Bitcoin discussion and news
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BigTom
Well-Known Member
nah, in the early days of bitcoin you could mine with a home computer quite happily, now you need banks of ASICs specialised in the task. It's just another step along the same scale, albeit in likely orders of magnitude larger than previous steps. Doesn't change anything fundamental as far as I know.
q_w_e_r_t_y
You see an investment scam and I see divinity
You defo have a point there, there are soooo many scams.
The way to avoid being scammed is
1. Stick to bitcoin until you know what you are doing (or forever)
2. Get them from a well known exchange or better from a P2P exchange like Robosats or Bisq.
3. Immediately get them off the exchange and into a wallet that you control the private key for.
4. Secure your private key backup offline.
This is the beauty of ZK tech. You can verify x without knowing y.
You just need to identify the conditions that you will accept age verification (eg an upload of a birth certificate), a zk proof can allow a wallet associated with that birth certificate to confirm to a third party the age of the holder without the holder themself providing the birth certificate.
And you are fighting it with one hand tied behind your back. There are an incredible amount of privacy initatives being developed in the crypto space right now - ZKsnarks, Mimblewimble, ring signatures, are some of the more popular ones.
Bitcoin is instantly transferable from one entity to another anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye with no third party involvement. There isnt another commodity in the world where that is the case.
Thats probably because it was, and one that had the ear of a remarkable number of politicians and regulators.
The whole FTX saga has remarkably little to do with crypto, because they didnt actually buy the crypto that people sent money to them to buy, they just changed some numbers on the front end.
This is why every single bitcoiner in the world will repeat the mantra not your keys, not your coins.
If there is one single thing that I want people on this thread to take away from my years of posting here, it is this.
If you do not own the private key, you do not own the coins.
I
q_w_e_r_t_y
You see an investment scam and I see divinity
No, that doesnt really work. The difficulty adjusts periodically depending on the hash rate. Assuming that the introduction of quantum computers meant that the hashrate went up x10 million by one person introducing a quantum miner to the network, the worst that would happen is that all the bitcoins up until the next difficult change would be mined near instantly, then the difficulty would adjust to the new hashrate, and that one quantum miner would now take 10 mins to find the next block, despite being 10 million times more powerful.
If such a scenario were to occur, the most likely thing to happen is
- all blocks to the next difficulty adjustment are mined instantly.
- all blocks in the subsequent difficulty adjustment are mined quickly as more quantum computers come online
- gradually the network slows back down to 10 mins per block over the course of a couple of days.
Bitcoin is self-adjusting.
But the financial system affects all of us, even if we as individuals aren't big players within it. It is VERY important, even game changing that everything is transparent.
For example any centralised exchange is beholden to those that own and run it. The customers have no way of knowing if those prices are genuine.
These days in the crypto space, decentralised exchanges are much more transparent as long as those that use them know what they are doing. There is only one downside to decentralised exchanges, in that ANYTHING can be bought and sold on them, including scam tokens. But that is far the lesser evil as there is nothing to stop the owners of centralised exchanges from commiting massive fraud.
People make a living in a lot of ways within crypto, speculation is just one example.
- Providing liquidity to decentralised exchanges for trading pairs (Example 50% USD, 50% ETH)
- Providing security to the network by staking Ether (Or other networks, one example being Polkadot)
- Arbitrage opportunities between exchanges, making the entire market more efficient so that prices are similar on all decentralised exchanges.
- Buying cheaper assets that are collatoralised loans being liquidated then selling them for a higher price.
- Providing liquidity for insurance.
There is a reason why policitians all around the world see it as innovative with a view to creating regulations that helps crypto rather than hinder it.
Unfortunately the Biden administration is hostile, frustraing American companies like Access & Visa from taking advantage of it. The Biden administration even wants to prevent Facebook and Google from providing ANY crypto services what-so-ever .... because .... "to protect the financial system from instability" which means protect the banks ... yet they want to roll out CBDCs which will cause liquidity problems for commercial banks.
