OT Bitcoin and quick wealth

[sipmeister]

Originally Posted by Clean39T

I once saw graffiti on a billboard in Portland that read: “F*ck Capitolism”.


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People will often repeat the things they have been taught.

[Peter P.]

Originally Posted by fiamme red

Bitcoin is very useful for ransomware hackers, because it's hard to trace the recipient of the payment.

Bitcoin can also be demanded in bomb threats:

Yeah but, what makes it any different from a credit card, PayPal, etc.?

Why do I want to exchange my my dollars for this crypto-stuff just to pay somebody?

[Peter P.]

Originally Posted by PQJ

Not to beet a dead hoarse or anything, but I think you should of used the word "brakes" in the quote infra. At least according to my humboldt opinion.

I believe the correct phrase is "should HAVE", unless that was an intentional error as well.

[fiamme red]

Originally Posted by Peter P.

Yeah but, what makes it any different from a credit card, PayPal, etc.?

Why do I want to exchange my my dollars for this crypto-stuff just to pay somebody?

If a hacker uses malware to encrypt your hard drive, you'll probably have to pay in Bitcoin for the decryption key.

[Clean39T]

Originally Posted by sipmeister

People will often repeat the things they have been taught.

The funny part was capitol vs. capital.


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[carpediemracing]

Originally Posted by Peter P.

Yeah but, what makes it any different from a credit card, PayPal, etc.?

Why do I want to exchange my my dollars for this crypto-stuff just to pay somebody?

I asked a coworker today about crypto in general. He said that bitcoin was his currency of choice when buying drugs, and in fact he had bitcoin when it was about $50 for exactly that reason. He doesn't do drugs now, to be clear, but that was why he used bitcoin back in the day.

[jimoots]

Originally Posted by Peter P.

What product or service is being provided? Who is the typical customer? What's the benefit to the consumer? If bitcoin has to do with money, how do I convert my real money to bitcoin, why would I want to, and how do I convert "my" bitcoin back to real money?

Is this a straw man?

Bitcoin and crypto more broadly isn't a product or service in the sense of a typical product or service, to think about it as such is a disservice to your understanding of what it actually is.

Much easier to think about it as a currency - even then it may test you as it's a twist, but at the heart it is a means of storing and transferring wealth.

Fiat money (i.e Money that is backed by nothing other than a government guarantee) is just as absurd a proposition as Bitcoin when you look at the fundamentals of either.

I'm not saying either are absurd, but if you point and laugh at Bitcoin, have a serious think about what the dollars in your bank account actually represent.

Originally Posted by Peter P.

Yeah but, what makes it any different from a credit card, PayPal, etc.?

It is not policed by a central government, nobody can print bitcoin at will (there is a fixed and defined supply which will eventually end).

You can move bitcoin (physically or electronically) cross border very easily.

Some crypto have privacy at their core and it is very difficult to determine where money goes to/from when it changes hands.

Bitcoin has moved from what most would term a transactional currency into a digital asset, at least for the moment. Think of it as digital gold.

Other crypto are a bit better at handling transactions and less volatile in terms of price movements.

Originally Posted by Peter P.

Why do I want to exchange my my dollars for this crypto-stuff just to pay somebody?

If you want to send dollars to another country you may find crypto is much cheaper. You might decide that you don't want the government to know what you spend your dollars on.

You may not want to and that is fine.

Institutionally there is a big market for use of crypto to shift funds around and what not too.

I guess it's useful to think about when you use Paypal, someone's paying them for that luxury. Likewise, when you buy via credit card, same thing.

Crypto has potential to be cheaper, faster and more private. Whether or not you as a customer value cheaper/faster/more private is one thing, but businesses may start to display preferences for what they want to accept.

Originally Posted by fiamme red

Bitcoin is very useful for ransomware hackers, because it's hard to trace the recipient of the payment.

https://blog.emsisoft.com/en/33977/i...ce-of-bitcoin/

Bitcoin can also be demanded in bomb threats: https://forums.thepaceline.net/showthread.php?p=2469079.

Bitcoin is super easy to work out where funds go because the ledger is public and you can see what wallet the funds go from/to. It's definitely not private and you wouldn't want to be buying or doing anything illegal with it because at any point in the future the ledger could be used as evidence against you.

With that privacy bit out the way, the main reason people will say pay me in bitcoin is because once you've sent the funds, the cops can't claw it back. It's gone.

Also noting that if you're in Russia, you probably don't care - Western authorities have little sway. And Bitcoin is relatively easy to access for the layperson with support at all trading exchanges.

Other Crytpo like Z-Cash or Monero are much better at anonymising where funds are going from/to.

[MattTuck]

With that privacy bit out the way, the main reason people will say pay me in bitcoin is because once you've sent the funds, the cops can't claw it back. It's gone.

Also noting that if you're in Russia, you probably don't care - Western authorities have little sway. And Bitcoin is relatively easy to access for the layperson with support at all trading exchanges.

