Crypto Currency Thread (Vol.2)
Discussion
OoopsVoss said:
With North Korea and anyone else on a sanctions list using the platform, this is hardly a surprise. If you dick with the hegemony of Western economics and more important Foreign Policy objectives - you are on a hiding to nothing. It doesn't matter what the little people think about democracy and perceived ills / injustices of the current system - you are messing with forces way more powerful than Mickey Mouse regulators.
This isn't new or even limited to BTC, anyone dense enough to think they can take on the likes of OFAC and its reach (and what they can pull behind the scenes internationally); is going to lose. OFAC which gets most of its powers from the Trading With the Enemy Act (and then its peace time extension) - basically exists on a permeant war footing - to remove ANY economic threat to US interests. They can paper up anything in the anonymity space as a threat and will act on it. The laws / decrees that created OFACs existence are also those that spawned executive order 6102 (for the gold bugs).
Even the fines they can levy in recent times are disproportionate to offence (ask BNP). It will also be an existential and omnipresent threat to anonymous financial networks always. Its why Crypto will never, ever, ever be allowed to usurp $ (mainly), EUR, £ control. Thinking otherwise and you are on a hiding to nothing.
This is simply "f
k around and find out".
You're labouring under the assumption that using BTC can be stopped byt the powers that be, when it's specifically designed not to be.This isn't new or even limited to BTC, anyone dense enough to think they can take on the likes of OFAC and its reach (and what they can pull behind the scenes internationally); is going to lose. OFAC which gets most of its powers from the Trading With the Enemy Act (and then its peace time extension) - basically exists on a permeant war footing - to remove ANY economic threat to US interests. They can paper up anything in the anonymity space as a threat and will act on it. The laws / decrees that created OFACs existence are also those that spawned executive order 6102 (for the gold bugs).
Even the fines they can levy in recent times are disproportionate to offence (ask BNP). It will also be an existential and omnipresent threat to anonymous financial networks always. Its why Crypto will never, ever, ever be allowed to usurp $ (mainly), EUR, £ control. Thinking otherwise and you are on a hiding to nothing.
This is simply "f
k around and find out".OoopsVoss said:
With North Korea and anyone else on a sanctions list using the platform
Yes, this sort of judgement is new. Very new, and unprecedented. You are missing the forest for the trees. Open source code runs on almost every single computer and device on the planet. They punished him and charged him with writing code and releasing it, thus he was liable for others actions. He is being held liable for other people's actions using the smart contract software he helped develop. He did not personally handle funds, he did not personally launder the 'money'. You did not need to use the hosted front end in order to interact with the smart contract.
This is not just a fundamental misunderstanding of how immutable smart contract protocols work, but there is seemingly no end to the liability this could cause for anyone who builds anything, and not just software. Is Microsoft liable if someone uses a Windows PC to hack a bank? Is a gun manufacturer liable if someone performs a robbery with one of their guns?
Edited by RichTT on Wednesday 15th May 13:29
RichTT said:
OoopsVoss said:
With North Korea and anyone else on a sanctions list using the platform
Yes, this sort of judgement is new. Very new, and unprecedented. You are missing the forest for the trees. Open source code runs on almost every single computer and device on the planet. They punished him and charged him with writing code and releasing it, thus he was liable for others actions. He is being held liable for other people's actions using the smart contract software he helped develop. He did not personally handle funds, he did not personally launder the 'money'. You did not need to use the hosted front end in order to interact with the smart contract.
This is not just a fundamental misunderstanding of how immutable smart contract protocols work, but there is seemingly no end to the liability this could cause for anyone who builds anything, and not just software. Is Microsoft liable if someone uses a Windows PC to hack a bank? Is a gun manufacturer liable if someone performs a robbery with one of their guns?
Edited by RichTT on Wednesday 15th May 13:29
You are living in a fantasy land. Jesus could have come up with all the jargon in your post. However, they just don't give a f
k. They look at this as threat to Foreign Policy objective. That trumps all.You think you have invented something great, it might be - but the powers that be have determined its a threat.
