Latest posts of: timerland

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Bitcoin is politically and geographically neutral, immune from meddling and entirely under your control if you wish it to be. None of those are controversial ideas and you don't have to be a foaming nutter to believe those characteristics might be helpful to you.

Exactly. Bitcoin's utility isn't something that is exclusive to only those who agree with the ideas or viewpoints of the first users/public promoters of bitcoin per se.

And given the fact that bitcoin has somewhat arrived in the hands of mainstream investors in the past decade, it's no surprise that no longer are we seeing as much discussion about the ideologies, but rather, more discussion about prices, profit, market, and regulation, which I think is inevitable anyways if bitcoin was ever going to go fully mainstream.

At the end of the day, I don't think that all of this matters too much, as long as bitcoin is able to fulfill its goals as means of exchange, and a long term store of value(despite short term volatility), which it has thus far.

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P.S. The current price of bitcoin has a very different price floor and risk level than Feb 7. It is good to know where the true floor is. Currently I am short, but I know EXACTLY where I am long. I am trying to educate people on what is actually happening, and hopefully stabilize the crypto markets. Please let me know what you think!

I agree with the majority of your statements, I think it should have been very obvious that earlier this year prices were bottoming, simply because the market sentiment was just so bearish in the mainstream, as well as the fact that it was apparent there was a period of consolidation and sideways movement that usually signal the price floor, as it's getting tested.

However, would you be able to explain why exactly you are short at the moment, perhaps based off not only your own compiled statistics but other factors as well?

Also, educating others by yourself will not stabilize the market. There are much bigger investors and traders, especially those on leverage, that simply have way further influence over the market than the average trader. And besides, people will always be influenced by their emotions no matter what.

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World leaders will gather in Osaka as Japan hosts its first ever G20 summit on June 28 and 29. Ahead of the summit is a G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting which is taking place on June 8 and 9 in the Japanese city of Fukuoka. Besides the G20 countries, there are invited guest countries and international organizations that will be participating including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. Cryptocurrency, regulations, and how users should be protected in the new financial system are being discussed at the conference this weekend, according to local media.

It'll be interesting to see whether the fact that this event being hosted in Japan will have any positive impact - given the fact that Japan is one of the more forward thinking countries when it comes to bitcoin regulation.

More likely than not though, the conclusions that the G20 is going to arrive at is that there needs to be tighter AML/KYC standards, which has been a trend in the past few years, as opposed to a loosening of this.

But at the end of the day, what the G20 discusses is really irrelevant unless this is all written down in each of the country's legislation and regulations. It's more of a reference for policy makers.

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Now I am scared, are my funds even saved there, Should i move everything, I have been referring everyone to Coinbase whoever wanted to start off with crypto; I feel betrayed, they championing themselves as a leader in Cryptocurrency/Decentralized space and Trying to centralized everything.This is ridiculous, does someone have any idea what can i do?

I mean, why wouldn't you move your funds off Coinbase?

For starters, Coinbase is a hosted wallet. It's not like you're gaining any tangible benefits in the form of interest payments for storing your BTC with them, so why take the extra risk of trusting them with your funds when you can just as easily store it in a wallet like Electrum, trustlessly?

Especially when they've got a track record of constantly delayed support ticket responses, as well as account suspensions. They've already obviously shown interest in investigating your account, so I think the smart thing is definitely to get out while you still can.

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on June 12, 2019, 12:24:05 PM

Looks like it has already crashed - I'm just getting time out errors. Great launch. Exactly the kind of workmanship I would expect from McAfee. Roll Eyes

From what I've read, you have to purchase a membership to be allowed to open an account, and then you have to purchase his own ERC-20 token to pay for your transactions to be processed, and then you presumably have to pay the transaction fee of the exchanges you are actually trading on. I wouldn't be surprised if he also wants to collect your personal data or if their security was terrible. Perhaps they will be using their hilariously inept Bitfi wallet as cold storage. Roll Eyes

Yep. It's been 2 hours now and the website still seems down. Not the best look for a new site, eh?

