The seizure on Monday marked a first-of-its-kind effort by a new Justice Department task force to hijack a cybercriminal group’s profits through a hack of its Bitcoin wallet. The Justice Department said that it had seized 63.7 Bitcoins, currently valued at about $2.3 million. (The value of a Bitcoin has dropped over the past month.)
Hopefully this becomes much more common going forward, though I'm very doubtful it will. Also, if I'm understanding things correctly if the hackers had taken their bitcoins off an exchange, or used an exchange less sensitive to US government pressure, they probably would have been fine.
Can you really claim to have recovered it if it's in Bitcoins? Hopefully they dumped for USD immediately.
While I'm definitely happy that the hackers ended up empty handed, I'm also quite ok with colonial not getting their cookie back in an equally edible form.
The seizure on Monday marked a first-of-its-kind effort by a new Justice Department task force to hijack a cybercriminal group’s profits through a hack of its Bitcoin wallet. The Justice Department said that it had seized 63.7 Bitcoins, currently valued at about $2.3 million. (The value of a Bitcoin has dropped over the past month.)
Hopefully this becomes much more common going forward, though I'm very doubtful it will. Also, if I'm understanding things correctly if the hackers had taken their bitcoins off an exchange, or used an exchange less sensitive to US government pressure, they probably would have been fine.
Can you really claim to have recovered it if it's in Bitcoins? Hopefully they dumped for USD immediately.
While I'm definitely happy that the hackers ended up empty handed, I'm also quite ok with colonial not getting their cookie back in an equally edible form.
In some ways it's the best outcome one could hope for; the crooks get nothing, also the other crooks get a financial sting so maybe they'll learn from their mistakes (they won't.)
The seizure on Monday marked a first-of-its-kind effort by a new Justice Department task force to hijack a cybercriminal group’s profits through a hack of its Bitcoin wallet. The Justice Department said that it had seized 63.7 Bitcoins, currently valued at about $2.3 million. (The value of a Bitcoin has dropped over the past month.)
Hopefully this becomes much more common going forward, though I'm very doubtful it will. Also, if I'm understanding things correctly if the hackers had taken their bitcoins off an exchange, or used an exchange less sensitive to US government pressure, they probably would have been fine.
Can you really claim to have recovered it if it's in Bitcoins? Hopefully they dumped for USD immediately.
If they held it through today, they're down to $2million from their initial $5million.
Love to try to use cryptocurrency as a real currency
Couldn't the DoJ, and similar foreign organizations, just publish a list saying "these coins are associated with crime, we will attempt to recover them from any holder within a territory where we have influence."
And suddenly they become pretty much worthless, because even exchanges in nations where they don't have influence will want to sell them in the future?
Ownership of wallets is annonymish, but the blockchain is public. Seems like a huge risk for a "legitimate exchange" to take.
El Salvador's president is trying to get Bitcoin to become legal tender in the country.
This just makes me sad - the reasoning given publicly (country's heavily reliant on remittance, lack of banks) makes sense... But there's better solutions than hooking yourself to ecological disaster scam.
---
On the TSM thing: it's amazing to see how a terrible team can be terrible in game and out of game! (They get crushed internationally in league despite talking big, every time)
So, I'm... having a lot of thoughts here. El Salvador is stuck in a bit of a rock and a hard place situation in that they use the USD as their national currency. This has left them with some real problems from a financial standpoint that they can't print their way out of. The ease of doing business with US companies/individuals, and the appeal for expats from the US cannot be overstated, but along with it has come all the problems from not being in control of your currency as well as having to comply 100% with US financial regulations. I suspect their is some attempt at democratization of the economy here, as El Salvador is also hugely stratified income wise. (This is part of what led to the civil war in the 80's, and while better, it's still bad). Bukele has been fighting against the government pretty hard core (he was kicked out of one of the main two parties and STILL ran for president and elected and is MASSIVELY popular). It's hard to get a firm read on him, he's clearly a populist, and some of his actions are.. concerning. But he's also genuinely seemed to be trying to help the people.
I guess my real concern with this is that a large amount of previous governments have been arrested/accused of major corruption (part of his platform was dealing with this), and making bitcoin a legal tender seems like a REAL GOOD WAY to add more corruption.
I'm not even getting to the instability in value component of BTC. As fast as it rises or falls, having your power bill be $50 or 0.002 (whatever) BTC, only to have BTC gain in value by 30% in 2 weeks seems... not great.
Couldn't the DoJ, and similar foreign organizations, just publish a list saying "these coins are associated with crime, we will attempt to recover them from any holder within a territory where we have influence."
And suddenly they become pretty much worthless, because even exchanges in nations where they don't have influence will want to sell them in the future?
Ownership of wallets is annonymish, but the blockchain is public. Seems like a huge risk for a "legitimate exchange" to take.