EDIT - I'm not missing anything - I didn't say it was correct, but I do happen to know exactly what these entities can do and reach they have.
Edited by OoopsVoss on Wednesday 15th May 13:45
BandOfBrothers said:
My opinions? OK then...
Anything that isn't Bitcoin is junk.
Many "next big thing"s may well be pumped to the moon, but they will crash back to zero.
Bitcoin is uniquely valuable due to its combination of characteristics and longevity.
Anything that is controlled by an organisation or person, which is all of them, is worthless.
AgreeAnything that isn't Bitcoin is junk.
Many "next big thing"s may well be pumped to the moon, but they will crash back to zero.
Bitcoin is uniquely valuable due to its combination of characteristics and longevity.
Anything that is controlled by an organisation or person, which is all of them, is worthless.
BTC is the only thing I will be holding on to in the long term.
But that doesn't mean you can not use some of the other crypto projects to make short term gains and convert the profits back in to BTC
OoopsVoss said:
You haven' done enough research. Go look at the actual points in my post re Trading With the Enemy Act, and EO6102 and you won't be surprised at ALL what happens when you dick around with this stuff. Cry me a river for this guy, its hardly news that there are unsafe convictions out there. Ever looked at something in the real world like the Libor case (which was utter BS).
You are living in a fantasy land. Jesus could have come up with all the jargon in your post. However, they just don't give a fk. They look at this as threat to Foreign Policy objective. That trumps all.
You think you have invented something great, it might be - but the powers that be have determined its a threat.
EDIT - I'm not missing anything - I didn't say it was correct, but I do happen to know exactly what these entities can do and reach they have.
Well that's why the decentralized and pseudo anonymous characteristics of BTC are so important.You are living in a fantasy land. Jesus could have come up with all the jargon in your post. However, they just don't give a f
k. They look at this as threat to Foreign Policy objective. That trumps all.You think you have invented something great, it might be - but the powers that be have determined its a threat.
EDIT - I'm not missing anything - I didn't say it was correct, but I do happen to know exactly what these entities can do and reach they have.
Edited by OoopsVoss on Wednesday 15th May 13:45
And the reason why Satoshi had to disappear after bootstrapping Bitcoin.
Because this makes it impossible for organisations to go after a single person or a centralized potential point of failure.
How are you going to shut down or censure a truelly decentralized protocol running on millions of computers worldwide?
ERIKM400 said:
BandOfBrothers said:
My opinions? OK then...
Anything that isn't Bitcoin is junk.
Many "next big thing"s may well be pumped to the moon, but they will crash back to zero.
Bitcoin is uniquely valuable due to its combination of characteristics and longevity.
Anything that is controlled by an organisation or person, which is all of them, is worthless.
AgreeAnything that isn't Bitcoin is junk.
Many "next big thing"s may well be pumped to the moon, but they will crash back to zero.
Bitcoin is uniquely valuable due to its combination of characteristics and longevity.
Anything that is controlled by an organisation or person, which is all of them, is worthless.
BTC is the only thing I will be holding on to in the long term.
But that doesn't mean you can not use some of the other crypto projects to make short term gains and convert the profits back in to BTC
BTC has fairly regular peaks and troughs.
I've just sold out of my BTC holdings. I will buy back in once the price halves.
BandOfBrothers said:
Altcoins are complete speculation - you are entirely dependent upon timing the market with them, not a great investment strategy.
BTC has fairly regular peaks and troughs.
I've just sold out of my BTC holdings. I will buy back in once the price halves.
We've not come out of the trough yet though. BTC has fairly regular peaks and troughs.
I've just sold out of my BTC holdings. I will buy back in once the price halves.
ERIKM400 said:
Well that's why the decentralized and pseudo anonymous characteristics of BTC are so important.
