bitreality

Would you say the same thing about cash? Because Dai is the closest thing out there to true digital cash.

I mean, Bitcoin isn't a fiat currency, either. Banks trade forex for completely different use cases than people/orgs trade Bitcoin.

What you're forgetting is that running an online business all day is isolating. Going to work with colleagues, all working towards a common goal, gives a sense of community. When you are not dependent on the money from your job, it also gives you a certain amount of leverage people normally don't have.

Then on top of this, for this gentleman to see a big change in his/her lifestyle, considering they are already earning $6K/month, any new business would need to make substantially more than that. Is making another $6K/month going to seriously change his/her life? Probably not. Maybe it affords a bit of a nicer house, staying at 5 star hotels VS. 4 star hotels.

The reality is to see a major difference in lifestyle from a new business, it would need to make $20-30K a month, or more.

This seems like the best solution. Introduce an opt-in security feature, whereby any attempt to port the number, or swap sims, is subject to a ~72h cooldown period. During that period, notify the account holder through numerous communication channels of the pending change.

Email, SMS, automated phone call.

Arguing over which tech behemoth is worse at privacy is pointless. The fact is that they are incentivized against privacy. Your data is valuable. The cost of anonymizing your data is expensive, and offers little measurable ROI.

Some companies work on providing the illusion that they care about privacy. But at the end of the day, unless it's convenient for them, and does not interfere with their goal, you should assume the worst.

You may believe that, and I'm sure it's true to a certain degree, but Instagram has seen absurd growth since the Facebook acquisition. Without Instagram, Facebook would likely be in a crisis right now over its aging userbase and decelerating growth. The Instagram app is probably nearly as valuable as the Facebook app at this point.

It reads like a 1000 word humblebrag.

For people who know what they are doing, Bitcoin provides a new way to move money across borders. Almost always, the fees will be lower than they would with any other money transfer service. Most money transfer services will also have KYC policies which closely mirror what is required at crypto exchanges.

You only need to hold Bitcoin for ~1 hour total in the entire process. You can avoid making international wires by using domestic payment systems on each end of the transaction. If you do some research, you may be able to move money across borders and actually make a small profit of 3-4%, depending on the sending / receiving currency.

All said and done, Bitcoin allows people to have much greater control of their money. It is very useful for moving money between countries without subjecting yourself to the wait times and high fees associated with cross-border transactions.

It's more that Everest is the highest peak in the world. If there was another mountain 10m higher than Everest, Everest would get 5-10% of the traffic it currently does.

How many people know the second highest mountain in the world? It's K2, most people have at least heard of it. How about the third highest? Kangchenjunga. Never heard of it, had to Google it.

So for people who want a recognizable achievement, Everest is pretty much the top. Not just in climbing, but any physical achievement. Unless Nepal restricts the number of climbers, it will only get worse.

This question you're posing assumes that all patents and products are created equal. There is a difference between a living thing and a non-living thing. Living things replicate through entirely natural processes. It is one of the most basic truths of life.

Trying to impose a patent which prevents a farmer from replanting seeds, or attempts to interrupt basic function of living things (making plants that do not replicate) is morally wrong. In the name of profit, companies like Monsanto will deliberately make their products "infertile" and unable to replicate. They do this so they can sell you new seeds every year.

Bit different from a patent on a phone screen. You can water it, leave it in the Sun, and a phone screen will never replicate itself in a million years.

It allows for a tiered system. Average users will use the token entirely within the Facebook ecosystem. Advanced users will have the ability to withdraw their tokens from Facebook's system and utilize them on other platforms.

Look at Paypal USD Balance. It's really just a "token" issued by PayPal, an IOU where 1 PaypalUSD = 1 USD Debt from Paypal. But PayPalUSD can only be used within Paypal.com. The only way to bring PayPalUSD outside of Paypal is to call in your debt to PayPal and withdraw the money to your bank.

PayPal has always said that their success relies on people holding PayPalUSD. People who keep their money in PayPalUSD are the ones making PayPal bank. First of all, it costs Paypal next to nothing if that user sends their PayPalUSD to another user. Yet they collect transaction fees. Furthermore, PayPal can throw this money into low-risk investments and earn 3-4% on it.

