China declares all crypto-currency transactions illegal

[tikker]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

You're making the mistake that all people are equally efficient and competent no matter what job they have. It's VERY VERY far from the case.

I'm not saying they are.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

The common point here is that people always think more of themselves than they really are worth. Especially people who manage other people. We are better off letting people work in the jobs they are competent in and not trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Most people in entertainment, if they were not in entertainment, and were not "trust fund babies" would not qualify for any job more complicated than a supermarket cashier/coffee-shop barista because there are no transferrable skills from entertainment if there is no art industry. A stage carpenter is not going to become a home carpenter, an actor is not going to become a cashier, and a sound engineer is not going to become an ultrasound lab tech.

They'll have to get (re)schooled. This goes for so many jobs outside of acting. An ultrasound lab tech will not simply become a sound engineer, a cashier will not simply become an actor, a home carpenter will not simply become a stage carpenter. They will have a leg up from being familiar with carpentry, but even that is a big field. This is all for the same reason PC enthusiasts dislike the "oh you're into computers, can you fix my server" thing. I work in radio astronomy, but I could not simply become an RF engineer even though I'm in a somewhat closely related field.

 

I've had questions on multiple occasions why we "waste" so much effort, time and money on "unnecessary" research. Astronomy will tell us a distant galaxy is 10 B years old, big deal; geology tells us there were dinosaurs millions of years ago, big deal. In the mean time many people die of cancer each year, why aren't we stopping that? Those questions will always be answered with an answer along the lines of first of all the big, but unpredictable potential for spin-off technology, and also progressing our species as a whole, different interests and your point of people having different skill sets, and interests. So if we now were to ban any science except that which helps us as an individual and a species survive, we'll be faced with a similar problem.

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

Again. The point being made here, is that (even bad) entertainment is worth more to the economy than cryptocoins are (which contribute nothing, only take.)

I agree. I even think the economy is a lesser argument and that its importance is much more from social value. I think that crypto, while not having an immediate economic or other benefit at this moment is stirring up the pot aking to a "spin-off" technology. Granted, people mostly treat it as an investment, but governments are investigating virtual currencies and blockchain technology for it. We can't say for sure, but I do feel like crypto has accelerated this if not spurred it. Some have interesting applications as well, like VeChain in supply-chains. There are many problems with crypto at the moment, but I'm not adamant on it staying in its current form. I'm interested in how it will evolve. If that evolution means it disappears so be it.

 

  

18 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

A surprise attack would probably wipe the network, besides that they can also just force-close crypto exchanges and outlaw it so no-one can accept it as a payment option. If ppl cant buy anything with it and cannot be exchanged for real money it will collapse rather quickly.

Yes, that's what I said earlier. If they want it gone the can just spend the time it takes to make a new law and ban it.

18 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

BTC is way too shady to be trusted. China has ulterior motives even i admit that but their reasoning is valid. BTC is practically the wet dream of speculants and criminals.

And what would those shady aspects be?

[jagdtigger]

22 minutes ago, tikker said:

And what would those shady aspects be?

No-one knows who made it, exchange can disappear with your <whatever imaginary currency you have> without any hope of getting it back (conventional banks are way better in this regard), its value can be easily manipulated, etc.....

[Kisai]

9 minutes ago, tikker said:

 

 

I've had questions on multiple occasions why we "waste" so much effort, time and money on "unnecessary" research. Astronomy will tell us a distant galaxy is 10 B years old, big deal; geology tells us there were dinosaurs millions of years ago, big deal. In the mean time many people die of cancer each year, why aren't we stopping that? Those questions will always be answered with an answer along the lines of first of all the big, but unpredictable potential for spin-off technology, and also progressing our species as a whole, different interests and your point of people having different skill sets, and interests. So if we now were to ban any science except that which helps us as an individual and a species survive, we'll be faced with a similar problem.

 

Let's reframe this one other way.

