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Is anyone else starting to become a bit worried? mod note in first post

Autochange

Bear markets
Fud
Regulation
Wall Street manipulation
The supposed tether ticking time bomb

What are your thoughts? Have you cashed out? Have you been buying the dips?

MOD NOTE:
Its good to see healthy debate and discussion taking place and I am sure every supporter of cryptocurrency and blockchain can agree that the contrarian viewpoint is worthwhile reading, if only to act as an anchor and help prevent investors from getting carried away in an echo chamber of "everything is wonderful, just keep going"

However, there have been a few reported posts recently which I did not action as I wanted to see the thread level out itself rather than start forcing viewpoints and I have been in two minds about that decision.

I'm not going to single any posters out but I'm going to ask that all posters read the forum charter and I want to point out that it was established years ago in the Television forum, that dropping in on a forum to tell the followers of that forums topic (in that case a particular tv show) that it was all crap and only idiots watched it etc etc was the exact definition of being a dick and attempting to troll. I know this because I was the mod of the forum at the time. Now look at the forum charter again.

There is pretty much one rule on this forum : if you cannot discuss in a civil manner, and I mean discuss, not soapbox or attack, then you have absolutely no business posting here and I have no qualms about removing your ability to do so.

This forum is for people that have in interest in cryptocurrencies, blockchain and their application to financial investments. that can be positive or negative but if you really feel the need to start pulling out memes / hiding insults in imaginary hashtags / attacking personalities or just generally being a dick there are other forums you can post in where I will let the local mods determine if it is within the scope of allowable behaviour. Here, it is not.

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q85dw7osi4lebg

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Speculative store of value, and there are still enough non-KYC exchanges if people want to take that risk. Hell, I remember the days we would buy it on forums/message boards. I bought one alt-coin from a guy with a decent rep on a popular social media site.

Is gold not a speculative store of value? It's completely stock to flow / sentiment based.

Bitcoin is digital gold.

makeorbrake

Bob24 wrote: »

you will only spot than if they used know dodgy wallet and didn’t mix coins too much

Just as a side note, many may use mixing services to maintain their privacy. i.e. we can't assume all coins passed through a mixing service were implicated in illicit trade.

The scenario with regard to fungibility is interesting. As a user and holder of Bitcoin on a personal basis - just like cash - i'm not going to give a fiddlers where that coin was before it reached me.
With this KYC/AML nonsense, institutions are bricking it - and so a specific market is emerging for virgin - newly minted - coins - for which they're willing to pay a premium. My understanding is that there are privacy updates waiting in the wings to be applied to Bitcoin to make it truly fungible. We will have to see how it all unfolds.

Bob24

makeorbrake wrote: »

Just as a side note, many may use mixing services to maintain their privacy. i.e. we can't assume all coins passed through a mixing service were implicated in illicit trade.

Yes of course. The point was rather that because of coin mixing it is not easy at all to identify the actual provenance of Bitcoins you receive, and thus I don’t get how Bitcoin would solve the provenance issue mentioned with gold above.

makeorbrake

Bob24 wrote: »

Yes of course. The point was rather that because of coin mixing it is not easy at all to identify the actual provenance of Bitcoins you receive, and thus I don’t get how Bitcoin would solve the provenance issue mentioned with gold above.

For sure. My question would be why does it want to - it should be moving away from that and providing complete fungibility....but I appreciate we all approach this from different perspectives.

JohnnyFlash

Why is this Satoshi guy so revered anyway?

He created some software that is grossly inefficient, used stupendous amounts of energy, and whose only use-case is allowing conmen to rip people off. It’s use case a few years back was allowing drug dealers, hit men, and child porn producers to get paid by drug addicts and liberation weirdo pedos.

A scene filled with the very worst of humanity. It’s no wonder people like Craig Wright, Ver, McAfee, Justin Sun etc are so prominent. Like flies to shït.

Bob24

makeorbrake wrote: »

For sure. My question would be why does it want to - it should be moving away from that and providing complete fungibility....but I appreciate we all approach this from different perspectives.

Good question and I was not making a call whether it should address this or not, discussion this in details would be a complex argument and on top of being subjective, the answer depends on potential future use cases and regulatory environments for BTC which we don’t know about.

I just meant to challenge InstaSte’s statement that Bitcoin does solve the specific laundering problem mentioned above related to gold and dodgy provenance. Looks like at least the two of us don’t see how it does.

