International News
See other International News Articles
Title: WAS BITCOIN CREATED BY THIS INTERNATIONAL DRUG DEALER?
Source:
[None]
URL Source: https://www.wired.com/story/was-bit ... ternational-drug-dealer-maybe/
Published: Jul 16, 2019
Author: SHARE SHARE TWEET COMMENT EMAIL AUTHOR:
Post Date: 2019-07-16 08:06:04 by A K A Stone
Keywords: None
Views: 43195
Comments: 88
THE MESSAGES STARTED arriving on a Sunday afternoon in mid-May. “Just wanted to draw your attention to this,” one began. “Rumors are starting to surface,” another informed me. “I’d be very interested in getting your thoughts,” a third suggested. My correspondents, mostly strangers, were polite but insistent. They wanted my take on a theory, newly circulating online, that offered a resolution to one of the most alluring digital mysteries of the past decade, the real identity (or identities) behind the persona of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The question, as someone in my Twitter DM’s articulated it, was this: “Do you think that Paul Le Roux is bitcoin creator Satoshi?”
In one sense, they’d all come to the right place. I spent five years tracking Paul Calder Le Roux, a South African programmer who built a global drug and arms dealing empire, and transformed himself into one of the 21st century’s most prolific and pursued criminals. I’d obsessively catalogued his life, from his early history as an encryption coder; through his creation of an online prescription drug business worth hundreds of millions of dollars; to his diversification into smuggling, weapons, and violence; to his 2012 capture by, and cooperation with, the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Along the way he had, among other endeavors, simultaneously fed the American opioid epidemic; built his own base operations in Somalia, protected by an armed militia; run gold and timber extraction operations in a half-dozen African countries; laundered millions of dollars through Hong Kong; plotted a coup in the Seychelles (later abandoned); bought off law enforcement in the Philippines, where he was based; trafficked methamphetamine out of North Korea; and overseen a team of engineers building missile guidance systems for Iran and drones for drug delivery.
I’d traveled into the Manila underworld and found former employees, including ex-military mercenaries who’d worked as Le Roux’s enforcers. I’d distilled hundreds of interviews and tens of thousands of pages of records into a 400-page book, The Mastermind, detailing Le Roux’s epic rise and fall.
These questions about Satoshi, however, filled me with a special kind of dread. I’d traveled down the Satoshi rabbit hole before and returned empty handed. “I’ve got a secret theory that Paul invented bitcoin,” I’d written in 2016 to Mathew Smith, Le Roux’s cousin. Smith, along with over a hundred other Le Roux–connected people I interviewed, from employees to cops, had seen or heard nothing to support my theory. By the time I finished the book, in late 2018, I’d largely discarded it. “I wasted countless hours trying to determine if there was any connection” between Le Roux and Satoshi, I wrote in the final manuscript. “As far as I could tell, there wasn’t.”
There was some relief in this. I’d seen the ignominy when people went Satoshi hunting in the past. The siren song of bitcoin’s progenitor had been calling out to journalists since Satoshi seemed to exit the cryptocurrency world in 2011, leaving behind a technology that—even today, after all the hype cycles—promises to shape the future of everything from money to contracts. Whoever Satoshi was, the person (or persons) was sitting on a fortune, roughly a million bitcoins that analysts estimated Satoshi had mined at the currency’s inception in 2009. (At current prices that stash would be worth more than $10 billion.) There had been many attempts to unmask the creator, unresolved.
But now the messages about Le Roux kept coming, driven by 4chan and Hacker News threads churning over a tantalizing new clue—a footnote in one filing in a multibillion-dollar federal lawsuit in Florida.
This is where things started to get weird. The defendant in the lawsuit is an Australian computer scientist named Craig Wright. As followers of the Satoshi saga will know, Wright was the man outed in late 2015 by WIRED and Gizmodo as a likely candidate to himself be Satoshi Nakamoto. Both publications later walked back the stories after it appeared that documents they’d relied upon had been faked and manipulated.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: All (#0)
Bitcoin is for suckers and predators.
The question of who created bitcoin is not relevant as it is both decentralized and open source. And even if it was important, there are hundreds of copycat crypto currencies in existence (though 98% of them I would not touch with a 10 foot pole). The US dollar, on the other hand, is centralized. If you believe in freedom and object to centralized control of the monetary system, then bitcoin and/or decentralized crypto is what you should be championing. By not doing so, you by default to the position that the US dollar is NOT for suckers and predators. Bitcoin was started in 2009, coincidentally not long after the 2008 financial crisis which saw huge bailouts for banking corps for implementing finance strategies to loot the economy. Crypto currency is the answer to that kind of abuse.
- - - - - - - - - - [Pinguinite #2] The question of who created bitcoin is not relevant as it is both decentralized and open source. And even if it was important, there are hundreds of copycat crypto currencies in existence (though 98% of them I would not touch with a 10 foot pole). The US dollar, on the other hand, is centralized. If you believe in freedom and object to centralized control of the monetary system, then bitcoin and/or decentralized crypto is what you should be championing. There is no such thing as absolute security on the internet. With banks, you have insurance if your account gets hacked. With crypto, primarily used by crooks, drug dealers, tax evaders, and others attempting to avoid the law, a successful hack means you are usually shit out of luck, with no legal recourse. As for a hack, anything that has been done, can be done. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032615/can-bitcoin-be-hacked.asp By Nathan Reiff Investors all over the world are swarming to buy Bitcoin, prompting some governments to step in with severe regulations. The success of bitcoin fueled the rise of legions of followers, including hundreds of new cryptocurrency launches and a wave of startups predicated on blockchain technology. Nonetheless, with all the fuss and hubbub surrounding bitcoin, many investors are still unsure about the security of the currency itself. Can bitcoin be hacked? And, if so, how can investors work to protect their investments? Bitcoin and Security Bitcoin was launched in 2009 as a decentralized digital currency, meaning that it would not be overseen or regulated by any one administrator, like a government or bank. Peer-to-peer transactions have fueled the rise of the digital currency world, and bitcoin has been at the forefront throughout. The blockchain is a public ledger used to verify and record these transactions. The issue of security has been a fundamental one for bitcoin since its development. On one hand, bitcoin itself is very difficult to hack, and that is largely due to the blockchain technology which supports it. As blockchain is constantly being reviewed by bitcoin users, hacks are unlikely. On the other hand, though, the fact that bitcoin itself is difficult to hack does not mean that it's necessarily a safe investment. There does exist the potential for security risks at various stages of the trading process. Wallets and the Transaction Process Bitcoins are held in wallets and traded through digital currency exchanges like Coinbase. There are various security risks inherent in each of these two components. Developers are always improving wallet security, but there are also those looking to access other peoples' wallets illegally to swipe their tokens and coins. In the transaction process. two-factor identification is commonly used as a security measure. Of course, having the security of a transaction linked to an email address or a cell phone number means that anyone with access to those components can authenticate transactions. If a hacker is able to determine some of your non-cryptocurrency-related