Individual coins are fungible once they're created, they effectively don't have a serial number. Your wallet isn't a list of the coins you have, it's a value representing the number of coins you have (which may not be an integer because you can spend fractional coins. Wallet applications all seem to display 8 decimal digits, but I'm not sure if that's the bottom limit to resolution or not.
Couldn't the DoJ, and similar foreign organizations, just publish a list saying "these coins are associated with crime, we will attempt to recover them from any holder within a territory where we have influence."
And suddenly they become pretty much worthless, because even exchanges in nations where they don't have influence will want to sell them in the future?
Ownership of wallets is annonymish, but the blockchain is public. Seems like a huge risk for a "legitimate exchange" to take.
Individual coins are fungible once they're created, they effectively don't have a serial number. Your wallet isn't a list of the coins you have, it's a value representing the number of coins you have (which may not be an integer because you can spend fractional coins. Wallet applications all seem to display 8 decimal digits, but I'm not sure if that's the bottom limit to resolution or not.
Yup, that's the whole point of a tumbler. Coins go in, coins go out.
Unless they are stupid and immediately send the same amount that was just deposited to a different wallet, or some really careful forensic accounting (and it gets exponentially harder the more wallets you tumble through) it's going to be nearly impossible to trace which money ends up going where.
El Salvador's president is trying to get Bitcoin to become legal tender in the country.
This just makes me sad - the reasoning given publicly (country's heavily reliant on remittance, lack of banks) makes sense... But there's better solutions than hooking yourself to ecological disaster scam.
---
On the TSM thing: it's amazing to see how a terrible team can be terrible in game and out of game! (They get crushed internationally in league despite talking big, every time)
So, I'm... having a lot of thoughts here. El Salvador is stuck in a bit of a rock and a hard place situation in that they use the USD as their national currency. This has left them with some real problems from a financial standpoint that they can't print their way out of. The ease of doing business with US companies/individuals, and the appeal for expats from the US cannot be overstated, but along with it has come all the problems from not being in control of your currency as well as having to comply 100% with US financial regulations. I suspect their is some attempt at democratization of the economy here, as El Salvador is also hugely stratified income wise. (This is part of what led to the civil war in the 80's, and while better, it's still bad). Bukele has been fighting against the government pretty hard core (he was kicked out of one of the main two parties and STILL ran for president and elected and is MASSIVELY popular). It's hard to get a firm read on him, he's clearly a populist, and some of his actions are.. concerning. But he's also genuinely seemed to be trying to help the people.
I guess my real concern with this is that a large amount of previous governments have been arrested/accused of major corruption (part of his platform was dealing with this), and making bitcoin a legal tender seems like a REAL GOOD WAY to add more corruption.
I'm not even getting to the instability in value component of BTC. As fast as it rises or falls, having your power bill be $50 or 0.002 (whatever) BTC, only to have BTC gain in value by 30% in 2 weeks seems... not great.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few countries follow suit. Any country without it's own currency or who's currency is problematic may find some form of crypto appealing. And I think there may be a further group of countries or at least powerful individuals within other countries who push adoption of crypto to avoid US foreign policy/sanctions or the threat thereof.
El Salvador's president is trying to get Bitcoin to become legal tender in the country.
This just makes me sad - the reasoning given publicly (country's heavily reliant on remittance, lack of banks) makes sense... But there's better solutions than hooking yourself to ecological disaster scam.
---
On the TSM thing: it's amazing to see how a terrible team can be terrible in game and out of game! (They get crushed internationally in league despite talking big, every time)
So, I'm... having a lot of thoughts here. El Salvador is stuck in a bit of a rock and a hard place situation in that they use the USD as their national currency. This has left them with some real problems from a financial standpoint that they can't print their way out of. The ease of doing business with US companies/individuals, and the appeal for expats from the US cannot be overstated, but along with it has come all the problems from not being in control of your currency as well as having to comply 100% with US financial regulations. I suspect their is some attempt at democratization of the economy here, as El Salvador is also hugely stratified income wise. (This is part of what led to the civil war in the 80's, and while better, it's still bad). Bukele has been fighting against the government pretty hard core (he was kicked out of one of the main two parties and STILL ran for president and elected and is MASSIVELY popular). It's hard to get a firm read on him, he's clearly a populist, and some of his actions are.. concerning. But he's also genuinely seemed to be trying to help the people.
I guess my real concern with this is that a large amount of previous governments have been arrested/accused of major corruption (part of his platform was dealing with this), and making bitcoin a legal tender seems like a REAL GOOD WAY to add more corruption.
