Bitcoin: Censorship-Resistant Digital P2P Currency

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Thu Jul 27, 2017 8:39 am

I ask myself that every day.

Obviously my inclination is to agree with Howard Marks, but we must allow for the fact that he's a human and can be wrong. I don't think he's wrong, but he could be wrong.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Thu Jul 27, 2017 3:49 pm

Bitcoin drama in 4 days...

I just received this email:

We would like to take this opportunity to let you know our plans for the upcoming weeks as we navigate any potential disruptions on the Bitcoin (BTC) network. As always, our focus will continue to be on the safety of your funds. In the event of a User Activated Hard Fork (UAHF) on 1 August or thereafter, it is important to clarify that Bitstamp would not be in a position to support Bitcoin Cash (BCC), the coin associated with the Bitcoin Cash proposal. In Bitstamp's view, BCC is an alt-coin and the decision to list BCC tokens remains at our sole discretion at all times.

If Bitstamp chooses to list BCC, we would decide at our own discretion on what course of action to take with balances deriving from the hard fork. BCC would also be subject to the same due diligence processes as for any other alt-coin, which requires time and careful planning. For these reason, Bitstamp is not in a position to support BCC, nor will Bitstamp be liable for any BCC sent to Bitstamp.

As always, the safety of your funds remains our number one priority. To this end, as a security precaution, we will be disabling bitcoin deposits and withdrawals on 31 July 2017 at 23:00 hrs UTC to ensure that all BTC funds stored at Bitstamp remain secure. Trading will remain unaffected throughout. Deposits and withdrawals will be resumed only when we deem it safe and prudent to do so.

We will leave it to you to decide whether to withdraw your BTC funds from Bitstamp prior to this cut-off date if you would like to access BCC or any other hard fork, and Bitstamp shall not be held liable for any consequences of that decision, from neither a financial, operational nor regulatory standpoint.

gilraen · Post by **gilraen** » Thu Jul 27, 2017 5:48 pm

Notice on Coinbase:

Our first priority is the safety of customer funds. In the event of a fork, customer fiat currency (USD, EUR and GBP) and digital currencies (bitcoin, ether and litecoin) are safe.

On August 1st, 2017 there is a proposal to make changes the bitcoin software. This proposal, known as Bitcoin Cash, is likely to create a fork in the Bitcoin network. This means that after August 1st, 2017 there are likely to be two versions of the Bitcoin blockchain and two separate digital currencies.

In the event of two separate blockchains after August 1, 2017 we will only support one version. We have no plans to support the Bitcoin Cash fork. We have made this decision because it is hard to predict how long the alternative version of bitcoin will survive and if Bitcoin Cash will have future market value.

This means if there are two separate digital currencies — bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCC) — customers with Bitcoin stored on Coinbase will only have access to the current version of bitcoin we support (BTC). Customers will not have access to, or be able to withdraw, bitcoin cash (BCC).

Customers who wish to access both bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCC) need to withdraw bitcoin stored on Coinbase before 11.59 pm PT July 31, 2017. If you do not wish to access bitcoin cash (BCC) then no action is required.

We plan to temporarily suspend bitcoin buy / sells, deposits and withdrawals on August 1, 2017 as the fork is likely to cause disruption to the bitcoin network. This means your funds will be safe but you will be unable to access your bitcoin (BTC) for a short period of time.

Also annoying since Aug. 1 is when NiceHashMiner is due to deposit my next balance into my bitcoin wallet. I guess they'll freeze the deposits until the drama settles down.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Fri Jul 28, 2017 1:08 am

Bitcoin split been around for serious discussion for few month (or much longer depending how you view it). But now it is official.
I dont have any bit coin, as when ever i get it, i get rid of it. I do think it still solid way to keep value, but there are much better way to get ROI. Though split put a lot of fundamentals in questin.

I spoke to head of EY blockchain few weeks ago, and we agreed independently that it will tank. So take your chances.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Sat Jul 29, 2017 10:53 pm

The invisible politics of Bitcoin: governance crisis of a decentralised infrastructure
Primavera De Filippi, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, United States
Benjamin Loveluck, Télécom ParisTech (Université Paris-Saclay) and CERSA (CNRS-Paris 2), France,
PUBLISHED ON: 30 Sep 2016 DOI: 10.14763/2016.3.427