Facebook tokens are PayPalUSD 2.0. They can be used within the Facebook.com ecosystem. But on top of that, people can withdraw them and use them outside of Facebook.com. Basically, any website can start integrating these FacebookCoin. It means less people will need to cash out, and will instead keep their money in FacebookCoins.

For users, the advantage would be an easy to use stable-coin, that is more accessible to the average person. Right now, most crypto currency has plenty of complexity to it. FacebookCoin will probably work more similarly to CashApp vs. Bitcoin.

It means most people using it won't even realize it's a Blockchain token. It'll be like "Facebook Bucks". But then it also offers the flexibility of a blockchain token to more advanced users (withdraw to your own wallet, send to an exchange, etc).

Compared to where? China? India? I think immigrants assimilate just fine into the United States. Assimilation is not easy anywhere. The United States isn't perfect, but plenty of immigrants are living great lives.

Elite Chinese talent is more likely to return to China, and therefore it becomes counter-productive. Plus, the US is in direct competition with China, which isn't the case with most other countries. So, to simply say "more is more" in this circumstance is false.

It's hardly a tragedy that rich kids in China can't attend Ivy League schools in the US.

Good points. It's surprising that these cities are facing such a major housing crisis, and still allow foreign purchases of residential property. If someone wants to buy a house, they should intend to live there. This is especially true for non-residents. Stop allowing your housing market to be a speculative tool for people who are not even a part of your community.

In my mind, the obvious solution is to require land owners be permanent residents of the country in which they are buying, and restrict the total properties owned by a specific entity. Do not allow foreign controlled corporations to purchase residential property.

The only way Tether can be stablized through "arbitrage" is if there is a risk-free way to trade 1 Tether for 1 USD.

For the average user, there is no direct way to cash out your Tether for 1:1 USD. I imagine that big clients do have the ability to trade Tether for USD. Because of that, they will buy up discounted Tethers on exchanges and redeem them to Tether Company for 1 USD each.

HOWEVER, this clearly relies on Tether Company providing that exchange. If Tether Company STOPS allowing the big guys to do this arbitrage, then suddenly the house of cards would collapse very quickly. The longer Tether stays below 1 USD, the more pressure is being put on their company by arbitrageurs.

Furthermore, we know that Tether has made a loan to Bitfinex for $900M. The Tether Company therefore only has cash on hand for about 2/3 of the outstanding Tether, assuming they had 1:1 reserves prior to lending cash to Bitfinex.

Tether is currently being traded around 99 cents. The market, so far, has assigned a 1% devaluation, despite this report showing that they basically lost $850M. From what I can see on Coinmarketcap, there is $2.83 Billion Tether in circulation.

So it would appear Tether has lost at least 30% of its assets (cash converted to Crypto Capital debt, which = toilet paper). I am shocked that people aren't taking this more seriously.

Bitfinex has been playing cat and mouse with banking for years. Even before Wells Fargo blocked their wires, they were in a nefarious banking situation. Bitfinex never wanted to take it slow and get themselves legal in the eyes of the US.

This approach would work if they were much smaller. If they just had $100M under management or something, they'd probably be able to operate in their sketchy way. They'd need somewhere safe to keep $50-60M, then they could take a diversified risk with third party processors to move money to clients.

But Bitfinex is just massive. They have billions under management. It's just not possible to hide these amounts of money when you are banned from the banking system. So yes, they should have shut down when Wells Fargo put the nail in the coffin. But like I said, by this point Bitfinex was already accustomed to opening new companies, new banks, hiding money and obfuscating its nature.

For them it probably wasn't even considered. They just kept trying to move huge amounts of money around, but from what I understand, there have been multiple instances where their money has been frozen, seized, or outright stolen by third parties.

I have been trying to simply visualize how a front runner makes money. Now I think I understand it.

Basically, a front runner looks for orders which will move the price on an exchange. So if an exchange has the following sell orders:

0.1 BTC @ $5100

0.1 BTC @ $5110

0.1 BTC @ $5120

And someone places either a market buy for 0.3 BTC, or a limit buy for 5120+, then they would expect to get 0.3 BTC @ 5110 average price.

However, the front runner, if they can see this order is about to be placed, could theoretically buy 0.2 BTC @ $5105 average, and instantly relist them for 5120, knowing they will be immediately sold to the $5120 limit / 0.3 BTC market buy order about to be placed, in this case pocketing $15/BTC

Before all this information got leaked, nobody knew about FISA section 702, nor had any idea how it was being interpreted and acted on by government agencies. I think it's quite clear that the secret courts in the US put huge demands on organizations to share and collect data on government behalf. Even worse, the organizations can not even publicly disclose information from the proceedings.