I'm not even getting to the instability in value component of BTC. As fast as it rises or falls, having your power bill be $50 or 0.002 (whatever) BTC, only to have BTC gain in value by 30% in 2 weeks seems... not great.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few countries follow suit. Any country without it's own currency or who's currency is problematic may find some form of crypto appealing. And I think there may be a further group of countries or at least powerful individuals within other countries who push adoption of crypto to avoid US foreign policy/sanctions or the threat thereof.
Why crypto though? I understand certain African countries use cell phone minutes (transferrable) as de facto currency.
El Salvador's president is trying to get Bitcoin to become legal tender in the country.
This just makes me sad - the reasoning given publicly (country's heavily reliant on remittance, lack of banks) makes sense... But there's better solutions than hooking yourself to ecological disaster scam.
---
On the TSM thing: it's amazing to see how a terrible team can be terrible in game and out of game! (They get crushed internationally in league despite talking big, every time)
So, I'm... having a lot of thoughts here. El Salvador is stuck in a bit of a rock and a hard place situation in that they use the USD as their national currency. This has left them with some real problems from a financial standpoint that they can't print their way out of. The ease of doing business with US companies/individuals, and the appeal for expats from the US cannot be overstated, but along with it has come all the problems from not being in control of your currency as well as having to comply 100% with US financial regulations. I suspect their is some attempt at democratization of the economy here, as El Salvador is also hugely stratified income wise. (This is part of what led to the civil war in the 80's, and while better, it's still bad). Bukele has been fighting against the government pretty hard core (he was kicked out of one of the main two parties and STILL ran for president and elected and is MASSIVELY popular). It's hard to get a firm read on him, he's clearly a populist, and some of his actions are.. concerning. But he's also genuinely seemed to be trying to help the people.
I guess my real concern with this is that a large amount of previous governments have been arrested/accused of major corruption (part of his platform was dealing with this), and making bitcoin a legal tender seems like a REAL GOOD WAY to add more corruption.
I'm not even getting to the instability in value component of BTC. As fast as it rises or falls, having your power bill be $50 or 0.002 (whatever) BTC, only to have BTC gain in value by 30% in 2 weeks seems... not great.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few countries follow suit. Any country without it's own currency or who's currency is problematic may find some form of crypto appealing. And I think there may be a further group of countries or at least powerful individuals within other countries who push adoption of crypto to avoid US foreign policy/sanctions or the threat thereof.
Why crypto though? I understand certain African countries use cell phone minutes (transferrable) as de facto currency.
The fact that most cryptocurrencies are designed to be scammily deflationary might appeal to countries worried about hyperinflation.
El Salvador's president is trying to get Bitcoin to become legal tender in the country.
This just makes me sad - the reasoning given publicly (country's heavily reliant on remittance, lack of banks) makes sense... But there's better solutions than hooking yourself to ecological disaster scam.
---
On the TSM thing: it's amazing to see how a terrible team can be terrible in game and out of game! (They get crushed internationally in league despite talking big, every time)
So, I'm... having a lot of thoughts here. El Salvador is stuck in a bit of a rock and a hard place situation in that they use the USD as their national currency. This has left them with some real problems from a financial standpoint that they can't print their way out of. The ease of doing business with US companies/individuals, and the appeal for expats from the US cannot be overstated, but along with it has come all the problems from not being in control of your currency as well as having to comply 100% with US financial regulations. I suspect their is some attempt at democratization of the economy here, as El Salvador is also hugely stratified income wise. (This is part of what led to the civil war in the 80's, and while better, it's still bad). Bukele has been fighting against the government pretty hard core (he was kicked out of one of the main two parties and STILL ran for president and elected and is MASSIVELY popular). It's hard to get a firm read on him, he's clearly a populist, and some of his actions are.. concerning. But he's also genuinely seemed to be trying to help the people.
I guess my real concern with this is that a large amount of previous governments have been arrested/accused of major corruption (part of his platform was dealing with this), and making bitcoin a legal tender seems like a REAL GOOD WAY to add more corruption.
I'm not even getting to the instability in value component of BTC. As fast as it rises or falls, having your power bill be $50 or 0.002 (whatever) BTC, only to have BTC gain in value by 30% in 2 weeks seems... not great.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few countries follow suit. Any country without it's own currency or who's currency is problematic may find some form of crypto appealing. And I think there may be a further group of countries or at least powerful individuals within other countries who push adoption of crypto to avoid US foreign policy/sanctions or the threat thereof.
Why crypto though? I understand certain African countries use cell phone minutes (transferrable) as de facto currency.
The fact that most cryptocurrencies are designed to be scammily deflationary might appeal to countries worried about hyperinflation.
And African countries are not?
In any case, cell phone minutes are unofficial currency and came about on the initiative of the citizens, not the government.
The El Salvador BTC thing is 100% about being the first mover and getting a bunch of PR and getting crypto rich people to invest/spend money in the country. That's it. If El Salvador is the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, they will get a bunch of stunt investments and tourism from rich Bitcoin zealots with money to burn. If they are the 8th country to do so, they will not.