personal information, he or she may be able to infiltrate your transactions in that space regardless. There have been widely publicized frauds, scams, and hacks which have plagued individual investors and even major cryptocurrency exchanges in their short history. Part of the issue is simply that the technology and the space itself are new. While this makes cryptocurrencies like bitcoin incredibly exciting--and potentially very profitable--investments, it also means that there are those looking to capitalize on security holes before they are corrected. All bitcoin investors are advised to take proper precautions in order to best protect their holdings. Related Terms Bitcoin Definition Bitcoin is a digital or virtual currency that uses peer-to-peer technology to facilitate instant payments. Bitcoin is a digital currency created in January 2009. It follows the ideas set out in a white paper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity has yet to be verified. Cryptocurrency A cruptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography. A cryptocurrency is difficult to counterfeit because of this security feature. Blockchain Explained A guide to help you understand what blockchain is and how it can be used by industries. You've probably encountered a definition like this: “blockchain is a distributed, decentralized, public ledger." But blockchain is easier to understand than it sounds. Coincheck Coincheck is a Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange and digital wallet founded in 2014. tZero TZero is a cryptocurrency and distributed ledger platform that was launched by Overstock. Bitcoin Maximalism Bitcoin maximalists favor bitcoin over other use cases and for the long term. Maximalists are unapologetically in favor of a bitcoin monopoly at some point in the future. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - https://www.bitfolio.org/cryptocurrency-hack-mt-gox Shubham Davey - 21 August 2018 https://www.coindesk.com/hackers-are-turning-binances-stolen-bitcoin-into-fiat John Biggs Jul 16, 2019 at 11:30 UTC A new analysis by Coinfirm shows the movement of the bitcoin stolen from Binance into various wallets. The hack, which netted 7,000 BTC, happened on May 7, 2019 at 17:15:24 UTC and the hackers have been moving stolen bitcoin from wallet to wallet. Now, however, Coinfirm has spotted some activity that suggests the hackers are moving their gains off of exchanges, potentially into other cryptocurrencies. [...] Bitpoint's president says it will repay victims in cryptocurrency David Canellis Published July 16, 2019 — 12:47 UTC Embattled cryptocurrency exchange Bitpoint has revealed that roughly half of its 110,000 users were affected by last week’s $3.02 billion yen ($28 million) hack, reports The Mainchi. Speaking at a Tokyo press conference, Bitpoint president Genki Oda noted that of the 3.02 billion yen stolen, customers owned 2.06 billion yen ($19 million), while 960 million yen ($8.9 million) consisted of the company’s own holdings. According to Oda, customer losses represented 13 percent of the total amount of cryptocurrency users had kept on Bitpoint. He also pledged to repay victims (in cryptocurrency) once standard trade resumes. The theft, which included sums of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple, was disclosed last Thursday. Originally reported to have totalled $32 million, those losses were later revised to a slightly smaller number of $28 million. To find success, hackers were said to have targeted Bitpoint’s “hot wallets,” a term for internet-connected cryptocurrency storage software. Oda then confirmed the discovery of an additional 250 million yen ($2.3 million) worth of stolen funds that were taken from overseas exchanges using Bitpoint software. This directly contradicts apparently incorrect media reports that indicated a fraction of the stolen funds had been recovered. An estimate for when Bitpoint will resume standard trade is yet to be determined, as official investigations are reportedly ongoing. Fellow Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif was ransacked by hackers last September, who stole $60 million worth of cryptocurrency in a seemingly similar raid.
Then why do people want to change their bitcoins into dollars? This is America and the dollar is what we use. If it was replaced by these drug dealer scams of computer numbers that have no value it would hurt all Americans. Use gold if you want something decentralized. That is just the way I see it.
Usually true, yes. But your dollars held in a bank are not protected against debasement or inflation, which is a loss of purchasing power. This occurs when the government continues to run up a national debt or bails out financial institutions after they conduct immoral and or illegal activity which led to, as an example, the 2008 financial crisis for which no one was even charged with a financial crime. Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments or other 3rd parties with court orders that may or may not be morally legitimate even if they are legally legitimate which they, again, may not be in every case. I'm sure that would fall under illegal activity in the mind of many but it nonetheless qualifies as risk. But if one trusts the government never to do that, then it is not a concern. But free market crypto protects against these potential losses in value. Obviously a demonizing statement. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are also used by crooks attempting to conduct illegal activities. Hacking is an admitted and understood potential problem for any holder of crypto. To be clear, this is not a problem for the crypto blockchain which is the place where crypto holdings are actually recorded. This is instead a problem with the keys to the blockchain which are not on the blockchain but held privately in "wallets" which is not really an accurate description of how crypto works. These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole. Yes there have been millions (in USD value) in Bitcoin hacked by hackers, however in the case of bitcoin, funds are traceable on the blockchain, such that all bitcoin stolen from one wallet can be seen in the new wallet to which it has been transferred. Though the identity of the person or party controlling that wallet cannot be directly known from the blockchain, any subsequent transfer of funds from that wallet to a new wallet can be monitored, and if any transfer is made to an exchange or other party that can be identified, no matter how small the amount, then the potential of tracing and identifying the original criminals is possible, even many years later. As one of the articles stated, crypto is new technology and being such, makes it vulnerable, though again, it's not the crypto itself that has demonstrated vulnerabilities but rather the 3rd party wallets and holders of crypto that have the security flaws. Crypto also is non-mature as a currency due to the time it takes to make a transaction. While it is certainly far faster and far less hassle and far cheaper than bank wires, compared to credit card transactions, it is far too slow for general usage such as in a grocery store check out line. Still, being a digital technology, crypto has the ability to improve in these areas with additional software upgrades. I understand Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin as a direct result of how the 2008 financial crisis was resolved (or to whatever extent it qualified as being resolved) by using taxpayer funds to forgive and make right massive problems that resulted from their gross and fraudulent mishandling of funds for the benefit of shareholders of major financial instiutions. There was no other remedy offered by government to that problem.. Not in the courts via prosecution, and not in law. Government is in bed with these institutions and objecting to crypto due to its independence neglects the interests of the American people and all holders of legal tender US dollars. Crypto is a protest response currency to neglectful and abusive government policies. Crypto is facilitated by technology which in our society and world is growing at an exponential pace, and it is on that basis something I see as inevitable. Ever changing technology has impacted society and business in significant ways in the past and it will continue to do so in the future. As I see it, regardless of how people feel about crypto, it cannot be stopped.
