Bitcoin Circulation Hits Record High Of $14 Billion (theguardian.com) 153
Bitcoin, the digital currency that most people have never actually used, has hit a record value of $14 billion after jumping 5 percent on Thursday. From a report on The Guardian: The price of one bitcoin reached $875 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, its strongest level since January 2014, putting the cryptocurrency on track for its best daily performance in six months. That compared with levels around $435 at the start of the year, with many experts linking bitcoin's rise with the steady depreciation of the Chinese yuan, which has slid almost 7% in 2016. Data shows the majority of bitcoin trading is done in China, so any increase in demand from there tends to have a significant impact on the price.
done IN China? (Score:2)
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Seriously? (Score:1)
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I've never used or considered using Bitcoin and I don't know a single person who has.
Same here...the risks of owning bitcoins seem to greatly outweigh the benefits, at least to me.
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Yeah, I have the terrible risk of having bought coins for $50 and now having them worth $875.
Until some weasel steals them from your wallet or your exchange rips you off or you lose the keys or whatever.
Do any of these ring a bell? Mt. Gox, Bitstamp, Bter, Mycoin, Gatecoin, Exco.in, Poloniex, Justcoin, Cavirtex, Cryptsy, Bitfinex, Neo & Bee, BIPS, Flexcoin, PicoStocks, Kipcoin, CryptoRush, ShapeShift, Blockchain.info, Moolah, MintPal, bitXoin....that's just a short list of recent scandals, wallets, and exchange frauds where people lost their bitcoins.
But props to you for making a killing on
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Yes, computer security is hard. If you don't securely store your keys, you could lose them. If you don't hold your keys at all, and trust an online company to hold them, you could lose them. Neither of which is the fault of Bitcoin.
And if you add up all the losses due to corporate failures like Gox, et al, you'll get a total that is probably rounding error compared against the frauds committed in dollars for the same period.
Bitcoin isn't risk free, but nothing is.
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And if you add up all the losses due to corporate failures like Gox, et al, you'll get a total that is probably rounding error compared against the frauds committed in dollars for the same period.
And if you add up all the bitcoin usage compared to the usage of non-virtual currencies you'll get a total that is probably rounding error compared against those non-virtual currencies for the same period. (In truth, it probably wouldn't even amount to a rounding error.)
Here's the thing, though- If my bank get robbed or hacked, I'll still have my money. Woo hoo!
But if your bitcoin wallet or exchange gets robbed or hacked, that money is gone. (I know, technically it's still out there somewhere, but it's gone
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What if your bank or government decides to freeze your funds and then sue you? With Bitcoin, your security is in your own hands. With banks, your life is in their hands, which makes you ultimately, their slave.
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What if your bank or government decides to freeze your funds and then sue you?
Lol, like they wouldn't be able to prevent you from fiddling around with your bitcoins?
Better yet, can you buy a plane ticket with bitcoins to flee the country or make your house payment? Can you go to the grocery store and buy food with bitcoins? Can you buy a gun or gasoline with bitcoins? Will your lawyer accept bitcoins? No, no, no, no, no, and probably no.
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With Bitcoin, your security is in your own hands.
As we've seen, with Bitcoin, your security is in anything but your own hands.
Mt. Gox, Bitstamp, Bter, Mycoin, Gatecoin, Exco.in, Poloniex, Justcoin,
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Lol, like they wouldn't be able to prevent you from fiddling around with your bitcoins?
Er, what? Unless they physically capture and restrain you, they can't stop you from "fiddling" with your bitcoins.
Better yet, can you buy a plane ticket with bitcoins to flee the country or make your house payment? Can you go to the grocery store and buy food with bitcoins? Can you buy a gun or gasoline with bitcoins? Will your lawyer accept bitcoins? No, no, no, no, no, and probably no.
And? You can trade bitcoins for cash and get all of those things.
As we've seen, with Bitcoin, your security is in anything but your own hands.
Mt. Gox, Bitstamp, Bter, Mycoin, Gatecoin, Exco.in, Poloniex, Justcoin, Cavirtex, Cryptsy, Bitfinex, Neo & Bee, BIPS, Flexcoin, PicoStocks, Kipcoin, CryptoRush, ShapeShift, Blockchain.info, Moolah, MintPal, bitXoin...tell me again how the security was in the hands of the owners of those bitcoins?