The El Salvador BTC thing is 100% about being the first mover and getting a bunch of PR and getting crypto rich people to invest/spend money in the country. That's it. If El Salvador is the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, they will get a bunch of stunt investments and tourism from rich Bitcoin zealots with money to burn. If they are the 8th country to do so, they will not.
How do they recoup all of the BTC that gets spent there, though? Wouldn't they have to exchange it for real money for that gamble to pay off?
It seems like a great way for neckbeards to come over and plunder the country for everything they have in exchange for some Monopoly money.
The El Salvador BTC thing is 100% about being the first mover and getting a bunch of PR and getting crypto rich people to invest/spend money in the country. That's it. If El Salvador is the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, they will get a bunch of stunt investments and tourism from rich Bitcoin zealots with money to burn. If they are the 8th country to do so, they will not.
How do they recoup all of the BTC that gets spent there, though? Wouldn't they have to exchange it for real money for that gamble to pay off?
It seems like a great way for neckbeards to come over and plunder the country for everything they have in exchange for some Monopoly money.
I assume they immediately exchange the bitcoin for dollars, just like every other business that claims to accept bitcoin as payment.
Well, I'll try to keep an eye out here for you guys, let you know what I see. Fact of the matter is, I don't see this being a thing for the general citizenry as it stands. A lot of these are people struggling to put together a couple hundred a month in USD. It just seems like a nightmare for any kind of day to day use by a regular person (who also, remember, rely almost 100% on cash).
Since the country has a remittance economy, it basically means that they're not the ones taking on any real risk from it. It's basically the equivalent of telling people that they can send their relatives money in the form of scratch tickets. Even all the tickets become worthless, you're not really the one that ends up losing.
People can send their bitcoin to El Salvador, but El Salvador still needs to be able to convert those bitcoins to dollars to buy things from other countries.
Really, though, this sounds like it's trying to open the door to a massive money laundering economy to make it easier for people to exchange their crypto for cash with very little scrutiny. A national scaled silk road.
The problem is that once that happens, US financial regulations might be forced to intervene.
I don't want to resort to generalizations, but there's a lot of drug activity around El Salvador, right?
I can definitely see a lot of cartels trying to move their money there. Transact everything in bitcoin, then send that bitcoin to your "relatives" in El Savador to exchange for cash.
"legal tender" just means forcing local people/business/etc to accept bitcoin, which I guess would mean requiring businesses to install terminals since bitcoin is too volatile to be used as physical currency even if you created a bunch of actual coins
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I don't want to resort to generalizations, but there's a lot of drug activity around El Salvador, right?
I can definitely see a lot of cartels trying to move their money there. Transact everything in bitcoin, then send that bitcoin to your "relatives" in El Savador to exchange for cash.
Not like there is in Mexico, and it's not like money laundering for the cartels is overly difficult now.
"legal tender" just means forcing local people/business/etc to accept bitcoin, which I guess would mean requiring businesses to install terminals since bitcoin is too volatile to be used as physical currency even if you created a bunch of actual coins
The articles I read said that people don't have to accept bitcoin if they're technologically unable to.
However, presumably the government could require that any business seeking government contracts or funding must be willing to accept payment in the form of bitcoin.
The volatility is a problem, but again, the government would have discretion to spend bitcoin of they expect the price to go down, or hold off they expect it to go up.
Heck, they can even run a scam where changing bitcoins into dollars requires an additional fee. So they pay all thru debts in bitcoin, then charge 10% if they want to convert to dollars.
As I understand it, almost no-one in the current climate wants to "buy" things with bitcoin.
For bitcoin true believers, giving someone else your bitcoin means they get to go TO THE MOON and you don't, so why would you buy something with bitcoin? For non-true believers, if you want to exit you do it in a huge sum - either pure cash or somethint like an expensive car, not pay your groceries.
Overstock I think was one of the biggest retailers to announce they were accepting Bitcoin, and it now accounts for a mere 0.1% of their annual revenue. And thats with focusing all the actual "spenders" to just a handful of retailers who directly process bitcoin, if Walmart, Amazon, Target etc. all directly accepted bitcoin it would drop to basically nothing (there are a number of 3rd party apps who will pay stores on your behalf, but apparently none of them are very customer friendly and have significant transaction fees attached to discourage casual buyers).
Apart from the PR angle mentioned above, the only other reason I can think of for adopting bitcoin as legal tender is that someone in the El Salvador government is a true believer and thinks the way to make the country rich is to collect bitcoin as taxes and send the country TO THE MOON.
As I understand it, almost no-one in the current climate wants to "buy" things with bitcoin.