I don't really get the point of this exchange at all. While having a middleman broker between you and the exchange might protect yourself against some privacy concerns on the exchange's end, you're essentially trusting McAfee and his company to not collect and use your information, and, there is also added counterparty risk.

It seems like that he's planning on adding debit cards as a payment method as well in the near future. I'm not sure entirely how the regulations in the US is going to allow him to do that without strict KYC.

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Steps like this seems to help make the government quite happy in how to handle crypto and manage risk in countries. Would you agree? What else do we need to implement or be sure to watch out for?

I'm not sure as to how Malta would respond - they are probably raking in a lot of revenue since crypto businesses prefer them as a destination as opposed to countries with stricter KYC/AML requirements in the European Union.

There is no incentive for them to tighten their rules too much, although they obviously need to prevent the clear cut cases.

This warning could have for sure been sparked because Malta is seen to take away business from the rest of the countries in EU, when it comes to regulated/licensed bitcoin businesses, while the warning about AML may only be what's happening on the surface.

Revshare scams aren't something new to this community whatsoever.

If you were around when programs like MyAdvertisingPays and Paidverts were still popular, then you should have seen the resemblance between these programs and this "Bits-pays" site immediately.

What these frauds do essentially is pose as advertising agencies, where you buy things like "ad-packs" and rented referrals to make money. In reality, if you think about it, who's actually buying ad-packs for the purpose of advertising? And the whole concept of rented referrals is super sketchy. At the end of the day, it's just another pyramid scheme.

Even though it seems like a remote possibility if it had happened for the rest of the world, I think that you need to take any rumours coming from the Indian government or the RBI very seriously, given the fact that it was wiling to essentially through the entire nation into a cash crunch for a publicity stunt of "cracking down on corruption".

Besides, it wouldn't be surprising if some negative action is taken in terms of crypto restrictions occur in the near future. They've already driven out the majority of crypto exchanges from their country due to the RBI restrictions on banks, which isn't getting lifted any time soon. They've also shown no interest in a new regulatory framework, which means that this type of thing is inevitable.

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India Proposes 10-Yr Jail For Crypto Use, May Introduce own crypto

The irony here Roll Eyes

I think that the general consensus is that IEOs do offer more liquidity as soon as the tokens launch, and that trading will likely go much more smoothly at least for the first few weeks given the fact that the team doesn't need to be worried about things like getting it listed on a market.

However, are there any legal advantages? I really don't think so.

There's a reason why exchanges operating with this type of model avoid countries with tight regulatory measures in crypto, because they know that even though IEO sounds like a different beast, it is really based on the same concept of IPOs, and they're not going to escape from pressure from authorities just by calling it an "exchange offering".

Quote from: jackg on June 07, 2019, 03:22:11 PM

I meant to say what happens to the money when it's printed? It goes to the government?

It could if it's debt monetisation - i.e., the central bank buys treasury notes from the government.

Quote from: jackg on June 08, 2019, 12:05:36 AM

No, I'm asking where the money goes immediately after it's printed? Who is it credited to as its made?

As a part of the federal reserve's operations, one of its goals is to maintain the fed funds rate.

To do so, they need to control the amount of liquidity available in the market (specifically, balances that banks hold with the Fed). Depending on whether they need to shrink the amount of reserves, or inflate the amount of reserves, they can either buy/sell securities or conduct repos.

E.g. If they need to inflate the amount of reserves so that the fed funds rate can be lowered due to an increased supply, then they can either buy highly rated securities from financial institutions outright, or essentially conduct a collateralised loan in the form of a repurchase agreement.

Hopefully this answers your question.

Quote from: CryptoBry on June 09, 2019, 10:44:04 AM

I am searching on the topic of decentralized economy and I came up with this piece which is a good one for me. I am quoting it here below:

"What is it for?
The decentralized economy emerges as part of a critique of existing market-economy systems. Virtual currencies are making financial decentralization possible, which undoubtedly influences the economy. Some of its professionals say that this type of economy is used to reduce costs and increase efficiency, so that there are fewer surpluses and shortages of products so that people can be free to choose what to produce and consume, take advantage of the time and knowledge, etc.

