I meant the same oeleo but didn't quite came out right. That is why quoted the El Salvador example..LOL. It is interesting that the banks always refrain from naming Bitcoin directly and just use the label "Private Digital currencies". I wonder if a jury was to deliberate on this in any of the presumably great democracies, would they classify Bitcoin as Private? Can Open Source Software be labelled as "Private"?

If not, then what do they have against Bitcoin. They may label everything else which is a foundation/ corporation coin (ETH, ADA etc) as private, but not Bitcoin.

The only thing that needs to be adjudged is that should state have the sole authority to judge what money is or how people exchange value? Going openly against Bitcoin is like going against democracy and freedom to choose. This is why they will continue to be subtle in undermining Bitcoin. Of course not so much in Russia, China or third world countries.

That is the most logical course that things should take. Though it takes one back to the same question. How far will nation-states go in their pursuit to suppress bitcoin and stop it from loosening their grip on power?

I don't know anything about the incident? What exactly happened? If there are scammers on the forum who have caused such mayhem, someone like @ICOPRESS would have found them out. Do share what this is about.

I can get from your post that this is about Filipinos deceiving Filipinos. Crypto presents a huge opportunity to scammers. It is upto those with better conscience to do something to help the newbies and not allow such situations. The OP talks about suicides due to scams. I hope this is not true.

If you guys are from the Filipino community, do share what this is about. Then again, we have some very good members on the forum from the Philippines. I'd expect that something as big as a 187 Bn USD scam would have been talked about already in the forum.

Most people playing it are grinding for the money and making back the initial investments. It is completely tilted towards the old players though and they will continue to rake in the money. The gameplay though is nothing to be excited about.

There are a lot of other games with much better graphics and gameplay already there on the blockchain and giving away blockchain items. The Lost Relics/ 9 Lives Arena on Enjin are games anybody can check and find to be actual games, rather than simply grinding for money. Axies has definitely gotten a huge user base and that network effect is helping it out. But I have always wished that Blockchain games should first be actual games that people can enjoy playing as much as they can earn from them. Axie doesn't have that charm and for this reason, they won't be "dominating" anything.

There is still a lot others waiting for bringing out the products and launching their marketing. I'd rather wait to see how it pans out.

So true. When it comes to the developed nations, the term "financial inclusion" actually mean the set of entities they want to keep "financially excluded". When someone like Jack Mallers talks of financial inclusion, he is actually talking about giving people with bare minimum resources access to a savings account. The latter is an actual ethical stand while former is just wielding control.

They actually are worried that stablecoins will take over. Right now, most stablecoins are only used for crypto trading. They seem to be pre-empting a scenario where crypto actually begins to be used on a wide scale. With the example of El Salvador, they are truly frightened that they won't have any option to dangle before these poor nation-states as "Oh, look! We've "researched" this CBDC technology for 24 months and are giving it to you free, Use it, not Bitcoin"

I bet if today they had the logistics ready, they'd probably call up every head of state contemplating usage of LN and Bitcoin and give them the offer. The implications for this are huge though. Does anyone believe that these powerful bodies will simply give up all that leverage and power that comes from controlling the financial infrastructure? Honestly, I feel concerned about what their real pushback look like. Currently, its just baby gloves with the FUD and regulations.

What can be the possible reason behind this change of stance? From outright banning to getting into selling futures contracts. If it is the recognition of an opportunity to earn fees, then why ban in the first place?

From there earlier statements, it looked more like a principled opposition to Bitcoin. As in "these are highly speculative assets backed by nothing". Like the CME Futures they'll now sell are backed by real Bitcoin. There ARE so many contradictions in how the big banks want to treat cryptocurrencies in general and Bitcoin in particular. They use the terminology "Private cryptocurrencies" which is simply not applicable to Bitcoin but will accurately define a bank issued CBDC.

I agree that its mostly speculation for traders but you cannot say that they are completely useless for the Bitcoin landscape. The "select clients" most probably are miners or even exchanges that will try to hedge their risk in running Bitcoin infrastructure.

The news about possibility of bitcoin confiscation by a communist government must have rattled the people there. Doesn't the govt say that it is for preventing bribes? Basically if those in power decides to do something against you as an individual, there is little that can help you. It does not matter if you are in a country like Russia or in a free democracy. The example pointed by Vishnu are scary but similar stuff can happen in democracies if we are not vigilante enough. It doesn't take long for an autocratic leader and government to start talking about stuff like "limitations to freedom of speech" and "Sedition".

Soon enough, the tumble starts.

There is little anybody can do for the people who live under such regimes. They can only help themselves. Living in democracies can often make you unaware of the fact that the biggest land-masses like China and Russia have people living their lives under restrictions and limitations prescribed by those in power. There can be no yearning for the truth and the rise of creative thought to its highest limits. Everything you express can be used against you. Feel for the people there. Hope those rulers can somehow evolve.

This is pretty interesting to know that the next set of challenges that LN will face is related to the need for complex scripts and the need for Bitcoin to find a way to accommodate this. Now, all this talk about Smart contract language for Bitcoin is a bit esoteric from my viewpoint but didn't a bunch of developers propose a scripting language change to achieve specifically this? It was called Simplicity and I could never go beyond the video where the developer is showing the Half-adder implemented in Simplicity.