On your question my personal answer and gut feeling is that similarity to gold the base protocol of BTC shouldn’t have to worry about these provenance issues, in order to guarantee a minimum of privacy for peer to peer exchanges. But that also like with gold all institutional actors dealing with the asset should have to enforce due diligence as otherwise the whole thing will blow-up (which I know is where you will disagree) and actually give ammunitions to supporters of completely fully traceable and non-private digital money as a sole legal means of payment.

Also adding to the above, for someone who is not tech savvy and not a criminal, Bitcoin as it is probably only gives then an illusion of privacy: I know you know all of this already but with a completely public ledger, a “basic” user as no privacy once their wallet has been mapped to them. And one has to have a certain level of motivation and/of technical understanding to really make it private.

makeorbrake

Bob24 wrote: »

On your question my personal answer and gut feeling is that similarity to gold the base protocol of BTC shouldn’t have to worry about these provenance issues, in order to guarantee a minimum of privacy for peer to peer exchanges. But that also like with gold all institutional actors dealing with the asset should have to enforce due diligence as otherwise the whole thing will blow-up (which I know is where you will disagree) and actually give ammunitions to supporters of completely fully traceable and non-private digital money as a sole legal means of payment.

Well, I think that tussle is already ongoing - and it will be ongoing for quite some time to come. By its nature, decentralised crypto doesn't play nice with centralised anything - regulation, confiscation, etc. etc.
Government backed regulators and central banks can influence matters at the on and off ramps - and they're doing exactly that.

We could run very close to a full court press - a blanket ban. That won't kill it - in the (very) long term, it will just make it stronger. However, for any of us holding - from a speculative investment point of view - we could get badly burnt.

The flip side is that they only get to play that card once and if they get it wrong, whatever semblance of control they had will be lost. It's being likened to the war on drugs.

Who knows - perhaps there will be a two tier Bitcoin trading regime - with coins that only circulate in institutional investment circles and the rest for the use of us unwashed. If those privacy features are enabled in Bitcoin, perhaps governments will throw their toys out of the pram and go for a full ban. In the US, they can't ban bitcoin because of the constitution but they can tackle exchanges.

There will be a whole wave of Central Bank Digital Currencies and Corporate Digital Currencies (Libra) soon enough - so we'll know more once those are in play.

cnocbui

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Why is this Satoshi guy so revered anyway?

He created some software that is grossly inefficient, used stupendous amounts of energy, and whose only use-case is allowing conmen to rip people off. It’s use case a few years back was allowing drug dealers, hit men, and child porn producers to get paid by drug addicts and liberation weirdo pedos.

A scene filled with the very worst of humanity. It’s no wonder people like Craig Wright, Ver, McAfee, Justin Sun etc are so prominent. Like flies to sh

Probably because he/she is very clever and broke the rule of 'nothing new under the sun' and invented something genuinely new.

Putting aside your deliberately glass half empty because I hate cryptos mindset, there's the little thing called the blockchain, an industry which is predicted to reach $23.3 B in value by 2023. So while all you can bring yourself to acknowledge are what you see as negatives, there are plenty of others who see the inventiveness of Satoshi as being seminal and positive. He/she will go down in history - you will not.

Pintman Paddy Losty

Christ almighty dohnjoe you have the patience of a Saint. Some amount of ducking diving and deliberately avoiding the question. It would make a politician blush. You'd think a straight forward question like should you have to verify who you are to a bank would be straightforward to answer.

cnocbui

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

Christ almighty dohnjoe you have the patience of a Saint. Some amount of ducking diving and deliberately avoiding the question. It would make a politician blush. You'd think a straight forward question like should you have to verify who you are to a bank would be straightforward to answer.

I'll answer the question.

Should you have to identify yourself: Yes, but asking for more than a valid passport/drivers lic. is taking the piss.

Should you have to prove your address with multiple restricted types of documents - no. I think homeless people and those who don't own property should be perfectly entitled to have a bank account.

There's a simple solution to the money laundering thing too.

If you can't meet all the KYC requirements, then banks could be required to take 5% of sums deposited to an account that exceed some figure, say €2,000 - up to an annual accumulated total of deposits greater than €400, of €14,000. Go over the €14,000 and the tax goes to 15%. Deposits that are from a government department - foreign or domestic, and likely some other categories deemed automatically legitimate, would not be taxed or included in the calculation of the annual allowance.

If you can meet all the KYC requirements as they are, then no tax, just the existing reporting.