If everyone wanted to do that, the value of bitcoin would go to zero. Sometimes people do because they want to buy things, and the USD is how things are priced and what people & businesses generally accept in such transactions. Does not a national debt of $23 trillion hurt all Americans? Fiat money offers the potential for scam/abuse on the part of government. Free market cypto cannot be printed ad infinitum. Cypto holders are protected against that. But to be clear, bitcoin is not simply "computer numbers" as though such numbers can be created at will by anyone. There is a guaranteed limit to the number of bitcoins in existence by the nature of the math within the blockchain system. The same cannot be said for the current USD financial system in which the vast majority of dollars in existence do not even exist in printed form, but instead are, in fact, "computer numbers" that express value in digital form. If you look up the difference between M1, M2 and M3 money supply, that should be easy to see. According to the Federal reserve, there is only $1.70 trillion in cash and coin in circulation. www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm (compare that to the US debt alone of some $23 trillion). Real gold in possession is good, but even gold has been abused. Far more gold is transferred on financial exchanges than is actually held by institutions that claim to hold it. The manipulation of gold and silver prices by institutions such as JP Morgan is an open secret. But is not prosecuted due to the compromized relationship between these institutions and the SEC.
So in other words it is for drug dealers and criminals. It's a scam. It isn't anything but numbers on a computer. Utterly worthless. It is good for predators to take advantage of suckers though. That is the way I see it.
I know it is just nothing based on nothing.
Sounds just like the US Dollar, to me.
Except the dollar is accepted everywhere.
At what rate? You don't internationally travel very much, do you?
CRYPTO CURRENCY - THEFT AND LOSS That the crypto may have functioned perfectly is no consolation for those whose virtual fortune has disappeared. This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate. People who had invested with Quadriga CX found out the hard way with the sudden death of founder GerGerald Cotten. Cotten died and nobody else seemed to know how to access the virtual fortune. There was no hack, nor any irresponsible parties. The virtual fortune is still safe with Gerald Batten who is not talking. Five years later, customers are still left in limbo. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47203706 By Jessica Murphy When the 30-year-old founder of a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange died suddenly, he took the whereabouts of some C$180m ($135m; £105m) in cryptocurrency to his grave. Now, tens of thousands of Quadriga CX users are wondering if they will ever see their funds again. In 2014, one of the world's biggest online cryptocurrency exchanges - MtGox - unexpectedly shut down after losing 850,000 Bitcoins valued at the time at nearly $0.4bn (£0.3bn). Its meltdown shook investors in the volatile emerging marketplace - but the calamity at the Tokyo-based company proved a boon for a new Canadian online cryptocurrency exchange. "People like the fact we're located in Canada and know where their money is going," Quadriga CX founder Gerald Cotten said at the time. Some five years later, Cotten's sudden, untimely death has left thousands of his customers scrambling for information about their own missing funds. "We don't know whether or not we're going to get our money back," Tong Zou, who says he is owed C$560,000 - his life savings - told the BBC. "There's just a lot of uncertainty." This month, Quadriga - which had grown to become Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange - was granted temporary bankruptcy protection in a Canadian court. The firm said it had spent the weeks since Cotten's death trying desperately to "locate and secure our very significant cryptocurrency reserves". [...] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - While it is true that inflation or deflation causes a loss of purchasing power for money stored in a bank, or even stored in yourr wallet or under your mattress, it is also true that crypto is unregulated and subject to wild fluctuations if value, the likes I have never seen occcur with U.S. currency in my lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_cryptocurrency_crash The 2018 cryptocurrency crash (also known as the Bitcoin crash and the Great crypto crash was the sell-off of most cryptocurrencies from January 2018. After an unprecedented boom in 2017, the price of bitcoin fell by about 65 percent during the month from 6 January to 6 February 2018. Subsequently, nearly all other cryptocurrencies also peaked from December 2017 through January 2018, and then followed bitcoin. The cryptocurrencies' market capitalization lost at least 342 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2018, the largest loss in cryptocurrencies up to that date. By September 2018, cryptocurrencies collapsed 80% from their peak in January 2018, making the 2018 cryptocurrency crash worse than the Dot-com bubble's 78% collapse. By 26 November, bitcoin also fell by over 80% from its peak, having lost almost one-third of its value in the previous week. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I see nothing which would support this claim. A crypto currency has no intrinsic value and may devalue to zero. Paper currency could devalue to zero. If paper currency devalued to zero, there would be nobody to buy your virtual currency with real currency, and nobody would exchange anything of value for virtual currency. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [Pinguinite #5] Obviously a demonizing statement. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are also used by crooks attempting to conduct illegal activities. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are readily distinguishable as they were not created with the intent of evading law enforcement action. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I have made no objection to crypto due to its independence. It cannot be a legal currency because that is unlawful. It is unregulated, and there is little legal recourse in case of loss. As an investment it is UNSAFE due to unregulated value fluctuation, and theft or loss. It is not demonization to observe that crypto currency was created as a means to evade government regulation. https://www.investopedia.com/news/beware-9m-are-lost-each-day-crypto-scams/ By Shobhit Seth While you may be tempted to think that open-source, decentralized, anonymous cryptocurrencies are safe because they are free of control from a single authority and work in a transparent manner, the reality is, they are constant targets for scams, including digital theft, phishing, fraud, and hacking. (For more, see Beware of these Five Bitcoin Scams.) In a recent finding by Bitcoin.com News, $1.36 billion worth of cryptocurrencies have been stolen by fraudsters during the first two months of 2018. Fraud constituted the majority of virtual currency scams, at 30 percent. It was followed by hacking attempts (22 percent), theft and exit scams (17 percent each), and phishing (13 percent). The biggest recent heist occurred at cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc in late January, where hackers made off with almost $500 million in virtual tokens. (See more: Coincheck May Have Suffered The Worst Hack In Cryptocurrency History.) Around the same time, Bitconnect, a cryptocurrency-lending scheme, shut down its operations and vanished, leading to an exit scam with an estimated loss of around $250 million. And in February, an Italian crypto exchange called BitGrail reported that it was hit with a hacking attempt that led to a loss of nearly $195 million worth of customers' virtual tokens. [...] https://www.pymnts.com/blockchain/bitcoin/2017/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-value-lost/ By PYMNTS Its expected that 21 million Bitcoins will have been mined by 2040, but the amount available to spend and trade will be a lot lower, according to recent reports from Fortune. In fact, between 2.78 million and 4 million Bitcoin have disappeared already, implying 17 to 23 percent are already gone, according to new research from digital forensics firm Chainalysis. Each Bitcoin is valued at approximately $8,500 as of Saturday, Nov. 25. Researchers have long made guesses as to how much of the cryptocurrency is gone, but Chainalysis’ findings rely on an empirical analysis of blockchain, the underpinnings of Bitcoin. The results reflect Bitcoins that have been lost completely — in the process of taking coins out of circulation, hoarding coins, buying and selling coins and strategic investments, among other factors — not those stolen by hackers or other bad actors. The research shows that going forward more Bitcoins will be lost, but the rate will slow compared to the past because the cryptocurrency is more valuable. The