While it is true that bitcoin cannot be effectively totally banned, the facts are that if it is legislated against in any way that makes it not worth the time and effort of most of the population, it will become effectively valueless to the remainder because there will be no network effects.
IOW, if you can't use a Bitcoin to buy anything from a "legit" vendor, then the network effects will be such that it's worth under a buck to everyone else. A tiny corner of the financial world, indeed.
I strongly disagree. Let's say I have a business that sells product A. And just like me there are many other businesses but they have more money to invest in PR, etc. Now I do not want to go bankrupt just because my gov said "Bitcoin is illegal". And if my product is welcomed to Bitcoiners then Tor is the way to go about it. I do not go bankrupt and guess what?.... I don't even have to declare TAX! Like I said, black markets will emerge and that is NOT what the governments want. That's why they are trying to find a way to regulate BTC, which will not happen IMO. All right, so you're no different then a drug dealer at that point. Most legitimate businesses don't want to go that route. |
|
|
|
I say goodluck to any government who thinks it is easy to seize a Bitcoin wallet. Maybe people should start using brainwallets so that they can always access their funds even if a government thinks they "seized" the wallet. You still can't kill it, there will still be people who use it, it will just be pushed underground. Even if a government will punish someone by death if they use i, there will still be people who use it, just as there are people who will kill others even though it can be a offense punishable by death in many places.
Again, this applies to legitimate business, and people who don't want problems with the law, which are the majority. Obviously criminals don't give a shit about following regulations. What I'm saying is, the government can easily block it from becoming mainstream. Some people here have this idea that bitcoin can compete with the central banking system. The reality of it is, the major governments of the world won't let that happen. Free-markets are stronger than Governments. Wait, we have a free market? since when? Since Bitcoin stepped in the scene  Keep telling yourself that. All the big retailers have to follow government regulations regardless of how they take payment. |
|
|
|
I say goodluck to any government who thinks it is easy to seize a Bitcoin wallet. Maybe people should start using brainwallets so that they can always access their funds even if a government thinks they "seized" the wallet. You still can't kill it, there will still be people who use it, it will just be pushed underground. Even if a government will punish someone by death if they use i, there will still be people who use it, just as there are people who will kill others even though it can be a offense punishable by death in many places.
Again, this applies to legitimate business, and people who don't want problems with the law, which are the majority. Obviously criminals don't give a shit about following regulations. What I'm saying is, the government can easily block it from becoming mainstream. Some people here have this idea that bitcoin can compete with the central banking system. The reality of it is, the major governments of the world won't let that happen. Free-markets are stronger than Governments. Wait, we have a free market? since when? |
|
|
|
It was also very scammy. They were basically selling people gold/silver bullion at a HUGE markup with deceptive marketing. IMO, good riddance. If someone tried to pay me with a liberty dollar I'd call the cops on them. Basically every "liberty dollar" would be backed by like 50 cents worth of gold. Total scam.
Bullshit. Every Liberty Dollar that I've seen was redeemable on demand for a set weight of silver bullion - just as the original US Dollar was redeemable for a set weight of gold or silver. I have one such $20 silver certificate on my desk right now. Up until the feds came in and (illegally, in my mind) confiscated all their precious metals holdings, one could go to their Shelter System Warehouse in Coeur d'Alene, ID, and exchange this $20 Silver Certificate for one ounce of .999 fine silver. Reread what I said. At the time silver was like $10 - $15 / oz, so they charged a massive markup. That IMO is a scam. I never said they didn't honor redemptions. I said they charged a huge markup on their product and marketed it in a way to deceive stupid people. |
|
|
|
BTC has extremely low fees (for any large transaction) and is pretty fast.
For smaller amounts, you can get virtually no fees and super-fast times, with alt coins.
BTC > Wiring money.
And again, you're ignoring the costs and time to transfer money into BTC, and transfer BTC back into money. |
|
|
|
If something like this moves to the U.S. in a big way, it will be up to individual people to become mini-exchanges (as they are doing already) and do Moneypak and debit card deals, etc., all over the place.  Yeah, that's totally efficient, convenient, and secure. So buying btc is like doing a drug deal. |
|
|
|
|
The only thing that would make me think the photos are legit are the fact that anyone can get a cam whore to write anything on a sign and hold it up for a few bucks.
The "layla" "pictures" you could probably get for $20 or less.
That being said, it still looks like a horrible photoshop job.
|
|
|
|
You can wire transfer people money much easier then that.