And the reason why Satoshi had to disappear after bootstrapping Bitcoin.
Because this makes it impossible for organisations to go after a single person or a centralized potential point of failure.
How are you going to shut down or censure a truelly decentralized protocol running on millions of computers worldwide?
The Tornado clowns knew they were running a laundry business. Pretending otherwise is nonsense - they even admitted it but said "hey its a robot, blame the user". Mixers are known to facilitate crime (you know nasty stuff like drugs, people smuggling, slavery etc etc), if they were really about privacy and human rights - they didn't need to profit from it.And the reason why Satoshi had to disappear after bootstrapping Bitcoin.
Because this makes it impossible for organisations to go after a single person or a centralized potential point of failure.
How are you going to shut down or censure a truelly decentralized protocol running on millions of computers worldwide?
Anything that is profited from that promotes crime will be and is fair game - especially if it goes up against the "man". Part of BTCs lure to many is they actually believe in the anarchic promise to take over FIAT currency (witnessed in here). People are then surprised when the system fights back?
Satoshi doing a Lord Lucan, was probably due to being aware of exactly what human nature was going to do with the creation. Most of it won't be good.
RichTT said:
BandOfBrothers said:
Altcoins are complete speculation - you are entirely dependent upon timing the market with them, not a great investment strategy.
BTC has fairly regular peaks and troughs.
I've just sold out of my BTC holdings. I will buy back in once the price halves.
We've not come out of the trough yet though. BTC has fairly regular peaks and troughs.
I've just sold out of my BTC holdings. I will buy back in once the price halves.
Think I'll stick with my trusty tea leaves, thank you!
ERIKM400 said:
Well that's why the decentralized and pseudo anonymous characteristics of BTC are so important.
And the reason why Satoshi had to disappear after bootstrapping Bitcoin.
Because this makes it impossible for organisations to go after a single person or a centralized potential point of failure.
How are you going to shut down or censure a truelly decentralized protocol running on millions of computers worldwide?
You don't, you simply shutdown the egress points or make it very difficult to offramp. Binance is the biggest Crypto exchange, the UK government stopped withdrawals from Binance to UK banks in a snap due to irregularities, that is just one example. Now imagine the Governments decided they'd make a concerted effort and stop withdrawals to lots of other places. BTC is worthless unless you can turn it into fiat at some point which the BTC evangelists seem to be in total denial about. And the reason why Satoshi had to disappear after bootstrapping Bitcoin.
Because this makes it impossible for organisations to go after a single person or a centralized potential point of failure.
How are you going to shut down or censure a truelly decentralized protocol running on millions of computers worldwide?
The powers that be could literally stop BTC in it's tracks tomorrow if they wanted to, they don't need to kill the network, they just need to make it very difficult to turn digital currency into real money.
Just because BTC is better than FIAT (sic), avoids currency debasement etc, is kinda mute when dealing with politics/government. Just because it's obvious regulators / OFAC / pick your enforcement agency can cause it to collapse, doesn't mean you support those actions. But it's a 20,000lb gorilla in the room.
Should Trump get in (looking likely - grrr), he's going to do something epically dumb, that makes a great case for the use of BTC. He is gunning for control of the Fed. I get all the arguments (before techno mumbo jumbo), why BTC is superior - but you cannot avoid the ever present risk of the system shutting it down. And they can.
Without a centralised authority it cannot pivot to even "work" with the authorities. It's completely alien and could even be an existential threat to FIAT hegemony.
It may never come to pass, and BTC a limited co-existence, but that's far short of the maximalist who thinks it should replace FIAT.
Should Trump get in (looking likely - grrr), he's going to do something epically dumb, that makes a great case for the use of BTC. He is gunning for control of the Fed. I get all the arguments (before techno mumbo jumbo), why BTC is superior - but you cannot avoid the ever present risk of the system shutting it down. And they can.
