Whatever you do, do not send any money to funds-recovery.com or anyone else.  They are attempting to scam you further.

And Corporate Creations is a legit company so it seems unlikely that they are related to the scammers.

Or let people pay for what they use instead of making other people pay for it at market rates.  Why should person X have to pay for person's Y's usage?

They probably will be very progressive when it comes to crypto - at least "progressive" as it is embodied in the US.  And in the US "progressive" really means "regressive" where they want power and control.  They regress back to the old Democrat position that your life is not your own and that it belongs to someone else, as in the old south, today though the Democrat party is a bit more subtle about it and uses flowery language like "equity" and "fairness" without ever defining those terms.  At root they go back to their old position that they can take what they want by force and you have to claim to like it.  BOHICA.

"Extreme fear"?

I don't know any *investors* who are fearful, let along "extreme fear".  Maybe some short term traders who are leveraged might be, but any investor knows the deal with bitcoin if they have followed it for any length of time:  buy and hold for any reasonable length of time and you will have come out way ahead so far.

If these people really knew anything that involves short term direction, they would be quite well off.  Instead they are hungry for clicks. 

This makes sense if you are parking somewhere that has "free" charging for your vehicle.  You are essentially shifting the cost to someone else, probably the type of people who really think that there is such a thing as a "free" way to charge a vehicle.  Maybe it is "free to you" but someone else is bearing the cost.

You hit the nail on the head. "Protect consumers", "for the children", and "for the common good" (etc) are all phrases that mean politicians want power and the money that comes with it while trying to hide it.

When you hear those, watch your wallet and your liberties.

I saw an article last week talking about how several years ago a lot of the trading in bitcoin occurred during what would be nighttime in the US whereas now a large majority occurs during the day in the US.  To me it shows how the bitcoin economic power is leaving China.

I don't know what anyone would expect though:  authoritarians, statists and totalitarians don't like people to be free to protect themselves from inflation and their governmental power, so the Communist Chinese Party couldn't abide by having bitcoin legal.

Wherever you see governments cracking down on bitcoin, know that liberty is then being curtailed there and prepare accordingly.

One certainly hope we have a merry Christmas! :-)

As the amount of fiat increases that goes into bitcoin, it will help reduce volatility because as the market increases, the amount of bitcoin or fiat that is required to move the market will increase also. 

The SEC always claims to be about protecting investors, but in reality they are more of a CYA entity.  How else could they miss Bernie Madoff for decades?  How else could they miss Stanford Financial?  They talk a good game, but are really more reactive than proactive.  I hope they approve one, but if the last ~8 years is any guide, it will be only when they are dragged kicking and screaming to do it.

Everyone has had a fair chance to get involved.  It has been open from the beginning.

However, instead of blaming someone else, one should take a look at the reasons that "poor nations" are poor.  It is about the choices of (some of) the people. 

When you elect a group that doesn't believe in freedom, the rule of law, stability, or property rights you end up with a country that can't compete.  When you elect a group that believes that envy, division and hate are the means to get and maintain power (e.g. the current administration in Washington DC), you end up driving people to somewhere that believes in equality, liberty, and the rule of law.  In short, what you end with is countries that can't compete (the US eventually if it drives business from it with high corporate taxes) or destroy themselves (Venezuela for example). 

As I said, it is about choices, and the reason there is inequality is because of the choices that have been made and the consequences of those choices.

And it as been said, but bitcoin was never about "reduc[ing] wealth inequalities."  It has been about protecting people from the kind of people - socialists, communists, fascists, authoritarians and totalitarians - who cause wealth inequality and the destruction of people and countries the world over. 

Personal, buying (or mining) bitcoin and holding has been a good strategy as long as you can keep from panicking and your timeframe isn't just a few days or weeks.

If any of the platforms was insured or could be trusted to have full collateral for the assets, that might change the calculations, but for 2% or 4% the risk/reward is not there.

You aren't stretching it too far at all.  This is the issue.  The US government and corporate toadies are already choking off payments to people who they disagree with and I am sure it is going on everywhere and will continue to spread.  Bitcoin as peer to peer helps to get around this.  Governments around the world are teaming up with private companies to shut down speech, a perfect setup that fascists would love and yet look at Twitter, Facebook etc and the US Government.

Eventually one hopes one can remain completely in crypto so you don't need to deal with the totalitarian/authoritarians around the world.  

The honest people are the ones who pay the price, the dishonest find a way around it causing them to demand more control.  Bitcoin is one of the escape valves that will keep the people of the world free.

 

This is a good point.  If you are building from source, make sure you are checking out  v22.0 not  v0.22.0 as it will error out:

e.g.
error: pathspec 'v0.22.0' did not match any file(s) known to git

I agree. I just wonder who would be stupid enough to pay taxes with bitcoin?  One should use a currency who's value is inflating away (decreasing) like fiat instead of an asset that has had more than a decade of increasing in value. Perhaps at fiat equilibrium that would make sense, but that's likely another few orders of magnitude away.