You can even do it for free if you have certain business bank accounts (100K+ min balance ofc)
Did a wire transfer from one bank to another bank a few months back, the charge was like $80 or something and took 3-5 days. Nope, don't share your sentiment. I did a wire transfer once. Wired like 25K, the charge was $25 and took < 1 hour. Bitcoin isn't fee free. You have to convert $$ into bitcoin, send bitcoin, then the receiver has to convert bitcoin into $$. That process can take weeks. Coinbase has instant buys. As soon as I click buy, I get Bitcoin. Transferring to another wallet address takes a few minutes, maybe an hour or so. Depending on how the other person wants to convert BTC to fiat and their institution, it could take minutes, hours, or days tops. It doesn't take weeks, not sure if you've ever done a Bitcoin transaction before. Ok, coinbase charges a huge 1% fee (that's big in the currency transaction world. Trading between USD/EUR for instance, costs you a few pips at most). That's on top of the bid-ask spread . So if you're sending 10K, that's $100 for their fee alone. And I don't think you can instant buy that much. $1 for $100 is huge now? That's nothing compared to a Wire Transfer fee. I paid $80 just to wire $800. By my math that's 10%. Not a Mickey mouse bank either, Wells Fargo, the biggest bank in the US. By the way my daily buy limit on Coinbase is $50,000. Yeah, well, I would only wire transfer money if it's a large amount. Like > 10K. And you got scammed if you paid $80 to wire transfer money. Typical outgoing wire tx fee in the US is around $25 for domestic, $40 for international. $25 out of 10K is .25%. There's other ways to move money around that has less fees. Like you could use chase quickpay, which is free. People use wire transfers because they are very hard to reverse. If the recipient trusts the sender there's plenty of low cost ways to move money around. The OP was talking about moving around a fairly large amount of money. |
|
|
|
You can wire transfer people money much easier then that.
You can even do it for free if you have certain business bank accounts (100K+ min balance ofc)
Did a wire transfer from one bank to another bank a few months back, the charge was like $80 or something and took 3-5 days. Nope, don't share your sentiment. I did a wire transfer once. Wired like 25K, the charge was $25 and took < 1 hour. Bitcoin isn't fee free. You have to convert $$ into bitcoin, send bitcoin, then the receiver has to convert bitcoin into $$. That process can take weeks. Coinbase has instant buys. As soon as I click buy, I get Bitcoin. Transferring to another wallet address takes a few minutes, maybe an hour or so. Depending on how the other person wants to convert BTC to fiat and their institution, it could take minutes, hours, or days tops. It doesn't take weeks, not sure if you've ever done a Bitcoin transaction before. Ok, coinbase charges a huge 1% fee (that's big in the currency transaction world. Trading between USD/EUR for instance, costs you a few pips at most). That's on top of the bid-ask spread . So if you're sending 10K, that's $100 for their fee alone. And I don't think you can instant buy that much. |
|
|
|
You can wire transfer people money much easier then that.
You can even do it for free if you have certain business bank accounts (100K+ min balance ofc)
Did a wire transfer from one bank to another bank a few months back, the charge was like $80 or something and took 3-5 days. Nope, don't share your sentiment. I did a wire transfer once. Wired like 25K, the charge was $25 and took < 1 hour. Bitcoin isn't fee free. You have to convert $$ into bitcoin, send bitcoin, then the receiver has to convert bitcoin into $$. That process can take weeks. |
|
|
|
Hi skooter, Yes I know it's windows. There are other versions floating around, but I was hoping someone managed to make a linux version ready to run, complete with working catalyst drivers. Or if someone had managed to get Litecoin BAMT 1.3 or higher, then downloaded and compiled oclvanitygen on it, and let it rip. That's what I plan to do, but was hoping someone else already did it. Vanity addresses aren't popular. A lot of people only use addresses once for security/privacy concerns, and vanity addresses are the exact opposite of that. So the odds someone has something like this ready to go is pretty much nil. |
|
|
|
Hey, you vanity address people, how do I temporarily use my 5 GPU mining rig to find addresses? I've got 5 Sapphire 270X. No hard drive, uses BAMT. So ideally, someone has some image file ready to burn to a USB flash drive, then it will auto detect all my GPUs and crank out 5 threads or 5 instances of oclvanitygen and find me a nice address in 2 seconds. And no harm can be done, it will be completely offline. Is that the one engraved on your famous ring? It's a windows exe. Temporarily connect a hard drive with windows installed on it to the machine. https://github.com/downloads/samr7/vanitygen/vanitygen-0.20-win.zip |
|
|
|
|
You can wire transfer people money much easier then that.
You can even do it for free if you have certain business bank accounts (100K+ min balance ofc)
|
|
|
|
|
All right, you can keep telling yourself that.
But when there's profit to be made by controlling/colluding with other people to control 51% of the network, it can and will happen.
