gold lacking utility it can't be utilized for much. Goods and services often can't be bought with gold which limits its utility and in turn its price.
Recently however countries like china have proposed allowing free exchanges of gold for their native currency the yuan. Others like Erdogan have proposed a move back to a gold standard. Perhaps support for gold is in our future. Although it is also possible that turkey, china and other nations are only hyping gold to raise its price before they dump their gold holdings on the market.
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Given venezuela's past behavior all 16 exchanges will probably be heavily nationalized. Venezuela seized a General Motors factory in the country last year and has always had a strong anti-capitalist stance which contributed towards venezuela being in the crisis it is in now. Venezuela faces the same issue russia faced under stalin and china faced under mao. Replacing a private sector with government run enterprises(or heavy state regulation) doesn't work as socialism fails to create value or address economic and financial demand as efficiently as markets which are incentivized via competition. Google and apple are examples of this. Both are large corporations that began and were run out of someone's garage. This defines the most efficient method of creating value. Allowing people to create their own business, patent their own ideas and innovate in a way limited by their own imagination. The trouble with states like venezuela is socialists have all the power, they want to limit competition, run and control everything with an iron fist in a way which satisfies their egos/greed rather than solves problems or deals with issues faced by society. Socialists in venezuela have waged a passive aggressive war against capitalism for decades and only succeeded in the limiting the private sectors ability to create value and solve economic problems. This in turn led to an economic downturn which began well before price of oil began to decline and has little or nothing to do with petrol prices imo. Venezuela seizes GM plant as crisis escalatesAmid turmoil punctuated by skyrocketing prices, unemployment, low oil prices and failed economic policies, the government seizure put an abrupt end to GM's operations -- a fate that other companies have faced. "GM is not the first and they’re not going to be the last because the government of Venezuela is desperate for any assets they can take," said Peter Quinter, Miami-based chair of law firm GrayRobinson's Customs and International Trade Law Group. "It really is a vicious cycle they're in." The Venezuelan government has previously seized assets belonging to U.S. companies, including those of cleaning products maker Clorox in 2014, glassmaker Owens-Illinois in 2010 and nationalized a rice mill operated by Cargill. GM denounced the South American country's actions as an "illegal judicial seizure of its assets" and vowed a legal battle, but the company's protections are minimal in a country with a dubious commitment to the law. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/04/20/general-motors-venezuela-plant-seizure/100684954/ If exchanges in the country are nationalized or heavily regulated by the venezuelan government, I'll go out on a limb here and predict they will be run far more inefficiently with more corruption than other exchanges and as a result they will have a difficult time competing as their userbase and trading volume will likely be low. |
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How about, for example, the daily limit? If a thief steal me my credit card, even under threat I reveal him the code, he would be able to get a little piece of the cake, and I will be able to protect the rest easily... Hw wallet could implement this feature looking at block number, but it is not that easy, and yet no one offer it. Not a good comparison. Credit cards normally have millions of breaches, this is a major problem for them and so they desperately need that system in place(which doesn't work btw as breachers only have to drain the entire account to avoid having the remainder of a balance be limited). Crypto doesn't have this problem. You will never hear of cases that are similar and so there is little demand or incentive for developers to provide those features to its user base. Credit cards also have many security flaws such as the vulnerability where key information can be stolen via palm scanner when credit card RFID support is active. "Would you feel safer having $1 million dollars stored in bitcoin or as a credit card balance." That would make for an interesting poll btw. |
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Welfare: Earlier this month, the government reported that enrollment in food stamps plunged by nearly 600,000 in one month. Is this part of a broader trend toward greater self-reliance? The Department of Agriculture, which runs the food stamp program — officially called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — reports that enrollment in January was 40.7 million, the lowest it's been since May 2010. In the months since President Trump has been in office, the number of people collecting food stamps plunged by nearly 2 million. The same is true for welfare. Enrollment in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program dropped 12% last year, to reach 2.3 million. Better still, the number of workers on Social Security Disability Insurance was down to 8.6 million in March — a decline of more than 100,000 since January 2017, and the lowest level since February 2012. So far this year, disability applications have averaged 179,000 a month, compared with more than 193,000 a month in 2016. And the number of people dropping off disability rolls is up. Medicaid Enrollment Drops Even enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP — the health care program for the poor and children — dropped by almost a million in 2017, to 74 million. In contrast, enrollment surged by more than 2 million in 2016. (Medicaid's rolls could climb gain if additional states decide to expand the program under ObamaCare.) In other words, millions of people are now free from at least some of their dependence on federal benefit programs. Except for Medicaid, these trends have been in place for years, as the growing economy produced the jobs and added income needed to move people toward greater self-sufficiency. This is obviously good news. Yet all too often, rising enrollment is the metric of success used by advocates. Which helps explain the hostility toward adding work requirements to receive certain federal benefits. Work For Benefits ObamaCare, for example, allowed able-bodied childless adults — with incomes above the poverty line — to enroll in Medicaid in expansion states. Because these states are now picking up a bigger share of the expansion costs, many are looking to impose work requirements to stay on the program. There's also a push to add work requirements for food stamps. That may seem heartless. But keep in mind that most of these programs have the word "temporary" right in their titles. They were never envisioned as permanent means of support, but a way to cover over rough patches. When you look at it that way, the best measure of success for any poverty programs is for enrollment to keep trending toward zero. https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/food-stamps-disability-welfare-medicaid-enrollment/Here's a break from the doom and gloom, economic recession, imminent stock market crash, time-to-buy-gold, econopocalyptic material that is often posted here--for whatever reason. There are many positives in our current financial and economic landscape which go unreported and neglected by the media. Decreases in welfare programs will cut state spending and contribute towards deficit and debt becoming more manageable. What we're witnessing is the US government becoming more efficient and streamlined by adopting proactive policies which create jobs and strengthen the economy, rather than reactionary measures which tend to be far less effective. While some might disagree with a looming "US vs China tariff war" bordering on the horizon and cite economic negatives in terms of unfunded liabilities, nations abandoning the petro dollar, gold being repatriated and a host of other negative factors. There are positives in terms of job creation numbers and declining welfare enrollment which are neglected points in the media. In the months since President Trump has been in office, the number of people collecting food stamps plunged by nearly 2 million. Of course, it is also possible that food stamp enrollment is declining due to americans fleeing to canada and moving abroad not wanting to live in the US now that Donald Trump is President. Anyway, here's an attempt @ good news for a change. |
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The Internal Revenue Service attributed the agency’s Tax Day crash to a piece of hardware supporting an IT system that is almost 60 years old.
