For the nth time, China bans cryptocurrencies China has once again banned cryptocurrencies. It's not even the first time this month Beijing's done so, let alone the first time ever, yet word of the reiterated crackdown sent coin prices tumbling, which may have been the ultimate goal. After all, China would prefer its citizens use its non-illegal digital yuan. Bitcoin …
The US Treasury Department is going after crypto exchanges. Its nominally part of a crackdown on ransomware but as the government's view is that crypto currencies are mostly used for illicit transactions anyway they might as well start working on controlling all transactions. The Feds are also interested in exchanges because its at this point currency profits can be taxed.
(I'm not a great fan of crypto myself because it is so resource intensive. Its useless for day to day finance because of its low speed and relatively high transaction fees.)
More importantly: the € 500 note is gradually being withdrawn. It was a sop to the German tax avoidance lobby who, apparently, like to keep a couple of grand in cash lying around for the spontaneous purchase of jewellery, cars, house, yachts, etc. but turned out to be the world's favourite way of moving cash across borders, because you can easily fit half a million in a carrier bag.
My mate is into one:
You buy x coins
every y weeks you get % more coins
the price the spruikers sell coins increases every week, thus making it appear that it's an "investment"
If you get in early you can sell your coins for a profit to punters getting in later, but there is a sell rate limit to "stop" runs on the currency.
Of course as soon as new punters stop buying them at the inflating price from the spruikers, the gain evaporates. The rate limit doesn't stop runs, it just slows them. It takes longer to sink through the sea, than to fall through the air, but both ways you will hit bottom.
The CCP has a short memory, and an even shorter attention span, and the people of China know this.
Whenever a crackdown like this comes around; be it corruption, prostitution, pollution, bitcoin, etc.; the people know that they just need to lay low for a week or so until the furore has died down, and then it will be back to business as usual; corruption, prostitution, pollution, and bitcoin. And If someone happens to get caught up in the short burst of arrests orchestrated for CCP propaganda, well, just see the first entry in my earlier lists.
You appear to be arguing against a point not mentioned, nor even implied, in the post to which you're replying.
Nobody claimed everyone was using bitcoin, let alone mining it; just like nobody claimed everyone was engaging in prostitution (though you didn't dispute that, so I'm guessing you're an urban mainland Chinese male). The claim was just that everyone knows that every crackdown is shot and sharp, but business returns to normal soon after.
I'd be interested to see mining, transport and storage cost of traditional commodities compared to BTC. Everyone in this debate assumes that extraction and processing of traditional commodities is completely free of environmental cost. Though I appreciate energy use by crypto, even renewable, takes energy resources away from other things while crypto utility is still to be broadly developed.
Crypto is a breath of fresh air compared to legacy financial markets though when it comes to trading. I have a stock plan from a US company I worked for several years ago and every time I sell some stock it often takes a full 5 working days to go through executed->settled->wire transfer initiated->wire transfer complete. Trades in crypto are completed in less than a second and funds can be moved around within less than a minute if you use a modern chain and protocol.
What I will say is that every time China bans crypto is just a consistently excellent moment to place a massive short order for some quick profit on a dump... so thanks again!
The difference is that actual commodities have real uses. Unlike bitcoin which is the worlds biggest ponzi scheme. The whole concept of blockchain still looks like a solution in search of a problem. Given the energy requirements I see no problems that are worth that much extra waste.
How exactly would you turn your bitcoins back into spendable money? You'd still be stuck using the very same bank transfers you compain about.
Being able to quickly turn bitcoins, into gold stars, into Linden-dollars into purple rupees quickly is irrelevent, when what you need to do is turn it into goods and services like food and electricity and transport!
You can clearly see the game with the crypto *ATMs*, like Bitnovo ATM below.... turn cash into a little ticket with a voucher number on it.... that will then it into crypto, transferred into your wallet.... its not an ATM at all, its a vending machine, you do not withdraw cash from it.
https://www.bitnovo.com/bitcoin-atm-en
There clearly is a problem with banking, the West has weaponized it. When you cannot rely on simply transfers, and bank officers act more like 5tasi agents. The world obviously needs a new banking system, but crypto grafted onto the existing banking system isn't it.
> You'd still be stuck using the very same bank transfers you compain about.
Trade BTC into USD/EUR/GBP immediately on the exchange then transfer to bank account.
True, the transfer part still relies on traditional banking system but a faster payments in GBP back from the exchange takes a couple of hours subject to fraud checks. Still much faster than the 24+ hours of a wire transfer from the US into a legacy UK bank.
Scenario 1: Bob has USD in US, he sends it to UK Dave, 2-3 days, includes a USD to GBP conversion.
Scenario 2: Dave has USD in foreign currency account in his UK, sends it to his GBP account in same bank, instantaneous usually.
It sounds like you're comparing Scenario 2 for BTC to Scenario 1 for banking.
In scenario 1, you have two sets of bank transfers, and you'd be waiting on the exchange to clear the inbound money, and on the receiving bank to clear the transferred money.
Of how many people don't know how his scheme worked, probably he would be. Cryptocurrency can be a poor investment, there are many crypto-themed scams, and it's also frequently failed at its own goal, but A) the popular ones aren't schemes at all, bubble is closer to the truth and B) some of the time when it is a scheme it's not a Ponzi-style one. Ponzi schemes are not a generic term for something where you lose money. It's a rather specific kind of deliberate fraud which requires several things a lot of crypto schemes don't have.
Crypto- without the "speculative" element would be a useful tool without the drawbacks. Not terribly far removed from something like the transaction networks behind Visa.
Of course, without the speculative element nobody would want to "mine" themselves; causing Chicken and Egg with regards getting the infrastructure in place for service provision.
It's almost as though these financial services for moving money cost money to run (while wanting to take a cut while they're at it...)
I'm not a gambler, but of the crypto concepts out there Nano is very promising with regards service provision, security and low overhead. BTC isn't dead yet, but as the majority of it's value is purely from speculation, it's just a question of when it goes bang, not if. And the transaction speed is so slow, it could all be over before you know about it.
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