A lot of those exchanges haven't lost their clients' money, so I don't exactly understand what you are trying to say. If you are talking about coins lost at an exchange, however, then it wasn't in the hands of those owners, because those owners gave up control of them by storing them there. If you use a shady exchange (or worse, st
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Er, what? Unless they physically capture and restrain you, they can't stop you from "fiddling" with your bitcoins.
You're right, the government that would freeze your funds and sue you would never do that. Except that's often exactly what they do when they freeze your funds and sue you- they incarcerate you to prevent you from fleeing.
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And? You can trade bitcoins for cash and get all of those things.
Well fuck me, why wouldn't I just use some of the cash or gold I've stashed in various secure locations to do those things? Then I wouldn't have to convert my bitcoins (assuming my bitcoins weren't also legally subject to seizure, which they almost certainly would be).
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A lot of those exchanges haven't lost their clients' money,
Really? So all that
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If you make a bet at a casino and win, that doesn't mean it was a good bet.
"I don't know a single person who has" (Score:1)
On any topic, that phrase automatically marks you as an idiot.
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On any topic, that phrase automatically marks you as an idiot.
He also does not know anyone that has had sex with a real girl, so it probably never actually happens... :)
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I don't know anyone who invested in gold, therefore gold is a useless metal. WTF kind of logic do these people use?
I've paid for my entire vacation this summer with my Coinbase SHIFT card and bought several trips and hotel rooms through Expedia. I win and come on top every time. All these idiots talking about how useless Bitcoin is makes my head hurt....
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Con artists and marks (of various varieties).
The exchanges fake transactions, fake liquidity, then claim to have been hacked while they take off with your real money. (SFYL)
The middlemen pretend to use Bitcoin but are actually more like unregulated online payment processors (these exist mostly because Bitcoin itself doesn't work well and most users are clueless enough that pretending to use Bitcoin is good enough for them)
The 'whales' who actually have enough Bitcoin they can move the market around. They d
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Any evidence for any of this?
I've seen spikes in bitcoin prices, mainly, when a large country starts playing around with it's currency. There was a pop earlier this year when Venezuela started cracking down on currency leaving the country, then again when India started dropping certain denominations of currency. Other than that, no rapid moves upwards or downwards other than the odd spike every few months or so.
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Many coins have enough transactions that the time involved in buying and selling is minimal. Now, if you mine, or purchase experimental coins then you're gambling. With BTC. Hell no. Put a buy or sell order at market and it's fulfilled immediately.
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It will take on average 10 minutes to post and an hour to verify.
Is this an issue? It depends on the purchase.
I personally feel that BTC will become more of a clearinghouse (end of day transmission of funds) and other coins with faster block times will be used for other transactions. The "cup-of-coffee" transaction is less important than the blockchain: where you have a cryptographically secure proof of identity and transmission. (Wallet A sent this fund to Wallet B - identity
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> Say I want to pay my plumber or handyman, someone I have a relationship with. How can I pay?
Well, I've just written checks.
> I can pay by check. Except I don't have physical checks anymore.
Hey buddy, I got a tip for you. Ask your bank for some fucking checks.
Here's your procedure:
1- Get some checks. This may cost you up to 20 bucks, or may be free.
2- Write the amount, the recipient, and sign the check.
3- Done.
Alternatively, if you don't have bitcoins:
1- Make an account on some bitcoin transfer pla
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Today, 2016, you're 100% correct.
But what about tomorrow? 2018
When one can easily send transactions from a phone? When Google Pay and other services are considered normal?
Now if banks drop their transfer costs to zero; and if it's easy to send payments then BTC most likely will not be used for these transactions.
BTC is considered (by some) to be spendable gold. Yo
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Just because it does not pass the Lucas123 comprehension test does not equal the epitome of market speculation. Sheesh.
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I've never used or considered using Gold and I don't know a single person who has. How is it that its value continues to soar? This has got to be the epitome of market speculation.
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i believe one of the major mistakes people are making with bitcoin is thinking that bitcoins are only useful if they can be used to buy something.
The bitcoin has been relatively stable for a pretty long time. Trade volume is stable and growing, so the market works really well to transfer value over borders. Think like western union on steroids.
Due to the long term stability, the bitcoin market is beginning to be trusted as an alternate and easy to access method of storing or transferring value, not necessar
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"I've never used or considered using Bitcoin and I don't know a single person who has. "
When BTC first went live, my big concern was that someone would crack the algorithm for generating it and it would all either disappear in a flash or infinite amounts of it would be created, demolishing its value like the Zimbabwean dollar. It has now been around long enough that there is little possibility of that happening.