What is the current state of development with Simplicity? Did it not prove useful in being the smart-contract solution? Once you answer a few questions, I promise I'll do some research on my own too. Thanks for this.

To answer the OP, I don't understand why nobody has pointed this out yet, but one of the challenges I feel is for the mining incentive to continue to remain lucrative to ensure the hashrate that we see today. In two decades, it'll halve twice. The state of the fee-market by that time and price of BTC will be the factors to decide whether it is lucrative enough for miners providing security to the chain.

Holy fuck. That is atrocious and painful to watch. How does it make sense to destroy all those machines?? The idiots could have auctioned these off to individuals. Malaysians would have gotten their hands on some cheap mining gear and the state could have earned an income.

This just goes to show why Third world countries are called Third world. The fuck man. They stole electricity to run those poor machines that must have been hashing day in and day out. What did they ever do to be crushed under a roller? Wonder what  kind of lawyers those Malaysians afforded that they couldn't even save legitimate property.

Of course mining it with stolen electricity is stupid and ethically wrong. Not to mention that if everyone did this, it'd screw up the game theory. But is mining and owning mining machines illegal?

The things Hydrogen quoted don't have alternatives. Steel, Concrete, Aluminum; these are primary resources which have nothing to do with consumer demands. If it is about making carbon expensive, the highest taxes should be on fuel guzzling transportation and coal fired power plants like he already pointed out. The EU at least is well on its way to reducing dependence on coal.  Siemens recently announced withdrawal from the Thermal Turbine business. That is a big indication as to where things are headed.

I had no idea about this but it is pretty much a bastardized version of the concept of CBDR, Common but differentiated Responsibility. In its original form, as far as i can recall, the historic polluters were supposed to use carbon credits to reach their pollution targets and could even finance pro-climate infrastructure in developing countries. That changed with the concept of NDC in Paris Accord.

I think the earlier point i made was lost in translation. I didn't mean that such policies are because of differences between parties. What i mean is these policies hint towards the growing isolationism in dealing with Climate goals. Countries like India and China will continue to have the most people and highest carbon footprints. I wonder whether the developed world with a much lower population wants to take the onus for investing in climate mitigation while not making the developing countries pay a price. The tariff regimes are a simple way to do this.

Of course you can do this in a non-fiat world. You are able to access that 1000 USD credit from a bank depending on your credit rating and trustworthiness. In a hypothetical BTC world where your salary is a monthly/ weekly on-chain payment from your employer and your expenses are on the LN, you can always access credit by citing your future cash flow. Of course institutions would have to come up to provide such services.

The loan in BTC/ LN case would be much more easily processed as it can be scripted into a smart-contract to debit your salary account on the next on-chain transaction.

So BTC can easily exist without Fiat. In fact, its designed to exist as immutable in places where Fiat loses its value due to government policies. I still think that BTC wasn't designed to replace Fiat but to address the problems and corruptions in the fiat system. Satoshi envisioned it as peer-to-peer cash, enabling people to be their own banks and trade with whomever they want without the need to go through the rent-seeking walled gardens that governments erect around their citizens.

What "market forces" do you think are in play when fiat is printed to not just save corrupt organizations but to ensure that their topmost executives get paid fat bonuses for getting us to those situations. Centrally printed Fiat was never a necessity like you quote. Civilizations worked even in the absence of it and they can in the future.

The opinion on this is settled that you cannot just differentiate Bitcoin and Fiat on the basis of who uses it for criminal activities. These are just talking points for those who don't want to accept Bitcoin and want to either pump their own bags or hope that something they propose will become the next bitcoin.

Another issue similar to this is about energy used by PoW.

Both of these issues are raised time and again to attack Bitcoin because it suits those with the power to print fiat, earn commissions on transactions and just manage money. Bitcoin threatens to make money managers obsolete. People can actually be in control of a sovereign currency that does not need to be backed by a state. The positive potential of this is enormous but nobody wants to talk about that as an option.

While its good that you are contemplating, why not contemplate on how Bitcoin and LN transactions will help a country of six million if all of them have a way to save/ spend money without the need to go to a bank branch and pay commissions/ fees to the bankers. How does financial education and financial literacy make better entrepreneurs and better savers out of people that most consider poor and incapable.

Those are the questions that the volunteer, self-policing group of people here at Bitcoin Forum intend to talk about and spread. It'd be great if you can divert your attentions too. Look forward to hearing your views on this.

The world is on a crossroads right now and there are too many factors creating uncertainty. The geo-political balance right now is precarious with a rising China and a shrinking America. There is the spectre of Climate change and no matter what the deniers say, we'll only witness an increase in freak weather activities.

On top of that, it seems there is a total lack of leaders and coordination in the world. For the longest time, the politicians took the decisions and things just stumbled along. As humans we had the option to vacillate on decisions or just take stubborn positions. Now there is a clock ticking and the world leaders, people, countries, everybody seems to be unable to come to a common ground. All of this has been exacerbated by social media which seems to have created more problems than it solved.