For bitcoin true believers, giving someone else your bitcoin means they get to go TO THE MOON and you don't, so why would you buy something with bitcoin? For non-true believers, if you want to exit you do it in a huge sum - either pure cash or somethint like an expensive car, not pay your groceries.
Overstock I think was one of the biggest retailers to announce they were accepting Bitcoin, and it now accounts for a mere 0.1% of their annual revenue. And thats with focusing all the actual "spenders" to just a handful of retailers who directly process bitcoin, if Walmart, Amazon, Target etc. all directly accepted bitcoin it would drop to basically nothing (there are a number of 3rd party apps who will pay stores on your behalf, but apparently none of them are very customer friendly and have significant transaction fees attached to discourage casual buyers).
Apart from the PR angle mentioned above, the only other reason I can think of for adopting bitcoin as legal tender is that someone in the El Salvador government is a true believer and thinks the way to make the country rich is to collect bitcoin as taxes and send the country TO THE MOON.
This is true for legitimate businesses.
But look at the video of the phone scammer someone posted earlier. I convince a victim to send me a $100 gift card, then sell the gift card for the bitcoin equivalent of $50, then sell the bitcoin.
Buying a $100 gift card with $50 worth of bitcoin is effectively doubling my money.
"legal tender" just means forcing local people/business/etc to accept bitcoin, which I guess would mean requiring businesses to install terminals since bitcoin is too volatile to be used as physical currency even if you created a bunch of actual coins
The articles I read said that people don't have to accept bitcoin if they're technologically unable to.
However, presumably the government could require that any business seeking government contracts or funding must be willing to accept payment in the form of bitcoin.
The volatility is a problem, but again, the government would have discretion to spend bitcoin of they expect the price to go down, or hold off they expect it to go up.
Heck, they can even run a scam where changing bitcoins into dollars requires an additional fee. So they pay all thru debts in bitcoin, then charge 10% if they want to convert to dollars.
Just saying, this is a great pair with the rise of state actor ransomware outfits. Modern version of North Korea's scam of taking counterfeit US money into China, buying drugs, and then selling the drugs for real Yuan.
As I understand it, almost no-one in the current climate wants to "buy" things with bitcoin.
For bitcoin true believers, giving someone else your bitcoin means they get to go TO THE MOON and you don't, so why would you buy something with bitcoin? For non-true believers, if you want to exit you do it in a huge sum - either pure cash or somethint like an expensive car, not pay your groceries.
Overstock I think was one of the biggest retailers to announce they were accepting Bitcoin, and it now accounts for a mere 0.1% of their annual revenue. And thats with focusing all the actual "spenders" to just a handful of retailers who directly process bitcoin, if Walmart, Amazon, Target etc. all directly accepted bitcoin it would drop to basically nothing (there are a number of 3rd party apps who will pay stores on your behalf, but apparently none of them are very customer friendly and have significant transaction fees attached to discourage casual buyers).
Apart from the PR angle mentioned above, the only other reason I can think of for adopting bitcoin as legal tender is that someone in the El Salvador government is a true believer and thinks the way to make the country rich is to collect bitcoin as taxes and send the country TO THE MOON.
This is true for legitimate businesses.
But look at the video of the phone scammer someone posted earlier. I convince a victim to send me a $100 gift card, then sell the gift card for the bitcoin equivalent of $50, then sell the bitcoin.
Buying a $100 gift card with $50 worth of bitcoin is effectively doubling my money.
I can't see a single step of that scam which contains "Step 1 : scam someone out of something worth $100" changes if bitcoin becomes legal tender.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make. Yes, illicit transactions like the anonymity that wallets provide. That doesn't impact that noone legitimate wants to actually spend bitcoin in any large volumes except people exiting, and they don't want $100 gift cards.
"legal tender" just means forcing local people/business/etc to accept bitcoin, which I guess would mean requiring businesses to install terminals since bitcoin is too volatile to be used as physical currency even if you created a bunch of actual coins
The articles I read said that people don't have to accept bitcoin if they're technologically unable to.
However, presumably the government could require that any business seeking government contracts or funding must be willing to accept payment in the form of bitcoin.
The volatility is a problem, but again, the government would have discretion to spend bitcoin of they expect the price to go down, or hold off they expect it to go up.
Heck, they can even run a scam where changing bitcoins into dollars requires an additional fee. So they pay all thru debts in bitcoin, then charge 10% if they want to convert to dollars.
the problem here of course is that the government does not control the bitcoin supply; they get all the problems associated with currency substitution and they benefit is essentially that they can more easily do business with... fucking bitcoin people
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
As I understand it, almost no-one in the current climate wants to "buy" things with bitcoin.
For bitcoin true believers, giving someone else your bitcoin means they get to go TO THE MOON and you don't, so why would you buy something with bitcoin? For non-true believers, if you want to exit you do it in a huge sum - either pure cash or somethint like an expensive car, not pay your groceries.
