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Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

SuburbanTurkey said:
Bitcoin isn't even useful for this anymore. The early years of being used to buy drugs off the dark web were an anomaly. The public ledger is easy to track and there are plenty of tools out there for cops or others to track transactions.

Any usefulness as a way to engage in black market deals was probably more to do with novelty than anything. Those days are well behind us and there's plenty of understanding and tools out there to follow the digital money. The only exception would be for ransomware, but these invariably rely on the fact that the operators are overseas and beyond the reach of law enforcement than any anonymity granted by bitcoin payments.

Other cryptos claim to provide anonymity for transactions, but bitcoin hasn't been well suited for this for some time now.
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Thanks, you're 100% right, my points are outdated. :thumbsup:
 
jeremyp said:
Yes it does. The profits of the early adopters are funded by the stakes of the late comers. So while it's not strictly a ponzi scheme, it does share some characteristics.
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Getting in early on something new is nothing like a Ponzi scheme whatsoever. Even if the early adopters were psychic and knew that bitcoin would take off that would at worst resemble "insider trading". Of course, psychics don't exist.

jeremyp said:
Yes it's great for doing things that are illegal (although not as great as many of the criminals think).
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It's funny that people who believe in the right to privacy suddenly think that you are a criminal if you don't want to account to the government for how you spend your money.
 
psionl0 said:
Getting in early on something new is nothing like a Ponzi scheme whatsoever. Even if the early adopters were psychic and knew that bitcoin would take off that would at worst resemble "insider trading". Of course, psychics don't exist.


It's funny that people who believe in the right to privacy suddenly think that you are a criminal if you don't want to account to the government for how you spend your money.
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#1 Fanboy completely (and probably willingly) ignores the fact (and the post from a few hours ago) that Bitcoin hasn't been about privacy for a long time now. I just realized that fact, why can't you. :confused:
 
EaglePuncher said:
#1 Fanboy completely (and probably willingly) ignores the fact (and the post from a few hours ago) that Bitcoin hasn't been about privacy for a long time now. I just realized that fact, why can't you. :confused:
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So you no longer have an argument against bitcoin.

Its utility is still that nobody can steal your bitcoins (unless you are careless) and nobody can prevent you transferring bitcoins to another wallet. It's just that criminals don't benefit from that any more. Right?
 
psionl0 said:
So you no longer have an argument against bitcoin.

Its utility is still that nobody can steal your bitcoins (unless you are careless) and nobody can prevent you transferring bitcoins to another wallet. It's just that criminals don't benefit from that any more. Right?
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lol, you still don't get it: Bitcoin was not useful or worth anything ever. Jeeeez, you actually have a shirt with "#1 Bitcoin Fanboy" printed on it, don't you?
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Bitcoin isn't even useful for this anymore. The early years of being used to buy drugs off the dark web were an anomaly. The public ledger is easy to track and there are plenty of tools out there for cops or others to track transactions.

Any usefulness as a way to engage in black market deals was probably more to do with novelty than anything. The only exception would be for ransomware, but these invariably rely on the fact that the operators are overseas and beyond the reach of law enforcement than any anonymity granted by bitcoin payments.

Other cryptos claim to provide anonymity for transactions, but bitcoin hasn't been well suited for this for some time now.
Click to expand...

I don't think this is accurate but if you have more information I'd be interested in reading it. While the ledger is public and there are tools to help, if there is no personally identifying information tied to your wallet or transactions, then it's still anonymous. Even if your initial purchase had identifiable information you can do coin joins to mix up which coins belong to who
 
The_Animus said:
I don't think this is accurate but if you have more information I'd be interested in reading it. While the ledger is public and there are tools to help, if there is no personally identifying information tied to your wallet or transactions, then it's still anonymous. Even if your initial purchase had identifiable information you can do coin joins to mix up which coins belong to who
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Pheeew, relax everyone, buying illegal stuff is still possible. :thumbsup:
 
EaglePuncher said:
lol, you still don't get it: Bitcoin was not useful or worth anything ever. Jeeeez, you actually have a shirt with "#1 Bitcoin Fanboy" printed on it, don't you?
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As I type this they are worth roughly $30K each. The intrinsic worth argument against bitcoin is a terrible argument.

Especially given there are so many better ones out there to illustrate that bitcoin is dangerous garbage.
 