Called the Individual Master File, components of the system—including 20 million lines of computer code—date back to 1960, when John F. Kennedy was president.IRS told Nextgov 18-month-old hardware supporting the Individual Master File experienced a caching issue causing the system to fail. The failure disrupted almost all other services and systems IRS provides because those systems ingest data from the Individual Master File. When those systems—such as Direct Pay and the structured payments portal—called to the Individual Master File mainframe and got no response, they too failed. Despite repeated warnings from the Government Accountability Office and Congress, IRS’ plans to modernize the system are at least six years behind schedule and several hundred million dollars over budget.“This was our biggest fear about one of these mission-critical systems crashing,” Dave Powner, GAO’s director of IT management issues, told Nextgov Thursday. “Fortunately, it wasn’t down for a long period of time, so in that way, we dodged a bullet.” Still, the crash forced the IRS to extend the tax filing deadline one day, delaying some 14 million submissions. It could be several years before the Individual Master File is fully modernized and rid of 1960s-era technology. “To address the risk of a system failure, the IRS has a plan to modernize two core components of the IMF by 2021, followed by a year of parallel validation before retiring those components in 2022,” the IRS told Nextgov in March, before the crash occurred. That timeline could slip because the IRS says it needs to hire at least 50 additional employees—while backfilling any attrition—plus an additional $85 million per year in annual non-labor funding over the next five years. The president’s fiscal 2018 budget request called for a $239 million reduction in funding for the IRS, which has faced numerous cuts in recent years. “Since Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives in 2010, their partisan attacks have left the IRS with nearly 10,000 fewer customer service representatives to assist taxpayers and a patchwork of IT systems, some dating back to the Kennedy Administration, which is ultimately harming all taxpayers,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., told Nextgov.
However, the Republican-led House ratified a package of nine IRS reform bills following the Tax Day crash that could amp up IRS’ modernization efforts. The bills, including the 21st-Century IRS Act and the Taxpayer First Act, will stress improving the customer experience for taxpayers as well as modernizing technology across the agency. The reform package was ushered in by the House Ways and Means committee, chaired by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.“A new tax code calls for a new tax administrator, and we have worked together so that the IRS can be transformed into an agency with a singular mission: taxpayer first,” Brady said in a statement. One of the bills will require IRS to compile a plan to enhance agency technology and customer service. That plan is due to Congress by September. The Individual Master File contains data from 1 billion taxpayer accounts dating back several decades and is the chief IRS application responsible for receiving 100 million Americans’ individual taxpayer data and dispensing refunds. IRS first attempted to replace the system with a modernized Customer Account Data Engine, but that effort was canceled in 2009. A delivery date for CADE 2, the IRS’ subsequent modernization effort, has slipped several years even as contractors working on the project have earned as much as $290 million. “We still have not seen a solid plan in place,” Powner told Nextgov. GAO identified the Individual Master File as the oldest technology system still operational in government in 2016. https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/04/irs-60-year-old-it-system-failed-tax-day-due-new-hardware/147598/ Someone might get a laugh reading parts of this. One might almost get an impression that everyone, even politicians in the white house dislike the IRS and everyone secretly hopes its ancient computer system dies and is never resuscitated, given the current President's plan to cut their funding further after a series of budget cuts. Thinking of the IRS someone might imagine they have advanced biometrics melded with military grade encryption and an army of genetically engineered soldiers to guard their facilities. But in reality, they're probably still using FORTRAN and their code could be written in 100% procedural asm with little or no commenting. Possibly punch cards are utilized to program their machines and their hardware could go up for auction and sold to the highest bidding museum collecting antique computer systems when they're finally retired. I wonder if other countries have tax agencies that do things the way we do? Are they better organized or better funded than the IRS? I would be curious to know. |
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why the state does not print a lot of money? Here's a scenario for you. #1 A worker in the USA is paid $20 an hour at a time when 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) US dollars are in circulation. #2 The state prints a lot of money. #3 The same worker mentioned in #1 is still being paid $20 but that $20 is worth far less as 10,000,000,000,000 (10 trillion) US dollars are now in circulation. The more money governments print the more they devalue their own currency, the less buying power workers have. This can lead to economic and financial distress, especially in eras where wage gaps or stagnant pay become chronic issues over prolonged periods of time. Its the same basic principle as litecoin's price being lower than many crypto currencies due to it having millions more coins in circulation. Fundamentals of scarcity, supply and demand. If there were fewer litecoin's in circulation, and if litecoin had a lower total coin cap, its value would be higher. Its very difficult to get something for nothing or create value out of thin air as far as printing money goes. The value compensates by decreasing significantly. |
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