Of course, it is not the same to speak of a decentralized economy than of cryptocurrencies, but we do dare to place them at a close level for their contribution to it. Spain, Switzerland or the United States are examples of such systems, and it must be said that virtual currencies have already reached them. As a result, we are witnessing the reaction of central banks, who still show a strong reluctance to their use and proliferation."
Source.

Are we heading to the creation of a decentralized economy (the one controlled by the people themselves) but still within and a part of the bigger centralized economy (the one controlled by the government)?

I think that there should be a clear distinction made between a decentralised economy, and a decentralised currency supply.

The latter is what bitcoin is trying to achieve, and most other cryptocurrencies as well. Decentralising the entire economy is still unfathomable at this point, and it is unclear whether this is actually going to be practical or required.

In the future, though, I think that what will happen is that centralised currencies will run in parallel with decentralised alternatives, to a greater extent than what is already happening. More people will most likely move their assets into decentralised, longer term store of values, as opposed to keeping them in fiat. However, the traditional financial institutions, central banks, etc. aren't just going to disappear off the face of the earth.

Quote from: Findingnemo on June 04, 2019, 03:26:59 PM

Why localbitcoins allow the person to give feedack on us even if they don't have any previous trade history with us?

Are you completely sure that it was someone you didn't have a deal with?

Even if the deal doesn't go through, but money was entered into escrow and there was an initial agreement to make a deal happen, then the counterparty does have the right to leave negative trust. Otherwise, if facing a seller with ill intentions, does the buyer have to complete the trade just to leave feedback? It is probably designed to be this way.

However, I do see an option of blocking traders without even opening a trade with them in the first place, which is quite odd. Though, I don't think that has anything to do with your trust score.

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1. To promote transparency - It is clear that block chain could help a lot for the records will be in public and all could see how the money could be transferred and being utilized. This is the basic way to eradicate corruption on every evil politician that forges documents in project to which it was never been implemented.

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4. Anonymity - transaction still could be done anonymously for the safety of the government's clientele.

These two points are somewhat in direct opposition with each other, don't you think?

I don't think that any government in the world would want more accountability by having a public record of every single transaction that they undertake, especially in those more corrupt governments, which goes without saying.

If it does get integrated within the government sector, I think that it will simply be a measure to cut costs of having a centralised database, or to try to introduce a more robust settlement process (even though that technically is under the jurisdiction of the central bank, in most countries).

Quote from: Horsetail on June 02, 2019, 01:11:30 AM

I have with difficulty registered an account, using an email and password thrice with localbitcoins.com but cannot re-access. I get 503 forbidden. I am able to access localbitcoins.com using tor browser, but the captcha goes in an endless loop.

Clearly localbitcoins may not be illegal but they are making it hard are they not?

Does anyone have info on this website,

I had been unsuccessfully been trying to get hold of $20 on Paxful and chose the option with no passport required. My bank which is a standard English bank and declines every single transaction that goes to buy an amazon gift card etc and they say they dislike bitcoin even though its not illegal and cancel anything they suspect is related

I live in Dublin and wonder if anyone can help me get hold of $20-$50 worth of BTC?

Thanks,
Horse

I've had painful experiences trying to access Localbitcoins from a TOR browser in the past as well. The login/registration captcha is certainly a pain in the ass as it simply takes way too long to load each time.

But it's definitely still working, they've removed a few trade options, but so far that's it and no further action has been taken.

You might want to check out the currency exchange board and post a trade request there, otherwise, try to go with options on Paxful that involve cash deposit or something (so that your bank isn't involved at all), if you still can't register for LBC (try VPNs as well).

Quote from: countryfree on June 06, 2019, 11:43:14 PM

https://medium.com/circle-trader/overview-of-btc-margin-lending-pool-losses-a2f0905aaa56

Scary. I used to think lending money on Poloniex or Biftinex was safe. Not anymore.

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Today, we recognized the generalized loss across lenders in the BTC margin lending pool. As a result, the principal of all active BTC loans as of 14:00 UTC today has been reduced by 16.202%.

So, if you were lending money on Poloniex, you've lost 16.202% of it... Man, that hurts!