The_Animus said:
I don't think this is accurate but if you have more information I'd be interested in reading it. While the ledger is public and there are tools to help, if there is no personally identifying information tied to your wallet or transactions, then it's still anonymous. Even if your initial purchase had identifiable information you can do coin joins to mix up which coins belong to who
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The critical point remains trying to turn bitcoin into real money. Finding exchanges that don't have "know your customer" type regulations (just like real banks) is pretty hard.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The critical point remains trying to turn bitcoin into real money. Finding exchanges that don't have "know your customer" type regulations (just like real banks) is pretty hard.
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I know exchanges exist that don't require personal identification though that tends to be more for like visa gift cards rather than cash in your bank account. You can also cash out amounts of $900 or less at crypto atms located at businesses such as gas stations and all you need is a phone number to receive a text code and any name you feel like giving the machine. But at the point of cashing out, does it matter if you're known? As mentioned earlier if you're doing it right or using a coin join you should be able to obfuscate where the coins came from and then cash out at any exchange as yourself.
 
psionl0 said:
Getting in early on something new is nothing like a Ponzi scheme whatsoever. Even if the early adopters were psychic and knew that bitcoin would take off that would at worst resemble "insider trading". Of course, psychics don't exist.
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I would not call bitcoin a Ponzi scheme, but it deflationary to the point of being evil. If there will only ever be 21 million coins, and probably 3 or 4 million are already lost, and you gotta get in early or "you're not gonna make it..." What happens to people who didn't get in early, or maybe weren't born yet? These whales with their zillions in bitcoin want to take over the world and have non-bitcoin people be serfs or something.

psionl0 said:
It's funny that people who believe in the right to privacy suddenly think that you are a criminal if you don't want to account to the government for how you spend your money.
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Your what now?
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The critical point remains trying to turn bitcoin into real money. Finding exchanges that don't have "know your customer" type regulations (just like real banks) is pretty hard.
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If you are just hodling (or making "legal" transactions) then that shouldn't matter. Sure, you would probably have to tell the tax man about any profits you made but that is also reasonable.

If you really want to fund terrorism or something then bitcoin is probably not the coin for you. Blockchain forensics is becoming a big thing now.
 
carlitos said:
I would not call bitcoin a Ponzi scheme, but it deflationary to the point of being evil. If there will only ever be 21 million coins, and probably 3 or 4 million are already lost, and you gotta get in early or "you're not gonna make it..." What happens to people who didn't get in early, or maybe weren't born yet? These whales with their zillions in bitcoin want to take over the world and have non-bitcoin people be serfs or something.
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Why does it always have to be some sort of "evil" conspiracy theory?

People who got in early were just lucky. At the time, you couldn't sell 10,000 BTC for $50. The prospect that the day would come when you couldn't sell $10,000 for 1 BTC would have been considered "just dreaming".

As for the hard limit, that would simply be a misguided concept economically if bitcoin was to seriously be a global currency (some inflation or demurrage would be necessary). But that is what buyers want - a currency that can't be printed into oblivion.
 
psionl0 said:
Why does it always have to be some sort of "evil" conspiracy theory?

People who got in early were just lucky. At the time, you couldn't sell 10,000 BTC for $50. The prospect that the day would come when you couldn't sell $10,000 for 1 BTC would have been considered "just dreaming".

As for the hard limit, that would simply be a misguided concept economically if bitcoin was to seriously be a global currency (some inflation or demurrage would be necessary). But that is what buyers want - a currency that can't be printed into oblivion.
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Oh silly me, I thought buyers want to buy low, sell high and then run as fast as they can from the silly clown show that bitcoin is. :)
 
The_Animus said:
I know exchanges exist that don't require personal identification though that tends to be more for like visa gift cards rather than cash in your bank account. You can also cash out amounts of $900 or less at crypto atms located at businesses such as gas stations and all you need is a phone number to receive a text code and any name you feel like giving the machine. But at the point of cashing out, does it matter if you're known? As mentioned earlier if you're doing it right or using a coin join you should be able to obfuscate where the coins came from and then cash out at any exchange as yourself.
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I guess the bitfinex hackers were just incompetent, because it seems like they were having a lot of trouble turning hot bitcoin into clean cash. The bulk of their stolen funds remained in the original wallet, and they abandoned smaller amounts in locked exchange accounts when they couldn't supply demanded ID info. They were successful in getting some of the stolen coins cashed out into gold or gift cards like you say, but then again it seems like they eventually did something that attracted the attentions of the feds while never even coming close to laundering the bulk of the stolen coins.

At small enough cash amounts it may be possible, though I imagine the high cost of bitcoin transactions makes this painful. Laundering larger quantities seems extremely difficult.
 
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