 

The Earth is doomed, Everyone dies on Feb 1st 2121. You can save 100,000 people (eg shelter, colony space ship, etc), the remaining 10 billion people are just gone. Who are you going to save?

 

You're not going to save the cryptocoin people. You're not going to save the billionaires. You're only going to save people who have a reasonable chance of living 50 years without medical assistance, because you can't take only doctors. You need the engineers and the environmental scientists, and also people to grow and prepare food for consumption.  If any videogame, television and film people want to be saved, they had better have a secondary interest in something medical or engineering related.

 

Ultimately there are a lot of things that we do on the planet which is not really productive for our survival, but having governments suddenly forbidding non-productive uses of resources point blank, will result in people going insane from boredom.

 

[tikker]

2 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

No-one knows who made it

Doesn't really matter in the context of a decentralised system. The code for Bitcoin, Ethereum and lots of other cryptos is all available: https://github.com/bitcoin, https://github.com/ethereum. The only thing you have to trust to not contain malware are the miners. If you don't touch those there isn't much risk from a "who made it" perspective.

6 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

exchange can disappear with your <whatever imaginary currency you have> without any hope of getting it back (conventional banks are way better in this regard)

Human stupidity. Don't keep significant funds on exchanges, but move them to your wallet.

7 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

its value can be easily manipulated

Need I mention GME and AMC?

[jagdtigger]

3 minutes ago, tikker said:

Need I mention GME and AMC?

Wont change anything, i treat the market the same as gambling. The sport of losers....

[tikker]

8 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Wont change anything, i treat the market the same as gambling. The sport of losers....

So you dislike the stock market as well then. That's fine. It is gambling to a certain extent. You are putting money into something hoping that it'll increase in value. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't. I'm happy to be a loser with profits compared to a winner with nothing.

[jagdtigger]

58 minutes ago, tikker said:

So you dislike the stock market as well then

Its not disliking, trust issue. Aint going to put my money into something that can disappear overnight.... 

 

58 minutes ago, tikker said:

I'm happy to be a loser with profits compared to a winner with nothing.

And im happily camping outside the world of gambling. If i have money to spare i just buy gold (no, not jewelry). Very liquid and very safe in terms of keeping its value.

[tikker]

4 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Its not disliking, trust issue. Aint going to put my money into something that can disappear overnight.... 

Understandable. It's not a complete gamble, like Nvidia or AMD are unlikely to disappear overnight, but you are taking a risk in the end. My investment money isn't money I expect to need to access any time soon and something I can in principle afford to lose (not that I'd want to).

4 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

And im happily camping outside the world of gambling. If i have money to spare i just buy gold (no, not jewelry). Very liquid and very safe in terms of keeping its value.

It depends on your goals as well. As you say gold is great for keeping value, but it won't make you much on top of what you put in. Gold has done +25% over the last 5 years, while an Nvidia stock has seen a 600+% profit. A big part is luck having your eggs in the right basket of course and you do risk Nvidia doing bad and going under.

[BuckGup]

On 9/25/2021 at 10:16 AM, jagdtigger said:

I dont think crypto is going to be a thing in 8 years so better prepare a plan b. If it becomes too big govts will coordinte a global seizure of servers holding the blockchain (the IP of those is easily obtainable).... If you want to invest in something buy gold.

Why dont you think its going to be a thing in 8 years? Bitgold was originally proposed in 1998 and bitcoin created in 2008. Its market cap is well over 2 Trillion so I find it hard to believe its just going to vanish

[jagdtigger]

3 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Its market cap is well over 2 Trillion so I find it hard to believe its just going to vanish

You mean basing off of a purely speculative figure? Because crypto value is just that, a speculative arbitrary value, just because ppl overrating it and attribute an unrealistic value to it does not mean its going to last. Especially in light of cryptos main users, criminals. Whether you or anyone else likes it or not this system only benefits them, and already rich ppl who can afford to buy asics/cpus/etc regardless of the cost and make themselves even more richer. At some point lawmakers will get tired of it and outlaw it. When ppl cant exchange it for real money and no-one accepts it, crypto will die regardless the said speculative value.