ABSTRACT
Bitcoin is a decentralised currency and payment system that seeks to eliminate the need for trusted authorities. It relies on a peer-to-peer network and cryptographic protocols to perform the functions of traditional financial intermediaries, such as verifying transactions and preserving the integrity of the system. This article examines the political economy of Bitcoin, in light of a recent dispute that divided the Bitcoin community with regard to a seemingly simple technical issue: whether or not to increase the block size of the Bitcoin blockchain. By looking at the socio-technical constructs of Bitcoin, the article distinguishes between two distinct coordination mechanisms: governance by the infrastructure (achieved via the Bitcoin protocol) and governance of the infrastructure (managed by the community of developers and other stakeholders). It then analyses the invisible politics inherent in these two mechanisms, which together display a highly technocratic power structure. On the one hand, as an attempt to be self-governing and self-sustaining, the Bitcoin network exhibits a strong market-driven approach to social trust and coordination, which has been embedded directly into the technical protocol. On the other hand, despite being an open source project, the development and maintenance of the Bitcoin code ultimately relies on a small core of highly skilled developers who play a key role in the design of the platform.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 11:49 pm

The Next 24 Hours Will Decide Bitcoin's Fate

For two years, the digital currency bitcoin has been deadlocked by a caustic debate—some call it a "civil war"—about how to best scale the technology up to allow for worldwide adoption. As the two opposing sides argued their positions, the rancor became so intense that at one point a former lead developer declared the entire bitcoin experiment a failure.

It's all been leading up to today, Monday July 31. In the 12-hour period between 8 PM on Monday (midnight in the UK) and 8:20 AM on Tuesday (all times EDT), the fate of bitcoin and its promise of a more libertarian kind of cash will be decided.

Here's what's at stake, and what could happen...

Victoria Raverna · Post by **Victoria Raverna** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:15 am

Moliere wrote:The Next 24 Hours Will Decide Bitcoin's Fate

For two years, the digital currency bitcoin has been deadlocked by a caustic debate—some call it a "civil war"—about how to best scale the technology up to allow for worldwide adoption. As the two opposing sides argued their positions, the rancor became so intense that at one point a former lead developer declared the entire bitcoin experiment a failure.

It's all been leading up to today, Monday July 31. In the 12-hour period between 8 PM on Monday (midnight in the UK) and 8:20 AM on Tuesday (all times EDT), the fate of bitcoin and its promise of a more libertarian kind of cash will be decided.

Here's what's at stake, and what could happen...

What is the meaning of this:

Bitcoin Cash will be immediately bootstrapped by some in-built value. A hard fork creates an identical blockchain, which will mirror people's bitcoin wealth in Bitcoin Cash. So, if you own 10 bitcoin, you'll magically own 10 Bitcoin Cash too. The new currency will likely have some value right away: Futures trading values the currently non-existent digital currency at $275 USD. This may create an incentive for people to sustain Bitcoin Cash.

For that to work, does tha means the trading value of bitcoin will drop based on the trading value of Bitcoin Cash?

So if you have X bitcoin that now worth US$ 10000, after the fork, you'll have X bitcoin that worth maybe US$ 8000 and X Bitcoin Cash that worth US$ 2000?

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:47 pm

Splitsville!

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:52 pm

Live coverage (UK times)

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Thu Aug 03, 2017 12:05 am

One of our consultants was key person covering it. http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin- ... ens-2017-8
He is first consultant mentioned. Was pretty crazy day yesterday, things were blowing up.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Tue Aug 08, 2017 4:18 pm

Bitcoin Has Split Into Two Cryptocurrencies. What, Exactly, Does That Mean?

The question of why bitcoin split is a deeply political one, as much about the philosophy of what bitcoin should be as it is about practical concerns of payment speed and per payment surcharges. As David Z. Morris described in Future Tense in June, the dispute centers on the maximum size allowed for any block in the blockchain. This is a technical point, but you can think of it as arguing over how many transactions are allowed on one page of the ledger. The original limit, imposed by pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto either as doctrine or temporary filler—depending on whether you support BTC or BCC—was 1 MB of data. This low limit is leading to delays in the amount of time it takes a transaction to be verified, which is itself leading to higher surcharges for premium verification.

If transaction time were the only issue, though, there wouldn’t be a three-year-long flame war and a battling subreddits, one for each coin. There are two other issues. One is that the BTH folks think that allowing larger blocks hinders small players from “mining” bitcoins, centralizing power in the hands of large mining entities. Bitcoin was created as an alternative to centralized currencies, however, so “greater centralization” is a serious accusation. Point for BTC.

