Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

Deathwing

Deathwing

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Aren't lots of things in society mass delusions? I'm not saying that's a good thing in this specific case. But getting people to trust a system so that the system works isn't itself necessarily a bad thing.

That said, the mass delusion and trust has definitely been abused.
 
Mist

Mist

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"Money printing was good, actually, when we just gave all the money to rich people to buy stocks with, but now it's bad when we give it to working people to buy food for their kids, and small businesses to cover their rent."
 
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Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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Mist said:
"Money printing was good, actually, when we just gave all the money to rich people to buy stocks with, but now it's bad when we give it to working people to buy food for their kids, and small businesses to cover their rent."
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A huge chunk of that money didnt even go to the average person. Literally hundreds of billions scammed and sent god knows where. You had prisoners scamming workers comp.
 
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Mist

Mist

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Big Phoenix said:
A huge chunk of that money didnt even go to the average person. Literally hundreds of billions scammed and sent god knows where. You had prisoners scamming workers comp.
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Yeah, it was incredibly fraudulent. Just like when we bailed out Wall Street to the tune of 1.5 trillion, then printed 4 trillion more via QE. Or when we sent C130s filled with palettes of $100 bills to Iraq and Afghanistan and at least 80 billion dollars worth went completely unaccounted for, plus hundreds of billions more that were accounted, but went to shitty contractors who didn't do the work, or local warlords as bribes.

20+ years of printing and spending money like it was nothing, ever since 9/11, and yet only now has the specter of inflation appeared when wage gains are starting to reverse then 40 years of fuck-you to the working class.

It's a scam, but the real scam goes even deeper than you think. The scam is always going on, but when that money actually starts to trickle to people who actually work for a living, instead of bankers, war-profiteers and criminals, that's when the money faucet has to be turned off.
 
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Flobee

Flobee

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Buy Bitcoin.

IMO attempts like this will be the norm moving forward. I honestly thought that this wouldn't get this far until CBDCs were out... but maybe its better this way. Read that anyone who donated more than $25 is going to have their accounts shut down. That may be BS, but regardless this is going to wake a lot of normal folks up to the importance of censorship resistant money.

To keep it StonkHouse approved, lets frame this as BTC number go up if the above is true.

 
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Arden

Arden

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Flobee said:
Buy Bitcoin.

IMO attempts like this will be the norm moving forward. I honestly thought that this wouldn't get this far until CBDCs were out... but maybe its better this way. Read that anyone who donated more than $25 is going to have their accounts shut down. That may be BS, but regardless this is going to wake a lot of normal folks up to the importance of censorship resistant money.

To keep it StonkHouse approved, lets frame this as BTC number go up if the above is true.

Click to expand...

I dunno man. I think we are a long way from BTC (or any crypto) being censorship resistant. If your government is going to act like a tyrant*, BTC isn't going to save you.



* Speaking theoretically here- not necessarily in reference to this specific Canadian example
 
Flobee

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Arden said:
I dunno man. I think we are a long way from BTC (or any crypto) being censorship resistant. If your government is going to act like a tyrant*, BTC isn't going to save you.



* Speaking theoretically here- not necessarily in reference to this specific Canadian example
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We certainly aren't there yet. Bitcoin has the technical capabilities to do it, but it needs to be more accepted as a medium of exchange. So long as you need to convert to fiat to buy goods/services it won't fully work. Fiat rails are the chokepoint, Bitcoin is perfectly capable of filling this role though. This sort of situation is exactly the sort of thing to push people toward accepting and using BTC as currency IMO
 
Tmac

Tmac

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Flobee said:
We certainly aren't there yet. Bitcoin has the technical capabilities to do it, but it needs to be more accepted as a medium of exchange. So long as you need to convert to fiat to buy goods/services it won't fully work. Fiat rails are the chokepoint, Bitcoin is perfectly capable of filling this role though. This sort of situation is exactly the sort of thing to push people toward accepting and using BTC as currency IMO
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Isn't this what Lightning solves?
 
Flobee

Flobee

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Tmac said:
Isn't this what Lightning solves?
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Yup. Like I said it is technically capable. Lightning probably isn't ready for full worldwide adoption, but the bones are there and development is moving forward. Regulation is a big hurdle for use as a currency. Obviously if the gov completely oversteps as it is in Canada then that becomes a moot point since you're probably a criminal anyway. Events like this are what will propel the general population toward understanding and accepting that a censorship resistant currency is vital to freedom.
 
Arden

Arden

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Flobee said:
Yup. Like I said it is technically capable. Lightning probably isn't ready for full worldwide adoption, but the bones are there and development is moving forward. Regulation is a big hurdle for use as a currency. Obviously if the gov completely oversteps as it is in Canada then that becomes a moot point since you're probably a criminal anyway. Events like this are what will propel the general population toward understanding and accepting that a censorship resistant currency is vital to freedom.
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Is it your position that, assuming mass adoption, governments will lose the ability to trace and track BTC transactions? Because they clearly have that ability right now (just look at the news). Assuming they maintain that ability, and I don't see why they wouldn't, it would be a pretty simple matter for a government to proclaim Bitcoin transactions as money laundering or financing terrorism or some such. Even if they are not capable of actually stopping Bitcoin transactions, it would be a simple matter of arresting people who participated in those transactions.
 
