A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted
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@jbert said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
In unrelated news, that onebox image has way too many "dynamics" lines, and that bottom right guy even seems to have "fart lines".
It's just showing how accessible The Blockchain is for people with disabilities!
- Guy on far left and guy in bottom center (blue shirt) are obviously in wheelchairs, you just can't see them below the image.
- Green-pants man on left obviously has Tourette's, that's why he's shouting.
- Black-suit man on left has Parkinson's, thus the shaking.
- Red-pants man is a victim of radiation poisoning, thus his hair glowing.
- Red-shirt-and-jeans guy wants to Youtube your reaction to him pointing at his junk
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:sad-trombone:
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At least the founders of Bitcon were noble, honorable people who are only in it for the good of humanity...
Well, scratch that one...
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Well, even if Bitconners aren't all pure and noble...
And even if it's not really a stable currency...
And even if the whole boom cycle might burst at any time, making it not really a stable investment...
At least we can still use it for anonymous
money launderingtax evasionexchange of money between friends...
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@izzion said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Coinbase: We will send data on 13,000 users to IRS
WE ARE BITCOIN! Capitalism is dead! We are beholden to no system but THE BLOCK CHAIN.
You operate in the US. Submit your tax form or we'll throw you all in prison.
YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO US... can they?
Subpena's
Uhhh...
oh hai everyone go play nice with the nice IRS hahahaha BYE!
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@lorne-kates said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Coinbase: We will send data on 13,000 users to IRS
WE ARE BITCOIN! Capitalism is dead! We are beholden to no system but THE BLOCK CHAIN.
They don't even use bitcoin themselves, just keep it in a centralized exchange.
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@lorne-kates Coinbase isn't one of those foaming-at-the-mouth "fiat is dead!" crazy-person companies. They probably didn't require supeonas.
That said it is one of those companies run by asshole San Franciscans and funded by moron venture capitalists, so who knows. But that's a different type of asshole than the insane conspiracy theory asshole.
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@boomzilla said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
who came up with the idea so customers can keep their visits to his club secret from their partners.
Because paying cash wouldn't work
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@boomzilla I saw that and I don't get how it works. Coinbase doesn't like make loans or invest on people's behalf (at least it better not be!). It just holds money.
So what would cause it to rise and fall? The amount of service fees they charge? Am I just an idiot who doesn't understand index funds?
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@blakeyrat It actually sounds like a derivative type of security(which is to say, not really an index fund that actually holds securities):
Coinbase Index is a measure of the financial performance of all assets listed on GDAX, weighted by their market capitalization.
A scam of scams.
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@blakeyrat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@boomzilla I saw that and I don't get how it works. Coinbase doesn't like make loans or invest on people's behalf (at least it better not be!). It just holds money.
So what would cause it to rise and fall? The amount of service fees they charge? Am I just an idiot who doesn't understand index funds?
- You put money into the fund.
- Coinbase takes their cut
- For what's left they buy coins included in the index
- When you want your money out, they just sell those coins
Guaranteed profit for Coinbase. For investors, not so much.
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@izzion said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Coinbase
Isn't that the thing that keeps popping up in browser cryptojacking?
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@boomzilla said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Coinbase Index is a measure of the financial performance of all assets listed on GDAX, weighted by their market capitalization.
Hm. As long as they only include valuations backed by actual coins actually being sold for actual US Dollars or Euros (or some other stable currency), I guess that makes sense.
If they're going by the inflated-ass crazy-numbers you get from ICO companies, they're going to go bankrupt the instant someone tries to sell 20 shares.
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@mrl said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
You put money into the fund.
Coinbase takes their cut
For what's left they buy coins included in the index
When you want your money out, they just sell those coinsSeems like you could just open a Coinbase account and do that directly without involving an index fund.
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@blakeyrat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@mrl said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
You put money into the fund.
Coinbase takes their cut
For what's left they buy coins included in the index
When you want your money out, they just sell those coinsSeems like you could just open a Coinbase account and do that directly without involving an index fund.