BTC has proposed a size increase of its own, one that comes with an even greater philosophical change. Segregated Witness, also known as SegWit2x, aims to fit more transactions on one page of the blockchain ledger by doubling the size of the page (that is, doubling the blocksize limit), and by reserving all space on the page for transactions. Right now, each page (each block) contains transaction details (Alice gave Bob 2 BTC), and signatures (I, Alice, agree to give Bob these 2 BTC). Instead of making the page much longer, SegWit2x wants to create more space on the page by erasing the signatures and reserving that space for transactions. Many believe this proposal changes the fundamentals of bitcoin more than BCC does, and in terms of structure of the chain, they are right. That’s why some supporters of BCC oppose the name “alternative coin,” they view what they’re doing as closer to Satoshi’s vision than BTC. Point for BCC.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Wed Aug 09, 2017 1:00 am

Moliere wrote:Bitcoin Has Split Into Two Cryptocurrencies. What, Exactly, Does That Mean?

The question of why bitcoin split is a deeply political one, as much about the philosophy of what bitcoin should be as it is about practical concerns of payment speed and per payment surcharges. As David Z. Morris described in Future Tense in June, the dispute centers on the maximum size allowed for any block in the blockchain. This is a technical point, but you can think of it as arguing over how many transactions are allowed on one page of the ledger. The original limit, imposed by pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto either as doctrine or temporary filler—depending on whether you support BTC or BCC—was 1 MB of data. This low limit is leading to delays in the amount of time it takes a transaction to be verified, which is itself leading to higher surcharges for premium verification.

If transaction time were the only issue, though, there wouldn’t be a three-year-long flame war and a battling subreddits, one for each coin. There are two other issues. One is that the BTH folks think that allowing larger blocks hinders small players from “mining” bitcoins, centralizing power in the hands of large mining entities. Bitcoin was created as an alternative to centralized currencies, however, so “greater centralization” is a serious accusation. Point for BTC.

BTC has proposed a size increase of its own, one that comes with an even greater philosophical change. Segregated Witness, also known as SegWit2x, aims to fit more transactions on one page of the blockchain ledger by doubling the size of the page (that is, doubling the blocksize limit), and by reserving all space on the page for transactions. Right now, each page (each block) contains transaction details (Alice gave Bob 2 BTC), and signatures (I, Alice, agree to give Bob these 2 BTC). Instead of making the page much longer, SegWit2x wants to create more space on the page by erasing the signatures and reserving that space for transactions. Many believe this proposal changes the fundamentals of bitcoin more than BCC does, and in terms of structure of the chain, they are right. That’s why some supporters of BCC oppose the name “alternative coin,” they view what they’re doing as closer to Satoshi’s vision than BTC. Point for BCC.

It doesnt matter at this point why it split (the article covers it pretty well, though through its own lense) , at this point what matters, what will it mean for future crypto.
This is more of theoryzation.
1) Trust in bitcoin as a cap is lower. If there were predictions for it to hit 20 k, that no longer the case.
2) This puts bitcoin, the sacred coin (there are over 800 other ones live now), to a very hard test
3) It adds uncertainty. It no longer a "one"
4) creates precedent for another spilt, and another, and another .....

What does it mean to average trader? Simple, it erodes bitcoin dominance. It is not accident that ethereum has just recovered from 220 last week to 320 this week. Ethereum had its own fork, but it has been on strong directon for a while now (in crypto terms), while bitcoin showed a sign of weakness. BTC (bitcoing main) will still do fine, and just broke another record (this is because uncertainty is done with, and BCC hasnt really became the competitor some expected to be, so trust is back in bitcoing), but it is not even close to break out Ether had in last week, and thats because people taking their gains from bitcoin being at the top price, and funnel to ether. Which now seem to be a lot more trustworthy, then before the split of bitcoins. This have for sure weakened bitcoin in longer term.Free money are rarely good, and because how far bitcoing was in its life cycle (unlike ether, which was very early in it), this a problem.

My predictions. Ether will strongly benefit from this, Bitcoin will be negatively affected in long run. After this split, i am pretty sure Ether will overtake bitcoin market cap by the end of the year.
Other coins? Meh, i already mentioned my favorite alt coin, i dont care much about others. That said, when market goes up, all coins go up.

gilraen · Post by **gilraen** » Wed Aug 09, 2017 3:04 pm

Matrix wrote:After this split, i am pretty sure Ether will overtake bitcoin market cap by the end of the year.

That's where most of my cryptocurrency investment is, so there's hoping

Although I was wishing I had more in Bitcoin after seeing the price go through the roof today (I have so little that it wasn't worth trying to sell).

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Fri Aug 11, 2017 5:12 pm

gilraen wrote:
Matrix wrote:After this split, i am pretty sure Ether will overtake bitcoin market cap by the end of the year.
That's where most of my cryptocurrency investment is, so there's hoping

Although I was wishing I had more in Bitcoin after seeing the price go through the roof today (I have so little that it wasn't worth trying to sell).