new research also raises the question of whether the missing coins are already priced into the value of Bitcoin. [...] https://www.wired.com/story/wired-lost-bitcoin/ Author: Louise Matsakis Back in 2013, when you could still mine bitcoins at home, WIRED was sent a small, sleek mining device manufactured by the now-defunct Butterfly Labs. We turned on the Roku-looking machine in our San Francisco offices and allowed it to do its job. A small fortune was soon amassed, now worth around $100,000. Then, we lost the money. Forever. Here's what happened to WIRED's 13 Bitcoins—and to the millions of others that have faced the same fate. [...] Throwing Away the Key To deal in bitcoin, you need at least two different keys, one public and one private (newer security protocols allow you to add more private keys). Together, the combination of codes lets you trade Bitcoin without an intermediary like a bank. You can look up WIRED's public key to send us money, and then in theory, we could use our private key to access those funds—had we not destroyed it. It's extremely unlikely we could successfully guess the code: it's 64 digits long and no one remembers what it was. No additional copies of the private key exist, at least according to the people who were there. "I didn't make a copy of the paper, or commit the 64 characters on it to memory," says Antonowicz, the technologist who set up the miner. The good news is that if someone did move the coins, the transaction would be public, allowing WIRED to see where they traveled to. In fact, you too can check out WIRED's lost Bitcoins right here. In theory, we might be able to recover the Bitcoin wallet from the hard drive where it was stored, but even that wouldn't be much help. "There might have been a way to forensically recover the wallet—with the encrypted key—from my hard drive, but I shredded that particular drive years ago," says Antonowicz. Plus, even if the wallet was resurrected, it's encrypted. Breaking that protection via brute force would take an unimaginable amount of time. There are three times more possible combinations than there are atoms in the observable universe, by Antonowicz's count. "Originally I was going to say that the closest metaphor I have is that we dropped a car key somewhere in the Atlantic, but I think it's closer for me to say we dropped the key somewhere between here and the Alpha Centauri," says Antonowicz. Recovering our bitcoins is essentially like trying to recover a photo album on a lost computer. Except not only did you get rid of the hard drive, you also protected the album in an encrypted folder with a 64-digit passcode that you threw away. Still, we wanted to make sure there was absolutely no way to get the bitcoins back. WIRED's editor-in-chief, Nicholas Thompson, suggested that if we were able to recover the funds, they might go toward hiring a full-time cryptocurrency reporter. I reached out to the founder of Butterfly Labs, who didn't respond. I also contacted Mark Frauenfelder, a writer and the author of a WIRED article about how he recovered $30,000 worth of Bitcoin. He agrees we're screwed. "If you lost your private keys I think it’s game over," he says. I also looked into a service that tries to crack cryptocurrency wallets via sheer brute force. But their services would be no help, since we don't have access to the hard drive itself. It looks like WIRED really did lose the money forever. The good news is we're far from alone. Lost and Never Found Chainalysis, a research firm that analyzes activity across different cryptocurrency markets, estimates that between 2.78 and 3.79 million, or between 17 and 23 percent of all bitcoins have been lost. That includes wallets believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious founder of Bitcoin who hasn't touched his estimated 1 million coins since 2011. “The number of lost coins over time will drop,” says Michael Gronager, the CEO and co-founder of Chainalysis. He argues that's because there’s more awareness of Bitcoin’s enduring value, even if the price wildly fluctuates. He also says that even if Satoshi were to reemerge, his activity wouldn't significantly impact the market because he wouldn't likely spend a large sum of Bitcoin at once. There are several ways you can lose Bitcoin. Like WIRED, you can simply lose track of your private key or your hard drive. One of the most famous cases of this is what happened to James Howells, an IT worker in London who lost 7,500 bitcoins, or around $56 million, when his laptop was thrown away in 2013. He reportedly wants to dig through five years of trash to unearth the computer. This is the most common way to lose Bitcoin; even Elon Musk tweeted that he forgot how to access a portion of a coin. You can also lose bitcoins by running buggy code or making software mistakes, though these instances are more rare. Last year, for example, someone forgot to collect their mining reward and burned 12.5 coins. In another similar incident, someone may have accidentally swapped a processing fee with the value of the transaction, resulting in nearly 300 coins lost. One time, someone even sent 2,600 coins to an incorrectly configured address, burning them into nonexistence. All of these examples come from BlockSci, a tool developed at Princeton University for analyzing the Bitcoin blockchain. It can be difficult to assess whether any given bitcoin is really lost for good. "It's actually pretty difficult to say for certain. A lot of what we do is look at the big picture," says Harry Kalodner a PhD at Princeton who helped develop BlockSci. He says part of the problem is that you can rarely determine whether someone is just holding onto their Bitcoin, or whether they've definitively lost access to it. Since Bitcoin isn't controlled by any single authority, there's no one who can simply close your account. So what could WIRED have done, were we to do the whole thing again? Since 2013, Bitcoin has added a number of new, more sophisticated features. For one, we could have locked our coins away until a certain date. "One Bitcoin feature that's been added is that it now supports time-locked coins, that makes them completely un-spendable until a set point in the future," says Kalodner. Like, say, May 2018, when the editor-in-chief could really use some money to hire another reporter. https://time.com/5625194/japan-cryptocurrency-remixpoint-hack/ By Associated Press July 12, 2019 (TOKYO) — A Japanese cryptocurrency exchange has reported a hack causing the loss of 3.5 billion yen, or $32 million, worth of virtual money. Tokyo-based Remixpoint, which runs the BITPoint exchange as well as travel, used car and energy businesses, apologized Friday, saying the losses were confirmed starting Thursday. The reason for the losses, which include bitcoins as well as Ethereum, Ripple and other kinds of cryptocurrencies, is under investigation. About two-thirds of the losses affected customers while the rest of the missing assets belonged to Remixpoint, the company said in a statement. All transactions have been halted. [...]
I don't care what your problem is. Get some pesos if you don't like it here.
Some forms of crypto can be created in any volume at will. Bitcoin cannot be, by design. Terminology is not established in the industry, but a crypto that can be created at will is only of use if it is centrally controlled and created. "Tether" is one such type. I call them "tokens". Tether Limited is a company that creates them and issues them at a cost of $1 per Tether coin. They are much like digital versions of coupons that you could find in magazines and newspapers. Any number can be printed. The value of Tether depends solely on the credibility, reliability and honesty of Tether Limited. If that company reneges on their redemption promise of $1 per Tether, holders of Tether are SOL. Bitcoin, and what I call "free market" crypto is not centrally controlled and therefore it's value does not hinge upon the existence or trust of any single entity or even country or set of countries. Any one part of the world could be devastated by meteors or nuke war, and free market crypto will not be destroyed. Anyone can seek to coin/mint/mine additional coins, but it is a race to solve each set of coins in sequence, so the creation of new coins is limited. This limits the supply of them, and limited supply imparts value. To win the race to mine more coins, computers much solve problems so complex that it comes at a usage cost to do so, not unlike how mining for gold comes with an investment cost. So no, it's not simply numbers. It is numeric solutions. Bitcoin also comes with utility value in serving as a medium of exchange between 2 parties anywhere on the internet. This provides a finance solution that in some cases is superior to that offered by traditional banking services. Namely, lower cost, no paperwork, no need to involve intermediary banks and no political sanctions that could interfere with the transfer (which can be disadvantageous or advantageous depending on the perspective, but is always advantageous to the immediate parties desiring to do the transfer).