But store it anywhere, in one of those online exchanges or on your own computer, and the hackers
not a currency (Score:2)
quit saying it is a currency, it is not
game points that currently can be converted to currency, value of which might drop to zero by various state actions suddenly, yes
Re:not a currency (Score:5, Insightful)
game points that currently can be converted to currency, value of which might drop to zero by various state actions suddenly, yes
Kinda like anything other currency. Like the Deutchmark in the 30s, or currently the Venezuelan Bolivar?
All currency (including gold) is an agreement between people that something has value. Bitcoin is no different. You're under the illusion that money is real, which it isn't. It's all a collective, convenient illusion.
intrinsic value, trade value, collectable vaue (Score:1)
It's said that coins and currency have intrinsic value, trade value, and collectable value.
Book-entry money, including bank accounts and e-coins, typically has only trade value.
A typical, non-collectable $1 bill will have an intrinsic value of a few cents or less - it can be used as wallpaper if nothing else. It has a trade value of exactly $1. Unless and until it becomes collectable, it's collectable value is less than its face value and can be ignored.
A de-monetized bank note from the Confederate States
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"All currency (including gold) is an agreement between people that something has value. Bitcoin is no different. You're under the illusion that money is real, which it isn't. It's all a collective, convenient illusion."
But gold at least is broadly accepted as a standard of value across most cultures, and is easy to validate because of its density. The value of BTC is purely in its limited supply.
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No, not like a sovereign power's currency that has legal standing, nor is it like a world currency.
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Why don't you use logic. You mouth off about notes of debt from a bank and NOT currency of a sovereign power. You are the one with irrelevant prattle about things that only prove my point. While I don't believe the money of the USA is the best solution, it nevertheless is currency from a sovereign power with legal standing and moreover is a global currency. Very different from bitcoin or any other "crypto-currency".
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noun, plural currencies. 1. something that is used as a medium of exchange; money.
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You need to learn how to read a dictionary.
bitcoin is not accepted as medium of exchange as money is; it is not money.
I'm still waiting for blockchain-bucks and -gold (Score:2)
I'm still waiting for a government or national-bank to issue blockchain-based currency that is backed by a familiar, tangible asset such as gold, silver, or the local fiat currency.
Unlike bitcoin, this would be a "captive" coin and it would not have many of the benefits of bitcoin and the like.
But here is what it would have:
* Stable value: Like currency or metal, a "bit-buck" is worth $1 and it always will be and a "bit-troy-ounce of gold" is worth 1 troy ounce of gold and it always will be.
* Built-in: In
Ultimately Currency Issuers Will Step In (Score:2)
Once governments feel the pinch and start to regulate it, it's game over! I'd expect the EU and the US are already planning just that!
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And yet Trump just included a big BTC proponent into his cabinet:Mick Mulvaney, a Republican congressman and a long-time bitcoin supporter was picked to run the Office of Management and Budget.
This seems to run against your position. Although you're correct. Governments can certainly kill bitcoin by making ownership and transmission of BTC a crime under penalty of death
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I'm still waiting for a government or national-bank to issue blockchain-based currency that is backed by a familiar, tangible asset such as gold, silver, or the local fiat currency....
I was following you right up to the last item.
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The fiat currency of any government relies entirely on magical manipulation to achieve "stability".
And it very frequently FAILS resulting in collapse of said economy and government.
Everything you said and or described is either debunked or handled better by bitcoin.
- stable - BTC has been steady up time on time since inception, after leveling out the big irrational exuberance spikes as any prudent investor would.
- builtin - already runs on every computer and smartphone.
- trading - NO, you cannot trade a ban
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Much more than just one disadvantage. The big one is that governments and banks prefer to create their money in the dark and out of sight. They gain nearly nothing from this idea, and by making that stuff public, they lose a LOT.
No, not $14 billion (Score:2)
Its useless to calculate a dollar price. Tell us the number of bitcoin. Because if you try to sell these amount of bitcoin, the price will drop so you will NOT get $14 billion. So it's just bullshit to quantify it in dollar.
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Its useless to calculate a dollar price. Tell us the number of bitcoin. Because if you try to sell these amount of bitcoin, the price will drop so you will NOT get $14 billion. So it's just bullshit to quantify it in dollar.
That is not how market cap works. If you try to sell all of the Apple Stock at once it will go down as well.
