99% of the customers are Europeans, just to let you know we all use the same currency and we all use SEPA.
Hungary has it's own currency still, although it's possible that businesses like that in the OP do accept the Euro anyway (often the case in the tourist industry, but the exchange rate is often not very competitive, expect to get a worse deal). Some non-Euro area banks have access to SEPA also, not sure about Hungarian banks though. Hungarian banks are part of the SEPA area, so it's possible to wire transfer EUR to bank accounts (denominated in EUR) in Hungary (SEPA transfer means that the amount of the wire transfer is credited next business day to the receiver's bank account if both banks are in the SEPA area, while outside of the SEPA this is usually takes at least an additional day) About exchange rate at the hospitals (or anywhere else where you want to pay with EUR instead of the national currency), it's usually worse compared to the exchange rate you can find at the official money-changer offices, and even in the banks. |
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Hello traders. What's your opinion could BTC kill banking system? Bitcoin has an advantage over fiatbecause its amount is limited and it can't fall under inflation.Inflation usually is caused by monetary policies of our central banks. Bitcoin is free from inflation, governement control and high transaction fees.Banks can’t control BTC because it has no representative and is fully decentralized. That's why banks are afraid of BTC.
Banks don't afraid of bitcoin, and from the technology at all. They will use the technology to make their services cheaper (I mean to run the bank on lower cost, not cheaper to the customers). Customers won't have a clue about the back end system, so they don't know the costs of running a bank, even if the cost has decreased over the time. So if banks will start to use the blockchain to cut their costs, if won't make banks fear of bitcoin/blockchain, but to enjoy the benefits of it... |
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We can write a lot of advice here how to deal with cryptos, alts, bitcoin (or how not to deal with them...)
but unfortunately most of the everyday people don't have the financial knowledge even to trade with stocks responsibly (risk management, etc...) This will cause them to lose money in the end...
If they want to deal with cryptos, it's even worse...
Greed is a strong emotion and it's really hard to learn how to handle it properly...
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My curiousness on this is how the banks would be able to have crypto under them. The crypto is really a different phase of financial activities in my opinion. Because banks are actually physical in nature while cryptocurrency is totally digital and involves everything on the internet.
You shouldn't think that banks are only deal with physical money, and they are not able to deal with the digital forms of money. Banks nowadays handle mostly digital forms of fiat and want to get rid of the physical banknotes and coins, because it needs human resources to handle them (counting, transferring, storage). Also, these activities are quite expensive, if you compare it to the costs of handling the digital forms of the fiat. There are even 'coinless' countries in the EU (Sweeden) where you can't use banknotes, only bank cards and bank transfer (and digital banking applications on smartphones). You can only use one type of coin (I don't know which one is that), and only for the purpose of opening the door of the public toilets, if the card reader don't work for some reason... (understandably, this is a kind of situation, when there's a real need for a 'Plan B' if there's a problem with the digital payment process  ) So they have managed to create and run a country without the physical form of the money, everything is digital there... |
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Along with Bitcoin day me accept some altcoins also to make the payment on their visit. Then is it legal to accept all the payments in Bitcoins in their country?
What is the difference between accepting payment in Bitcoin and accepting cash? (From the taxing point of view) If the bitcoin payment is done between wallets only (no exchange, payment processor, etc), it's private. It's as private as the cash payment. From the tax point of view, both are invisible... Hungarian doctors are moving usually to the western part of the EU to make a better living, because they are talented and doing their job fine. So it's possible that someone who lives in e.g. Germany would visit a doctor in Germany and will meet a Hungarian doctor (who speaks German of course) in the hospital... So there's no main difference in the quality of the service, just because of the location of the doctor/clinic... |
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Burger King in Germany gets the fiat equivalent of the BTC you pay through Bitpay. It would have been an accounting nightmare to include bitcoins in the journal as another form of currency since, you already know, the value fluctuates wildly.
Also, if you have ledger or trezor, where you store your spending coins for everyday use, Bitpay is a pain in the neck to pay with... Last time I have tried to pay a Bitpay invoice, I just went mad, nearly... First, I've tried to pay with my ledger nano S, but it haven't recognized the payment URL, so failed. I've started to read and found that there's no need to try with ledger directly in the browser, and also you can't use segwit address to pay from. So to cut the long story short, I had to move some sats to the trezor, open a mycelium app on an ancient android phone (that was the only one nearby) and open the trezor via the mycelium app, and finally scan the Bitpay invoice QR code in the app to be able to pay... it's much easier if you have a hot wallet on your mobile, but it's not safe to store much value in it... So if something is safe, it's not easy to use, and if something is easy to use, it's possibly not the safest thing to use... I just long for LN to handle these kind of small purchases in the foreseeable future... |
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I think you would be less interested in this news if we just remove 'Bitcoin' from the title, like:
Scammer caught tortured and killed.