Think of Bitcoin as ice breaker, every time it goes up or sets new high, other crypto benefit. Sometimes right away, sometimes not.

The market cap of entire crypto market is good indication of whats happening to the more global thinking. Right now entire market cap of all crypto combined is 127 Billion. While might seem like thats a lot at glance, it is less then 1 large company. Here is a thing, blockchain tech in its entirety worth only as much as British American Tobacco (which is at 123 billion) or Total (128 billion). Is it promise only equivalent to British American Tobaco? (and to be clear, blockchain is mostly promise at the moment aside for monetary liquidity and alternative asset which is what it is valued on right now) . If current market is being valued entirely on crypto valuation, and its value as digital asset.
So, if blockchain can allow for what it promises in theory: smart contracts, tracking, integrity, etc. Basically a shift in every major field, how much will it be worth? And that's a trillion dollar question.

Here is list:
(in billions $)
Apple 752
Alphabet (google) 579.5
Microsoft 507.5
Amazon.com 427
Berkshire Hathaway 409.9
Facebook 407.3
ExxonMobil 242.2
Johnson & Johnson 338.6
JPMorgan Chase 306.6
Tencent Holdings 277.1
Wells Fargo 274.4
Alibaba 264.9
General Electric 261.2
Samsung Electroincs 254.3
AT&T 249.3
Bank of America 231.9
ICBC 229.8
Nestle 229.5
Royal Dutch Shell 228.8
Procter & Gamble 228.1
China Mobile 225.3
Wal-Mart Stores 221.1
Roche Holding 219.3
Anheuser-Busch InBev 213.1
Visa 206.4
Chevron 206.1
PetroChina 204.5
Pfizer 203.1
China Construction Bank 205.5
Verizon Communications 198.4
Comcast 139.5
Novartis 193.2
Coca-Cola 182.9
Oracle 182.2
Walt Disney 178
Home Depot 176.7
Philip Morris International 176.2
Merck 173.3
Toyota Motor 171.9
Intel 170.4
Cisco Systems 165.1
Citigroup 164.3
HSBC Holdings 162.6
IBM 162.4
Taiwan Semiconductor 161.7
UnitedHealth Group 160.2
PepsiCo 159.4
Agricultural Bank of China 149.2
Unilever 143.9
Bank of China 141.3
Altria Group 138.8
Total 128.1
British American Tobacco 123.8
Mastercard 121.3
Amgen 120.3
SAP 119.7
Sanofi 116.1
BP 114.7
3M 113.5
Inditex 112.1
Kraft Heinz Company 110.4
Medtroinc 110
Commonwealth Bank 109.9
Siemens 109.8
Schlumberger 109.1
Boeing 108.8
L'Oréal Group 107.5
Royal Bank of Canada 107.2
McDonald's 106.4
China Petroleum & Chemical 105.1
AbbVie 104.5
Charter Communications 101.6
Ping An Insurance Group 100.8

From what i see, more and more companies want to explore blockchain, it still at glacial pace right now, but adaption is speeding up.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Mon Aug 14, 2017 6:53 pm

$4300 for Bitcoin?

That seems a bit ridiculous.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Mon Aug 14, 2017 10:51 pm

ya... 4450 now.... dang.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Mon Aug 14, 2017 11:38 pm

I can't imagine that anyone believes that the current valuation isn't pricing in wild speculation about future possibilities. Am I misunderstanding what you said?

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Mon Aug 14, 2017 11:59 pm

RunningMn9 wrote:I can't imagine that anyone believes that the current valuation isn't pricing in wild speculation about future possibilities. Am I misunderstanding what you said?

Ohh, it is too high for sure. Crazy wild is appropriate definition.
People are afraid to miss out, things are getting really heated up. There is also isue of some exchanges, big ones of pulling out of US (aka you can cash in anymore). So to way to pull out is to buy bitcoin. Though this is likely not main reason for current high.

Rest of the crypto mostly even, just waiting for that crazy bit coin rush to be over. Alot of the gains in bitcoin will be going into other crypto as it starts to pull back and people will try to lockin the gains. This is a huge rally and higest cost ever. Up from 2.5k of just few days ago. Means when it will start to pull back, other cryptos will be doing chaching dance. (since it is not easy to turn crypto into cash, and you will get taxed an arm and a leg if you dont hold 1 year, which means other crypto or ICOs are default choice to lock in profits)

Sectoid · Post by **Sectoid** » Tue Aug 15, 2017 9:26 am

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Wed Aug 16, 2017 3:55 pm

Looks like Bitstamp wants in on the Ether action:

It gives us great pleasure to announce that we will be launching ETH for trading with BTC, USD and EUR tomorrow, Thursday, 17 August!