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That's what i am saying.
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And Yet it is geting harder to mine (Score:2)
Ahh, well.
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Re:Whatever (Score:5, Interesting)
There is little point in using bitcoins for normal everyday business-to-consumer transactions. So most people do not, and maybe never will, use them. But there are still uses for bitcoins. My company employs a graphic artist living in Karachi. The transaction costs of transferring and converting dollars to pak-rupees are exorbitant. So we pay her in bitcoins. It works well, and, since it is below the radar, we don't have to worry about the 35% tax that our soon-to-be-president will impose on offshoring.
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Bitcoin is gambling on collectables (Score:3, Insightful)
Beanie-babies would work just as well for currency. (maybe better).
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It's not the same order of magnitude of risk or volatility, though. I worry that unchecked US government spending might hurt the currency, for example, but that's a worry that inflation may rise by 3-5 percent a year. That would be a shocking (and unlikely) move for the dollar. There's more risk and volatility in the CNY, but that's still nothing compared to BTC.
Actually, it's both (Score:1)
For people who hold BC for more than a short time, it's gambling.
For people who need to buy from someone and they don't have a currency the seller will accept, they must buy a currency the seller will accept. If the seller accepts US Dollars and BitCoin, and all I have are Euros, am I going to buy USD or am I going to buy BitCoin? Well, if they take my credit card (with its low exchange fees) I may "buy" USD. If they don't, I'll buy BC, buy elsewhere, or do without. For this buyer, it's being used as a
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Is it also an alternative currency? yes. for some.
Is it also an alternative to fiat? yes. for some.
But one of it's main purposes is to send money quickly, easily and with low overhead from one person to another. Something that credit cards do not do. It's expensive to receive a credit card transaction. It's a bare minimum of $20.00
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The downside of using BTC is that, like cash, you can lose your money. .
The value of BTC is
- the ease of sending money (as with email over snail mail).
- reasonable anonymity.
However anybody that thinks they can evade the IRS or NSA using Bitcoin is either a fool or has a VERY sophisticated team of people r
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The value of BTC is
- the ease of sending money (as with email over snail mail).
- reasonable anonymity.
Why do people imagine that BTC has any sort of anonymity? Your IP address (with timestamp) is about as anonymous as your physical address to the government, and that's permanently recorded in the blockchain. I guess you could be anonymous to the other party, but how often is that useful?
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Your IP address (with timestamp) is about as anonymous as your physical address to the government, and that's permanently recorded in the blockchain.
No it isn't.
Seriously, you have no idea what you are talking about, why comment?
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The value of BTC is - the ease of sending money (as with email over snail mail). - reasonable anonymity.
Why do people imagine that BTC has any sort of anonymity? Your IP address (with timestamp) is about as anonymous as your physical address to the government, and that's permanently recorded in the blockchain. I guess you could be anonymous to the other party, but how often is that useful?
In my next line I wrote: However anybody that thinks they can evade the IRS or NSA using Bitcoin is either a fool or has a VERY sophisticated team of people running said transactions. So, no I don't think that BTC is anonymous. But one is pseudo-anonymous. Nonetheless, as a point of reference, the blockchain does not record IP address.
However you must assume that the NSA, the FBI or IRS will be able to associate your IP address to your bitcoin transactions unless you use anonymizing technologies like
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OK, but my point was: who else would you want anonymity from, besides the government?
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Some clear-cut reasons: say weed is legal but you don't want it showing up on your MasterCard. You're buying a personal toy that comes in brown-paper wrapping but you don't want it on your credit card.
For others, like me, it is a "political" thing. It's privacy from the data collection done by banks, google, facebook, etc...
Privacy is privacy. Do your friends and parents know what you make and all your expenses? Do you share your favorite se*ual positions with everyone? We have
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I guess. The weed store only takes cash, though, and the personal toy that comes in brown-paper wrapping shows up on the credit card bill as Amazon (probably why Amazon is the worlds largest sex toy vendor).
The thing about buying anything, unless you pay in person with cash, is that the seller has your info anyhow.
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Your IP address (with timestamp) is about as anonymous as your physical address
The IP address is recorded as the source of transaction. Mine will show up as originating from one of a large variety of VPN servers all over the world. Perfect? No. Better than using the IP address assigned by my ISP? Very much.
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What's the difference between a customer paying in cash and paying in BTC?