As though no one has ever lost dollar holdings? It most certainly has via banks, both in distant times and in more recent times. But cash is constantly being stolen. The currency itself does not provide a guarantee vs loss due to a variety of methods. Even when banks are robbed, there is a loss. Perhaps not to the account holders directly but do you think the replacement funds are simply printed into existence without consequence? Wealth transfer *always* occurs either through debasement of the currency via more printing, in which case all USD holder pay the fee, or taxpayers picking up the bill. So it is not accuarate to say that always safe in USD form, even when on deposit. It most certainly is accurate. Your citation reflects a case of keys not being securely protected, just as I stated they must be. In this case, Cotten and/or the company with which he was associated, utterly failed to safeguard the private keys to this fortune. It was gross negligence on their part. They apparently entrusted them to a single man's memory which was one heartbeat away for oblivion. That key could have been safeguarded in any number of ways. Bitcoin, by design, can be secured with multiple keys such that of, say, 5 different keys any 3 or 4 would be needed to access the funds. This protects both against the loss of any single key as well as protects against any one party from absconding with the funds unilaterally. As for the members, who entrusted this company, that is most unfortunate for them of course, though ultimately, it was the account holders who chose to trust an incompetent company, so some of that responsibility resides with them, and not with the fundamental design of bitcoin. It most certainly has. Though it's not accuarte to simply conclude it has been "volatile" without also mentioning the tremendous growth in value it has seen over the years. The very first official bitcoin transaction was made for 2 pizzas. The cost: 10,000 bitcoin, which is about $100,000,000 at today's prices. Bitcoin has seen about 6 or 7 booms and busts but has not died. Each boom has well surpassed the prior boom, such that *even* if anyone had invested in bitcoin at the *worst* possible time of each boom with the exception being the most recent of $20k, he would still be sitting on a very healthy return today. And even today, with BTC price at about 50% of it's all time high, prospects are not altogether dire for it rising again above 20k. Of course, this valuation is in US dollars, which is not necessarily the best benchmark. This citation is not even accurate in terms of "unprecedented". It has gone up and down by amounts that would rock any standard commodity market to its core, but it's been far more up than down, even taking into consideration the half dozen or so busts that it's seen. 2018 was just the latest bust and its not even the biggest bitcoin has seen. My information is 93% drawdown is the record, and it has bounced back from that. I first accepted bitcoin for payment when it was about $450. I've certainly not done poorly with that particular transaction. The first part of your comment implies that a paper currency that devalues to zero would still constitute "real currency". It also implies that crypto currency could or would not be exchangable for goods and services directly. It seems your thinking implies that cyrpto as never able to qualify as a currency itself, that it MUST be first exchanged for some kind of paper currency. That is certainly not the idea with which most crypto currencies were designed. The second part of your comment that "nobody would exchange anything of value" for virtual currency in a world where no paper currency exists I see as fallacious. Currency exists not because people believe currency itself has value -- it doesn't (the paper form, at least). Currency exists as a tool for society to exchange goods and services. It's an invention that serves that purpose. And as long as society is in need of exchanging goods and services, something -- anything -- that can serve as a money will do. True, crypto has no intrinsic value but neither does the USD. But crypto does score fairly high when weighed against all properties a quality money must have such as being finely divisible, non-degrading/unlimited storage life, in limited supply, and easy to store. It was principly designed to evade abuse by the government itself as previously cited in regards to the 2008 finance crisis as well as the continuing problem of escalating national debt. If one believes the government is completely benevolent, then yes, they might see crypto as having little moral benefit. It is unregulated, but along with that unmanipulated. I agree loss is a danger, but there is no method of value storage that is completely risk free. For those who consider crypto to be only a temporary storage of value, it can be viewed as risky. As one who works in software development and is cognizant of the ever growing impact that technology has in society and given my general distrust of government which I consider well validated, I view crypto as a tool that is both unstoppable and a moralizing force to right some of societies wrongs. That is my personal assessment. No, not to evade regulation. It was to evade theft of value as previously mentioned. If one does not see anything morally wrong with the 2008 bailouts, one may indeed see the development of crypto as having only nefarious, immoral purposes. But bitcoin would not have any value if it was only used by the relatively small criminal elements in the world. It would only have value if the general population starts to adopt it. And the general population is that entity that the government is morally bound to serve. It was never intended that the government would rule the general public. Re: your links at this point, I'll only say that yes, hacking and criminal theft of crypto has occurred, as has happened with all forms of wealth. Your source of investopedia may well be biased, as I have found that traditional financial professionals are generally anti-crypto simply because it is contrary to everything about finance they have ever learned. Crypto is a new kid on the block, and none of us likes it when we our lifelong expertise is challenged. Yes some crypto has been lost. There is a hard drive in a land fill somewhere that was accidentally thrown away in the early bitcoin days when bitcoin was worth fractions of a penny. The rightful owner has offered a sizeable percentage to anyone who can think of a way to find it. But it's not really necessary as far as the economy goes. The smallest increment of bitcoin is worth about 1/100th of a penny. If bitcoin gose to $1 million per coin, the smallest increment would be worth 1 cent. That's small enough to serve monetary needs, and even if it weren't, software upgrades could divide it even further. So no, it's not a "problem" for bitcoin as a whole. FTR, most wallets -- all I am familiar with -- translate your private key to a series of 12 or 24 ordinary words that are much more easily memorized. With those words memorized or recorded somewhere, in the correct order, one can recreate their wallet and restore full access to funds. That provides a recovery method even if all of your electronics were destroyed in, say, a house fire.
Pinguine you are grasping at straws to try to make your point. Bitcoin which isn't a coin but a series of numbers in cyberspace has zero value. They will not replace your money like a bank would. You treat it like it is no big deal if your preferred money system of the world is hacked and there is zero recourse to get your money back. But you are hung up on this pet theory of yours.
Your money is always secure in a bank against theft up to 100 thousand per bank account. Bitscamcoin zero.
It is how they work though isn't it. Side note. Facebook should be seized and dismantled if they go through with this libra scam.
Even the mark of the beast huh. Ok. Take the mark under your skin in order to buy or sell. You would do that? Even thought the Bible warned you thousands of years ago?