Ether deposits and withdrawals will open at 9.00 a.m. (UTC) on that date, with full trading functionalities commencing at 1.00 pm (UTC) .

FREE TRADING will be available on these pairs until 1 October, with other generous discounts to follow until the end of the year!

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Fri Aug 18, 2017 8:46 pm

WTF?

Bitcoin Is Forking. Again.

After a years-long debate about how best to speed up the bitcoin network failed to resolve in unanimous agreement, in July bitcoin "forked," a term for when open-source software gets cloned by users who want to create their own version. This created two different versions of the world's most popular digital currency. Now, the fork is becoming a trident. On Wednesday, a group of bitcoiners scheduled yet another split for the network in November, which would create a third version of bitcoin.

So, what makes this version different from the others?

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Sun Aug 20, 2017 10:30 pm

TED Talk

Say hello to the decentralized economy -- the blockchain is about to change everything. In this lucid explainer of the complex (and confusing) technology, Bettina Warburg describes how the blockchain will eliminate the need for centralized institutions like banks or governments to facilitate trade, evolving age-old models of commerce and finance into something far more interesting: a distributed, transparent, autonomous system for exchanging value.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 10:44 pm

scammers took over Enigma's website, mailing lists, and Slack accounts

by exploiting some extremely basic security mistakes Enigma had made. The blunders also facilitated a scam that ultimately cost Enigma supporters almost $500,000.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 11:41 pm

Moliere wrote:TED Talk

Say hello to the decentralized economy -- the blockchain is about to change everything. In this lucid explainer of the complex (and confusing) technology, Bettina Warburg describes how the blockchain will eliminate the need for centralized institutions like banks or governments to facilitate trade, evolving age-old models of commerce and finance into something far more interesting: a distributed, transparent, autonomous system for exchanging value.

This is a bad example, she is maybe knows a bit about blockchain but she certainly doesnt show it, her entire video is basically fluff fluff fluff fluff... empty air.
There is another video like this, it is topscott father and son, kind of same bs.
All three of them is a good example of when media goes for "professional" faces.

Bitcoin will continue to fork, till it can fork no more, which is never, so ya. If you own bitcoin, buyer beware.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 5:00 pm

Bitcoin slides on 'fraud' warning from JPMorgan's Dimon

Bitcoin slid by more than 10 percent on Wednesday, as investors sold the cryptocurrency after a warning by JPMorgan (JPM.N) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon that it “is a fraud” and will eventually “blow up”.

Bitcoin, the original and still the biggest cryptocurrency, has been on a tear in recent months, hitting a record high just below $5,000 at the start of September after a more than fivefold increase in price since the start of the year.

But bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been falling since early last week, when China banned the issuance of new digital coins for fundraising purposes - a phenomenon known as initial coin offerings, or ICOs.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 11:21 pm

Moliere wrote:Bitcoin slides on 'fraud' warning from JPMorgan's Dimon

Bitcoin slid by more than 10 percent on Wednesday, as investors sold the cryptocurrency after a warning by JPMorgan (JPM.N) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon that it “is a fraud” and will eventually “blow up”.

Bitcoin, the original and still the biggest cryptocurrency, has been on a tear in recent months, hitting a record high just below $5,000 at the start of September after a more than fivefold increase in price since the start of the year.

But bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been falling since early last week, when China banned the issuance of new digital coins for fundraising purposes - a phenomenon known as initial coin offerings, or ICOs.

Ya, guys who invested in alternative crypto and have had hand in every blockchain consortium since the start. He is last person to call anything. Looks more like last resort to me. But good news is price is low, and i am buying.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Fri Sep 15, 2017 11:43 am

China is about to outlaw all Bitcoin exchanges in China, possibly by October. ICOs are already prohibited.

According to Chinese officials, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies serves no practical purpose in China except to undermine the official currency (not good for a planned economy), scam people (with ICOs), and to pay off blackmailers.

http://mashable.com/2017/09/15/china-bi ... gJnjC0smqR

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Fri Sep 15, 2017 11:56 am

The exception might be something like XRP/Ripple that has an actual function and not just a social agreement (hey let's call these set of 0's and 1's money).

http://www.investopedia.com/news/ripple ... ocurrency/

XRP, Ripple’s digital currency, enables real-time global payments anywhere in the world. It is the third most prominent cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization and has performed extremely well during 2017.