Overstock I think was one of the biggest retailers to announce they were accepting Bitcoin, and it now accounts for a mere 0.1% of their annual revenue. And thats with focusing all the actual "spenders" to just a handful of retailers who directly process bitcoin, if Walmart, Amazon, Target etc. all directly accepted bitcoin it would drop to basically nothing (there are a number of 3rd party apps who will pay stores on your behalf, but apparently none of them are very customer friendly and have significant transaction fees attached to discourage casual buyers).
Apart from the PR angle mentioned above, the only other reason I can think of for adopting bitcoin as legal tender is that someone in the El Salvador government is a true believer and thinks the way to make the country rich is to collect bitcoin as taxes and send the country TO THE MOON.
retailers that accept bitcoin (e.g. overstock) don't really 'accept' bitcoin in the same sense that they accept dollars; they accept bitcoin only in that they have contracted with an intermediary (e.g. coinbase) who will immediately redeem BTC for dollars, and give those dollars to overstock.
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
"legal tender" just means forcing local people/business/etc to accept bitcoin, which I guess would mean requiring businesses to install terminals since bitcoin is too volatile to be used as physical currency even if you created a bunch of actual coins
The articles I read said that people don't have to accept bitcoin if they're technologically unable to.
However, presumably the government could require that any business seeking government contracts or funding must be willing to accept payment in the form of bitcoin.
The volatility is a problem, but again, the government would have discretion to spend bitcoin of they expect the price to go down, or hold off they expect it to go up.
Heck, they can even run a scam where changing bitcoins into dollars requires an additional fee. So they pay all thru debts in bitcoin, then charge 10% if they want to convert to dollars.
the problem here of course is that the government does not control the bitcoin supply; they get all the problems associated with currency substitution and they benefit is essentially that they can more easily do business with... fucking bitcoin people
Uruguay doesn't control the USD supply either. Though, I'll admit USD has been much more stable & useful than bitcoin. Bitcoin enthusiasts like to point out that ~20% of all USD were created in 2020. In their minds this means massive inflation is on the horizon and bitcoin's fixed supply is very attractive. Obviously, I don't buy all that and there are a number of problems with bitcoin that this thread has pointed out repeatedly. But, I'm still interested to see how making bitcoin legal tender works out and if other countries follow suit.
China just arrested 1100 bitcoin miners (persons, not companies).
Also, on the subject on inflation, known money launderers and Russian oligarch stooges Deutche Bank (one of the world's largest criminal enterprisesbanks criminal enterprises) announced that they are afraid we will shortly be entering a period of prolonged, worldwide inflation and resultant economic chaos.
"legal tender" just means forcing local people/business/etc to accept bitcoin, which I guess would mean requiring businesses to install terminals since bitcoin is too volatile to be used as physical currency even if you created a bunch of actual coins
The articles I read said that people don't have to accept bitcoin if they're technologically unable to.
However, presumably the government could require that any business seeking government contracts or funding must be willing to accept payment in the form of bitcoin.
The volatility is a problem, but again, the government would have discretion to spend bitcoin of they expect the price to go down, or hold off they expect it to go up.
Heck, they can even run a scam where changing bitcoins into dollars requires an additional fee. So they pay all thru debts in bitcoin, then charge 10% if they want to convert to dollars.
the problem here of course is that the government does not control the bitcoin supply; they get all the problems associated with currency substitution and they benefit is essentially that they can more easily do business with... fucking bitcoin people
Uruguay doesn't control the USD supply either. Though, I'll admit USD has been much more stable & useful than bitcoin. Bitcoin enthusiasts like to point out that ~20% of all USD were created in 2020. In their minds this means massive inflation is on the horizon and bitcoin's fixed supply is very attractive. Obviously, I don't buy all that and there are a number of problems with bitcoin that this thread has pointed out repeatedly. But, I'm still interested to see how making bitcoin legal tender works out and if other countries follow suit.
I mean, there’s reasons to use currency your government doesn’t control; like Latin American countries using USD or Scotland using the pound, it eliminates a source of friction between economies that want to be highly integrated. The government gives up some political control but at least there’s a beneficial trade off there.
Why you’d want that relationship with BTC nutters I do not know
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
"legal tender" just means forcing local people/business/etc to accept bitcoin, which I guess would mean requiring businesses to install terminals since bitcoin is too volatile to be used as physical currency even if you created a bunch of actual coins
The articles I read said that people don't have to accept bitcoin if they're technologically unable to.
However, presumably the government could require that any business seeking government contracts or funding must be willing to accept payment in the form of bitcoin.
The volatility is a problem, but again, the government would have discretion to spend bitcoin of they expect the price to go down, or hold off they expect it to go up.