Obviously the figures are just examples. This would allow for generation of tax revenue from small scale laundering and would provide incentive to go full KYC when that becomes possible. It also lets people get bank accounts who can't meet the current onerous KYC requirements.

makeorbrake

Thanks to having finally clicked on the 'ignore poster' function earlier this year, I don't see the trolling from Podge and Rodge...unless someone quotes it - and that's no longer going to bait me into responding either.:D

JohnnyFlash

KYC and AML is extremely quick and easy to do. You need to provide a load of identification to trade funbux on the bucket shop exchanges you all use anyway. And then they get hacked anyway.

This anti AML stuff is the latest crypto trope - HODL, Lambo, stacking sats etc etc.

Dohnjoe

Gerald Obedient Manicurist wrote: »

Is gold not a speculative store of value?

Yup. Everything has it's own set of factors that determines short term volatility, long term volatility, and all that jazz

Dohnjoe

cnocbui wrote: »

Probably because he/she is very clever and broke the rule of 'nothing new under the sun' and invented something genuinely new.

Clever from a technical point of view (although blockchain based assets had been tinkered with before) Economically, not so much. He/she/they created Bitcoin to be an alternative currency, however it ending up being an alternative speculative trading/gambling token. The technical model is cool, the economic model is backward and harks back to the days of gold.

The key point (I feel) is that Bitcoin has been a showcase of the potential of the tech, which many are running with in different directions now

JJJJNR

One of the things I like about the stellar exchange is there's no KYC, and you still get to keep the keys, you would think that after all the paperwork these exchanges would give you the keys to your wallet but no.. No control over your wallet.. or security.

makeorbrake

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Clever from a technical point of view (although blockchain based assets had been tinkered with before)

He/she/they wasn't the first to come up with something like this - but there's no doubt but that the Bitcoin whitepaper was a major advancement - solving the Byzantine generals problem and designing in scarcity.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Economically, not so much.

Saifedean Ammous and proponents of Austrian Economics will take issue with you on that.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

He/she/they created Bitcoin to be an alternative currency, however it ending up being an alternative speculative trading/gambling token.

Actually, there's a lot of misunderstanding as regards Satoshi's intentions. Check out Dan Held's tweet storm here. The evolutionary process for this digital money appears to be Collectible -> Store of Value -> Medium of Exchange -> Unit of Account.
The speculation that you refer to forms part of that process.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

The technical model is cool, the economic model is backward and harks back to the days of gold.

We'll disagree on that one. As regards harking back to the days of gold, we may well be - the promoters of FIAT might have to go back to the gold standard. Doing far better than they've been doing is the only thing that might stop the march of decentralised crypto and competition from corporate crypto (eg. Libra).

Dohnjoe wrote: »

The key point (I feel) is that Bitcoin has been a showcase of the potential of the tech, which many are running with in different directions now

The Bitcoin Whitepaper - and the long time demonstration of a robust digital money network - has no doubt inspired other projects. Whether they can rise higher than it remains to be seen - as in solving what may be perceived to be shortcomings in Bitcoin, it remains to be seen if they're not leaving weaknesses in other areas as a consequence.

Dohnjoe

makeorbrake wrote: »

As regards harking back to the days of gold, we may well be - the promoters of FIAT might have to go back to the gold standard.

There are no "promoters", these aren't crypto projects. Fiat is in place in 99% of the world's economies and has been for quite awhile. Maybe something else will come along that works better, who knows, but it certainly isn't going to be some unstable non-fluid supply gambling asset like BTC.

Stable-coins might be a possibility, but they essentially mirror fiat, are literally pegged to fiat currencies or baskets of fiat currencies due to the stability. Also, recent rumblings from the BIS and FATF are making the future of third-party stable-coins (e.g. the ones we have now) look uncertain due to susceptibility to financial crime

From a recent intergovernmental meeting

“Emerging assets such as so-called global ‘stablecoins’, and their proposed global networks and platforms, could potentially cause a shift in the virtual asset ecosystem and have implications for the money laundering and terrorist financing risks. There are two concerns: mass-market adoption of virtual assets and person-to-person transfers, without the need for a regulated intermediary. Together these changes could have serious consequences for our ability to detect and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.”
https://www.coindesk.com/fatf-joins-bis-in-calling-stablecoins-global-risk-citing-money-laundering-concerns

Fiat works decently enough for the public, business, industry and government - I don't think it will be "challenged" by crypto, rather augmented by it, e.g. some sort of ECB backed crypto tender, a stable-coin. Ironically one that would be highly regulated, and probably not fully decentralised either (no one wants their economy depending on a completely rudderless currency)

Personally I still think the world needs a proper decentralised stable-coin to help protect imploding economies such as Venez. but it would have to be pretty robust, proven and finally trusted in order to be accepted

Libra? I think that's dead in the water. No one wants a corporate coin, least of all the regulators, politicians and law-makers

makeorbrake

Dohnjoe wrote: »

There are no "promoters", these aren't crypto projects. Fiat is in place in 99% of the world's economies and has been for quite awhile.