While Ripple belongs to the category of cryptocurrencies, its purpose is different from that of Bitcoin or Ethereum. While Bitcoin is a payment method and Ethereum is a multifunctional platform for decentralized SmartContracts, Ripple is a decentralized solution for banks and financial institutions that is fast (4 seconds) and scalable (1,000 transactions per second).

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 10:28 am

Kasey Chang wrote:China is about to outlaw all Bitcoin exchanges in China, possibly by October. ICOs are already prohibited.

According to Chinese officials, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies serves no practical purpose in China except to undermine the official currency (not good for a planned economy), scam people (with ICOs), and to pay off blackmailers.

http://mashable.com/2017/09/15/china-bi ... gJnjC0smqR

Except they wont. The problem not crypto or ICO, it is who an invest in ICO. Chinese retail investors (non professionals) also like to gamble, and ICO is the money pit that keeps on growing. China trying to protect those uneducated investors.
That said, china also want to seem on the cutting edge of tech. They want to compete in industries that are growing and in future will decided by those technologies. If that's the case and China certainly believe so, wouldnt outlawing Bitcoin and other crypto assets would stifle their protective growth and limit chinas potential growth in blockchain tech space. So what does China want? They already backtracking on their ICO Ban, saying that there will be licensing, so only ICOs approved by China will be allowed to function in China. China wants a) protect their retailer investors b)have control and say over what projects can be ICO c)Not stifle their tech growth and be a leader in emerging tech spaces

Each of those points have to be satisfied for china to be happy with solution. 40% of crypto miners are from China, thats a lot of crypto money concentration that being mined. Hence even outlawing exchanges will be at best temporary mostly to protect (a) and figured out a better way to do (b)

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 12:08 pm

Probably a bigger news

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-1 ... ur-cryptos

Announced on Thursday, the API is currently being implemented in browsers including Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Edge, Apple’s Webkit, Mozilla’s Firefox, the Samsung Internet Browser and Facebook’s in-app browser. When activated, the Payment Request API will allow new payment types, including bitcoin, ether any any other available cryptocurrency (as well as more traditional online payment methods) to be stored directly in the browser.

This might be a game changer. As it simplifies barier to entry through crypto. One, and probably the biggest barrier right now is difficulty of setting up wallet, synchronizing and actually using it as payments. This would allow to have crypto ( for small amounts) to be built in into any browser. By making it built in, it lessens the aforementioned difficulty by a factor of 10.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 12:49 pm

So I was talking to a friend of mine that dabbles in BTC and other coins and we've talked many times about the obvious speculative bubble that is going on here. I had two thoughts that we never really got to the bottom of, so maybe here will be a good place.

1) I am old enough to have been a fully formed adult during the dot com bubble/crash. I remember all of the "the internet will change the world" rhetoric. Basically, it's the exact same thing we hear from evangelists about blockchain technology. When originally thinking about this, my concern was based on the idea of "what if blockchain technology doesn't take off?". But then I was thinking about the dot com bubble, and it occurred to me all the pie in the sky rhetoric we heard from the dot com folks effectively came true. The internet did fundamentally change how the world worked. But it didn't matter, everything crashed and burned anyway.

2) The problem with the dot com era wasn't that the evangelists were wrong. The problem was that what they were selling (dot com companies) wasn't worth anything close to what they were selling it for. In late 1999 I worked at a small telecom company whose stock had been trading for ages in the $2 range. The day before Thanksgiving, we put out a press release that our upcoming product had passed protocol testing in a number of countries. It was a nothing press release. Our stock shot up about 2700% in less than 10 hours of trading. There was no change in underlying value, but cost skyrocketed. The stock shortly cratered and never recovered. The problem was that cost >>>> value.

Which brings me to bitcoins. There is no actual value. If I speculate on a company and buy stock, it can at least be determined to some degree what the actual value of the company is. It has assets. I use my money to buy a share of those assets with the hope that those assets become more valuable to the extent that someone else will pay me more money for my shares.

When I buy bitcoins, I'm not actually buying anything. The evangelists always respond with some variation of "ZOMG Blockchains!!", but when I buy bitcoins or ether, I'm not buying blockchain technology.

I'm effectively buying dollar bills. Dollar bills whose cost fluctuates wildly, and upon which there is no basis for any intrinsic value (the intrinsic value of a bitcoin is $0.00).