Told them loads of times. They think it's all a big conspiracy theory, even though 85% of central banks have openly admitted to developing CBDCs....and in other news....
Digital Marketplace
www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk
If you dont like bitcoin, this is likely to be your alternative much sooner than you imagine.
Pick your path.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
You sound so incredibly blasé about all that.
Kabbes is right that we're actually nowhere near quantum supremacy just yet, and there's no guarantee that we ever will get there. But running quantum computers is an incredibly involved process. Whoever creates the first fully functional ones that do achieve supremacy will be a group with a lot of money behind them.
Your brave new anarchist world will be controlled by those who are already in control.
Storm Fox
Trying the find the next noun to verb
For me it's mostly the lack of regulation, poorly implemented solutions, lack of testing of products and no recourse when things on wrong. Which I assume CBDC will fix this and have backing to compensate customers when it does.
We'll lose privacy in what we buy, but we have much privacy now will anything not bought in cash.
Oh and the massive environmental fuckery that Bitcoin especially produces.
The government can make appropriate regulations and has drafted them up. The crypto industry is pleased with this. So regulations won't be a problem.
You don't always have recourse in the tradional financial sector if things go wrong. If you're duped into sending your savings abroad, good luck with that.
As for CBDCs. Please. Time and time again throughout history governments have abused their powers. Even if you trust the likes of Sunak and Starmer, we are still always just one or two elections away from an absolute power-crazed nutter circumvented Parliament to cut off everyone's escape route from CBDCs, then it will turn real draconian real fast.
When the enemy of the state are begging for food in the local Tesco car park, you won't dare give them anything. Not even a slice of bread. You won't even dare seen be talking to them. Hell you'd probably shout at them gesticulating in the hope that you would get extra social credits. No thanks.
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
This is not healthy. You should get a proper hobby.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
You keep fantasising about this shit, and it says a hell of a lot more about you than anything else. Because the only way you can have your ridiculous anarcho-capitalist "muh freedumbz!" worldview make any sense is if the only viable alternative is somehow even worse. It's transparent as fuck and you're either too thick to see it, or you do see it and you know exactly what you're doing.
But that's my point. FTX was a centralised exchange. They committed fraud because they could.
The public can't see inside the FTX palace and get behind the wizard's curtains to reveal what is going on.
You simply can't do that with a decentralised exchange when the code for the exchange is a matter of public record, with all the assets being on chain. On a DEX (Decentralised exchange) everything is out in the open.
The whole fucking point of CBDCs is to bring in controls.
It will be technically possible to control who can spend how much on what.
You don't know what you're talking about. Even the banks have admitted that the ONLY way to run a secure CBDC is to run them over blockchains.
So what's the point? Why do the things have to run on private government blockchains (which can't even be as secure as public blockchains)?
Because they don't want the public to be able to have any escape routes out of their barbwired tyranny.
Why don't you just google "CBDCs" and see how much opposition there is out there? You know, the real world isn't full of Marxists who think that world would be a better place if only people's lives were controlled top down.
It’s an incredibly anti-society perspective, in which there is no attempt to build social trust, no creation of institutional governance, no systemic protection of the vulnerable, no societal interaction, frankly. It’s an anti-human vision of the future.
The future with CBDCs is zero trust. You will be forced to use to prove you are doing no wrong.
If you walk into a bank and ask for a sizeable sum in cash, they will ask you what you are doing with it. If you tell them to mind their own business, you won't get the money.
Because they don't trust you.
Their attitude and the governments attitude, is that citizens are untrustworthy.
You will hear the term "Zero Trust" a lot for the likes of the WEF, BIS and FATF. They know what they are doing, it's not an accident, citizens are untrustworthy.
In the cryptoworld, there are trustless systems because you don't trust people when you don't even have to.