Without a centralised authority it cannot pivot to even "work" with the authorities. It's completely alien and could even be an existential threat to FIAT hegemony.
It may never come to pass, and BTC a limited co-existence, but that's far short of the maximalist who thinks it should replace FIAT.
OoopsVoss said:
Just because BTC is better than FIAT (sic), avoids currency debasement etc, is kinda mute when dealing with politics/government. Just because it's obvious regulators / OFAC / pick your enforcement agency can cause it to collapse, doesn't mean you support those actions. But it's a 20,000lb gorilla in the room.
Should Trump get in (looking likely - grrr), he's going to do something epically dumb, that makes a great case for the use of BTC. He is gunning for control of the Fed. I get all the arguments (before techno mumbo jumbo), why BTC is superior - but you cannot avoid the ever present risk of the system shutting it down. And they can.
Without a centralised authority it cannot pivot to even "work" with the authorities. It's completely alien and could even be an existential threat to FIAT hegemony.
It may never come to pass, and BTC a limited co-existence, but that's far short of the maximalist who thinks it should replace FIAT.
I'd be interested to hear how you think it can be shut down, because from my reading there would only be two likely survivors of even a nuclear mass extinction event: cockroaches and BTC.Should Trump get in (looking likely - grrr), he's going to do something epically dumb, that makes a great case for the use of BTC. He is gunning for control of the Fed. I get all the arguments (before techno mumbo jumbo), why BTC is superior - but you cannot avoid the ever present risk of the system shutting it down. And they can.
Without a centralised authority it cannot pivot to even "work" with the authorities. It's completely alien and could even be an existential threat to FIAT hegemony.
It may never come to pass, and BTC a limited co-existence, but that's far short of the maximalist who thinks it should replace FIAT.
BandOfBrothers said:
I'd be interested to hear how you think it can be shut down, because from my reading there would only be two likely survivors of even a nuclear mass extinction event: cockroaches and BTC.
It can't be shutdown just like 100 years ago they couldn't make you hand in your Gold.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
On April 6, 1933, The New York Times wrote, under the headline Hoarding of Gold, "The Executive Order issued by the President yesterday amplifies and particularizes his earlier warnings against hoarding. On March 6, taking advantage of a wartime statute that had not been repealed, he issued Presidential Proclamation 2039 that forbade the hoarding 'of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency', under penalty of $10,000 fine or ten years' imprisonment or both
Scootersp said:
BandOfBrothers said:
I'd be interested to hear how you think it can be shut down, because from my reading there would only be two likely survivors of even a nuclear mass extinction event: cockroaches and BTC.
It can't be shutdown just like 100 years ago they couldn't make you hand in your Gold.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
On April 6, 1933, The New York Times wrote, under the headline Hoarding of Gold, "The Executive Order issued by the President yesterday amplifies and particularizes his earlier warnings against hoarding. On March 6, taking advantage of a wartime statute that had not been repealed, he issued Presidential Proclamation 2039 that forbade the hoarding 'of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency', under penalty of $10,000 fine or ten years' imprisonment or both
There is no way for the government to take your BTC unless you give them your (digital number) key.
Similarly, if you have just say 3 surviving PCs, BTC works.
BandOfBrothers said:
There is no way for the government to take your BTC unless you give them your (digital number) key.
Similarly, if you have just say 3 surviving PCs, BTC works.
It's entirely useless if you can't spend it though. Similarly, if you have just say 3 surviving PCs, BTC works.
The government could easily control the on/off ramps and at which point the whole thing becomes a load of 1s and 0s in cyberspace. You can't spend it without swapping it for £ or $, nobody is able to buy more, and nobody can sell what they own.
Of course the government can - and has - seized BTC, so the argument they can't take it wouldn't appear to hold water. I doubt many criminals hand over their keys, but the government can still confiscate them.
Condi said:
BandOfBrothers said:
There is no way for the government to take your BTC unless you give them your (digital number) key.