Which brings me to my final thought. I can certainly see a future where blockchain technology becomes the primary method underlying international commerce. I don't think that will in any way save those that are destined to lose nearly everything when this game crashes. And the fundamental reason is that the most important feature of currency is relative consistency in value. (and yes, I know that money market accounts work by trading currencies as relative values shift)

The USD works because $1 today will more or less be worth $1 tomorrow, relatively speaking. Sure there is inflation/deflation. But if $1 today can reasonably we worth $0.60 tomorrow, the entire system would break down (we've seen it happen with other fiat currencies). Why would anyone store their assets in such a wildly fluctuating "currency"?

It only works if that value is relatively consistent. What happens to bitcoins if their value becomes relatively consistent?

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 1:44 pm

The problem is blockchain was a fundamental shift of paradigm that was basically a "reactionary invention".

Cryptocurrency is basically a reaction to the subprime mortgate crisis (2007-2010), where the trust in the economic institutions was at an all time low. (Bitcoin was revealed 2009-ish) Basically, the idea is we can trust the technology, not the institution.

And there's no doubt that it is an interesting invention, where transactions globally are tracked, yet anonymized via the public ledger. It's basically "trust no one" self-policing libertarian system that end-runs all the policies and regulations, because those didn't save any one from the subprime mortgage crisis and the fallout.

However, it seems the only ones to really love cryptocurrency are the people in the darkweb, where nobody trusts anybody any way. Regular people who do trust institutions really have NO use for blockchain and cryptocurrencies... except when they hear huge fortunes are made in there, and fall for the latest ponzi schemes using cryptocurrencies as a front.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/09/16/oh-t ... ed-to-fix/

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 1:23 am

RunningMn9 wrote:So I was talking to a friend of mine that dabbles in BTC and other coins and we've talked many times about the obvious speculative bubble that is going on here. I had two thoughts that we never really got to the bottom of, so maybe here will be a good place.

1) I am old enough to have been a fully formed adult during the dot com bubble/crash. I remember all of the "the internet will change the world" rhetoric. Basically, it's the exact same thing we hear from evangelists about blockchain technology. When originally thinking about this, my concern was based on the idea of "what if blockchain technology doesn't take off?". But then I was thinking about the dot com bubble, and it occurred to me all the pie in the sky rhetoric we heard from the dot com folks effectively came true. The internet did fundamentally change how the world worked. But it didn't matter, everything crashed and burned anyway.

2) The problem with the dot com era wasn't that the evangelists were wrong. The problem was that what they were selling (dot com companies) wasn't worth anything close to what they were selling it for. In late 1999 I worked at a small telecom company whose stock had been trading for ages in the $2 range. The day before Thanksgiving, we put out a press release that our upcoming product had passed protocol testing in a number of countries. It was a nothing press release. Our stock shot up about 2700% in less than 10 hours of trading. There was no change in underlying value, but cost skyrocketed. The stock shortly cratered and never recovered. The problem was that cost >>>> value.

Which brings me to bitcoins. There is no actual value. If I speculate on a company and buy stock, it can at least be determined to some degree what the actual value of the company is. It has assets. I use my money to buy a share of those assets with the hope that those assets become more valuable to the extent that someone else will pay me more money for my shares.

When I buy bitcoins, I'm not actually buying anything. The evangelists always respond with some variation of "ZOMG Blockchains!!", but when I buy bitcoins or ether, I'm not buying blockchain technology.

I'm effectively buying dollar bills. Dollar bills whose cost fluctuates wildly, and upon which there is no basis for any intrinsic value (the intrinsic value of a bitcoin is $0.00).

Which brings me to my final thought. I can certainly see a future where blockchain technology becomes the primary method underlying international commerce. I don't think that will in any way save those that are destined to lose nearly everything when this game crashes. And the fundamental reason is that the most important feature of currency is relative consistency in value. (and yes, I know that money market accounts work by trading currencies as relative values shift)

The USD works because $1 today will more or less be worth $1 tomorrow, relatively speaking. Sure there is inflation/deflation. But if $1 today can reasonably we worth $0.60 tomorrow, the entire system would break down (we've seen it happen with other fiat currencies). Why would anyone store their assets in such a wildly fluctuating "currency"?

It only works if that value is relatively consistent. What happens to bitcoins if their value becomes relatively consistent?

Lets forget bitcoin. Bitcoin in itself will never have much value beyond intrinsic trust in privacy. Bitcoin in itself at this point an obsolete relic of what original vision of crypto was. Bitcoin can never be consistent, because it is limited amount of it and it has fundamentally deflationary economics, which will result as it gets scarcer in higher price not because it have value, but because of scarcity. Bitcoin is Netscape of the 90s.
No bank, and i personally had conversations with high up blockchain guys in those banks, will touch it, they will hold it, but they will never deploy any project or solution on it. There is too much stigma with illegal. So they need it separate solution. All banks want to be ahead of competition. Hence, they are all fighting for that spot at that top. They cant just be part of it, they must rule it.