This will likely push interest rates on other lending platforms up as well, given the fact that the market is now given a lot more awareness about how potentially risky their investments are, while they previously thought it was something that was risk free.

I'm surprised that Polo isn't offering to at least compensate in some way, though, given the fault is probably partially on them for offering margin trading on illiquid markets anyways.

I doubt their 'debt recovery' will go that well anyways. It's probably extremely difficult to get anyone, especially people with high amounts invested at the time to pay back their dues, especially when their positions should have automatically closed in the first place.

Quote from: basicnecromancycr on June 07, 2019, 06:24:24 AM

I have been in here from December of 2017. This means I had never experienced a complete bear market before. So I want to ask the veterans: Has the dip passed? What is your opinion of it?

I don't think that this will be the last dip we'll see within this bull market.

Short term corrections like this is extremely common, and should not be something that is unexpected. When you see value of BTC constantly rising due to the fomo that exists within the market, you'll realize that it is simply unsustainable and an adjustment in the terms of price will come sooner or later.

I think that currently, $8k is still a level that has some resistance, though I fully expect that to be breached within a week given how bullish the sentiment has become. I think we're still in the smart money phase before the actual mainstream catches on at this point, because there is still a general fear of the market in mainstream due to people like you that got introduced to the market in late 2017.

Quote from: malevolent on June 02, 2019, 07:13:58 PM

Quite a disappointment if it's not a mistake on their part. In-person cash trades were the reason to use localbitcoins over exchanges, for security and privacy reasons.

Definitely disappointing.

Though, I doubt that this decision was something that was within their control - most likely they are concerned about the pressures that the regulatory bodies placing on them to remove all untraceable transactions with cash. And given the fact that Localbitcoins has expanded so much in terms of their trading volume that there is no escaping from the eyes of regulatory bodies.

All the alternatives that still work with cash in person without any KYC will probably eventually encounter this issue as well, given that they have noticeable volume. That's all people can go with at the moment if they still want cash in person trades right now, though.

Quote from: jjjfff on May 23, 2019, 01:41:24 PM

Perhaps some of you might have seen this Reddit discussion about fake volume?

The data is extracted from CoinMarketCap. Simply by removing all "stablecoins" and adding up only U$ volumes, you arrive at 1.6% Bitcoin volume traded in actual cash. Everything else is stablecoins.

What do you think about this? Seems like obviously something's wrong here? Why are stablecoins even being called dollars? Makes no sense. This is a time bomb and gonna explode at some point.

I'm not a fan of stablecoins, but they do offer a convenient way of trading. You simply don't need to deal with the wait times with deposits and withdrawals, nor are there as much fees involved with conversion and generally makes a much more liquid market.

I wouldn't discount bitcoin trading volume the way you did and call the volume of all pairs with stablecoins "fake".

After all, the reserve requirements of these coins are completely out of the scope of what the bitcoin network can control. If people choose to transact with them, so be it, at their own risk, but it should still count as "legitimate volume". What is illegitimate volume is those that are generated by wash trading, which is much more difficult to estimate.

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They are using the name of facebook for their project but facebook has no announcement about something like this.

They're probably trying to take advantage of the fact that there were rumours that were spread around last month about Facebook apparently launching their own "Globalcoin". But that obviously has no affiliation with this project whatsoever.

If people do their research they'll come to the conclusion that this official FB token has not even been launched yet, and right now isn't even confirmed to be launching any time soon, and therefore this "Facebooktoken" project is completely fabricated.

Unfortunately, the people who don't take these steps to protect themselves are the ones targeted by this project.

Also, I can't tell if user @markzuckerberg is a troll, or just a really bad impersonator. Cheesy

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They basically gamble with customers' money.

That sums it up right there.

I think that the fact that they are doing this clearly is profit driven, otherwise, they would be reducing balances in customer's accounts with the actual currencies that are lost, not the BTC-equivalent or something along the lines of that.

However, I don't know if that's their motivation for going bankrupt per se.

Also, from other recent news it seems like that one of the Cryptopia co-founders or team members has already moved onto build another NZ-based exchange. Talk about a quick change of scenery? Roll Eyes