No mention of bitcoin or crypto currencies, here. Should they also be considered in "cashless society" discussions? What are peoples thoughts on this?
It depends on the context. If the discussion is focusing on the differences in physical and electronic payments from the point of view of people who struggle to use the latter (like the eldery and the poor in this article), then Bitcoin is a part of cashless society. But on the other hand, Bitcoin is not controlled by banks and governments, unlike electronic fiat, it was originally described by Satoshi as electronic cash because he wanted to distinguish it from centralized payment systems, so in this sense Bitcoin is the opposite of cashless society. |
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The only way fiat is going to die is when the population will lose faith in it and the government will fail. Even hyperinflation like the one currently happening in Venezuela is not enough to kill fiat, many other countries have had it at some point of their history, and they've usually solved it by rebooting their currency. Too many people are dependent on it - people employed by the government, people who pay taxes and so on. I don't believe in Bitcoin revolution, Bitcoin will just keep coexisting with fiat and will have a relatively small userbase consisting of people who value its properties.
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I don't like the fact that so many people have heard about Bitcoin and yet so many few own it and even less use it as a currency. I guess most people are okay with banks and governments, they don't feel the pressure to look for alternatives like Bitcoin. Maybe it will change in the future if there will be more disasters like the 2008 crisis, more countries will experience hyperinflation, and anti-cash policies.
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Why would a rational person pay BTC0.00016 for 1 USD if he can payment protocol and money function at its starting price of 1 satoshi?
Seriously, you need to do a little better in explaining what exactly do you mean. Rational person would buy bitcoin either: as a speculative investment, as a hedge to current monetary system, or for its utility (ie. to easily transfer money).
Would you pay 10,000 dollars for a potato or give up your car just to get a potato? Of course not. This is because the utility of a potato or the want-satisfying power of a potato is much smaller than that of a car or of 10,000 dollars worth of goods or services. In comparison to a potato, Bitcoin is not even a physical tangible good that can be used for satisfying human wants or needs, and its only utility is that it functions as payment protocol and money. So why would you pay enormous amounts of money just to have these functions if they are equally available whether the price of Bitcoin is 0.001 $ or 6, 000 $, and more importantly if these functions can be realized with various alternative cryptos or fiat money? Why would you not pay $6,000 or $1,000,000 or any other price? It's not like you are going to lose those money for those functions, you can use Bitcoin to buy goods/services for the equivalent of its fiat value. Why should you use Bitcoin and not fiat/altcoins? Because with Bitcoin no one will ever freeze your account, and with certain measures you can even achieve a decent level of privacy. As for altcoins, Bitcoin is simply way more secure and stable than them. |
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Wasn't that Bitcoin Cash? Regardless and like I said above, I thought that if any coin would gain any ground on bitcoin or come to rival it would be eth. I still don't think eth is over and far from dead and it'll probably bounce back at some point though.
Yes, Bcash people were also talking about their own flippening, and probably still talk now, but they are just being delusional, because Bcash price was nowhere near close to that, while ETH had 30.63% dominance against Bitcoin's 37.82%. You're right, ETH is not going to die anytime soon, unless maybe it's competitors will roll out some new tech that is objectively better, which I doubt. Maybe Ethereum can even be useful without decent scalability for some smart contracts that don't require frequent transactions. It's too early to call doom/moon now, because in terms of software so many things can change in a couple of years. |
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I don't really expect this to happen, to be honest.
With the current adoption statistics, I think that it's safe to say that probably 0.5-1% of the globe currently use bitcoin at the moment, and that would be a pretty optimistic estimate given that most of these people are not actively using bitcoin, but rather using it as an investment vehicle. I think it's possible if you expect growth to be exponential rather than linear. I assume Armstrong is drawing on the idea of growth curves like the S-curve. Once you "cross the chasm," adoption rate can go vertical. The vast majority of television adoption happened over a period of five years or so. That's the most optimistic case, but if you look at recent examples like the internet and mobile phones, the rate of growth can be quite staggering:  I thin the chances for exponential adoption are lowering with each year, because nowadays new things get picked up really fast. Most of the people have heard about Bitcoin already, but for various reasons they've decided to not get involved. Volatility and fear of a bubble are probably the biggest reason, but also there are other downsides like Bitcoin's unforgiving nature and complex interface, or undetermined legal status. Together they simply make it not worth the risk for average joe. I'd be happy to see even 5% of world population as active users and 5% more as infrequent users or hodlers. |
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Remember how in the last year Ethereum fans were anticipating "the Flippening" - a scenario when ETH marketcap surpasses Bitcoin marketcap. For a few days a lot of people seriously believed in this possibility, but now, a bit more than 1 year after, crypto community seriously discusses how Ethereum is going to die soon. Everyone should take this as a lesson of how a common sentiment is never a good indicator of the future and how volatile and experimental the world of cryptocurrencies is.