Every day, a lot of people, who scammed others are caught, and punished somehow...
If the scammer is not scamming with bitcoin, but any other kind of money, valuable things, etc... it's possible that he/she would get the same punishment from those who were scammed...
That's life, if someone starts to scam he/she should think about the possible consequences... maybe he was expecting some years in jail and after to spend the money happily somewhere on an exotic place...
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So, listening to what this guy says about bitcoin is like giving a damn on a vegan's review about Pappy’s Smokehouse.
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Keeping your savings in something safe means in case of an emergency you can easily withdraw the same amount and use this to cover your needs.
It's not safe heaven if you have to wait 5 years to (maybe) get your funds back while you can't pay up your mortgage.
I have a book from the '80ies, it's about preparing for the situation when all hell breaks loose (like civil war, world war, local natural disaster, etc...) In the 80ies, the book advised to buy some little thin gold rings at the jeweler regularly (when the situation is normal, not when the disaster happened already) and you'll be able to trade them for food and water when you are in a need... I'm afraid that despite of 40 years has passed, nothing has changed since... In a case of an above mentioned situation, fiat will lose it's value in a really short time. I don't really think that if someone will convert all of his/her fiat to bitcoin in the very last moment, then he/she will be safe and will be able to solve all the situation where it's about trading food for something valuable thing... If you only expect just another credit crunch like in 2008, bitcoin could be a kind of safe heaven, but if something worse happens, bitcoin won't help at all. If a new credit crunch happens, it will be bad for the banks (and for the people of course), but the infrastructure in the countries will remain untouched (mostly) and the internet connection will still work (which is essential for bitcoin trading/transferring). In this situation, bitcoin could be a safe heaven for those who are not fighting for living and have savings in the bank, they just need to move their savings to bitcoin and wait for a few years as above stompix has mentioned... But if something worse happens, the infrastructure (first, the communication network) will suffer and bitcoin won't be available for the people... Of course, if you can wait for a few years, or you can get to another country where you can trade your bitcoins, you'll be fine in the end, but this presumes that you haven't starved to death because you haven't got any other valuables but bitcoin... So bitcoin could be a kind of safe heaven but not for everyone/everywhere... |
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Larger pools with lots of miners in them would need to split the bounty entirely on those huge numbers, meaning that even if you get all those blocks, chances are your rewards would also lessen compared to when there are individual miners taking a chance on the pot with fewer members to split the shares.
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Even if the miners of the biggest pool find blocks more frequently, because of the large number of the pool members and the need to split the bounty for smaller parts, miners would consider to join to a smaller pool, just to have higher rewards in the end. Greed will sort this one as well  Miners will search for the highest return and hopefully join to the pools according to this, this will balance the members of the pools on the long run. |
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The basic problem is (nearly everywhere in the world) is that people has little or no financial knowledge...
They usually even don't know how credit cards work, they just use credit cards and they end up with serious debt...
Bitcoin is a very specialized part of the financial market so if someone don't know the basics, he/she won't have a clue about bitcoin, because you can't just read in the newspaper/talk about it in the local bar, how to deal with bitcoin....
I know that the knowledge can be found on the internet but people usually don't want to search and read for the desired information, but they usually ask their family/colleague/etc... and they will trust the answer even if it's not 100% legit...
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This is delusional.
You won't achieve financial freedom by trading mining or buying and holding. Unless if you already have a LOT of money and you are willing to risk all that money in those risky activities.
Bitcoin won't increase its price by 10.000% again. Ok, it may happen, but are you willing to take the risky?
Let's suppose you need 1 million dollars to achieve your financial freedom.
So if you invest 100k USD in btc (10 BTC), and if the price goes to 100.000 USD per BTC, you have achieved your goal.
But do you have all that money? Are you willing to do all in strategy? It isn't worth, because the price may go down as well
It's the part of the financial freedom that you're free to fail with the investments Everyone is free to risk anything, even to risk his/her lifetime savings, if he/she don't care... Of course, there's a chance that this could end up with success but usually it won't... The idea of the OP is more like lottery than a well-prepared investment plan, how to achieve financial freedom with cryptos... When it's about greed, FOMO, etc., people usually don't think about the risks, until it's too late, unfortunately... |
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I believe that the greatest victory for Bitcoin will come when major retail companies like Amazon, Best Buy and the rest starts to accept it as a means of payment. I am sure that a time will come when they start doing that very soon.