Come on you are not that naive. The US, the European Union and China need to investigate who is behind the manipulation of bitcoin’s price. And since I happen to know Donald Trump and I also happen to know that the president reads my column regularly, that’s what I’m suggesting right now. No need to even make a phone call. As I’ve said before, bitcoin is nothing more than a confidence game. It’s worth nothing if people suddenly lose their confidence in this fake digital currency. It’s backed by nothing. It’s the definition of a con. That’s why people who are propping up bitcoin lose their minds whenever someone like me writes anything negative about it. That’s what happened on Tuesday. Thanks, folks, for all the e-mails and tweets. Keep them coming! I’ll keep them handy because I am sure that every one of these writers will be thrilled to defend bitcoin in front of investigators from the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Justice Department, the IRS, Homeland Security and any other agency that will eventually get in on the action. Just so you know, I didn’t start this latest skirmish with the bitcoin, uh, let’s call them “enthusiasts.” Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank started it when he said recently: “Cryptocurrencies or bitcoins, or anything like that, are not really currencies — they are assets. A euro is a euro — today, tomorrow, in a month — it’s always a euro. And the ECB is behind the euro. Who is behind the cryptocurrencies? So they are very, very risky assets.” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said pretty much the same thing. “There are investor and consumer protection issues as well” with bitcoins, Powell told the House Financial Services Committee a year ago. Powell also said cryptocurrencies are not real currencies because they have no intrinsic value. –– ADVERTISEMENT –– I’ve said the same thing when a bitcoin was selling for $20,000. And still was saying it when it plunged to $4,000. Its real worth: $0. https://nypost.com/2019/05/22/bitcoin-manipulation-madness-calls-for- massive-investigation/
So no, it's not a "problem" for bitcoin as a whole. Because you said so. Ok.
So no, it's not simply numbers. It is numeric solutions. Bitcoin also comes with utility value in serving as a medium of exchange between 2 parties anywhere on the internet. This provides a finance solution that in some cases is superior to that offered by traditional banking services. Namely, lower cost, no paperwork, no need to involve intermediary banks and no political sanctions that could interfere with the transfer (which can be disadvantageous or advantageous depending on the perspective, but is always advantageous to the immediate parties desiring to do the transfer). Strange. ra·tion·al·i·za·tion /ÌraSH(Y)n(Y)lYÈzSH(Y)n,ÌraSH(Y)n(Y)l+ÈzSH(Y)n/ noun 1. the action of attempting to explain or justify behavior or an attitude with logical reasons, even if these are not appropriate.
So in other words it is for drug dealers and criminals. Plenty of banks are used to launder drug money. Banks Launder Billions of Illegal Cartel Money Bank of America, Western Union, and JP Morgan, are among the institutions allegedly involved in the drug trade. Meanwhile, HSBC has admitted its laundering role, and evaded criminal prosecution by paying a fine of almost $2 billion. The lack of imprisonment of any bankers involved is indicative of the hypocritical nature of the drug war; an individual selling a few grams of drugs can face decades in prison, while a group of people that tacitly allow — and profit from — the trade of tons, escape incarceration.
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. Back in 2008 (or 2009), they increased this to $250,000. They said they wanted to protect consumers during the banking crisis. However, what it did was eliminate the incentive for people to hold cash in their bank accounts from having a bunch of bank accounts, each with less than $100K in it. And who really benefited from this? The biggest banks who, instead of seeing people move their savings over $100K out of their bank to split it up among two more banks. So the big bank would get to keep a lot more of these most desirable customers. And Congress, as usual, supported the big banks (who had caused the financial crisis) at the cost of the smaller banks.
That may be true. But it is also true that peoples money is even more secure. If you account for inflation from when the 100 thousand dollar policy started. Is it about the same today in what a dollar is worth compared to the past? I don't know.
100000 in 1980 → $304741.30 in 2018 - Inflation Calculator
The goldbugs have an argument against fiat currency. They say that the government and big business have historically favored big investors and banks. And favored borrowers over savers. The goldbugs say the value of the money, whether backed by gold or not, can be measured simply in the cost of something a century ago as compared to the cost of the same quality of good today. They typically use the cost of a good men's suit, like a lawyer or businessman would choose. So they observe that a century ago, when the Federal Reserve was just really getting started and the dollar was still backed (imperfectly) by gold, a good men's suit cost $20. And today a comparable suit costs about $2,000. So they estimate that a dollar today is worth roughly 1% of what it was worth a century ago. So your arguments against crypo aren't as strong when you recognize the "petrodollar tax". Namely, that the U.S. government, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and big institutional investors have a known bias toward devaluing the currency over time while still trying to make it the one indispensable currency globally. Because seeing the dollar as indispensable is part of its power, despite its defects as the chosen currency of dollar manipulators and their cronies. Bitcoin's value can similarly vary but a massively indebted government with its Wall Street cronies and investor class and borrowers et cetera will always be trying to force dollar values down, primarily to benefit the investor class. Since we have allowed federal debt to grow so large, it is virtually guaranteed that the federal government will favor dollar devaluation just so its own books can be (roughly) balanced. While continuing to run a trillion dollar deficit in 2020. The dollar starts to look more and more like a plot by the Federal Reserve to keep the petrodollar as the indispensable currency while using monetary policy (interest rates) to favor the big banks, Wall Street, the investor class, and smaller borrowers and even the small fry like mortgage holders, all to keep that system intact. Even foreign governments and investors are tied into this system and the inevitable "tax" on all dollar holders that the deliberate institutional devaluation of the petrodollar necessarily entails.
Tell you what. Invest with me and I can guarantee that in thirty years your dollars will be worth 30% of what you invest with me. Doesn't that sound like a really good investment plan for you? Just mail me a check already. You see, this is a way to use monetary policy to reduce government (and private) debt, all at the expense of the entire economy. However, since we force the entire oil industry to conduct its business in petrodollars (and no country has yet really escaped the petrodollar system), then this constant devaluation is actually a subsidy that props up the value of a dollar. Look back a few years, to the attempts to establish a different foreign currency like the euro or the Chinese yuan as an alternative to the petrodollar (because those foreigners were pissed at the constantly and deliberately devalued petrodollar at their expense and to the benefit of the American economy and, especially, the biggest American banks and investors and the federal government most of all with its huge ongoing debt crisis). We pulled out the stops and all that talk has amounted to nothing. Yet, some very serious players wanted to proceed. Like Saddam in Iraq looking to sell oil to the EU using a petro-euro or petro-franc. Fast forward some years and Saddam is now gone, a nice object lesson to regional dictators. And the oil contracts Saddam had got invalidated and the contracts for Iraqi oil had to mostly be renegotiated, using the petrodollar of course. And in the meantime, America's fracking explosion has now made the petrodollar more hard to escape than ever since America is now the world's leading producer of natural gas and of oil and of gasoline. Point out the defects of Bitcoin all you like. But don't pretend the dollar is perfect either. It has some serious defects as well.