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So, 3 MP's out of 450? That's nothing. And I've said leaders, meaning the President, Prime Minister, Finance or Economy Ministers, etc. It's similar to how pretty much what most of the countries around the world are doing with crypto taxation.
If you receive income in the form of bitcoin, obviously you're going to still be paying tax on it. Bitcoin is not some sort of tax haven, it's merely just another form of payment for income in the government's eyes. And this is pretty much all this policy is about, there is nothing special here. It's interesting though that they're regarding CGT as regular income tax, and having no apparent policy as to using bitcoin as a means of payment.
The tax on mining though could mean that some miners could potentially be disincentivized from mining within Ukraine, due to 20% of their profits being taxed.
Notice how the guy from the article said that you can obtain Bitcoin via mining or trading. He didn't say that you can receive it for selling goods or services, and that's probably because the law is very murky here, so one might even get into trouble by using Bitcoin as a currency if they operate with really high volumes. But small businesses and freelancers should be fine, they've been working with not fully legal payment systems or using various schemes for years. |
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This is a middle-ground fallacy, a false argument that both sides are equal and must compromise. In reality on side is right and the other is wrong. Bcash is an attack on Bitcoin, the coin is centralized and the powers behind it want to completely control Bitcoin. Exposing them is a good thing for crypto community as a whole, it shows that decentralization is the main value of any cryptocurrency, and that it can be attacked from the inside of community. If you are painting Bitcoin and Bcash as equals, you are not only eroding the core principles of cryptocurrency, but also making people risk their money if they'll consider using Bcash, as this coin has no future.
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1 in 8 people by then, is it now? As much as a believer as I can be, it's really difficult to see that many people using crypto, unless the definition is an extremely loose one.
Take away the traders/speculators, the ultra-holders who see crypto as an investment, the people "owning" Bitcoin on any number of exchanges, the merchants using Bitpay and their ilk who don't have a crypto wallet... and we have a smattering of maybe several hundred thousand actual users.
Yes, I'm being unscientific. But so's Armstrong.
If we change 5 years to 7-10 and 1 billion to 500 million, then it will be an optimistic, but achievable prediction, in my opinion. Bitcoin can get a lot of popularity if governments and banks will keep fighting cash. People love cash because so many of them want to get some shadow income, or buy something illegal/restricted, or are just worried about their privacy. They are the potential users of Bitcoin as a currency, we just need to communicate to them that Bitcoin and cash have many similarities. |
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The internet is the whole world, it doesn't have a border that ends in the EU or anywhere else (even internet users in China and North Korea can find ways to reach the world outside).
So the only way this kind of effort could really work would be if there were a unanimous agreement around the world to implement a passport for ALL internet usage. This would only perpetuate the cat and mouse game further though, as people could build a private internet that doesn't require the passport.
The sooner that governements and their politicians realise that internet tech is more powerful than they are, the better. This story is a sign they will not, of course, go down without a fight. I expect that their self-interest will get the better of them, however.
They very likely realize that they can not stop ICO's and cryptocurrencies, but they know that they can go after exchanges, and that would really hurt crypto economy because it will be cut off from liquidity. Even if we imagine some really good decentralized exchanges, the governments would still be able to hurt crypto because they control fiat payment processors - they will make some algorithms that will detect cryptocurrency-related activities. So, in worst case crypto will be pushed into darknet markets, making crypto economy relatively small. |
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I think it is even worse that dotcom, because blockchain is way more narrow than the Internet. Blockchain promoters like to compare it with other fundamental technologies, but the hype has been around for 2 years and I still don't see any impressive results, it's all mostly just vaporware. So far the most successful application of blockchain is money, and Bitcoin is by far the best case, because it's network is so stable and secure. So, if there will be a big crash, Bitcoin will definitely survive, but outside from some privacy coins, it's hard to say the same about any other coin/token. Out of all cryptocurrencies and tokens only 10 have any noteworthy network activity, and most of it is speculation.
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Remember that Bitcoin has limited supply that is quickly decreasing. A few more halvenings, and the amount of new coins will be only a fraction of what it is now. This is partially priced in, because the price wouldn't be where it is now if Bitcoin was inflationary, but only partially, because traders don't plan for too many years on a volatile market like this. Eventually $20k will look cheap and people will envy those who bought at that price, just like people now envy those who bought at $1,000 (the ATH of 2013). Then there's a factor of innovation and adoption, which can back even bigger prices. So, there's extremely high chance that you'll be able to sell at the price higher than 20k if you are patient enough.
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Even if you could technically show a transaction and prove that the funds belong to you, the coin with the highest chances of getting banned from most governments thus never being able to buy a proper house and other actual tangible things with your gains is Monero.