Not necessarily. If they're going to accept bitcoin using payment processors like BitPay that helps to get our privacy thrown of the window, then better not have that. Besides, these companies would probably convert their earnings to fiat so honestly, I don't think that major retailers adopting bitcoin is as important as some people make it look like. They do it for e.g. marketing purposes, not because of bitcoin itself... In Europe, a Czech retailer Alza accepts bitcoin, but converts it on the fly to fiat and the invoice contains the fiat value, so it's nothing to do with bitcoin for them. They just can't risk to accept it and store it while the exchange rate is so volatile, because they work with tight margins and if the exchange rate change eats up their profit, they can close their store in the end... So, they accept it but receive fiat, they're fine with it, and they can advertise themselves as a store that accepts bitcoin... Also, they can find new customers who have bitcoin but don't have fiat and they don't want to exchange it thru exchanges/localbitcoins/etc... it's easier to pay with bitcoin in a webshop for them (although the exchange rate could be as bad as the localbitcoin rates...) Also, some of the people who have bitcoin, could think about bitcoin as an 'easy come, easy go' thing based on the method they got their bitcoin (mining, bounties, etc...) and they could shop things for bitcoin easier compared to their fiat (because they work hard everyday for their fiat) |
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blockchain and decentralization are two completely different subjects that are not at all related.
blockchain as i said is just the chain of blocks. decentralization comes from when this chain is held and monitored by independent peers.
in a bank, there is no independence, there is a central authority that decides the fate of the chain. so why call it "blockchain" in first place? all a bank needs is a database and automation of that database is much easier than using a blockchain.
That makes sense. In this case banks are just using the blockchain technology for marketing purposes (to show that they are also interested in the new trends and they upgrade their system with the help of the technical development) but behind the scenes they just won't create any new system based on blockchain technology, but who cares, because people won't be able to determine if their system is based on blockchain technology or not. Maybe stock exchanges would be interested in tokenization and blockchain technology to speed up the clearing of the transactions and to make their system more cost effective. But, if they have a good working database, this development could be unnecessary, just like at the banks above.... |
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as for whether they can, the answer is yes but a better question would be if they should!
blockchain is just a chain of "historical transfers" that were put inside a database using cryptography. so the question is, when the banking system is centralized and their books aren't public why would they want to use a blockchain?
Because blockchain technology helps the banks to employ less people, because blockchain is a kind of technology that needs fewer manual intervention in case of problem with a transaction or network or anything... So less employees means cost effectiveness and banks can really win with this on the market, because all the banks can give you nearly the same service, the price of the service is the key when most of the people choose a bank. So blockchain is not just a chain of historical transfers but a decentralized database that can correct itself is something goes wrong with one of the nodes in the network so it's less vulnerable for attacks and so on... So it's more secure for less cost, this is ideal for the banks... |
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Now, here is my solution. I can create a private key using 20 words. And I can make the last 5 words something only I know. I can email my family (and myself) the first 15 words. Then, I can email them the clues of my last 5 words. Of course, I have to do a damn good job that only the ones I fully trust know the answers. So, I guess my method is 3/4 paper - 1/4 brain wallet? Apart from the risks from your proposal: why would you give your family access to your Bitcoins? If it's meant for the "hit by a bus scenario", there might be another option. I've been thinking about this for a while now, but haven't actually used it: 1. Print a normal paper wallet. 2. Sign a transaction to send funds from your cold storage to the normal paper wallet, but add a Locktime so it's only valid from a block far far in the future. Say 1 million block count or even more (but not so far none of your family members will still be alive). Or while you're at it: create a few versions (1 million blocks, 1.5 million, 2 million) and print them on different sheets of paper. 3. Print the transaction and store it with the paper wallet. 4. If you're still alive a couple of months before the first transaction becomes valid: burn it, the next one becomes your new fail safe. If your family ever needs it, all they have to do is wait a few years, broadcast the transaction, and the paper wallet becomes valuable. Wow I'll quote this for reference, I'll read it over again, because it seems to be a good solution for this 'bus scenario' Something else: Someone mentioned that storing significant amount of bitcoin on hardware wallet is safe enough... OK, it can be safe, because if the hardware wallet fails, you have your 24 words on a piece of paper packed in a pair of socks in your wardrobe drawer (everyone has them there ) Now this is where we should hold on for a minute. If we have the 24 word seed (which you need to restore the hardware wallet) written on that piece of paper laying somewhere, the security of the hardware wallet equals to the security of the method you store your paper wallet... because if someone finds that piece of paper, he/she can restore the hardware wallet and can spend the bitcoins, without the need to physically access your original hardware wallet. So in my opinion, hardware wallet is OK for a little amount, but for a larger amount, you should think it over again... |
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I visited Seba Crypto AG website which is one of the licensed company mentioned in the article. It doesn't seem they are going to create something new and special. It seems that they are going to create a centralized bank account for our cryptocurrencies. Nothing more!
