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Comment by slammm | Hacker News Reader

I feel like its another case of the tech bubble. The projects with real causes and uses will come back from any implosion in the long run.

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So illegal transactions and money laundering it is.

Iunno, if i were a billionaire, the idea of having $50m under nobody’s control but my own that I can take anywhere, anytime, doesn’t exist anywhere else.

I can’t do that with gold. Bank deposits are always available until they aren’t. But Coinbase can’t do this either.

Right, that's money laundering.

Having money you control is not money laundering.

Money laundering is when you launder money. Exclusive access to your own money is called financial sovereignty.

And why would someone put $50m into a highly volatile, unchecked tech, where mediators are mostly known because of their security problems and breaches?

1. Because you can afford to lose it.

2. There’s a chance (however small) that you could lose the other $950m, but keep some of this other $50m.

It's written in the post you are answering to: "Because it's under nobody’s control but my own that I can take anywhere, anytime".

Edit: I calculated this wrong, please ignore this comment

unless you have to cross a border with it?

Let us know how you get it through airport security.

>Let us know how you get it through airport security.

How you get it through what now? Private aircraft don't deal with that. GP did specify "billionaire", and at that level at least fractional ownership in private long distance transportation is not a reach either.

The point is that transporting large amounts of money that can be physically confiscated is a problem, even if it somehow fit into a suitcase.

Debating the logistics of potentially being able to evade some of those difficulties by having even larger sums of money (to afford private airliners or private security, even in times of unrest) and accepting larger risks misses the point.

I have carried several kilograms of gold through TSA screening checkpoints a half dozen times. I know that GP pre-edit was talking about $50mm but it is practically quite straightforward and entirely legal to fly domestically in the US with $0.5-1mm in gold. The risk of civil asset forfeiture is another matter but in 6-8 times I have never personally felt at risk from such.

Presumably I won’t exchange it all at once, so now i’ll need a mix of coins and bars, taking up more volume.

The billionaire looking for security would already have a cache of stone and gold, but would appreciate other new forms of diversification.

You're off by more than an order of magnitude. $50 million is 3,382 lbs (1534 kg, 1.6 US tons) of gold at current prices.

You're right; I was calculating based on the per-troy-ounce price, thinking it was the per-gram price. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

Your point is still valid: it’s difficult to carry enough gold on your back to survive the rest of your life in the comfort that you’re used to.

I smirk whenever I walk past the poster in the international jetways at SFO regarding it being a no no to leave the country with more than $10K.

You misread those posters. It's fine to come in/out with more than $10k. You're required to declare it.

you're missing the obvious methods, used by the wealthy. and it has the single hallmark, of being the preferred methods - as it is propped by other rich people, also evading taxes.

;)

cryptocurrency, is about the pump-and-dump.

Idk, I buy burritos at taco bell with my Bitcoin Debit Card.

I dont trust my local government's always inflating currency.

>non-inflated currency

>bitcoin

Pick one.

> always inflating

> fixed number of Bitcoins

Don't think he needs to.

Google defines inflation as: “a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money“.

Let’s take a step back and remember how Bitcoin’s purchasing power has lost nearly $15,000 since its all-time high. So yes, he does need to.

Bitcoin is also worth almost exactly as much as it was worth a year ago.

The number of Bitcoins that currently exist is still increasing, at about 4% annually. They have an eventual cap (assuming that never gets hard-forked away) but for now they still mint 12.5 new bitcoins every 10 minutes.

What card do you use? Anything on this list? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DRbTeMCzb4UeXI0YlAzB...

That's exactly what will remain out of this pile of hot steaming garbage.

The long-term value of crypto will likely come from use cases made possible by auditable smart contracts that are administered on decentralized databases and run at perfect fidelity, facilitating the efficient flow of information through multiple types of systems (logistics, finance, etc) at a refresh rate / granularity that will be orders of magnitude faster / more detailed than the current status quo.

In the meantime it'll be fun to say snarky things about shitcoins, no question about it, but the tech does have some pretty exciting potential.

>but the tech does have some pretty exciting potential

And some terrifying consequences for bugs. Or administrative errors with contracts, or non-binding contracts that you'll need a traditional court to sort out anyway.

> And some terrifying consequences for bugs

As all important software (aircraft, medical, financial) do.

Those industries have stringent regulations on them.

When an aircraft has a bug, there is a federal investigation.

These smart contracts people keep talking about, maybe one day they'll amount to something, but so far I don't know anyone who uses smart contracts, or who wants to use them, or who even knows what they are or what they do.

And...

* Porn

* Donations to wikileaks

* Pot

* Sending money to Venezuela

* Leaving Venezuela with your wealth intact

* Payments without giving all transaction info to the credit card companies

* Digital payments for the unbanked

All legal usage that makes sense.

All of those items can be done pretty trivially without cryptocurrency (with the sort-of exception of Venezuela, but taking money out of the country is not a legal usage in either case).

Except credit card companies don't want to touch porn sites (they have to pay a huge markup and go through other middlemen) or pot companies (who accept cash but it's not digital).

PayPal froze the donations to wikileaks. That's not possible if you donate using Bitcoin.

The corrupt government in Venezuela may deem it illegal but it's not immoral to want to flee the country with your wealth. This is much easier with Bitcoin as you can just remember or write down your seed.

The point is cryptocurrencies does this all better. And your definition of "pretty trivial" is for the most part ignorant.

That's quite a few moved goalposts.

Granted the Venezuela example was a bad example of a legal use. Everything else stands though.

Your markup/middleman argument pretends that Bitcoin didn't fairly recently have massive fees for transactions - for a while, one's $10/month Pornhub subscription would've cost $40+/month. (Side note: said monthly subscriptions are another challenge here for crypto and porn...)

Cryptocurrency stored on an exchange can be frozen, just like one's PayPal balance can be. Wikileaks takes PayPal (and credit card, bank transfer, checks, etc.) donations currently on their site.

Bitcoin's developers have refused for years to do what's necessary to avoid high fees like that. Luckily there are other cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin Cash, which consistently have < 1 cent fees.

The infrastructure for automatic payments isn't there yet that's true. There's no reason why it can't be done though. I also have recurring payments for my email service, VPN, VPS and domains which I pay using cryptocurrencies.

To be fair the point of cryptocurrencies isn't to store them on an exchange (although you can) as some of the benefits are then lost.

That Wikileaks take other options doesn't retract from the point that there are clear benefits for them to accept cryptocurrencies.

The last one is complete bollocks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/9jv70b/butter_tri...

The only question is... what cryptocurrency projects have a real cause and use cases? I have yet to meet a person that bought something using a cryptocurrency, expect for another cryptocurrency.

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