Everything else is noise and patience… what happens to artificially rare items that suddenly become much rarer? I think people around here have a sense of the effect. If you are in custody of your own coins, you’re good. Government isn’t going to spend FBI time hunting down your 0.4 BTC in your private wallet that you sent from Coinbase two years ago.
Interesting, do you invest in it?
Yup. Started mining in 2017 with my gaming PCs. Picked up a few extra GPUs when the 1080tis dropped. HODLd all of it
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Yeah I remember December 2013 and the PBOC too. Banned though? Yes and No. Banned from the banking system and no more exchanges. No more ICOs. But it’s not illegal to own…yet. And it’s still said that 50% of the mining is still based in China.
Exactly
Governments around the world are very concerned about Facebook’s plans for crypto and how they could destabilize their currencies. It is very possible that they will ban any and all currencies that aren’t state sponsored.
A true believer I see. Fair enough.
Rarity does not equate to value is also something most around here understand all to well. Rare sure but made useless for all practical purposes, definitely possible.
And yeah, the FBI isn’t going to kick down your door over your .4 BTC. They’ll be too busy kicking in the door of the individuals that make buying and selling bitcoin their “side hustle.” Unlicensed money transmitting business is what they were jamming people up with. Interesting times. Guys getting arrested for simply going to meet up with someone to buy or sell. In hindsight I’m sure they were the outliers and their operations always seemed to be a bit more vast in the end. But stories of people being crushed under the full weight of the force of the United State government tend to have the desired chilling effect.
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I absolutely believe that’s where it’s heading. What I hear Yellen and other regulators saying (reading between the lines) is: we love blockchain, but we’re not going to let our monetary systems be destroyed, and we’ll use the technology ourselves by issuing a state sponsored crypto dollar.
Bitcoin is not going to destroy their monetary system. They are going to do that on their own. Then use it as excuse to usher in CBDC USD. Too many elites are on the “BTC is digital gold” train now. Bitcoin is a dinosaur technology and so poses no real threat to the “system” any more than gold does.
Oh yeah Facebook coin or whatever is was. Admittedly all I remember is them walking that back after flack from The Hill. The one I always thought about was Amazon. I mean Amazon gift cards are almost considered just as good as money to some people since you can pretty much buy most anything with them. And I know locally I’ve seen smaller stores that will even take them as payment. So why not launch their own coin or Bezos Buxs or whatever. I mean the guy is practically a living Bond villain. Him and Elon. Once you get your own space fleet…Bond villain. So why not have his own currency. I guess it’s when they would start making them easy to “spend” between users and offer some system of converting them to dollars, that Uncle Sam would get his nose out of joint. I don’t know, stuff like that gets beyond me pretty quick.
Totally agree. And while so much easier to tax but think about the control. During the next pandemic ordered locked down, you’ll find your official crypto dollar wallet geofenced so that you can only use it from your home or other designated green zones.
Or enforce social justice with it
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Exactly. They’ve been drooling over the idea for decades and the technology is ripe.
Bitcoin won’t but Facebook’s Libra could. They’ll all be collateral damage.
That’s the biggest investment risk right now more or less. But there’s the counter forces of big tech on the side of crypto. They seem to have the ear of government now wouldn’t you say? Dorsey loves BTC. Facebook kid wants his libra. If they work it out for themselves, by the collateral damage logic, BTC wins.
They do at the moment, but that can, and probably will, change on a dime. Additionally, this is a global problem, not just a US one. You should read up on what the Europeans are discussing.
Touching on the ever-growing need for power, are the benefits truly worth the costs to operate it? I’m not necessarily saying they aren’t, but that’s a lot of power going into mining and operating a system for payment when we already have many already in place.
It’s different now. They’re all moving to proof of stake now. Mining will soon be obsolete. The US Government could probably run their digital currency for less than it costs to print the bills, much less the coins.
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I honestly don’t know enough about it one way or the other, I just always worry about whether the resources we put into a lot of different things are worth it. I don’t think you have to be an “environmental greenie” to care about the suitability of the planet to live on. I also don’t think it’s some sort of radically left wing idea to analyze cost and benefit of power usage as long as that power is coming from non renewable resources that produce carbon emissions.
Surprised Facebook hasn’t started its own nation.
Just a heads up, while I do not mind the conversation going on, just remember to keep it chill, stay out of deep politics and don’t be mean. Other than that carry on.
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