Heck, they can even run a scam where changing bitcoins into dollars requires an additional fee. So they pay all thru debts in bitcoin, then charge 10% if they want to convert to dollars.
the problem here of course is that the government does not control the bitcoin supply; they get all the problems associated with currency substitution and they benefit is essentially that they can more easily do business with... fucking bitcoin people
Uruguay doesn't control the USD supply either. Though, I'll admit USD has been much more stable & useful than bitcoin. Bitcoin enthusiasts like to point out that ~20% of all USD were created in 2020. In their minds this means massive inflation is on the horizon and bitcoin's fixed supply is very attractive. Obviously, I don't buy all that and there are a number of problems with bitcoin that this thread has pointed out repeatedly. But, I'm still interested to see how making bitcoin legal tender works out and if other countries follow suit.
My guess is, with the volatility alone, incredibly badly.
Haven't we spent the last 15 years dangerously close to deflation?
Like, everyone panicking sound more like a very obvious and expected correction to everything post 2008.
There's something interesting about all the companies that warn about the coming economic turmoil: they tell you your dollars are in imminent danger, and offer you a solution that involves giving them your dollars.
They clearly don't actually fear for the dollars, and in fact want as many of them as they can get.
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While I'm definitely happy that the hackers ended up empty handed, I'm also quite ok with colonial not getting their cookie back in an equally edible form.
In some ways it's the best outcome one could hope for; the crooks get nothing, also the other crooks get a financial sting so maybe they'll learn from their mistakes (they won't.)
pleasepaypreacher.net
If they held it through today, they're down to $2million from their initial $5million.
Love to try to use cryptocurrency as a real currency
Couldn't the DoJ, and similar foreign organizations, just publish a list saying "these coins are associated with crime, we will attempt to recover them from any holder within a territory where we have influence."
And suddenly they become pretty much worthless, because even exchanges in nations where they don't have influence will want to sell them in the future?
Ownership of wallets is annonymish, but the blockchain is public. Seems like a huge risk for a "legitimate exchange" to take.
So, I'm... having a lot of thoughts here. El Salvador is stuck in a bit of a rock and a hard place situation in that they use the USD as their national currency. This has left them with some real problems from a financial standpoint that they can't print their way out of. The ease of doing business with US companies/individuals, and the appeal for expats from the US cannot be overstated, but along with it has come all the problems from not being in control of your currency as well as having to comply 100% with US financial regulations. I suspect their is some attempt at democratization of the economy here, as El Salvador is also hugely stratified income wise. (This is part of what led to the civil war in the 80's, and while better, it's still bad). Bukele has been fighting against the government pretty hard core (he was kicked out of one of the main two parties and STILL ran for president and elected and is MASSIVELY popular). It's hard to get a firm read on him, he's clearly a populist, and some of his actions are.. concerning. But he's also genuinely seemed to be trying to help the people.
I guess my real concern with this is that a large amount of previous governments have been arrested/accused of major corruption (part of his platform was dealing with this), and making bitcoin a legal tender seems like a REAL GOOD WAY to add more corruption.
I'm not even getting to the instability in value component of BTC. As fast as it rises or falls, having your power bill be $50 or 0.002 (whatever) BTC, only to have BTC gain in value by 30% in 2 weeks seems... not great.
Individual coins are fungible once they're created, they effectively don't have a serial number. Your wallet isn't a list of the coins you have, it's a value representing the number of coins you have (which may not be an integer because you can spend fractional coins. Wallet applications all seem to display 8 decimal digits, but I'm not sure if that's the bottom limit to resolution or not.
Yup, that's the whole point of a tumbler. Coins go in, coins go out.
Unless they are stupid and immediately send the same amount that was just deposited to a different wallet, or some really careful forensic accounting (and it gets exponentially harder the more wallets you tumble through) it's going to be nearly impossible to trace which money ends up going where.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few countries follow suit. Any country without it's own currency or who's currency is problematic may find some form of crypto appealing. And I think there may be a further group of countries or at least powerful individuals within other countries who push adoption of crypto to avoid US foreign policy/sanctions or the threat thereof.
Why crypto though? I understand certain African countries use cell phone minutes (transferrable) as de facto currency.
The fact that most cryptocurrencies are designed to be scammily deflationary might appeal to countries worried about hyperinflation.
And African countries are not?
In any case, cell phone minutes are unofficial currency and came about on the initiative of the citizens, not the government.
How do they recoup all of the BTC that gets spent there, though? Wouldn't they have to exchange it for real money for that gamble to pay off?
It seems like a great way for neckbeards to come over and plunder the country for everything they have in exchange for some Monopoly money.
I assume they immediately exchange the bitcoin for dollars, just like every other business that claims to accept bitcoin as payment.