According to their website they will provide bank accounts for fiat and digital assets in one place. If we assume that digital assets include cryptocurrencies, they are going to create a bank account for our cryptocurrencies.
They will also provide e-banking apps. In this case, they are going to release a wallet which is regulated by Switzerland government. They are going to help the governments to play role as a third party in our cryptocurrencies transactions. We don't need it. We already have decentralized wallets. We use cryptocurrencies to be independent from banks and now they are offering bank accounts.
According to their website, they will also tokenize fiat, precious metals and any valuable product. I think it's better to focus only on this. We don't need bank accounts for our cryptocurrencies. We have already better options to keep our cryptocurrencies safe.
This is right from the technical point of view. Bitcoin doesn't need 3rd party, or centralized platform. But, even for temporary period of time, it's possible that these kind of trusted 3rd parties could help the mass adoption. Just imagine, now those people, who don't have a clue about bitcoin, have do their own research about bitcoin to start to deal with bitcoin. It's not easy for a 'newbie' to start with bitcoin, there are a lot of scam sites, scam exchanges, etc... They don't know how to store their bitcoin safely, if they managed to buy some, etc... These 3rd parties could help them to skip these initial problems and after some of them who want to use bitcoin as a decentralized currency/store of value, will learn about bitcoin and will just leave these 3rd parties and buy a hardware wallet at least, and start to use bitcoin as it's advised for those who want to eliminate the middle men in their financial transactions. |
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Paying for the bank to hold your savings is known for a really long time in Switzerland. They have an independent banking industry and they're (the Swiss banks) nearly the only trusted banks by the richest people. If all the economies collapse, the Swiss banks will remain and will hold the savings in their national currency (Swiss Frank, CHF) and it will preserve the value.
Those people only trust these banks to hold their money, because they don't want to lose any of the value of their saving over the time. This is why Swiss banks could offer negative interest rate, because they're so trusted, and the demand is very high for their services, so they can just directly charge their cost with negative interest rate.
German bonds are pretty similar, Germany has a really good economy (on the long run), so people trust them enough to buy bond with negative interest rate because people speculate like the normal economies will fail, currencies (not EUR but the others) will lose a part of their value in a recession, so if you buy German bond even with negative interest rate will help them to preserve the value of their savings...
This is a signal for a coming recession or for a coming financial crisis... no one knows this for sure, but this is a signal...
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Our goal is to offer crypto exchange in our main post offices in all big cities and in tourist area and we except it will happen soon .
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This means people will be able to buy and sell crypto in the end if the pilot will be successful. I thought that banks would be the first to lead the way when it's about crypto payments. But banks are maybe afraid of these alternate channels of payments, because their business is based on the fact that people have to use their payment service if they want to transfer their money to someone or to a company, etc... If they lose this channel, their other services could also fail because people won't store their money (or just a little part of it) in banks anymore. But Post is only transferring the money of the people to other people or to companies, and they don't really handle people's savings, or have more services, which are based on e.g. people's savings. OK, they sell stamps (which becomes more and more rear), they handle packages, but these are not depending on how they transfer money. So it's not a problem for them if they dip their toe into the crypto see, to test the water there... Sorry, I don't want to hijack the topic, maybe we can continue to compare bank's and the post's motivation in connection with crypto things in a new topic, and let this topic continue to talk about the pilot of the Croatian post |
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I guess the 2 axioms for this conversation are the location (because culturally we handle numbers differently) and value (because items do not have a uniformed price).
I might try and build an index for the prices of goods and use location search tool to offer some flexibility.
OK, got it now. Maybe you can use the exchange rate of each nation's fiat compared to USD when you want to determine how does the location change the way each nation handle large or small numbers. Usually if the exchange rate of a nation's fiat (compared to the USD) is somewhat equal (like EUR/USD, which is around 1,1 or something similar) that nation will use similar number format (few decimals). If 1 USD compared to a different nation's fiat equals e.g. 500 fiat, that would mean that should use more decimals when they think about bitcoin compared to the others who use USD as a base for that calculation. |
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Why would they use bitcoin if they can use the US dollar? Cash has no track record and they don't need to exchange bitcoin to USD and after to cashout the USD to get the cash they want in the end...
It's much easier to use cash and it doesn't need any technical knowledge, smartphones or computers and internet connection. Cash is just totally offline and can be used in the middle of the desert/forest/sea, just everywhere... and much faster than bitcoin...
In the beginning of the internet, it was used to download mp3 music and for some other illegal activities, but after people started to use it for everyday purposes now... maybe bitcoin is only needs some time to have the proper adoption to let everyday people start using it...
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