Are we really going to argue over the word 'promoters'? FIAT is centralised government money. Of course it has promoters, facilitators or proponents. No question its established but its centralised so someone is behind each and every one of them. And of course they come and go.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Maybe something else will come along that works better, who knows, but it certainly isn't going to be some unstable non-fluid supply gambling asset like BTC.

I'm not expecting a swap out - just that it will act as an alternative. Other than that, your characterization of Bitcoin in this instance betrays a lack of understanding of how it works.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Stable-coins might be a possibility, but they essentially mirror fiat, are literally pegged to fiat currencies or baskets of fiat currencies due to the stability.

Yes, I'd like to see further development of stablecoins for the short to medium term. Their basket may not always contain just FIAT though but we'll have to see over the fullness of time.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Also, recent rumblings from the BIS and FATF are making the future of third-party stable-coins (e.g. the ones we have now) look uncertain due to susceptibility to financial crime

From a recent intergovernmental meeting

“Emerging assets such as so-called global ‘stablecoins’, and their proposed global networks and platforms, could potentially cause a shift in the virtual asset ecosystem and have implications for the money laundering and terrorist financing risks. There are two concerns: mass-market adoption of virtual assets and person-to-person transfers, without the need for a regulated intermediary. Together these changes could have serious consequences for our ability to detect and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.”
https://www.coindesk.com/fatf-joins-bis-in-calling-stablecoins-global-risk-citing-money-laundering-concerns

Yeah, there's your KYC/AML nonsense getting in the way of innovation once again. And of course it's the control factor. Governments want control on money when a bit of healthy competition could serve society well.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Fiat works decently enough for the public, business, industry and government - I don't think it will be "challenged" by crypto, rather augmented by it, e.g. some sort of ECB backed crypto tender, a stable-coin. Ironically one that would be highly regulated, and probably not fully decentralised either (no one wants their economy depending on a completely rudderless currency)

FIAT has functioned to a point - no question. But of course, it's not without it's downsides. This whole thing raises the question as to why its assumed that governments have to have a monopoly on money. They don't and they shouldn't. So I said challenge - as in competition with both corporate digital money and decentralised digital money. But whats clear from the Europeans in their reaction to Libra is that everything is ok as long as its OUR digital money.
I hate Facebook but I'm really glad to see them come out with Libra. Whether it succeeds or fails, it's a win for Bitcoin.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Personally I still think the world needs a proper decentralised stable-coin to help protect imploding economies such as Venez. but it would have to be pretty robust, proven and finally trusted in order to be accepted

There are trust issues with them - and it seems it's going to be difficult for there not to be. But lets see how things develop.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Libra? I think that's dead in the water. No one wants a corporate coin, least of all the regulators, politicians and law-makers

The interesting thing with the hearings in the US was that on the one hand Facebook came in for major abuse due to past record (well deserved) but there were a number of progressive politicians that recognised that this is the way its going. That the US will have to embrace this or they're going to lose competitive advantage in this sector. The Chinese are the ones that are moving forward with digital money.
I think that there will be corporate digital money. The Libra project is still alive despite some prominent members dropping out. But...maybe it will be them...maybe it will be someone else. But at some stage, one of them will wriggle through.

Bob24

JJJJNR wrote: »

One of the things I like about the stellar exchange is there's no KYC, and you still get to keep the keys, you would think that after all the paperwork these exchanges would give you the keys to your wallet but no.. No control over your wallet.. or security.

By definition if you are registering with a centralised exchange you are expecting the exchange to act as a custodian. They can’t “give you the keys to your wallet” (since encryption keys must be private, you definitely want to generate your keys yourself rather than obtaining them from a third party such as a centralised exchange, as in the second scenario you would have a huge security hole with that third party having full access to your wallet).

If a centralised exchange offers to give you “your keys”, run away from that exchange.

JohnnyFlash

Do Binance offer to give you your keys?

makeorbrake

Bob24 wrote: »

If a centralised exchange offers to give you “your keys”, run away from that exchange.