People can send their bitcoin to El Salvador, but El Salvador still needs to be able to convert those bitcoins to dollars to buy things from other countries.
Really, though, this sounds like it's trying to open the door to a massive money laundering economy to make it easier for people to exchange their crypto for cash with very little scrutiny. A national scaled silk road.
The problem is that once that happens, US financial regulations might be forced to intervene.
I can definitely see a lot of cartels trying to move their money there. Transact everything in bitcoin, then send that bitcoin to your "relatives" in El Savador to exchange for cash.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Not like there is in Mexico, and it's not like money laundering for the cartels is overly difficult now.
The articles I read said that people don't have to accept bitcoin if they're technologically unable to.
However, presumably the government could require that any business seeking government contracts or funding must be willing to accept payment in the form of bitcoin.
The volatility is a problem, but again, the government would have discretion to spend bitcoin of they expect the price to go down, or hold off they expect it to go up.
Heck, they can even run a scam where changing bitcoins into dollars requires an additional fee. So they pay all thru debts in bitcoin, then charge 10% if they want to convert to dollars.
For bitcoin true believers, giving someone else your bitcoin means they get to go TO THE MOON and you don't, so why would you buy something with bitcoin? For non-true believers, if you want to exit you do it in a huge sum - either pure cash or somethint like an expensive car, not pay your groceries.
Overstock I think was one of the biggest retailers to announce they were accepting Bitcoin, and it now accounts for a mere 0.1% of their annual revenue. And thats with focusing all the actual "spenders" to just a handful of retailers who directly process bitcoin, if Walmart, Amazon, Target etc. all directly accepted bitcoin it would drop to basically nothing (there are a number of 3rd party apps who will pay stores on your behalf, but apparently none of them are very customer friendly and have significant transaction fees attached to discourage casual buyers).
Apart from the PR angle mentioned above, the only other reason I can think of for adopting bitcoin as legal tender is that someone in the El Salvador government is a true believer and thinks the way to make the country rich is to collect bitcoin as taxes and send the country TO THE MOON.
This is true for legitimate businesses.
But look at the video of the phone scammer someone posted earlier. I convince a victim to send me a $100 gift card, then sell the gift card for the bitcoin equivalent of $50, then sell the bitcoin.
Buying a $100 gift card with $50 worth of bitcoin is effectively doubling my money.
Just saying, this is a great pair with the rise of state actor ransomware outfits. Modern version of North Korea's scam of taking counterfeit US money into China, buying drugs, and then selling the drugs for real Yuan.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make. Yes, illicit transactions like the anonymity that wallets provide. That doesn't impact that noone legitimate wants to actually spend bitcoin in any large volumes except people exiting, and they don't want $100 gift cards.
JBS paid their ransom of $11 million USD, according to wall street journal
Also losing production for very long probably would have been more expensive?
the problem here of course is that the government does not control the bitcoin supply; they get all the problems associated with currency substitution and they benefit is essentially that they can more easily do business with... fucking bitcoin people
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
retailers that accept bitcoin (e.g. overstock) don't really 'accept' bitcoin in the same sense that they accept dollars; they accept bitcoin only in that they have contracted with an intermediary (e.g. coinbase) who will immediately redeem BTC for dollars, and give those dollars to overstock.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Uruguay doesn't control the USD supply either. Though, I'll admit USD has been much more stable & useful than bitcoin. Bitcoin enthusiasts like to point out that ~20% of all USD were created in 2020. In their minds this means massive inflation is on the horizon and bitcoin's fixed supply is very attractive. Obviously, I don't buy all that and there are a number of problems with bitcoin that this thread has pointed out repeatedly. But, I'm still interested to see how making bitcoin legal tender works out and if other countries follow suit.
Also, on the subject on inflation, known money launderers and Russian oligarch stooges Deutche Bank (one of the world's largest criminal enterprises banks criminal enterprises) announced that they are afraid we will shortly be entering a period of prolonged, worldwide inflation and resultant economic chaos.
Like, everyone panicking sound more like a very obvious and expected correction to everything post 2008.
I mean, there’s reasons to use currency your government doesn’t control; like Latin American countries using USD or Scotland using the pound, it eliminates a source of friction between economies that want to be highly integrated. The government gives up some political control but at least there’s a beneficial trade off there.
Why you’d want that relationship with BTC nutters I do not know
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Anything said by DB is axiomatically suspect. Did make headlines here anyway.
Oh right, I should have realized that was the main point, I just also saw articles this morning about the CPI jump.
My guess is, with the volatility alone, incredibly badly.
There's something interesting about all the companies that warn about the coming economic turmoil: they tell you your dollars are in imminent danger, and offer you a solution that involves giving them your dollars.
They clearly don't actually fear for the dollars, and in fact want as many of them as they can get.