[Moonzy]

3 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Especially in light of cryptos main users, criminals.

Sources?

I'd wager that the main users are investors at the moment

 

3 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Whether you or anyone else likes it or not this system only benefits them, and already rich ppl who can afford to buy asics/cpus/etc regardless of the cost

Quite a few people have modern enough machine to be profitable in mining, right now it's everyone with 1060 6gb or better GPU, so it's actually quite a big portion of computer owners

I guess that's still not a huge portion of the overall population though, since there's many poor people that can't afford a PC, but that's just how it is

 

Also, the rich getting richer isn't only a crypto thing, it's an issue for just about anything

 

3 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

When ppl cant exchange it for real money and no-one accepts it, crypto will die regardless the said speculative value.

I mean, that's how everything works

Though, I'm not too sure that there's a good reason to ban mining worldwide in my opinion

 It is a trillion dollar industry, I'd think the government would want to tax it instead of ban it unless if it affects them negatively

 

Instead of banning crypto exchanges, my local government have worked with an exchange and started regulating them

https://themalaysianreserve.com/2021/07/30/luno-becomes-1st-registered-cryptocurrency-exchange-in-malaysia/

[thechinchinsong]

2 hours ago, Moonzy said:

Instead of banning crypto exchanges, my local government have worked with an exchange and started regulating them

https://themalaysianreserve.com/2021/07/30/luno-becomes-1st-registered-cryptocurrency-exchange-in-malaysia/

Isn't one of the major selling points of crypto less regulations and red tape from governments?

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, Moonzy said:

Sources?

Ransomware attacks for one..... Plus the propertues of it is wery good for them. Instead of asking for sources you should think 1st.

[Moonzy]

54 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Ransomware attacks for one..... Plus the propertues of it is wery good for them. Instead of asking for sources you should think 1st.

just because it's used for something doesnt make them the

7 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

cryptos main users

so, any statistics to point that they're the main users, or take up the most significant portion of the transactions?

[BuckGup]

18 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

You mean basing off of a purely speculative figure? Because crypto value is just that, a speculative arbitrary value, just because ppl overrating it and attribute an unrealistic value to it does not mean its going to last. Especially in light of cryptos main users, criminals. Whether you or anyone else likes it or not this system only benefits them, and already rich ppl who can afford to buy asics/cpus/etc regardless of the cost and make themselves even more richer. At some point lawmakers will get tired of it and outlaw it. When ppl cant exchange it for real money and no-one accepts it, crypto will die regardless the said speculative value.

What do you think fiat based currency like the USD is based off of lmao?

[jagdtigger]

8 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

What do you think fiat based currency like the USD is based off of lmao?

If you have to ask better stop this convo right here. Learn basic economics 1st.

[WkdPaul]

4 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

If you have to ask better stop this convo right here. Learn basic economics 1st.

"do your research" type of replies aren't much more than antagonistic and disingenuous replies. Your saying the main use of crypto is for crime. We can quickly check that with available info.

 

The crypto currency total value is $1.9T USD (source).

 

Now, you mentioned ransomware ... the total estimated damages of ransomware (important word here being damages, what transitions through the crypto markets will be much less, but still, lets take that number anyway) ... it"s around $20B USD (source ; https://cybersecurityventures.com/global-ransomware-damage-costs-predicted-to-reach-250-billion-usd-by-2031/).

 

Even if that was ALL crypto transactions, that's only around 1% of all of the crypto market.

 

Let's say we add ALL of the illegal drugs on top of it ($652B, source, page 13), that's still only 35%.

 

 

We can wait for sources that crypto is mainly for criminals, but that would be surprising seeing as the math doesn't add up (the numbers I used are estimates, but I put the WHOLE thing in there, and, for sure, that's not happening, the local drug dealer doesn't take BTC when peddling his drugs. As for ransomware, the damages they calculated is a LOT more than what pirates are getting).

