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Sundial, how do these ATMs function? Currently a single Bitcoin is worth just shy of $15,000.00 USD. I generally don't carry that much cash with me to convenience stores ;)
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How is what you're imagining here different from the systems we already have? |
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So, the very first thing about crypto-currency anyone needs to know is that it is decentralized. It is not owned nor controlled by any one agency, whether a government or a bank. It also has strict limitations on how many units can be printed. In fact that was one of the early concerns, that in the opposite manner of infinitely printable legal tender, it's value per unit (coin) would rise so high that it would be of extremely limited vale and finally collapse as a system. So far that has not happened and it seems there are natural forces that come to play since it's value is not determined by any one person or agency but by market forces only. The odd thing is that some detractors see this as a form of collectivism that smacks of Socialism, while others say it absolutely reeks of Adam Smith Capitalism. In my view, how it is labeled is unimportant. How it functions is likely to be very important. Legal Tender has been around literally for millennia and suffers from it's very nature in being unwieldy and slow, both in responsiveness to market forces (tail wagging the dog) and in the ability to transfer wealth whether simply buying immediate goods or long term contracts. Most of us have experienced both an improvement in speed (and conversely a slowdown due to obstructions) via credit cards and online banking but wonder why it is so difficult to transfer funds instantaneously. In my case my bank would rather have a person write a physical check and mail it through POTS than to do a simple electronic transfer in far less time involving far less paid employees and their {paid for) time. In fact they charge more to do something that costs them less, not exactly a case of reciprocity. If I choose to buy something from even a friendly country like the UK my bank goes into hissy fits, flagging and holding any transaction until I make a call and take up another paid employee's time verifying the transaction.... or that's what they say BUT I made some 35 transactions, all under 100 dollars with the exact same company over a period of 3 years before they finally stopped flagging and withholding. It is my understanding that larger purchases bring even greater scrutiny and are a serious obstacle to corporate and national transactions. Crypto-currency has the potential to overcome such obstacles and actually plan timing whether instantaneous or over many years of time, and even adjust value over time if both parties agree on those terms. And there it is. It puts the power in the hands of those who actually own the wealth and takes it away from 3rd party institutions. I have previously mentioned that many banks refuse to make good on their clients (yours and mine) purchases if they don't like the recipient for whatever whimsical reason as if it was their money not yours. That's like "owning" a car, but having to ask for permission to drive it, subject to someone's approval of your destination, time, or whatever the hell they choose. These are just some of the values of decentralized currency and the forces that keep shrinking our world are evolving to make it a necessity which is at the heart of my prediction. As lovely as they are, there is no place for horse and buggy in modern civilization excepting a few Luddite communities and such forces are similarly affecting not only how we do business but how we CAN do business. |
If you think Bitcoin is decentralized, watch this video about how it has been taken over by commercial interests that basically allowed the "decentralized" blockchain to price itself out of the market. (Cost per transaction there has risen since the video was made and is currently about US$27.)
How The Banks Bought Bitcoin |
And you really thought the banks would not get in on it?
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Bitcoin is over, but there are many more scams rolling at the moment:
https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/ However, the technology behind bitcoin, once corrections are made, is sound. Sweden or China or some other country will throw their weight behind one even if they have to take the intiative and start a new one. That would be the most likely course since it would give them full control and that is what this is about. That also means that none of the truly decentralized or any of the anonymous methods would be allowed. China is already banning the bitcoin exchanges. Again, one possibility there is that they might do that so as to clear the field for their own currency, one that they control. Some combination of Tencent or Alibaba seems likely for that. Edit: The People’s Bank of China has run trials of its own prototype cryptocurrency, taking it a step closer to being the first major central bank to issue digital money. China’s vision, however, seems to be based more on taking full control of such transactions in contrast to the libertarian aspirations of Bitcoin. |
There are some very exciting characteristics of these digital tokens if the computation problem could be effectively solved. It has some very exciting prospects.
Present day systems rely on central authorities, sometimes very-long digital transmission routes, and inevitable errors that accumulate to millions of dollars' worth of genuine losses each year. If When that can be solved using digital technology, that will be a very big step forward. But currency? No, not in the general sense and certainly not in the "Libertarian" sense. If you could just "issue your own money," in whatever form, well, we have a word for that: counterfeiter. We call it a crime because of what it always leads to. Furthermore, there's a crucial element of trust that must be considered in more than just a purely-digital sense: there are people involved here, too, and sometimes people set out to steal from or to swindle other people. (As they are, in fact, doing right now.) Even though people know what sort of a devil "The Government of the United States" is ... :rolleyes: ... the fact remains that it's a big devil, rather than a small one. Many people like to think "Libertarian," but they don't behave that way. |
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