As a world, we are in for some strange times and novel ideological battles. Economic growth and prosperity is definitely going to suffer as those at the lower rungs of society will be left to their own means as is the case in such times. Those already in power will obviously continue to enjoy the riches.

I think this is something that most of the developed world will soon follow if it is implemented by EU. It is funny how developed countries like those in EU sold the carrot of globalization and open borders to the developing world (what this article calls the poorer countries).
Once those markets have been solidified in such a way that high technology products have a solid market, the climate initiatives is being used as an excuse to close the doors on low tech imports like cement, steel etc., like you rightly point out.

Essentially, you can kill the export potential of developing countries pretty easily by this idea of "carbon tax". While the exports from developed countries will continue to find a market. Trade may not be so binary in real life, yet such legislations seem like a remnant of the colonial mindset.

You cannot completely blame the EU though. Climate change initiatives have really not been able to get anything done due to the varying interests of all parties, especially with lot of developing countries just beginning to industrialize not being able to fulfill these lofty ideals without direct support (which hasn't been forthcoming from the developed world). This isolationism in the name of climate policy will probably continue to grow.

It was a soft launch which means that the transactions between L1 and L2 have a very long finalization time. 7 days in this case. Then once on L2, you can create your money legos with minimal transaction cost and move around positions. Version3 has only allowed a limited number of currencies and there isn't much you can do yet.

You'll need to wait to see how this grows. I doubt that with the incentives of transaction front-running removed, the DeFi trading won't remain so lucrative. We are already seeing a bear market incoming due to these changes.

Looks like this launch coincided with a sharp drop in Ethereum price.

It is significant that Uniswap has not gone for any other scaling solutions that others like AAVE already tried, (Polygon for example). They have decided to stick with the OE team. There have been a lot of other teams working on scaling but it is highly likely that the one Uniswap sticks with, will find the most usage and acceptance due to the sheer number of users and transactions on Uniswap.

The recent rise of Polygon may just end up being a short lived bubble, if OE proves to be reliable. I still find it pretty odd that Ethereum crashed hard on this news.

The bearish case for Bitcoin is mostly about government regulating it out of existence and usage of general public. We are currently right in the middle of this as El Salvador has decided to make it legal tender and several South American countries are planning to do so. The next step will come from other international organizations dealing with these countries. The BIS has already declared that they will come up with CBDCs. Yet, if actual countries start endorsing Bitcoin, a consensus will continue to evolve.

If we move past this step of national adoption without too much pushback from international organization, i think any remaining bear case would be finished.

Other reasons like technical failure, lack of block rewards etc are factors that will be the weak points for every other contender too.

Those are pretty wild predictions. The last rally for Ethereum was based on the final specs for launch of ETH 2.0. I think people rushed for the 32 ETH requirement and that created this current price floor. Apart from that, there wasn't anything fundamentally new about Ethereum.

So expecting almost a 5X solely because of launching PoS is too optimistic. PoS has a different set of issues and hasn't really been done on this scale except in a fully centralized manner (as in case of Binance Chain).

What the hell is this bomb everyone keeps talking about? I am not well versed with Ethereum and the community. So all of this is a bit new.

What makes you so confident about the success of PoS? ETH 2.0 is not going to be the first PoS coin. A lot of them have tried this system of using validating nodes instead of miners for processing of transactions and generation of blocks.

How is ETH 2.0 different from say ADA etc. which claim that they are better than Ethereum?

On top of that, it is already going through the MEV issues which are leading to instability. What I mean is that what makes you so certain about Ethereum's success and how is its PoS model different from those hundred others which have failed to work at scale.

The Sollet wallet is not at all intuitive. There are too many hoops to obtain there token.

You need to pay for something as trivial as adding a token to your wallet.

Most of it has been pre-mined and distributed to proxies of exchanges and the initial holders. So much so that 0.22% of all addresses hold over 90% of the circulating supply. It is abysmally centralized and the founders have just taken advantage of the bull-run to market themselves.

I for one, would never really put any money into something like this. Yeah, if you can earn it for free by building something, you should go ahead as they are well documented at least.

MATIC, Well, the same situation here too. Just riding on the wave of L2 adoption by certain projects. As ETH goes to PoS, it won't need L2 and MATIC would basically become redundant. In the short term though, the upside can come from any bull run till Ethereum shifts to PoS.

You can think what you want. Everybody is free to have an opinion, however stupid it may be, as they have their reasons for them.

Now talking about pure growth, there is nothing that Ethereum is doing differently than what it has already done. People have been learning solidity and deploying a combination of a website, a whitepaper and a smart-contract since 2017 bull-market. In the last 4 years, that has not generated sufficient economic activity for ETH to overtake Bitcoin. The reason being that only a very miniscule percentage of those projects are actually legitimate. If they were actual projects and not money-grabs, this would have happened a long time ago.

Nothing in the future points to this changing. Solidity devs will continue to swindle newbies with false promises. BTC on the other hand is being adopted by nation states and people are actually working towards a decentralized future. Thus, having an opinion that ETH will somehow flip BTC is pretty much nonsensical.