If customer pays cash
vendor gives customer receipt
vendor deposits cash in business account (ideally, in order to avoid commingling issues)
vendor records transaction in ledger (paper, excel, quickbooks, whatever)
vendor declares income in quarterly sales tax forms and yearly income forms that "x" cash was received.
If customer pays w BTC
all the ab
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You may win in the long haul or you may lose your shirt.
Or in this case, you may lose $300. High risk investments with tremendous upside and little downside aren't gambling. They are investments.
Re: damn forgot to preview (Score:2)
Just because an investment is high risk doesn't mean it isn't a good one. Lottery tickets are a bad investment, objectively and are also high risk. But that doesn't mean that all high risk investments are bad. It also doesn't mean they must be too complex for an amateur investor to understand.
And I'd argue, due to the prevalence of people thinking like you do, the current high risk investments out there are probably better than the low risk do to their lack of popularity (it's a buyers market)
All he happens to be is an Anonymous Coward. (Score:2)
You happened to win. You may have even approached it as an investment. That doesn't mean it wasn't a gamble.
By all standards of accuracy or mere reality - he's "winnings" are a work of fiction.
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Crap... HIS winnings.
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Beanie-babies would work just as well for currency. (maybe better).
Please tell me how you can send payments pseudonymously across the globe in 10 minutes using Beanie babies.
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purse.io
expedia.com
overstock.com
Many others....wake me up when your IQ goes up
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I've bought stuff with BitCoin. On one of those 'markets'. Multiple times.
What do you want to know?
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I might never buy anything with Bitcoin, but that doesn't mean it won't find its place. I've never had a merchant account or interacted with credit processing behind the swipe--but the stores do that all the time. Likewise, I've bought alcohol at retail; but I've never driven a beer truck. What I'm getting at here is that Bitcoin might turn out to be kind of a dud and/or a curiosity at the consumer level; but could find utility for the "wholesale" or "behind the scenes" transactions.
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Re:Fools and their money (Score:4, Insightful)
Gold is also going up, and trust in currency is going way down.
I keep hearing about how trust in currency is going "way down." I'd really, honestly like to see a study showing how many people pay their mortgages, gas, and grocery bills entirely with Bitcoin (or gold bars). If those people (if they exist) truly don't trust the currency, then their day-to-day lives must be terrifying.
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At least in USD, gold prices have declined about $200/oz since July.
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"Zero cost" - meaning you will wait for hours or days for your transactions to get confirmed. You have no idea what you are talking about.
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"Zero cost" - meaning you will wait for hours or days for your transactions to get confirmed. You have no idea what you are talking about.
As compared to what? Credit cards that take 60 days? Or paypal perhaps that can claw money back from you months later?
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Credit card authorisations are seconds, not 60 days.
Transactions in bitcoin take seconds as well.
He is talking about the transaction becoming final and non reversible (something very important to vendors, credit card fraud cost billions per annum).
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Yeah, you're lying.
Reversed two weeks later? If you're going to make shit up _please_ at least make it feasible, the longest fork in bitcoin lasted a matter of hours, not even days.
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Backpedaling?
Besides, how would you know anything about the software to know it is shit, you clearly don't understand how it works. I very much doubt you have ever had any at all let alone transacted with it.
Start lieing like you do and your credibility drops to zero and now you just another internet liar.
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Your such a liar, I really don't believe you.
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More lies.
You wonder how I know you are lying? In a fork transactions are processed by both chains not by one or the other, there is no communication between the chains to say, "I have processed this so you don't have to". Chain forks delay things and change who receive the block reward but transactions still take place.
If you had actually used bitcoin you may actually know this, but yeah, your just a liar instead.
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More lies and bullshit.
I do have a question though, why does bitcoin threaten you so much? Seriously, you don't know that much about it and yet you hate it with a passion (enough to just make up lies about it and look like a dick).
Is there something in particular about it or are you just a general "I hate what I don't understand " type?
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More bullshit and lies.
Tell you what, you can cryptographically prove me wrong, go on then.
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Look at this from a consumer point of view.
I am by point out how full of shit you are and how you are lying. There is nothing to fix here apart from you lying.
That way legitimate consumers won't be fooled by your crap. You are not actually a consumer if all you have ever done is lie about it.
It is not as if there are no legitimate concerns about bitcoin but instead of picking one of those you make up fairy tales.
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If Bitcoin becomes too much of a nuisance, the Chinese government will either regulate it to death or, if regulation is deemed not effective enough, outright ban it.
Like they did with prostitution and drugs!