Bitscamcoin zero. I believe one of the recent hacks was actually insured against loss. And yes, there is no reason why crypto could not be so insured in the same way cars, houses and jewelry is insured.
Crypto has no more in common with the Biblical "mark of the beast" than does dollars at this point. Your credit card is just numbers too, isn't it? Worse yet, it has your name attached to those numbers. At least bitcoin doesn't conflate the two.
If you want a currency that is actually backed by something, that's fine, but don't pretend the US dollar meets that requirement. You are pretty much left with the Swiss Frank, which is partially gold backed, and gold and silver itself. As I've conceded numerous times that crypto is not so backed, but neither is the dollar, I don't see the point of bantering that point further. The people who lose their minds are those who can't admit the fact that bitcoin is almost 10 years old and has not gone away in spite of comparisons to tulip bulb mania. And that tulip bulb mania only lasted about 3 years in times of antiquity. And here in the modern age, bitcoin has done almost 10. Congress has called for hearings about libra and has dragged FB execs to DC to discuss it. They insist it's important to talk about potential illicit use, money laundering, security, Know Your Customer and all those things before FB moves forward with it. It's because of DC's insatiable appitite for controlling money. But they didn't do that for bitcoin, and do you know why? There are no execs to drag to DC to question!. There is no central party that controls bitcoin, and that's a good thing. Yes there is good and bad, but government control is just as bad, or worse, than any other potential illicit use of bitcoin you could name. I believe there are many thing you don't trust the gov with stone. Why do you trust the monetary system with them? But of course professional, lifelong bankers will hate bitcoin. They are oriented to central control of the monetary system and bitcoin is decentralized. What's not to hate? If its real worth was truly zero, there would be no need to investigate.
Good point! The type of money is not the problem.
Sounds about right. So in about 40 years, the US dollar has lost 2/3rds of it's purchasing power.
So someone should take out an insurance policy in case their money disappears in cyberspace. That isn't comforting. I like it the way it is better. Pity to the poor person who couldn't afford to insure their money. Should the government mandate that you have insurance on your "money" you know to protect us? 16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Hey that verse up there in the Bible could maybe make crypto more secure. Number everyone with a microchip. Then their microchip could identify them and make sure it isn't stolen money or an illegitimate transaction. Uh Oh 9 And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, 10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: 11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. No thanks
That is the way it goes. People make more money today. So that is just the way it is. Bitcoin would't change any of that.
Me and you should team up and make a virtual currency. We'll call it the liberty.
Because it works. Everyone in the world wants dollars. It makes Americans richer because everyone wants our money. No one wants pesos. I know it should be backed by gold. Or I used to know or think that. That could be bad too. Not enough gold. Gold theft from Fort Knox possibility.
I agree crypto right now obviously isn't the mark of the beast. I disagree that they are equally unlike the mark of the beast. There will be problems with Crypto. People will want help with the government. They will eventually use mark of the beast to make it secure. That is where I see it going long term from my perspective. With crypto type stuff who is to say you wont be locked out of your money somehow in the future if you are not compliant with governments wishes. Who knows maybe the CIA made Bitcoin. Or some government.
I worked in a grocery store in the 80's. Milk was $1.89 for the red topped vitamin D milk. !0 cents less for the Blue top and another for the watered down 1 percent. Now I can get it for 99 cents or a buck 29. Computers are cheaper too. Why am I telling you. Well you'll have to figure that out I don't have time to develop my thoughts in a manual for you to read. Computers are cheaper too. And Dewalt power tools.
I'm glad the world prefers dollars. It makes us richer. It is to our advantage that we can print money and these other countries take it instead of our gold.
Comments (41 - 88) not displayed.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#2. To: A K A Stone (#1)
#3. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#1)
[A K A Stone #1] Bitcoin is for suckers and predators.
Can Bitcoin Be Hacked?
Investopedia
Updated Jun 25, 2019 The biggest cryptocurrency hack in the history of blockchain (hack attack that uprooted a giant from industry)
Bitfolio Hackers Are Turning Binance’s Stolen Bitcoin Into Other Cryptocurrencies
Coindesk
Updated Jul 16, 2019 at 16:38 UTC 55,000 cryptocurrency users affected in Bitpoint’s $28 million hack
TNW
#4. To: Pinguinite (#2)
The US dollar, on the other hand, is centralized.
#5. To: nolu chan, A K A Stone (#3)
There is no such thing as absolute security on the internet. With banks, you have insurance if your account gets hacked.
With crypto, primarily used by crooks, drug dealers, tax evaders, and others attempting to avoid the law, a successful hack means you are usually shit out of luck, with no legal recourse.
#6. To: A K A Stone (#4)
Then why do people want to change their bitcoins into dollars?
This is America and the dollar is what we use. If it was replaced by these drug dealer scams of computer numbers that have no value it would hurt all Americans.
Use gold if you want something decentralized.
#7. To: Pinguinite (#5)
Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments
#8. To: Pinguinite (#6)
Free market cypto cannot be printed ad infinitum.
#9. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#8)
Pinguinite: Free market cypto cannot be printed ad infinitum.
A K A Stone: I know it is just nothing based on nothing.
#10. To: buckeroo (#9)
#11. To: A K A Stone (#10)
Except the dollar is accepted everywhere.
#12. To: Pinguinite, A K A Stone (#5)
[Pinguinite #5] Hacking is an admitted and understood potential problem for any holder of crypto. To be clear, this is not a problem for the crypto blockchain which is the place where crypto holdings are actually recorded. This is instead a problem with the keys to the blockchain which are not on the blockchain but held privately in "wallets" which is not really an accurate description of how crypto works.
[Pinguinite #5] These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole.
Quadriga: The cryptocurrency exchange that lost $135m
BBC News, Toronto
17 February 2019 [Pinguinite #5] But your dollars held in a bank are not protected against debasement or inflation, which is a loss of purchasing power.
2018 cryptocurrency crash
[Pinguinite #5] But free market crypto protects against these potential losses in value.
[nolu chan #3] With crypto, primarily used by crooks, drug dealers, tax evaders, and others attempting to avoid the law, a successful hack means you are usually shit out of luck, with no legal recourse.
[Pinguinite #5] Government is in bed with these institutions and objecting to crypto due to its independence neglects the interests of the American people and all holders of legal tender US dollars.
$9 Million Lost Each Day In Cryptocurrency Scams
Updated Jun 25, 2019 Bitcoin’s Missing 23 Percent Problem
Posted on November 27, 2017 How WIRED Lost $100,000 in Bitcoin
WIRED
security
05.28.18 07:00 am A Hacked Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchange Just Lost $32 Million of Virtual Money
#13. To: buckeroo (#11)
At what rate? You don't internationally travel very much, do you?