When the world figures out that debt levels are not sustainable and people start protecting themselves by buying PMs and crypto, those people, companies and countries who already realize this will be well prepared.

He sounds like Warren Buffett decades ago not investing in tech companies because he "doesn't understand them."   If you couldn't understand Microsoft, Intel or Apple in 1990 or 1995, you must be pretty stupid. I don't think he is stupid though about investing, just about his support of fascism and socialism etc.

You would think that was the case, but think about these:
1.  It is illegal to come across the border and yet the President is not enforcing the law.
2. It is illegal to commit perjury, but see Clapper and Brennan before the US Congress.  See "parallel construction"
3. It is illegal to store (or remove it) on person devices, but see HRC.
4. It is illegal to discriminate based on skin color, but see "affirmative action".
 
etc

So a more accurate statement today might be: "that is the law, and it may be obeyed depending on if one is in a politically favored class or not."

The thing to remember is that (per AP), bitcoin usage is optional.  So all these people who oppose the law don't have to use it.  They can just go about their business as if nothing happened.  That is the nature of a free society where people can use things if they wish to, and not if they don't.

The key will come if/when a socialist, fascist, communist or some other authoritarian is elected.  Then those Salvadorans who are familiar with bitcoin and have assets in bitcoin will be somewhat protected.  Everyone else will have some time to protect themselves and their assets also.  Of course they'll probably want to swap an "official wallet" for an open source wallet at that time.

It elicits alarm in Washington because DC has gotten so far away from the founding principals of liberty and limited government that they fear people having control of their own money and lives.

The NYT is - knowingly or not - carrying water for the controlling powers in DC and statists and authoritarians worldwide.  Their policies such as perennial inflation, huge tax and regulatory burdens hurt the least well off the most, yet these same people attempt to claim the opposite.


Bitcoin is about freedom.  You are free to use bitcoin, or not.  Unlike the politicians around the world who have such terrible ideas they have to be imposed by force, not voluntary agreement.

There are several reasons, accurate or not:

First, the belief from many that stopping fighting somewhere else or at least confining it there can prevent it from spreading.

Second, that innocent people deserve help - e.g. to prevent things like the Holocaust, genocide etc. Look at the hundreds of millions that were killed by the statist authoritarians over the last century. 

Third, the (perhaps real reason) deep state (per Glenn Greenwald in 2017 ) is invested in power and war. For example, look at who provided the "evidence" of WMDs?  The three letter agencies (DoD, NSA, CIA, etc).  Look who provided the "intelligence" about Afghanistan?  Three letter agencies again. All unelected bureaucrats who have nothing to fear from being wrong for decades or committing perjury - Clapper and Brennan - about spying on the US (and the world) per Snowden.  Some, like Clapper and Brennan don't believe in liberty, only power and will do much to undermine the US overseas in order to get people to distrust liberty.

Fourth, nation building - give people a taste of a republican form of government combined with democracy and they'll be able to keep it.

Number 1 and 2 are often used as public rationale while 3 is the deep rationale.  Good, sincere people may believe in the first two while being used by those in 3.

Which are real, which are accurate, which make sense, I don't know, but those are some reasons about which I have read.  Personally, I think a lot of people believe #2, and really mean it. They're being hijacked though.

I wouldn't think it would matter - it would impact using a scanner to scan a bar code, a cash register, or a credit card etc.  So as you say, someone would just use cash, but I don't see why it would matter MORE for bitcoin than for the rest.

As Sithara007, what do you expect from a left wing paper that doesn't want people to have ownership of their lives?  They want power and that means controlling people's money so that they can inflate away its value and preventing people from having privacy - hence the desire to have no one have any privacy for their money or anything else.

End to end, on device encryption will be key and obfuscation of transactions on the block chain critical over time.

It can be a financial savior if people prepare in time. The people of Hong Kong could've converted some assets to bitcoin to save them from the communists. The people of Taiwan should be protecting themselves this way.  Just as the people of Afghanistan have had the chance to do so.

Anything that needs a cross border asset transfer that can't be confiscated easily if someone doesn't know you have it.

Just to be clear to those advocating for some type of authoritarian system:  I’m not going to accept some fake freedom where I am “free” to work as I want while you are free to dispose of my life as you want. Someplace where everyone is both a slave master and a slave.

If you think that is a good idea, I suggest that you go and live somewhere that is practicing that for a few years.  See what it is like to live under the whip hand.  If you survive, come and report back to us afterward, but don't pretend that it is for our own good that you want to impose your whims on people who want to be free.  It is for your own selfish desire to control everyone else.