With Bitcoin the chances are lower, it's too big, there will always be favorable countries to it, I see switzerland being one. But Monero may be pushed by all major governments into some niche currency nobody uses.
People will find ways to launder their Monero's if it will be necessary. A worldwide ban would definitely hurt it's adoption and price, but people will still be using it. When people talk about illegal transactions, they immediately think of guns and drugs, but the biggest illegal use-case is shadow economy, people will use privacy coins instead of cash for selling items, providing services, receiving black salary, so going through the trouble of laundering it might be still worth it if it means less taxes. |
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Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. Bitcoin has clearly reacted to the first few waves of ETF rejections, Bitcoin has crashed and then recovered after last year's China ban. There are more correlations like that, but also there's a lot more coincidences or simply lack of any price change. So, as a rule of thumb, one can assume that only truly big and relevant to Bitcoin news are important. Generally, it's the news that involve important governments like the US, EU, Korea, Japan, and the news have to be specifically about Bitcoin.
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We don't need 1000%! A 500% would still be a great rise. If such a thing would happen every single coin would establish a new ATH. Wouldn't that be great? 1000% is just greedy. Vitalik is acting really bearish but if my coin would lose so much value as ETH did I'd be even more bearish than him.
He didn't say 1000%, which is 11 times growth, he said 1000 times growth, which is 99900% increase. He's right here, we won't see 6 milllion dollar price for Bitcoin, maybe our grand-grand kids will. But the part about “real applications of real economic activity”, is a bit more tricky - coins outside of Bitcoin, ETH, LTC, DOGE have very little actual users, even all these flashy coins that claim to be Ethereum killers barely have any users. But at the same time, most Ethereum users are just people trying to get rich quick with ICO's. So, Bitcoin is unsurprisingly the coin that fits his words the best, especially with Lightning Network being a very real thing already. |
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I think this ruling is not yet clear or misunderstood by everyone. Including the people who wrote this. I say this because this totally different in principle to what Ukraine has been trying to achieve with Bitcoin and blockchain. They know they are so far behind and economically lagging, so they are moving up, trying on one hand to be friendly to crypto business, trying to set up blockchain hubs, even now testing elections by blockchain vote.
So you want to tax 20% of people crypto incomes? This is so going to be bad for any of the things they want to do, if true.
There was no ruling, cryptocurrencies are still not regulated. It was just an interview with official where he has told that the general law and tax rates apply to Bitcoin, like if it is a common commodity. Also, Ukraine is not really trying to do anything with blockchain and cryptocurrencies, all the news that you've been hearing are really insignificant, some MP's propose their half-baked drafts, and that's it, there's no interest from the leaders of the country whatsoever. Same with blockchain voting, it's just some guy from the Central Electoral Commission who decided to post the voting results, that are already public, to NEM's blockchain, anyone can do that. |
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I'm guilty of 1 and 4, but I doubt that they can be described as anything even remotely close to addiction. It's totally normal to check how your investment/currency is doing on a daily basis, especially if this investment/currency is highly volatile. I'm sure that people who trade stocks do this every day, including checking charts after waking up. every day I see a new weird thing in bitcoin community which can not be found anywhere else! the community is pretty innovative when it comes to creating weird content  "bitcoin addiction"? what the hell is that? are you an addict if you use fiat every day? or know the value of the fiat you are holding? no you are an addict if you use that fiat in abusing manner such as gambling with it. bitcoin is the same. things OP describes are not bitcoin addiction, they are addiction to other things such as gambling. for instance someone who has a tab open checking price of different altcoins every second has no idea what trading truly is and how it works so he has to constantly check to see if his bets (since they are not investments) have won him any money or did you lose some more. Anything can be an addiction if it negatively impacts someone's life. I can easily imagine people wasting hours everyday on reading crypto news, analysis and other crap that doesn't matter in the long run, stress themselves over the price, and then feel bad for spending so much time unproductively. |
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Because noobs are very sensitive to any news, they think that everything can move Bitcoin's price, especially when Bitcoin is directly mentioned. This is probably because crypto news sites report anything slightly related to Bitcoin's price, and they also like to suggest a connection between price moves and some events, to boost their own relevancy. This might be especially notable now, during the bear market, because a lot of newcomers got #rekt by jumping into Bitcoin near the top of the bubble, so they desperately look for anything that in their opinion could trigger a new run.
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There already are centralized "coins", they are called banks, so why would the population switch to centralized cryptocurrencies? Everyone knows that the point of cryptocurrency is to not have any intermediaries, so far centralized coins like Ripple and EOS are pretending to be decentralized, and their fans believe it, but overwhelming majority of actual crypto users are using Bitcoin (check the active addresses stat for different coins), because they understand how centralized those altcoins are. We've already deflected many attempts to centralize Bitcoin in form of Bcash, Segwit2x and other forks, so the future doesn't seem so bad.
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