Just to add to this section, the exchanges are where any future regulations will impact. Not on the algorithm itself. I am sure coinbase will turn over coins, keys, and names when faced with a warrant. The government has seized bitcoins related to the silk road (really they just got the encryption keys).

If you want to avoid entanglement with law enforcement, best to do it directly on the block chain yourself and keep your keys very hidden.

[jimoots]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

Just to add to this section, the exchanges are where any future regulations will impact. Not on the algorithm itself. I am sure coinbase will turn over coins, keys, and names when faced with a warrant. The government has seized bitcoins related to the silk road (really they just got the encryption keys).

If you want to avoid entanglement with law enforcement, best to do it directly on the block chain yourself and keep your keys very hidden.

Yep, exchanges are a huge point of weakness - both in terms of security and privacy. I'm not saying exchanges are soft on security, but if you look at the system, that's the attack/vulnerability point. It's also the point you go from having money with a legal name attached to bitcoin that are attached to a wallet that has no ownership information (just the keys for access).

Security is obvious, they are a third-party and they can have their own vulnerabilities. Same as your bank account from managing your own passwords, and then who knows what a hacker could engineer to come in from the back end.

Privacy is the other one - the easiest way to buy in to crypto is via an exchange, and if you want to do that the exchange will verify you so they comply with KYC/AML laws. Once your bitcoin is connected to your exchange account, it's no longer anonymous and you can follow the bitcoin across the ledger - i.e. where you spend or transfer it and so on.

Ultimately if you don't have the key it's not your bitcoin, so don't keep any crypto you're not comfortable in exchange accounts.

[laupsi]

EM is out, future uncertain, but then it always was w/Cripto

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by Peter P.

Yeah but, what makes it any different from a credit card, PayPal, etc.?

Why do I want to exchange my my dollars for this crypto-stuff just to pay somebody?

I am reminded of this old meme.




But seriously, what makes it different is that paypal and your credit card are still denominated in dollars, or if you're in England, Pounds, or if you're in Europe, Euros... etc. Bitcoin is its own currency. It doesn't have an understanding of dollars or Euros. The transactions are only accounted for in bitcoins.

If you put $100 in your Paypal account, and just left it there for many years, you'd have exactly $100 in your account (less any fees Paypal charged you). If you put $100 into bitcoin, you'd have (ball park) 0.00202 bitcoins in your account today, and in many years. In general, the purchasing power of US dollars has declined over time due to inflation. Bitcoin is expected to have limited inflation.

Peter, I posted a longer response on the previous page or 2, you should read it if you haven't already and are truly curious about crypto assets.

Bottom line is, there is a ton of information and resources out there, so if you are willing to invest some time to learn, you should be able to come up to speed and really appreciate the block chain/crypto currency concept.

[Peter P.]

Originally Posted by jimmy-moots

... the cops can't claw it back. It's gone.

What do you mean "it's gone"? If I'm paid in bitcoin, somehow I have possession of it. Why can't law enforcement seize it if they arrest me and have legal grounds to seize my assets?

[jimoots]

Originally Posted by Peter P.

What do you mean "it's gone"? If I'm paid in bitcoin, somehow I have possession of it. Why can't law enforcement seize it if they arrest me and have legal grounds to seize my assets?

They would need your private key to be able to take ownership of your bitcoin.

A private key is a long string that objectively you could store anywhere and it has no tie to an owner.

It looks like this:

0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4140

So sure, if the police find your private key they can take your bitcoin, but if you can hide that key then nobody can take it ever.

You could even memorise the key.

You're probably wondering how is that long string of characters on a piece of paper connected to digital money.

That private key connects with a 'public key' on the blockchain which is where your funds are stored. It effectively unlocks your ownership of the bitcoin on the blockchain to do with as you wish.

To the original scenario. If someone in Russia has bitcoin that you sent them, they have the private key to that bitcoin. There is no way to reverse the transaction. The funds are gone. And law enforcement stateside has no relationship with law enforcement in Russia so they're effectively in the wind an are able to convert that bitcoin to other currency in ways that are more difficult to do if you were stateside.

[Louis]

Originally Posted by jimmy-moots

So sure, if the police find your private key they can take your bitcoin, but if you can hide that key then nobody can take it ever.

I'm not sure if they're still like that, but at one time weren't Swiss bank accounts supposedly something similar?

[jimoots]

Originally Posted by Louis

I'm not sure if they're still like that, but at one time weren't Swiss bank accounts supposedly something similar?

Similar in that the bank account is numbered, but the Swiss bank does know your identity.

With bitcoin (and cryptocurrency more broadly) there is no third-party on which you need to place trust. The ledger is distributed rather than being held at a central position. And obviously the ledger doesn't record your identity.

The catch to that is that when moving your wealth into the system, most people use an exchange, so there is a degree of losing that anonymity that occurs there.

But you can buy bitcoin from someone, meet in person, exchange cash for bitcoin, and it's about as anonymous as you could get from that point on. Marketplaces for that sort of thing exist.