 

Crypto currencies are a tool, just like a hammer, or a car. Should we ban hammers because it's used to build illegal stuff, or kill people ? Or maybe ban cars, or transport trucks because it's used to transport drugs, or humans when trafficking ?

 

YOU might not have any uses for crypto currencies, but some people do, while the majority is doing it as an investment (not the greatest idea IMO), there are some (a small minority IMO) that are also using it as a tool to circumvent oppressive governments (personal experience).

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

"do your research" type of replies aren't much more than antagonistic and disingenuous replies.

This particular misinformation was debuked quite a few times already, wont waste my time to explain it again just so it could be forgotten again...

[Moonzy]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

This particular misinformation was debuked quite a few times already

"dude, trust me" with no solid numbers, while wkdpaul literally posted statements with sources to go with them

plus someone shared some sources stating that it's only 2% in other threads iirc, but i cbf to look it up, especially when the other party is as unreasonable as you are where no amount of evidence will make them think otherwise and continue to spout nonsense because that's what they think instead of actually showing data and numbers

 

if it's truly debunked with actual numbers, do show it and show that your statement are true instead of just baseless accusations, which it's been debunked and yet repeated in multiple threads that it's getting real old

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, Moonzy said:

"dude, trust me" with no solid numbers

If you need solid numbers in light of the past few years ransom attacks i dont have to say anything.....

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

If you need solid numbers in light of the past few years ransom attacks i dont have to say anything.....

literally ignored what i said about how you're ignoring what people say

 

17 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

The crypto currency total value is $1.9T USD (source).

 

Now, you mentioned ransomware ... the total estimated damages of ransomware (important word here being damages, what transitions through the crypto markets will be much less, but still, lets take that number anyway) ... it"s around $20B USD (source ; https://cybersecurityventures.com/global-ransomware-damage-costs-predicted-to-reach-250-billion-usd-by-2031/).

 

Even if that was ALL crypto transactions, that's only around 1% of all of the crypto market.

 

[suicidalfranco]

4 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

If you need solid numbers in light of the past few years ransom attacks i dont have to say anything.....

and the cartel deals in usd. so eliminate all cash by your logic.

[Spotty]

Alibaba has banned all sales related to cryptocurrency.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/alibaba-makes-cryptocurrency-sales-illegal

Quote

Chinese technology giant Alibaba announced today that it would prohibit the sale of all goods and services related to cryptocurrency mining. This decision comes after the People's Bank of China announcement that all crypto-related transactions are illegal.

[...]

The ban also covers any hardware or software used to obtain these virtual currencies, in addition to any tutorials about cryptocurrency. 

I wonder if that includes graphics cards. Surely not.

 

Given the situation with the ban on cryptocurrency I'm not surprised Alibaba is banning sales of cryptocurrency related products.

[tikker]

6 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

If you need solid numbers in light of the past few years ransom attacks i dont have to say anything.....

Of course you need solid numbers. I could say you've laundered a billion dollars last year. I'm not going to show you my proof, just trust me. I can put you away for good.

16 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

This particular misinformation was debuked quite a few times already, wont waste my time to explain it again just so it could be forgotten again...

Quite the opposite. It's the "crypto is only used for crime" argument that has been debunked often.

 

Here's another source backing that up, Chainalysis' report that comes out every year: https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-crypto-crime-report-intro-ransomware-scams-darknet-markets

The estimated fraction of illicit crypto activity was 0.34% over 2020.

 

This crime-only thing is based on the misconception that it's anonymous and untraceable. That is true for privacycoins like Monero, but not at all for the major ones like Bitcoin and Ethereum which are easily traceable and pseudonymous. There is the problem of tying a name to a wallet address, but once that is done they can trace pretty much anything you've ever done in relation to that address on the blockchain, because it's all publicly on the blockchain.

[Moonzy]

5 hours ago, Spotty said:

wonder if that includes graphics cards

Given the strict control on gaming, I wouldn't be surprised at this point