Most ICO's will be what .com era was, most... 95% will fail and few will pick up the pieces. The tech is too new. It is still evolving, as we speak. It is too early in its stages to see what will happen next, just like in 90s no one knew what internet can do, and all the possibility it can afford. Internet did all it promised and then some. It changed everyones life, completely. But there was crush and burn, multiple times. We are very likely to see that in the crypto world.

You are totally correct, it will crush and burn, and crush and burn again. The timing is iffy at this point, but we will see huge ups and downs over next 6 month. Evangelist had timing wrong in .com, and BC (blockchain) will certainly have same issues.
Dollar can become digitized and on blockchain at some point. This is where blocchain tech should be superior to what we have now, allowing governments an amazing control of assets, money and information. Bottom line, i think we are still in very very early stages of what blockchain can do.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:57 am

You can substitute any cryptocurrency for bitcoin and the problem remains the same. To be used as a currency, you have to have a relatively consistent value. And strictly speaking there is no value in "trust".

I guess my concern is that it doesn't matter to me in the slightest whether blockchain tech succeeds beyond reason or fails spectacularly.

Unless I'm missing something, can I buy blockchain technology?

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:38 am

RunningMn9 wrote:And strictly speaking there is no value in "trust".

Actually, it's all about the trust, at least in fiat currency.

It used to be we have gold reserve to back up the currency, but now we have free-floating currency that relies on pretige of the nation's economy. (Part of the problem with EuroZone is they let countries with weak economies to convert/join and dragged down the rest of the economy)

A US dollar is worth so much because people believe US dollar *is* worth that much now or in the near future. It's all about trust.

Cryptocurrency has no prestige or economy to rely on. It's worth that much because enough people "trust" it to be worth that much. And that pretty much means Bitcoin and a few other big ones will be the only cryptocurrencies to stick around, because nobody else would be adopted en masse.

Blockchain itself, however, has a lot of interesting applications. It basically is cloud-based and "perpetual", if it is widely adopted. Transactions are timestamped and hashed and cannot be altered. Thus, this presents opportunity in authentication of all sorts of things.

Imagine documents notarized are digitzed, then hashed into a QR code, which the document is then stamped with, and the hash is added to a blockchain. Now there is no debating when this document was notarized, and easily authenticated by hashing it and compare it against the stored hash.

Not just notarized documents, but ANY sort of stuff you don't want disputed. Regular payments to banks, voting for public officials, and so on.

Even your entire identity, online or offline, with a little help from public/private key encryption.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:03 pm

I don't care anything about blockchain at the moment. I couldn't care less that a document can be notarized and digitized and hashed into a QR code. There isn't a crushing problem in the world over when documents were notarized.

Also, I can't buy blockchain technology, can I?

And when I say that "trust" has no value, what I mean is that currently the value of the USD isn't "trust". The value of the USD is the backing by the full faith and credit of the United States.

There is nothing behind bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency). Which is why the cost fluctuates so wildly. The cost is based on speculation, not value.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:51 pm

RunningMn9 wrote:There is nothing behind bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency). Which is why the cost fluctuates so wildly. The cost is based on speculation, not value.

That's because people are equating all cryptocurrencies/BT's that same. Ripple/XRP is not Bitcoin. It's centralized and dramatically improves a bank's ability to conduct cross border transactions. That's just one example.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Tue Sep 19, 2017 5:45 am

So what? That doesn't confer inherent value to the coin itself. Does the value of that digital currency fluctuate significantly? If I buy that coin do I get to own part of the underlying technology?

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Tue Sep 19, 2017 8:06 am

US Dollars have value because of demand to participate in the US economy. Bitcoins have value because of libertarian/hacker ideas and speculation in new tech.

US Dollars are subject to speculation but have an economic counterbalance. Bitcoins do not, which is why they're the the modern tulip bubble. Dotcoms are are good analogy -- but the crash is going to destroy the "trust" central to the product.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Tue Sep 19, 2017 8:22 am

Cryptocurrency has no prestige or economy to rely on

Pretty much this. Over time in this "disruptive" era we live in, it could happen but it's speculation. Blockchain's value independent of being backed by the word of government or economy is a completely different disruption than are cellular service or EVs or ECommerce. Now, if you back the horse that gets a major economy involved and ties itself directly into the technology, then things will get interesting.