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Flobee

Flobee

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Arden said:
Is it your position that, assuming mass adoption, governments will lose the ability to trace and track BTC transactions? Because they clearly have that ability right now (just look at the news). Assuming they maintain that ability, and I don't see why they wouldn't, it would be a pretty simple matter for a government to proclaim Bitcoin transactions as money laundering or financing terrorism or some such. Even if they are not capable of actually stopping Bitcoin transactions, it would be a simple matter of arresting people who participated in those transactions.
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Bitcoin is a public ledger, on-chain transactions will likely always be trackable to some degree. Improvements allowed by Taproot will help with privacy by improving UTXO obfuscating practices like coinjoins/payjoins will help. Further developments are in the works to incentivize big blockspace users like exchanges to coinjoin their transactions to save of fees, which would further enhance privacy. Its also worth noting that Lightning transactions are not trivially tracible without owning a significant amount of the liquidity on a given payment route.

That being said no, Bitcoin does not stop the government's ability to arrest you. It does however remove their ability to simply turn off your access to the banking system, as well as their ability to print however much money they need to do what they want. By removing their printing ability, and forcing them to rely on more manual processes of censorship (going to your house an arresting you for example) Bitcoin can, and I believe will, severely reduce the amount of power that governments have over the individual.

I believe the endgame for Bitcoin is to displace centralized control of the monetary system and this will significantly reduce the power of the state. Bitcoin makes tyranny more difficult and that is probably enough to stop this current iteration of dystopia.
 
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Flobee

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Things are escalating


RISCH, MENENDEZ, CASSIDY INTRODUCE LEGISLATION TO MITIGATE RISKS OF EL SALVADOR’S ADOPTION OF BITCOIN​

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), ranking member and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) today introduced the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act , legislation requiring a State Department report on El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, as legal tender and a plan to mitigate potential risks to the U.S. financial system.

“El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender raises significant concerns about the economic stability and financial integrity of a vulnerable U.S. trading partner in Central America,” said Risch. “This new policy has the potential to weaken U.S. sanctions policy, empowering malign actors like China and organized criminal organizations. Our bipartisan legislation seeks greater clarity on El Salvador’s policy and requires the administration to mitigate potential risk to the U.S. financial system.”

“El Salvador recognizing Bitcoin as official currency opens the door for money laundering cartels and undermines U.S. interests,” said Dr. Cassidy. “If the United States wishes to combat money laundering and preserve the role of the dollar as a reserve currency of the world, we must tackle this issue head on.”

The State Department report would require:

  • An analysis of El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender and the risks for cybersecurity, economic stability, and democratic governance in El Salvador.
  • A plan to mitigate potential risks to the U.S. financial system.
 
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Arden

Arden

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Flobee said:
Things are escalating


RISCH, MENENDEZ, CASSIDY INTRODUCE LEGISLATION TO MITIGATE RISKS OF EL SALVADOR’S ADOPTION OF BITCOIN​

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), ranking member and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) today introduced the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act , legislation requiring a State Department report on El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, as legal tender and a plan to mitigate potential risks to the U.S. financial system.

“El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender raises significant concerns about the economic stability and financial integrity of a vulnerable U.S. trading partner in Central America,” said Risch. “This new policy has the potential to weaken U.S. sanctions policy, empowering malign actors like China and organized criminal organizations. Our bipartisan legislation seeks greater clarity on El Salvador’s policy and requires the administration to mitigate potential risk to the U.S. financial system.”

“El Salvador recognizing Bitcoin as official currency opens the door for money laundering cartels and undermines U.S. interests,” said Dr. Cassidy. “If the United States wishes to combat money laundering and preserve the role of the dollar as a reserve currency of the world, we must tackle this issue head on.”

The State Department report would require:

  • An analysis of El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender and the risks for cybersecurity, economic stability, and democratic governance in El Salvador.
  • A plan to mitigate potential risks to the U.S. financial system.
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Lol, did he mean to say a "vulnerable U.S. trading partner" or a "valuable U.S. trading partner"? Funny either way.

Few thoughts:

-The money laundering thing is such a red herring. Just come out and say it's 100% about preserving the role of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. This isn't the 80s and 90s... The idea of the U.S. combating any kind of cartels in Central America- drug or "money laundering" is laughable. There are already countless countries where the U.S. has zero control over "money laundering" activities... The idea that El Sal would be something special is a joke.

-Yet again, this is just an act that requires a "report." At this rate, BTC adoption will be worldwide before the U.S. actually decides to do something (other than draft reports).

-As an aside, I continue to find it hilarious that crypto (both pro and con) seems to be the one subject that can get bi-partisan support in congress these days.
 
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Mist

Mist

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So could you buy your own NFTs at ridiculous valuations, then when NFTs become worthless, write off those losses? Carry those losses forward. Never have to pay taxes for the next 10 years?
 
Flobee

Flobee

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Mist said:
So could you buy your own NFTs at ridiculous valuations, then when NFTs become worthless, write off those losses? Carry those losses forward. Never have to pay taxes for the next 10 years?
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If you obfuscated your addresses and UTXO's properly you could probably get away with this. You'd better know what you're doing though because the law man cometh.

 
reavor

reavor

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canadian fascist regime has shown the way, get your crypto out of coinbase etc.

 
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