Similarly, if you have just say 3 surviving PCs, BTC works.
It's entirely useless if you can't spend it though. Similarly, if you have just say 3 surviving PCs, BTC works.
The government could easily control the on/off ramps and at which point the whole thing becomes a load of 1s and 0s in cyberspace. You can't spend it without swapping it for £ or $, nobody is able to buy more, and nobody can sell what they own.
Of course the government can - and has - seized BTC, so the argument they can't take it wouldn't appear to hold water. I doubt many criminals hand over their keys, but the government can still confiscate them.
Sending and receiving BTC is spending it!
You transfer to the seller he gives you a goat, drugs, a car, gun, bread, whatever you are buying.
No government can stop that, even if everyone on the planet agreed to band together to try to stop it, they couldn't.
All you need is a mobile phone, a PC, or other type of computer for each party to the transaction and ideally one more. That's it.
Even if those weren't available, the BTC doesn't disappear or get taken, it just sits there until someone with the correct hardware fires it up again.
It is without question that BTC cannot be moved without your digital key. It is simply not possible.
People may have disclosed their key, or kept their BTC on an exchange and had it seized from the exchange, but again that is them giving away their key.
BandOfBrothers said:
With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about.
Sending and receiving BTC is spending it!
You transfer to the seller he gives you a goat, drugs, a car, gun, bread, whatever you are buying.
No sSending and receiving BTC is spending it!
You transfer to the seller he gives you a goat, drugs, a car, gun, bread, whatever you are buying.
t. But the food for the goat, the ingredients for the drugs, the metal for the car, the bullets for the gun, and the wheat for the bread are all usually traded in £ or $ or € or Yen or whatever it may be. At some point someone is going to need to turn those BTC into £ to pay someone, and if they say they won't accept BTC because they can't cash it out then the whole chain falls apart. What use does the farmer have for BTC if he needs to buy diesel for his tractor but Shell won't accept BTC? BTC is then useless to him, so he refuses to accept it. The pet food supplier then doesn't want BTC because he can't pay the farmer with it. He says to the goat farmer he will only accept £, so why is the goat farmer going to take BTC from you he can't easily spend? It's not complicated.
Until the government allows you to pay taxes in Bitcoin you CANNOT exist without using the existing financial system, and if any government wants to make using BTC difficult they're certainly not going to allow you to send BTC to HMRC now are they?!
Edited by Condi on Friday 17th May 00:34
Condi said:
BandOfBrothers said:
With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about.
Sending and receiving BTC is spending it!
You transfer to the seller he gives you a goat, drugs, a car, gun, bread, whatever you are buying.
No sSending and receiving BTC is spending it!
You transfer to the seller he gives you a goat, drugs, a car, gun, bread, whatever you are buying.
t. But the food for the goat, the ingredients for the drugs, the metal for the car, the bullets for the gun, and the wheat for the bread are all usually traded in £ or $ or € or Yen or whatever it may be. At some point someone is going to need to turn those BTC into £ to pay someone, and if they say they won't accept BTC because they can't cash it out then the whole chain falls apart. What use does the farmer have for BTC if he needs to buy diesel for his tractor but Shell won't accept BTC? BTC is then useless to him, so he refuses to accept it. The food supplier then doesn't want BTC because he can't pay the farmer with it. He says to the goat farmer he will only accept £, so why is the goat farmer going to take BTC from you he can't easily spend? It's not complicated.
Until the government allows you to pay taxes in Bitcoin you CANNOT exist without using the existing financial system, and if any government wants to make using BTC difficult they're certainly not going to allow you to send BTC to HMRC now are they?!
So what if Shell won't accept BTC and you need petrol. I guarantee you someone will sell it to you for BTC, especially if the government start restricting what you can do with their fiat currency.
And how is the government going to stop you trading BTC for £ or $?
You know that multiple governments have tried that with USD and their local currency, right? How well did that go?
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