Right now there's no upside to controlling 51% of the network, because if someone did that at this point in time it would just make btc collapse and they'd get nothing out of it. But at some point, if btc becomes mainstream (and that's a HUGE if), someone's going to control it. That someone might be the government, or a corporation, but it'll happen.
|
|
|
|
No it is still a horrible idea.
Accept PayPal and you will lose money and probably lose your account.
Yeah.. basically if you take paypal from someone for bitcoin, you should also be willing to send them bitcoin up front while they mail you a check for it. You need THAT level of trust to accept paypal for bitcoin. |
|
|
|
Yes, but let's say the top 4 pools say they're going to set these rules and orphan any blocks who don't follow those rules.
To actually suceed they need significantly more than half the network, and like I said, if the top four pools threatened to do that, most miners would just switch pools. Thus dramaticly reducing the hashing power of the pools and preventing the attack on the network. Remember, it's not people and their GPUs supporting a protocol they believe in.
Only ASIC miners are relevant now, and the people who own them made an INVESTMENT to make a profit. If they have to deal with rules they don't like or agree with to make that profit, they will do so.
First off, many people invested in GPU's as well to mine and made a profit. Secondly, asic miners are profiting now and would still profit in the senario you described even if they choose not to support the currently four largest pools. You seem to be missing the entire point of bitcoin, it is a bunch of decentralized people supporting a protocol they believe in. That's the ONLY reason bitcoins have value. Because a bunch of people value it and the protocol as a way to transfer and store wealth. (LOL, typical libertarian bullshit).
Really? You couldn't make your point without trying to insult me? Also, I'm not libertarian, read Richard J. Maybury if you want to understand what I really believe instead of trying to use an Argumentum ad hominem fallacy. Wasn't talking about you specifically. A lot of bitcoin "supporters" seem to be these anti-government/libertarian types (which IMO is NOT a good thing. being anti-government makes it far more likely the government will fuck with you). The majority of ASIC miners aren't "supporting" a protocol they "believe" in. Those huge data centers were put together by businessmen who wanted to make a profit. I know a lot of people here have these pipe dreams and view bitcoin through rose colored glasses and refuse to see the realities of it. The reality is a small group of people have tremendous influence over bitcoin, and it's no longer decentralized at all. |
|
|
|
Yeah, let me know if you're going to sell bitcoin with paypal. I'll buy everything you got at $1000 / coin. I promise there won't be any chargebacks.  Well if it turns out that selling Bitcoin is not against the TOS, you may well not be able to do a chargeback, as the transaction would be on the Blockchain as proof that a commodity was sold. Because you know, nobody ever uses a stolen paypal account/credit card on the internet. |
|
|
|
Yeah, let me know if you're going to sell bitcoin with paypal. I'll buy everything you got at $1000 / coin. I promise there won't be any chargebacks. |
|
|
|
I would bow down to a 1337HaXoR vanity. just 6years for 50%  How slow is your computer? @ 20 MKey / sec (GeForce 660 Ti), it's more like 20 days for 50% Someone with better hardware then me could probably do it in a week. http://imgur.com/NVejAgvNon case sensitive would take a couple days for me. If you have like 4 top of the line GPUs you could do it in half a day. |
|
|
|
The top 4 mining pools (who control 60% of the hash power) could come together right now and say we're charging a 2% transaction fee. Pay it or your Tx will be declined. If other miners accept Txes that don't pay the fee, your block will be declined and orphaned.
This couldn't happen with a decentralized currency, but the fact is bitcoin is very centralized.
While four mining pools currently control 60% of the hashing power, I should point out that they are POOLS. The mining power is still decentralized because if those pools did try to implement a mandatory fee the individual miners would still have the choice to switch to a different pool which didn't implement mandatory fees. Even if all the current pools implemented a mandatory fee, miners could still mine solo or even create their own pools. In fact pools increase decentralization because they allow small miners to add their hashing power to network. Because miners can mine on whichever pool they choose, they can support the pools which implement the protocol they want to see used. This all prevents big, cetralized mining companies from controling the network. Summary: Large pools increase decentralization. P.S. Was proofreading real quick and reallized the summary sounds really funny if taken out of context. P.P.S. Again, apologies for any typos. Yes, but let's say the top 4 pools say they're going to set these rules and orphan any blocks who don't follow those rules. Chances are those 4 pools will INCREASE in size. Because anyone NOT in those pools gets zero for their work. And who's going to be the first one to leave the pools to go join a pool that's not generating any BTC? Remember, it's not people and their GPUs supporting a protocol they believe in (LOL, typical libertarian bullshit). Only ASIC miners are relevant now, and the people who own them made an INVESTMENT to make a profit. If they have to deal with rules they don't like or agree with to make that profit, they will do so. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
