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Convert
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Fri Jan 26, 2018 8:41 pm

Redocbew wrote:
And that's supposed to make it better?


ludi wrote:
A nominal half billion dollars' worth of unsecured assets from one institution in a digital heist? Right, that's totally ordinary. Happens every day.


DancinJack wrote:
Not only that, but it was said as if the amount of money in cryptocoins == the amount of money in banks around the world? Otherwise why would you ever compare the two?


Heh, I think I made the mistake of forgetting people are a little too personally invested in the conversation.

I actually thought America had something like that stolen every year, not sure about the whole globe. Could be wrong though, maybe that's world wide. I just remember something like 800 million dollars, that could even be from identity theft or something. Then again it really doesn't matter if they are equal, or largely disparate as of today in the total amounts.

To me, someone who owns no cryptocurrencies, doesn't mine and has no regrets from not investing, I don't see a theft like the one linked as being significant to anyone mining. Having real money stolen wouldn't make real money illegitimate or make people dump it, why do we think fake money would be any different? Money gets stolen all day every day probably within a few miles of anyone reading this post. Maybe it's just some guys pocket change, but a lot of money is stolen in some form and in enough micro transactions (in comparison) to amount to a lot more than this in a year. I work in IT, I know a handful of local CFOs who got scammed with the wire fraud schemes and while dealing with them and the FBI it is apparently far more common than one would think. A local college was hit with it for about 2 million dollars by it even.

The linked theft is significant in many ways, such as the risk of it being centrally located, which runs counter to the crypto creed of being decentralized in nature and the risks involved with no stone walls and guards keeping it safe. Obviously there wasn't massive theft at the treasury to compare it to. So the argument is that people should put more trust in real money because there are real banks to keep it safe and the biggest bank has better security than these exchanges? We're talking about FAKE crypto money here people, you really think those details are of any concern to the miners and traders?

There's also no way to get stolen crypto money back AFAIK, which makes any theft significant. While not all theft with real money is reversed, it sure offers more protections. But, as we'll see, this won't have any tangible impact on the craze, and it absolutely won't be the last time it happens and we will yet again see the continuance of cryptocurrency.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Fri Jan 26, 2018 8:48 pm

It's the fact that it is so easy to steal so much of it at once, plus the fact that it is difficult or impossible to recover, plus the fact that a pretty large percentage of the total value of the cryptocurrency "economy" has been stolen at some point. These all point to it not being anywhere near a mature thing yet.
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Redocbew
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Fri Jan 26, 2018 8:55 pm

Convert wrote:
Having real money stolen wouldn't make real money illegitimate or make people dump it, why do we think fake money would be any different?


What JBI said, mostly. If crypto-currency is still around many years from now, then I fully expect there will still be people stealing it. I could even see how it's possible at that point for theft of "real" money to be easier and much more common. However, crypto-currency seems to have a lot of hurdles it needs to clear before it gets anywhere close to that, and for whatever reason there's a ton of people who are very resistant to seeing that.
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NovusBogus
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Fri Jan 26, 2018 9:49 pm

mudcore wrote:
People can be as irate as they want about the "waste" of what's happening now but eh... seems to ignore the "waste" or "costs" of basically all major shifts in human history.

When you get down to it, the overwhelming majority of things that humans do with electricity are "wasteful" in some form or another, especially if measuring with the strict need-to-survive rule. Color me cynical but I have a hard time seeing threads like this as much more than one group of cake eaters accusing another group of cake eaters of eating too much cake. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go eat some more cake. Nom nom nom...

Captain Ned wrote:
Well, at least the money stolen from banks is real money. Good luck trying to turn those stolen coins into hard currency.

I dunno man, lately Wells Fargo has been making great strides in innovating around that archaic "real money" requirement. ;)
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:01 pm

NovusBogus wrote:
Captain Ned wrote:
Well, at least the money stolen from banks is real money. Good luck trying to turn those stolen coins into hard currency.

I dunno man, lately Wells Fargo has been making great strides in innovating around that archaic "real money" requirement. ;)

The 2008 financial crisis was the result of creative financial "innovation" too. The heavy leveraging of mortgage-backed derivatives effectively created phantom money out of thin air. When the sub-prime mortgages underpinning the whole thing proved to be a lot riskier than assumed, the charade was exposed and everything came crashing down.
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mudcore
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:11 pm

Redocbew wrote:
Convert wrote:
Having real money stolen wouldn't make real money illegitimate or make people dump it, why do we think fake money would be any different?