Bingo.
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@boomzilla said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
who came up with the idea so customers can keep their visits to his club secret from their...
Uhhh... isn't the whole point of the blockchain that anyone can verify anyone's transactions at any time?
So if you know the wallet number of the strip club, just look for transactions to that wallet on the blockchain? Then you just need to identify who the wallet belongs to?
And since people post their fucking wallet number all over the place ("hey send me btc thx!"), you can pretty easily line those up?
...
Hang on, I think I just discovered an amazing way to make some money off Bitcoin. BRB, need to sign up for a six VPNs first and work on my extortion-letter wording.
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@lorne-kates said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Uhhh... isn't the whole point of the blockchain that anyone can verify anyone's transactions at any time?
Right; when Bitcoin people say it's anonymous what they mean is "there's no personally identifiable information in an account". The account's actual transactions are all out there in the open. Which is not at all what normal people think the word "anonymous" means.
There are also services out there that run like 600 Bitcoin accounts and shuffle money between them randomly to "launder" Bitcoins and make it very difficult or impossible to see the actual transaction. These take a pretty big percentage for obvious reasons.
Also there's a new coin called Bitcoin Private or something like that which claims to have some kind of privacy-maintaining blockchain but I haven't looked into it.
@lorne-kates said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
And since people post their fucking wallet number all over the place ("hey send me btc thx!"), you can pretty easily line those up?
Wallet software lets you make a new bitcoin address for each use. When I did the bitcoin begging on Twitter, I made a new address for that. So people could see what went into that address specifically, they'd have no idea what went into the various other wallet addresses I have.
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@blakeyrat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Wallet software lets you make a new bitcoin address for each use. When I did the bitcoin begging on Twitter, I made a new address for that. So people could see what went into that address specifically, they'd have no idea what went into the various other wallet addresses I have.
Okay, so you CAN do a "one use ticket" type thing.
But it takes effort, some caution on the part of the user, and a touch of technical knowledge.
...
Yeah, I think my business plan is still apt.
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@blakeyrat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Right; when Bitcoin people say it's anonymous what they mean is "there's no personally identifiable information in an account". The account's actual transactions are all out there in the open. Which is not at all what normal people think the word "anonymous" means.
Yeah, so the strip club thing will be less obvious to the casual wife than a credit card or bank statement but the determined divorce lawyer will milk the obvious attempt at obfuscation for all it's worth.
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@boomzilla said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@blakeyrat It actually sounds like a derivative type of security(which is to say, not really an index fund that actually holds securities):
Coinbase Index is a measure of the financial performance of all assets listed on GDAX, weighted by their market capitalization.
A scam of scams.
And it's not even a good index! "Weighted by market cap" is just "Bitcoin", to first approximation. That's so hopelessly un-diverse as to be nearly useless.
(Okay, I did a quick search. It's more like "50% Bitcoin, 20% Etherium, 7% Bitcoin Cash, 6% Ripple, and then noise". According to this 4-month-old Reddit post. Either way, BTC and ETH are waaaay too large of a fraction of the fund.)
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You probably thought you weren't gonna get stoned out of your mind today… Surprise!
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@dcoder
I like IOVO's defense at the end... "[it totally wasn't us, bro]""Even though IOVO contributed to the overall program of the Crypto Sanctum conference and provided its website, we were not engaged in any executive services. IOVO as an event partner was not involved in food and drinks organization, and we had no knowledge about any nonstandard components used in the process of their preparation." Gagacki said IOVO "will do everything in our power to make the guilty party accountable."
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@dcoder Never drink the punch. Sheesh.
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@dcoder I guess that's a good way to have the attendees believe your bullshit
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Of course, I'm not really sure if losing $1,000 of value shortly after 8am west coast time is really a dive in the bitcoin market caused by the statement, or just "Wednesday morning in the Bitcon market"...
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@izzion post hoc ergo Bitcoin hock
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@blakeyrat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Seems like you could just open a Coinbase account and do that directly without involving an index fund.