As for social interaction and governance, if you believe there is a lack of any of that in the cryptoverse then it's further proof you know nothing about any of it.
On your point re "systemic protection of the vulnerable", in a fair and transparent financial system, there won't be many people who'll fit that description, if any.
That sums up your entire position, but not in the way you think it does.
I've never known someone to get so worked up about the prospect of a fair and transparent financial system.
It must boil your piss that anyone of any race, creed, sex, gender, sexuality or political persuation, can you just make money without the all knowing politican authoracunts demanding to know every aspect of your life before being judged worthy of making a living.
I hope you get it. In todays global economy, it's NONE absolutely NONE of my business who I'm fucking dealing with. Can they make me the money? Yes or No? If they can, great, I don't care who they are, because I'm not a hateful authoracunt.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
No doubt that various governments will want a piece of the action if blockchain goes anywhere worthwhile. I very much doubt it will become the norm, since various entities public, private and corporate will still have plenty of legitimate reasons for keeping closed ledgers. I also doubt that many people are going to be receptive to the idea that their personal finances should be scrutinised and controlled to the degree that you're concerned about.
I took a look at the pages about CBDCs on the Bank of England's website. It seems that they are currently looking at the idea, but have no plans to implement it. Curiously I see no mention of blockchain technology, perhaps they didn't get the memo about that being the only secure way. They're taking consultations as of now so maybe you could drop them a line? I don't give a shit myself, I'll be among those who don't see the point.
However, further reading uncovered this February 2023 Consultation Paper (PDF link) concerning the digital pound. One detail that did catch my eye was that this idea is at least partly motivated by a desire to maintain confidence in sterling and thus ensure economic stability. This would necessarily have to include a widespread public belief that one's money in the form of digital pounds remains private and accessible. A belief which would be viciously murdered in full public view if the government started pulling the kind of Social Credit-style antics that have got you so wound up.
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
Me me me! Wah!
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
If you study economics, the very first thing you come across - like page 1 of 'A Basic Introduction to Economics,' before you get to basic supply and demand etc - is the definition of what Economics actually is. And it's generally considered to be the study of the allocation of scarce resources, something along those lines. It's sort of interesting (for certain values of interesting) just how totally abstracted this stuff is from that. Tokens, trust, transparency blah blah blah but really nothing to say about who gets to live in a mansion and who's in a caravan, who gets to eat what and when etc. It'll just work out somehow.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
It's so funny because the world he's talking about exists entirely inside his head. Even the CCP's China, which apparently has an embassy lodged rent-free within his head, has billionaires now. None of the world's governments are against people making money.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
Wow, what socially useful work. We are all better off thanks to these brave souls moving money around in complicated ways.
It's one of the best ways to fight discrimination, if not the best.
But as I suspected, huge swarths of the left aren't interested in fighting discirmination.
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
It’s a view of economics that entirely removes people and society from it. The world reduced to a fancy tech spreadsheet.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
You need to actually demonstrate how being a latter-day digital financier fights discrimination before you can truthfully make the claim that it does. Because we've had those kind of occupations in the analogue world for a while now, and they're not fighting discrimination to any greater degree than any other job. Transferring those roles to the digital world does not make for any fundamental changes in relationships under the capitalist mode of production; when the internet made online commerce a thing, that didn't overthrow capitalism, instead capitalism evolved to accommodate it. So there's no reason to suppose that digitising the financial sector is going to make for any meaningful systemic difference in terms of discrimination.
Yes indeed, CBDCs might not happen because no one who knows how blockchains work, wants to work to enslave themselves and everyone they love.
Central banks are having awful problems getting blockchain developers. Ah what a shame.
Digitsation doesn't stop discrimination. No one claimed that.
What does stop discrimination is descentralised, permissionless, immutable blockchains.
Does it really grind you down that minorities don't need to ask for old whitey's permission to participate in the economy?
Oh dear. Never mind.
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