Bitcoin price plunges

[jerwin]

@werdnagreb

My server farm keeps me warm during the long winter nights. It’s been a great investment.

Richmond And His Flashing Lights

[Brainspore]

@Randy_Meier

Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies will be transformative in the coming years, and you’ll all be using them.

I’m gonna quote Randall Munroe on this topic: “Blockchains are like grappling hooks, in that it’s extremely cool when you encounter a problem for which they’re the right solution, but it happens way too rarely in real life.”

[Randy_Meier]

In regards to DLTs, one of those cases is a digital currency issued by a central bank. It will be hard to escape that usage.

[anon59592690]

And expensive. That’s how they get ya.

[smulder]

BITCOIN IS THE MARK OF THE BEAST

[anon59592690]

Cool, it’s already gone up, it was only 666 last time I looked, I knew I should have bought in earlier!

[smulder]

6666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666

[anon59592690]

Great, BitCoin and CVS are in cahoots.

[Melizmatic]

@Brainspore

At least you could wipe your ass with Confederate currency.

Or write on it, or burn it for fuel.

[Randy_Meier]

Just to make the point, crypto can be converted to fiat currency. It is taxed by the IRS as property. When I sell a crypto asset for USD’s I pay either short-term capital gains tax or long-term capital gains tax, depending on how long I’ve held the asset. Short-term gains are taxed as regular income. Long term are taxed significantly lower, but that’s true for any asset class. I pay taxes on my crypto (it’s extremely difficult to avoid crypto taxes today as a US citizen because the US requires crypto exchanges to complete Know Your Customer diligence). The IRS knows my SS# and that I own crypto and whether I’ve sold or bought any. Some people don’t pay taxes. Some people pay taxes on their cash USD earnings (which are far harder to trace than crypto transactions). Some people don’t pay taxes on their cash earnings. That doesn’t change the legitimacy of either instrument. The only instrument I’m certain is used in more illicit activity than BTC is cash USD.

[Anselm]

@Randy_Meier

The Federal Reserve has made no secret it plans to launch a digital USD to match the digital Yuan. That’s all the same tech.

Why ever would the Federal Reserve use a blockchain for its digital USD? Blockchains suck. A centralised database will work way better and be less resource-intensive to boot. By orders of magnitude.

[Randy_Meier]

They won’t use Blockchain. They’ll use Distributed Ledger Technology.

[dreamofthedarkstar]

@chenille

I’ve talked to someone who’s mined crypto because they genuinely needed the heat, and figured the energy might as well have some side benefit besides simply forcing electrons through long coils. So at least they weren’t increasing pollution with it. But man, are there a lot of other calculations that computer could be doing that the answer would actually be useful to have.

They would have been better served by installing a high efficiency heat pump. Or a coal furnace for that matter.

[Anselm]

@Randy_Meier

They’ll use Distributed Ledger Technology.

What I said. A database. Certainly not one where everyone has to have a copy of every single transaction in history in order to be able to figure out whether they have the correct number of digital dollars in their account. Instead you’ll be trusting your bank to keep your balance straight, just like you’ve been doing ever since you got your first savings account at age 3.

[Randy_Meier]

Rather than detail what’s under development at the moment, I would suggest researching “CBDC” (central bank digital currency) development and see what solutions are being research and suggested. The Federal Reserve has released information on their current considerations. CBDCs are coming, and they’ll eliminate the need for a great deal of the legacy financial system.

[Ryuthrowsstuff]

Meanwhile I seem to be using these regular US Dollars digitally just fine over here.

Why would the Fed develop one anyway? Doesn’t seem like it’s a confirmed thing just “exploratory meetings”.

[Randy_Meier]

A good bit of our financial system now does use digital technology to speed things up, but the system is quite antiquated and unnecessarily expensive. There’s a big difference in receiving an ACH payment to your current account at a bank and what’s being proposed with CBDCs. There’s plenty of easily searchable information on this online.

[Randy_Meier]

One reason the Federal Reserve is interested in developing this technology relates to preserving the international status of the USD. If the global financial system undergoes a technological sea change, then the Fed wants to preserve the USD’s central role in that system. Both China and Russia have an interest in undermining the role of the USD in the global financial system as points of their national security. China’s leadership in developing a CBDC can be interpreted as an element of that effort.

[Anselm]

@Randy_Meier

A good bit of our financial system now does use digital technology to speed things up, but the system is quite antiquated and unnecessarily expensive.

It’s probably just as well to remember that the financial systems in other countries are considerably more advanced than that of the United States already. For example, I don’t recall having had to use a cheque for 30 years or so, we can make direct money transfers to any account in any country within the SEPA at zero or negligible charges, and the main reason our credit cards still have magnetic strips is that we expect them to work in the USA, too.

[Melizmatic]

@Randy_Meier

Just to make the point […]

Nothing you can say or post will negate the fact that crypto is terrible for the environment RIGHT NOW; full stop.