Until I see something to convince me otherwise, I assume any sizable organization that is operating within the United States shares any/all data requested. No loophole will protect them. If they don't collect the data, guess what, time to start collecting.

You're saying that organizations can avoid being subject to providing data if their service does not store the data. But I am not convinced. If the NSA or whatever 3 letter agency demanded the data be made available in a secret court, the company would have no choice but to comply.

They could require this in several ways. They could store the data directly on government servers, or set up a third party server and store the data on there, where both parties could access it. Either way, there is no technical reason the data can NOT be collected, so if the big boys want it, they will get it.

Oh come on now. The US Government forces tech companies to share information all the time.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/us-government-threatened-yahoo-bi...

They certainly can, and will, go after any company they want to, without referencing any specific US legislation.

Your point is well received, and one would expect society to function that way, but it does not. People won't knock any house of cards to the ground unless they are starving. It's impossible to achieve anything of significance as individuals. And no organization fighting against the status quo could acquire enough resources to make a dent.

Corporations and government have hands in each others' pockets. They are protected by court systems designed in their favor, weapons which could wipe out populations in an instant, and complete control of the technology we all use to communicate.

From Boeing's standpoint, it's actually even worse than this. The families of the people who perished pose a risk to their business. The company doesn't want these people drawing attention to the incident, and they want to minimize any legal recourse. It's about finding a balance, pay them a reasonably small amount to get them to shut up and go away.

Capitalism, baby!

They avoid making actionable statements. In this case, the CEO did not explicitly assign blame, so it would be difficult to call them a liar. Omitting is different from lying. Using vague terminology isn't lying. So you get stuck with all this corporate talk, where they act as if they're apologizing, but won't even really say what they are specifically apologizing for.

With the way litigation works, corporations will never admit blame for anything, since it greatly increases their legal risk. It's unfortunate, but their responsibilities lie with their shareholders, not the people who lost their lives on their planes.

I'd say the last 15+ years of air travel has been pretty safe in the US. To say the security has accomplished nothing is a stretch.

That is precisely the problem with the current landscape for online businesses. Nearly every step of the way there is a single entity that you need to work with, or you are toast.

The biggest one lately comes down to marketplaces and payment processing. For example, if you are running a business selling a physical product, and you are banned from:

- Amazon

- PayPal

Your business is dead. It usually comes down to exposure and payment processing. Some businesses can gain exposure through a variety of channels. But most businesses get the majority of their customers through a small list of channels. That can be Facebook Ads, SEO, Forums, etc.

If you wake up one day and Google de-lists you from organic search, and the majority of your traffic was from SEO, you're dead. You can try refocusing and investing in other channels, but the majority of your potential new customers probably use one or two channels to find your service. So unless you are the only person offering said service, they'll just go to a competitor.

These companies like Amazon, Google, Paypal, Facebook, Apple have become gatekeepers. Try and do any type of e-commerce without using the above services. Good luck buddy!

Many businesses boil down to 1-3 of the above. Losing access to one can be all it takes to go from a highly successful company to a doomed company. And these services will ban you on ToS violations, without ever explaining what part of the ToS you violated. The implication from such a ban is that your business, your livelihood, your life's pursuit is instantly crippled or dead. The implication to them is nothing.

"But if Netflix and Walt Disney both use technology to stream video, why is only Netflix trading at infinity-times earnings? And if Tesla and BMW “both use battery technology to power luxury cars,” Deluard writes, “why should the former trade at 42 times forward earnings when the latter fetches 5.6 times trailing earnings?” Good question."

Incredibly flawed argument. BMW's earnings come from a huge variety of products and services. Not purely battery-powered electric cars. Tesla's entire business model is producing battery-powered vehicles.

So to compare each company's P/E directly under the assumption that they are both making identical products would be wrong. Instead you would need to somehow isolate the P/E ratio of BMW's battery-powered car business in order to draw a meaningful comparison.

In general, this article is trying to group all of tech into one basket and draw conclusions which apply universally. A company has a high P/E ratio for a very simple reason: investors believe its earnings growth will outpace the market. That will seemingly always be true for companies which are focusing on growth over profit.