#14. To: buckeroo, A K A Stone (#9)
#15. To: nolu chan (#12)
That the crypto may have functioned perfectly is no consolation for those whose virtual fortune has disappeared.
[Pinguinite #5] These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole.
This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate.
Cotten died and nobody else seemed to know how to access the virtual fortune. There was no hack, nor any irresponsible parties. The virtual fortune is still safe with Gerald Batten who is not talking. Five years later, customers are still left in limbo.
While it is true that inflation or deflation causes a loss of purchasing power for money stored in a bank, or even stored in yourr wallet or under your mattress, it is also true that crypto is unregulated and subject to wild fluctuations if value, the likes I have never seen occcur with U.S. currency in my lifetime.
2018 cryptocurrency crash
The 2018 cryptocurrency crash (also known as the Bitcoin crash and the Great crypto crash was the sell-off of most cryptocurrencies from January 2018. After an unprecedented boom in 2017, the price of bitcoin fell by about 65 percent during the month from 6 January to 6 February 2018.
[Pinguinite #5] But free market crypto protects against these potential losses in value.
I see nothing which would support this claim. A crypto currency has no intrinsic value and may devalue to zero. Paper currency could devalue to zero. If paper currency devalued to zero, there would be nobody to buy your virtual currency with real currency, and nobody would exchange anything of value for virtual currency.
[Pinguinite #5] Obviously a demonizing statement. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are also used by crooks attempting to conduct illegal activities.
Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are readily distinguishable as they were not created with the intent of evading law enforcement action.
I have made no objection to crypto due to its independence. It cannot be a legal currency because that is unlawful. It is unregulated, and there is little legal recourse in case of loss. As an investment it is UNSAFE due to unregulated value fluctuation, and theft or loss.
It is not demonization to observe that crypto currency was created as a means to evade government regulation.
Bitcoin’s Missing 23 Percent Problem
"If you lost your private keys I think it’s game over,"
#16. To: Pinguinite (#15)
As though no one has ever lost dollar holdings? It most certainly has via banks, both in distant times and in more recent times. But cash is constantly being stolen. The currency itself does not provide a guarantee vs loss due to a variety of methods. Even when banks are robbed, there is a loss. Perhaps not to the account holders directly but do you think the replacement funds are simply printed into existence without consequence? Wealth transfer *always* occurs either through debasement of the currency via more printing, in which case all USD holder pay the fee, or taxpayers picking up the bill.
#17. To: Pinguinite (#15)
So it is not accuarate to say that always safe in USD form, even when on deposit.
#18. To: Pinguinite (#15)
It seems your thinking implies that cyrpto as never able to qualify as a currency itself, that it MUST be first exchanged for some kind of paper currency. That is certainly not the idea with which most crypto currencies were designed.
#19. To: Pinguinite (#15)
anything -- that can serve as a money will do.
#20. To: Pinguinite (#15)
It is unregulated, but along with that unmanipulated.
#21. To: Pinguinite (#15)
Yes some crypto has been lost. There is a hard drive in a land fill somewhere that was accidentally thrown away in the early bitcoin days when bitcoin was worth fractions of a penny. The rightful owner has offered a sizeable percentage to anyone who can think of a way to find it. But it's not really necessary as far as the economy goes. The smallest increment of bitcoin is worth about 1/100th of a penny. If bitcoin gose to $1 million per coin, the smallest increment would be worth 1 cent. That's small enough to serve monetary needs, and even if it weren't, software upgrades could divide it even further.
#22. To: Pinguinite (#14)
Bitcoin, and what I call "free market" crypto is not centrally controlled and therefore it's value does not hinge upon the existence or trust of any single entity or even country or set of countries. Any one part of the world could be devastated by meteors or nuke war, and free market crypto will not be destroyed. Anyone can seek to coin/mint/mine additional coins, but it is a race to solve each set of coins in sequence, so the creation of new coins is limited. This limits the supply of them, and limited supply imparts value. To win the race to mine more coins, computers much solve problems so complex that it comes at a usage cost to do so, not unlike how mining for gold comes with an investment cost.
#23. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#7)
Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#24. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#17)
#25. To: Tooconservative (#24)
And who really benefited from this? The biggest banks who, instead of seeing people move their savings over $100K out of their bank to split it up among two more banks. So the big bank would get to keep a lot more of these most desirable customers. And Congress, as usual, supported the big banks (who had caused the financial crisis) at the cost of the smaller banks.
#26. To: Tooconservative (#24)
#27. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#25)
If you account for inflation from when the 100 thousand dollar policy started. Is it about the same today in what a dollar is worth compared to the past?
#28. To: A K A Stone (#25)
(Edited)
That may be true. But it is also true that peoples money is even more secure.
#29. To: A K A Stone (#17)
Your money is always secure in a bank against theft up to 100 thousand per bank account.
#30. To: A K A Stone (#19)
Even the mark of the beast huh. Ok. Take the mark under your skin in order to buy or sell. You would do that? Even thought the Bible warned you thousands of years ago?
#31. To: A K A Stone (#20)
As I’ve said before, bitcoin is nothing more than a confidence game. It’s worth nothing if people suddenly lose their confidence in this fake digital currency. It’s backed by nothing. It’s the definition of a con.
That’s why people who are propping up bitcoin lose their minds whenever someone like me writes anything negative about it. That’s what happened on Tuesday.
I’ll keep them handy because I am sure that every one of these writers will be thrilled to defend bitcoin in front of investigators from the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Justice Department, the IRS, Homeland Security and any other agency that will eventually get in on the action.
Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank .... Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said .....
I’ve said the same thing when a bitcoin was selling for $20,000. And still was saying it when it plunged to $4,000. Its real worth: $0.
https://nypost.com/2019/05/22/bitcoin-manipulation-madness-calls-for- massive-investigation/
#32. To: Deckard (#23)
Plenty of banks are used to launder drug money.
#33. To: A K A Stone (#26)
100000 in 1980 → $304741.30 in 2018 - Inflation Calculator
#34. To: Pinguinite (#29)
I believe one of the recent hacks was actually insured against loss. And yes, there is no reason why crypto could not be so insured in the same way cars, houses and jewelry is insured.
#35. To: Pinguinite (#33)
Sounds about right. So in about 40 years, the US dollar has lost 2/3rds of it's purchasing power.
#36. To: Pinguinite (#31)
(Edited)
#37. To: Pinguinite (#31)
I believe there are many thing you don't trust the gov with stone. Why do you trust the monetary system with them?
#38. To: Pinguinite (#30)
Crypto has no more in common with the Biblical "mark of the beast" than does dollars at this point.
#39. To: Tooconservative (#28)
Tell you what. Invest with me and I can guarantee that in thirty years your dollars will be worth 30% of what you invest with me.
#40. To: Tooconservative (#28)
Look back a few years, to the attempts to establish a different foreign currency like the euro or the Chinese yuan as an alternative to the petrodollar
.
.
.
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]