bit¢oin$

So if I understand correctly referring to blockchain transactions as 'currency' is roughly analogous to calling that device in your pocket a 'phone' even though communicating through it with your voice only accounts for like 7% of said device's total employment.

but anyway no blockchain isnt being used for many non currency things some unclear if anyone is actually using smart contract functionality aside the world changing potential of the blockchain is pure thought leader coke dreams at this point, and i havent read the bitcoin whitepaper but i have seen a bunch of those satochi emails and it seems pretty clear from those that the point of developing the blockchain was to support cryptocurrency with an explicitly political goal of undermining governmental/banking monopolies on money

currency is, at its root, cash that's issued and verified by a central authority. any paperless transaction is handled by financial institutions that, again, are regulated and government by that authority

blockchain currency has some great selling points for asset management in that there's a commodity that has a known scarcity (a "coin"), absolutely everyone knows where every single coin is at every point in time because there's a ledger that shows the current assigned owner and absolutely every transaction back to when it was created.

so using "coins" as a marker of assets is completely linked to trust in the distributed ledger system. the problem with using it as currency, actually buying things that aren't agreed to have a value in a certain number of coins, is that you introduce intermediaries to let you trade in fractional coins.

bitcoin is basically a really halfassed gold standard. I have a brick of gold, I hand it to a guy who holds on to it, and he'll let me pull it back out, pay me for it, or (uh oh) spend a fraction of that brick. Any fractional trading is now 100% based on trust in this guy who has my brick -- it's his brick now, possession is 9/10th etc. So now your faith is transferred to an intermediary keeping track of things. It's someone running a gold standard bank, you trust that they have the gold bricks in the back room. any time someone trades less than a full bitcoin they're doing this, and the blockchain may not even be touched

transactions against the actual blockchain, that's trading in full bricks of gold. if it's assigned to your account and you maintain ownership of your keys, it's 100% yours -- you can load up the ledger and do your own transactions. But doing transactions against the ledger is now a pain the the ass because of the amount of space it takes and the computing power/time investment. so I decide to use an intermediary to handle transactions for me. again, this is giving some of my trust to a third-party, and they're using my authority on my behalf

Bitcoin is divisible to like 8 places though. theoretically there's no difference between 1 BTC and 0.01 BTC.

still, that does touch on a major issue with any cryptocurrency - there's no failsafe, if I've got $50k in BTC and I lose the private key (or, more likely, trust it to a bad exchange), it's just gone forever. once those systems get built in you're left with a really inefficient and less safe version of the monetary system we have now.

Yet another reason that occurs to me as to why bitcoin will never see widespread adoption: no one is going to make people do it, so only true believers will ever use it. People use US currency because (1) it's what they get paid in (2) you can pay for goods with it everywhere and (3) you HAVE TO pay your taxes in it. Even if lots of retailers start accepting bitcoin, I don't see 1 and 3 changing. I don't even think a substantial minority of people will ever adopt some crazy newfangled currency that no one forces them to use.

xp yeah, I botched that part of the explanation

the problem with allowing fractional trading is the number of transactions increases exponentially, leading to case #2 there where no one can handle their own transaction

tbh there are some real-world paper currencies that have less faith than bitcoin

and never forget the giant shipping containers of US dollars that were sent to buy off warlords in afghanistan, etc.
those dudes were not using them for american taxes per se

I mean, bitcoin is garbage, but every form of currency is garbage to some extent

xp sure but ultimately the value of dollars still stems from its use as the world's reserve currency, which stems from it being the currency issued by the most powerful country in the world. There is no case for bitcoin ever reaching anything close to that status, only libertarian weirdos, black market transactors, money launderers and people trying to escape restrictions on moving their money abroad seem to have actual use for bitcoin, with the rest just being speculation and manipulation.

Thanking u guys, I will try to parse your explanations but I'm pretty dumb so we'll see.

Yet another reason that occurs to me as to why bitcoin will never see widespread adoption: no one is going to make people do it, so only true believers will ever use it. People use US currency because (1) it's what they get paid in (2) you can pay for goods with it everywhere and (3) you HAVE TO pay your taxes in it. Even if lots of retailers start accepting bitcoin, I don't see 1 and 3 changing. I don't even think a substantial minority of people will ever adopt some crazy newfangled currency that no one forces them to use.

this is pretty much OTM and why I can't see another currency whose value fluctuates relative to USD ever working without some sort of major systematic collapse. BTC's massive rise is even more confusing since it's actually being used LESS now - all the random retailers and coffee shops that used to accept BTC don't anymore, since the transactions can take a long time and barely anyone ever wanted to use it. there are all sorts of logistical problems inherit in BTC ever seeing widescale adoption - it still does not fundamentally scale, if even 1% of all transactions done on a given day were done in BTC the entire system would slow to a crawl and transactions may not get processed until weeks later, which can be abused in a number of ways.

still, that does touch on a major issue with any cryptocurrency - there's no failsafe, if I've got $50k in BTC and I lose the private key (or, more likely, trust it to a bad exchange), it's just gone forever. once those systems get built in you're left with a really inefficient and less safe version of the monetary system we have now.