You could do that with any kind of index fund. It’s just an issue of scale.
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@greybeard Well ok but the Coinbase one is only like 5 currencies so it'd be pretty easy. ;)
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@boomzilla said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@dcoder Never drink the
punchKool-Aid. Sheesh.
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Keybase a product I've never heard of is now supported by Stellar cryptocurrency, a cryptocurrency I've never heard of!
What great news! So glad this unexplained gibberish was promoted to the top of HackerNews this morning!
Stellar coins are apparently called "Lumens" which makes me want to play Rayman Origins again.
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@timebandit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I mean, the only byproduct of cryptocurrency mining is heat, so I guess that's a good idea if you want heat anyway.
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@ben_lubar That's basically what your computer is doing anyway, blowing warm air out the vents on the back. Maybe they've designed it to produce higher-temperature air, or something. (I haven't RTFA.) But for a given amount of mining, unless you make the computer less efficient, the same amount of electrical energy is going to be turned into heat energy in your room, whether you call it a computer or a heater.
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@hardwaregeek said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@ben_lubar That's basically what your computer is doing anyway, blowing warm air out the vents on the back. Maybe they've designed it to produce higher-temperature air, or something. (I haven't RTFA.) But for a given amount of mining, unless you make the computer less efficient, the same amount of electrical energy is going to be turned into heat energy in your room, whether you call it a computer or a heater.
Yeah, but people don't expect a heater to do anything but convert electricity into heat. People expect their computer to convert electricity into fancy light and sound patterns that make them feel emotions.
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@ben_lubar said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
People expect their computer to convert electricity into fancy light and sound patterns that make them
feel emotionshave a wank
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@hardwaregeek said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Maybe they've designed it to produce higher-temperature air, or something.
They produce two kind of hot air: heating and cryptocurrency
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@timebandit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@boomzilla said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
who came up with the idea so customers can keep their visits to his club secret from their partners.
Because paying cash wouldn't work
Bitcoin is more sanitary, though... you know everywhere that it's been.
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@ben_lubar said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@hardwaregeek said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@ben_lubar That's basically what your computer is doing anyway, blowing warm air out the vents on the back. Maybe they've designed it to produce higher-temperature air, or something. (I haven't RTFA.) But for a given amount of mining, unless you make the computer less efficient, the same amount of electrical energy is going to be turned into heat energy in your room, whether you call it a computer or a heater.
Yeah, but people don't expect a heater to do anything but convert electricity into heat. People expect their computer to convert electricity into fancy light and sound patterns that make them feel emotions.
IT HAS FAILED.
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Remarkable Turn of Events
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@timebandit
A real shocker! Competence in cryptocurrency? Can it be?
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@luhmann Law of Averages. It was bound to happen at some point.
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Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges on the Internet
Never heard of it before.
Furthermore, in the subsequent investigation, Binance identified the 31 accounts, reversed all transactions,
Good.
and confiscated the original Viacoin funds
That seems like something a business ought not to be able to do without due process. Freeze them pending legal action, maybe, but not outright confiscation.
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@hardwaregeek said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
and confiscated the original Viacoin funds
That seems like something a business ought not to be able to do without due process. Freeze them pending legal action, maybe, but not outright confiscation.
I was told you couldn't transfer coin at all without the private key, which was supposedly one of the main features...
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@tsaukpaetra
There's actually transferring coin on the blockchain, and then there's exchanging tulip bulbs at the exchanges. Guess what most people do...
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@hardwaregeek said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
and confiscated the original Viacoin funds
That seems like something a business ought not to be able to do without due process. Freeze them pending legal action, maybe, but not outright confiscation.
That's the equivalent of someone getting banned from SomethingAwful, or a player of a multiplayer game being banned without a refund. Or any time the phrase "down payment" appears.
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@timebandit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Remarkable Turn of Events
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@dcoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Worldwide graphics card shortage
This is why we can't have nice things.