I'm sure JJJJNR can tell us more but I suspect it's a bit more sophisticated than that. I spoke to a guy working on a Stellar network based project. He was putting together an innovative solution to solve the responsibility issue that exists for users when it comes to private keys.

Private keys are encrypted and sent to an external server along with a passphrase that the user sets. A token is returned. In order to access the private key, you need the passphrase, a token which the exchange holds and another token held by the company who run that external server (and who's only function is to provide that token).

I don't know how robust that approach is yet - but its an example of innovation in the space and efforts made to smoothen custody for users. There's a lot of that type of work needed to improve the UX and customer experience. It will take time but there are smart minds working on it.

Bob24

makeorbrake wrote: »

I'm sure JJJJNR can tell us more but I suspect it's a bit more sophisticated than that. I spoke to a guy working on a Stellar network based project. He was putting together an innovative solution to solve the responsibility issue that exists for users when it comes to private keys.

Private keys are encrypted and sent to an external server along with a passphrase that the user sets. A token is returned. In order to access the private key, you need the passphrase, a token which the exchange holds and another token held by the company who run that external server (and who's only function is to provide that token).

I don't know how robust that approach is yet - but its an example of innovation in the space and efforts made to smoothen custody for users. There's a lot of that type of work needed to improve the UX and customer experience. It will take time but there are smart minds working on it.

As far as I understand, he was comparing centralised exchanges to DEX.

In the second case, you generate the key yourself and essentially directly transact on the blockchain the DEX is based upon. So the responsibility of holding the keys is clearly with the user and the exchange backend never sees them or is responsable for any asset (with the drawback that you can only trade assets running on the blockchain that DEX is based upon)

What you describe seems like a fancy way to store/share your own keys with a third party. But since centralised exchanges operate off-blockchain to allow for cheap and quick trade between assets which are running on different blockchains (or between crypto and fiat), that approach doesn’t apply to them: these cheap and quick trades imply that the exchange has full control and custody of the assets being traded and thus that they are holding the keys.

Even if the mechanism you describe was used to temporarily share your private keys with an exchange through the third party so that the can retrieve your assets to trade them, I see 2 massive issues:
- that would mean trusting the exchange (or whichever third party initiates the blockchain transaction) with all your funds indefinitely as once they have access to the key for just a few seconds they can store it elsewhere and have complete and unlimited access to your wallet forever
- slow and expensive trades because every time you trade the exchange would have to execute a blockchain transaction on your behalf to retrieve your funds (in the case of a BTC pair, that could mean the trade takes 30 minutes and costs a few euros)

makeorbrake

@Bob24: I don't have the full technicals on that project. It was at an embryonic stage when I talked to the guy and in that instance, it was being developed as an escrow or peer to peer styled format. Stellar has built in multi-sig so i'm sure there's scope to build a robust yet convenient solution to private key management.

JohnnyFlash

Bitcoin appears to have shït its trousers. What happened now?

Kickstart1.3

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Bitcoin appears to have shït its trousers. What happened now?

Well 8% drop isn't unknown here, but it has been going sideways for sometime. 6k should be the next support but that failed in the past too.

Who knows, I think all this regulatory scrutiny isn't good. The same buzz and excitement about Bitcoin and Crypto in general is gone. It promised so much but hasn't delivered.
You need that herd mentality, fear of missing out to drive this, otherwise its just plain price manipulation by the likes CME Bitcoin, and scam coins and exchanges.
On top of which I see that some Governments are starting to come after bitcoin hodlers for taxes owed. So much for the financial freedom eh!

cnocbui

Tax for bitcoin hodlers - so tax on unrealised capital gains - how's that work?

Kickstart1.3

cnocbui wrote: »

Tax for bitcoin hodlers - so tax on unrealised capital gains - how's that work?

Ring revenue they'll enlighten you

cnocbui

Kickstart1.3 wrote: »

Ring revenue they'll enlighten you

No, I'd like you to enlighten me. I suspect you don't know what you are talking about, but no doubt your reply will address that.

makeorbrake

cnocbui wrote: »

Tax for bitcoin hodlers - so tax on unrealised capital gains - how's that work?

Tax is paid once crystalised into FIAT. If you have a paper gain right now but have not traded back into FIAT, then there has been no gain in the eyes of Revenue.

There's a guidance document here.

cnocbui

makeorbrake wrote: »

Tax is paid once crystalised into FIAT. If you have a paper gain right now but have not traded back into FIAT, then there has been no gain in the eyes of Revenue.

There's a guidance document here.

Thank,s I know that, but someone else clearly doesn't :rolleyes: