Allstarflyer wrote:Johan or somebody at Anet got irritated when I revived the oldest thread in Site-Related (about 10+ years at that time) asking who Tarq was/is (I still don't know or can't remember). It was after that they started locking older threads.
Looks like Queso is taking a stroll down NAS memory lane with some of these older threads resurfacing, something I might like to do again (if they could be reopened, ahem ) - not always the worst thing to see how things were seen (especially about politics).
DXing wrote:The only problem I see with it is that it is not backed by a nation state. Therefore any nation state could make its use illegal, or tax the hell out of any purchase made using it.
DXing wrote:Already there have been grumblings about regulatory action in a number of countries so while its future may someday be bright, right now it's still as volatile as a WW1 munition found in a French farmers field.
DXing wrote:The broker I was dealing with back then talked me out of it saying it was a flash in the pan and I'd just be throwing my money away. Given what I was willing to invest at the time, I would be worth over a $100 million at todays prices. Needless to say I didn't invest, and that broker and I have since parted ways.
Customers who hold bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin in PayPal digital wallets will now be able to convert their holdings into fiat currencies at checkouts to make purchases, the company said.
The service, which PayPal revealed it was working on late last year, will be available at all of its 29 million merchants in the coming months, the company said.
“This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet,” President and CEO Dan Schulman told Reuters ahead of a formal announcement.
Queso wrote: Ever traded (bartered) for anything? Did you tell the government about that transaction, or give them their "cut" of it?
Queso wrote: If they can't keep drugs off the streets, my question is how can they possibly control something which doesn't actually exist in worldly form?
Queso wrote:Even if someday this type of cryptocurrency is somehow taxed and people willingly agree to give the government a cut will they ever get anything from it. And by then, another form of currency will have been developed and will already be in use. This is paving the way to get government out of the financial system, no matter what government it would be.
Queso wrote: Long-term, you can't argue with it's increase in value, and every time an entity pumps a $billion or two into it, it becomes that much more stable!
“This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet,” President and CEO Dan Schulman told Reuters ahead of a formal announcement.
DXing wrote:Queso wrote: Ever traded (bartered) for anything? Did you tell the government about that transaction, or give them their "cut" of it?
No, but then those transactions were so small as to be less than required to report.
DXing wrote:Queso wrote: If they can't keep drugs off the streets, my question is how can they possibly control something which doesn't actually exist in worldly form?
While they can't keep the drugs off the streets, the money that drug dealers make has to be constantly laundered to avoid taxation, or moved out of the country to be of any use without attracting unwanted attention. So if or when you sell your bitcoin and convert it into currency, that's income, it's traceable, and thus taxable. Unless you can live entirely by using bitcoin as your choice of currency, at least for the time being, it's the only way to avoid a tax on the gains, unless you are good at money laundering.
DXing wrote:Queso wrote:Even if someday this type of cryptocurrency is somehow taxed and people willingly agree to give the government a cut will they ever get anything from it. And by then, another form of currency will have been developed and will already be in use. This is paving the way to get government out of the financial system, no matter what government it would be.
As long as the nation state has the power to enact laws, including taxation, those can be use to take a portion of income.
DXing wrote:Queso wrote: Long-term, you can't argue with it's increase in value, and every time an entity pumps a $billion or two into it, it becomes that much more stable!
Only have to go back as far as 2008 to say that no financial industry or tool is beyond collapse.
DXing wrote:“This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet,” President and CEO Dan Schulman told Reuters ahead of a formal announcement.
Which leaves a paper trail that the government can subpoena and use to levy a tax on. Remember when Amazon and other internet purchases weren't subject to State sales taxes? How true is that today?
Queso wrote:So at what size transaction do you think the government should have their nose in your personal business and take a cut of it?
Queso wrote: it's now a rare thing for a person to do all their transactions in cash.
Queso wrote:How? ONLY by the consent and will of the people can the government get a cut of something they don't own and don't have a way of controlling. If I give you something of value directly, the only way the government will know about it or receive a cut is if I decide to let them know and give them some. If I am my own bank, they don't have to know anything about it.
Queso wrote:Define "collapse".
Queso wrote:Well, first of all, the quote only applied to intermediary exchanges which exchange one form of currency for another, like PayPal. If we both have our own Bitcoin addresses, that transaction remains anonymous.
Queso wrote:How? ONLY by the consent and will of the people can the government get a cut of something they don't own and don't have a way of controlling. If I give you something of value directly, the only way the government will know about it or receive a cut is if I decide to let them know and give them some. If I am my own bank, they don't have to know anything about it.
WASHINGTON -- The Biden administration's tax enforcement plan would double the number of IRS employees over the next decade and require banks, payment services and cryptocurrency exchanges to provide the government more information about account flows, according to a Treasury Department report released Thursday.
Treasury officials project that the plan would generate a net $700 billion over the next 10 years and $1.6 trillion in the decade after that, and the report says those figures are conservative because they underestimate how audits deter tax dodging and don't count any benefits from improving IRS technology.
DXing wrote:plan
https://www.marketscreener.com/news/latest/Biden-IRS-Plan-Would-Double-Agency-Staffing-Target-Cryptocurrency--33314174/
That will be under consideration in the Biden infrastructure bill. I don't think it will pass but the ball is rolling.
Queso wrote:Yep, ain't gonna happen any time soon.
DXing wrote:Queso wrote:Yep, ain't gonna happen any time soon.
Up until a few weeks ago I would have agreed with that. With the spate of high profile ransomware attacks since, I have a feeling that regulation will come sooner rather than later as at this point the hackers can operate with relative impunity as their ransom demands are demanded in cryptocurrency that leaves them anonymous.
Privacy coins are a class of cryptocurrencies that power private and anonymous blockchain transactions by obscuring their origin and destination. Some of the techniques used include hiding a user’s real wallet balance and address, and mixing multiple transactions with each other to elude chain analysis.
In the spirit of transparency, Bitcoin and other non-privacy blockchains allow anyone to view public addresses and transactions in their network, which makes it relatively simple to track someone's deposits and withdrawals.
However, privacy coins handle two different aspects; anonymity and untraceability. Anonymity hides the identity behind a transaction, while untraceability makes it virtually impossible for third-parties to follow the trail of transactions using services such as blockchain analysis.
Queso wrote:Any regulation would have ZERO (0) effect on ransomware attacks. If you know anything about blockchain technology and privacy coins, then you'll understand they don't have to use only Bitcoin or Ethereum or Cardano or Polygon or etc, etc with open source code. They can simply make their demands payable in some other cryptocurrency.
Queso wrote:I'm telling you, the government moves waaaaaay too slow to regulate the kinds of things they are trying to regulate with crypto.
The seizure announced on Monday was conducted by a recently launched ransomware and digital extortion task force, which was able to track bitcoin transactions. It was the group’s first operation of its kind, investigators said during a press conference on Monday.
Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount first said during an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he paid $4.4 million in cryptocurrency to free the company’s systems.
About 63.7 bitcoins have been recovered, with an estimated value of about $2.3 million, according to the DOJ. The company paid about 75 bitcoins in ransom, according to authorities
DXing wrote:That happened way faster than I thought it would......bold is mine...The seizure announced on Monday was conducted by a recently launched ransomware and digital extortion task force, which was able to track bitcoin transactions. It was the group’s first operation of its kind, investigators said during a press conference on Monday.
Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount first said during an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he paid $4.4 million in cryptocurrency to free the company’s systems.
About 63.7 bitcoins have been recovered, with an estimated value of about $2.3 million, according to the DOJ. The company paid about 75 bitcoins in ransom, according to authorities
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/us-investigators-recover-majority-ransom-colonial-pipeline-paid-hackers
I'll say it again, if the government wants their cut, for any reason, they will find a way to get it. They are far more ruthless and dogged than any mafia or cartel kingpin ever was.
Queso wrote:...the government moves waaaaaay too slow...