― frogbs, Wednesday, January 10, 2018 12:27 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah the no recourse nature of the system is pitched as a feature when its obviously a huge bug, like what do u do if you order something online with bitcoin and it never comes, nothing! unless theres some sort of third party..... intermediary

hilarious thing abt smart contracts being the first blockchain dream to actual exist is the first big test case for them was an investment pool that was immediately compromised and had all their money stolen lol

its interesting that these ppl who develop extremely technically complex systems are so bad at understanding other ostensibly technical concepts like money and contracts, like if you ask a lawyer what a contract is they will tell you its a meeting of minds, its what all parties to the contract agreed upon, which is why you cant be held to a contract that you were tricked into signing, but blockchainist just go ahead and take the tv show version of a contract where youre held to exactly what it says on the paper, and then as soon as they try it someone smarter than them at contracts steals all their money, they think theyre cutting lawyers out of the loop when really theyre inventing a class of super predator lawyers/programers lol

oh yeah, you're banking on high value actual transactions occurring in the system to prop up its value

faith in the black market or the US government, take your pick (for the record the latter is better for me, but I'm relatively above board)

the speculators are big liars but want in on this
The estimated amount of money laundered globally in one year is 2 - 5% of global GDP, or $800 billion - $2 trillion in current US dollars.

I mean, bitcoin is garbage, but every form of currency is garbage to some extent

― mh, Wednesday, January 10, 2018 12:35 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uh no many currencies have armys to ensure that ppl respect them

tracking "currency" as an asset that needs a chain of ownership is completely asinine btw, it's all just imaginary numbers

that said, the early intermediaries were so bad it'd be like someone at Bank of America being able to open a checking account, just type "one billion dollars" as the balance without transferring it from another account, and then just spending it all over the place for a while without getting caught

yeah the army thing is key

btw if you work at Bank of America and figure out a way to do that, go for it. it'd be really cool

if u work at bank of america plz give me some money thx

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTMn0ZTWkAAY3xl.jpg

I've heard the whole thing explained as a bunch of libertarian techbros learning one by one what every piece of financial regulation is for

one thing I hear a lot is "well yea you can steal the money, but then no one will ever trust you again" which is a remarkably dumb defense. but this is kind of how they think the system will work itself out.

but none of this matters anyway as crypto has basically gotten to the point where it's 100% a gamble. the true believers are out there but at this point nearly all the discussion about crypto is "oooh how much USD is this gonna be worth?". to which I say, just bet sports, it's a lot more fun

the situation is pretty funny def but at the end of the day some poor saps who mortgaged their house to buy dogecoin are just gonna be left holding the bag while some finance/startup bros party in ibiza

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTMn0ZTWkAAY3xl.jpg

tbf this seems pretty foolproof against rape charges because it ensures a woman will never have sex with you

lmao

unless you pay them in womancoin

seems clear to me that the price of cryptocurrencies is being entirely driven by market manipulation at this point, will be interesting to see what happens once that shakes out via regulation or other forces, cld see the entire thing just dying tbh, the combo of not really having any use as a product and being exposed as a scam might be too much to recover from, tho i still feel like theres some niche for crime

who on this board wld like to develop the perfect crimecoin with me

that said, the early intermediaries were so bad it'd be like someone at Bank of America being able to open a checking account, just type "one billion dollars" as the balance without transferring it from another account, and then just spending it all over the place for a while without getting caught

there's a thing called Tethercoin which is kind of exactly this

yeah I sort of wonder how much market cap you would need just to cover the criminal/dubious uses. I imagine money launderers don't hold bitcoin very long but trade in and out of it to make their steps harder to trace. $5B? $10B?

xps re:legal fling: that is ridiculous, though i think some sort of verifiable consent protocol will be necessary when teledildonics (lol..) starts taking off

tether is super key to how the price is being manipulated

xps re:legal fling: that is ridiculous, though i think some sort of verifiable consent protocol will be necessary when teledildonics (lol..) starts taking off

― scoff walker (diamonddave85), Wednesday, January 10, 2018 1:04 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

um yeah bump this thread when that happens

i mean, security researchers already showed that it's possible to scan for "smart butt plugs" and that it would be possible to remotely control them

im personally sick and tired of waiting to be murdered by a hacked sex robot

im personally sick and tired of waiting to be sexed by a hacked murderbot

The more I hear about all of this stuff the more I'm convinced the person behind at least one of these "currencies" will turn out to be an 11-year-old named JR

Isn't bitcoin an instantiation of teledildonics, in a way?

bitcoin has certainly fucked thousands of people right enough

I don't have the energy to do it right now but I kind of want to photoshop one of those old comic frames (of the roy lichtenstein type) of a man about to kiss a woman, and they each have speech bubbles but the dialogue is just bitcoin keys

send me bitcoins and i will do it for u

im personally sick and tired of waiting to be murdered by a hacked sex robot

― lag∞n, Wednesday, January 10, 2018 12:08 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im personally sick and tired of waiting to be sexed by a hacked murderbot

― pee-wee and the power men (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, January 10, 2018 12:10 PM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd only considered one of these, but I'm for both now

When you request sexual consent via LegalFling and the response is negative, that denial is permanently stored in the cockblockchain

the friendchainzone

incelcoin

lag∞n i would make little ilxcoins with u

cool do u know how to program computers lol (i do but prob not good enough to make a coin)

http://loyalkng.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/rabbit-loving-is-pretty-lul.jpg

feeling very inspired rn

block my chain up

I can't turn my face into a coin!

Or can I???

ILX should offer a crypto. Perhaps YSICoin

i'll give it another shot this weekend