What JBI said, mostly. If crypto-currency is still around many years from now, then I fully expect there will still be people stealing it. I could even see how it's possible at that point for theft of "real" money to be easier and much more common. However, crypto-currency seems to have a lot of hurdles it needs to clear before it gets anywhere close to that, and for whatever reason there's a ton of people who are very resistant to seeing that.


I think the majority of people purchasing altcoins realize quite well that most of the current "hot" cryptos will not have long term value or be much of anything long term i.e. actually usable blockchains, networks, etc. XEM for instance I would bet only a small fraction of what isn't a particularly large group of people see it as something of value long term and its better than most in this regard. Which is a big part in why such large amounts are hacked in the first place. People buy these altcoins to speculate, they're not looking to hold it long term and therefore do not invest the time to properly store it. Poorly run exchanges behave in much the same way. Contrast this with more established options like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, where in general there's a far greater degree of seriousness in security around it.

I don't agree with the premise of your last statement. I think the amount of necessary growth/improvement is very much acknowledged. And that events like this are being appropriately considered in that light.

There's a lot of different "streams" in the crypto space. So the reactions from events are going to be seen differently than others. I think the amount of people who are impacted directly by this event is really quite small, hence it doesn't cause crypto people to run for the hills at large. But it will spur other groups to try to build solutions and fixes for it nonetheless.
 
Redocbew
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:48 pm

mudcore wrote:
I don't agree with the premise of your last statement. I think the amount of necessary growth/improvement is very much acknowledged.


For ICOs it seems hit or miss. For the general public it's almost entirely miss. When average everyday people are dropping 50k or more to set up mining farms based on technology which clearly has a long way to go still, then something's not right.
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mudcore
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Fri Jan 26, 2018 11:55 pm

Redocbew wrote:
mudcore wrote:
I don't agree with the premise of your last statement. I think the amount of necessary growth/improvement is very much acknowledged.


For ICOs it seems hit or miss. For the general public it's almost entirely miss. When average everyday people are dropping 50k or more to set up mining farms based on technology which clearly has a long way to go still, then something's not right.


Average everyday people are not building $50K mining farms at scale, groups and people are but they're more aware of the risks they're taking than you imply. Likewise I don't see a problem with this even if en mass the average everyday person has felt the need to suddenly get up off their rears and do something besides veg out in front of a excessively loud TV while scrolling through their Facebook over and over. (But that's of course not is what is happening here at least.)
 
Redocbew
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 12:23 am

I guess you didn't see the image Kougar posted in the other thread?

https://m.imgur.com/moZjblW

We're headed for R&P if we talk too much about how accurate to reality social media really is, but there's plenty of other examples besides this one.
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mudcore
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 12:38 am

Redocbew wrote:
I guess you didn't see the image Kougar posted in the other thread?

https://m.imgur.com/moZjblW

We're headed for R&P if we talk too much about how accurate to reality social media really is, but there's plenty of other examples besides this one.


I'm not sure if you understand what "at scale" means. Or how that Facebook post is any indication these people are unaware of the risks they're also taking on.

EDIT: Look I don't see the point in dragging this out more. But simply... I'm not going to be negative about a series of events, inventions, shifts, speculations etc. that have happened that have suddenly incentivized a group of people to take risks in their pursuit of radically changing their lives. Even more these people are doing so for a whole host of "R&P" reasons as well. Anyway, pictures like that are just proof of how small a group of people (two) can take out the entire stock of a metro region. Chances are very high they had IT/tech backgrounds before this too.
 
NovusBogus
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 1:08 am

just brew it! wrote:
NovusBogus wrote:
Captain Ned wrote:
Well, at least the money stolen from banks is real money. Good luck trying to turn those stolen coins into hard currency.

I dunno man, lately Wells Fargo has been making great strides in innovating around that archaic "real money" requirement. ;)

The 2008 financial crisis was the result of creative financial "innovation" too. The heavy leveraging of mortgage-backed derivatives effectively created phantom money out of thin air. When the sub-prime mortgages underpinning the whole thing proved to be a lot riskier than assumed, the charade was exposed and everything came crashing down.

Funny you should mention that...I regularly cite the events of 2007-2008 as the origin point of both cryptocurrency enthusiasm and the larger crypto-anarchist subculture. After all, if the Ivy Leaguers get to build their own little financial old-boy club, why not everyone else? It's my understanding that the very first proof-of-concept BTC transaction included a comment about the bank bailouts. Pity that BTC got corrupted by the same kind of shenanigans it set out to disrupt, but c'est la vie and maybe another bunch will refine the idea.

Redocbew wrote:
I guess you didn't see the image Kougar posted in the other thread?

https://m.imgur.com/moZjblW

That's a lot of GPUs. Still less money than what some folks have spent on Star Citizen, though. Far less than a McLaren supercar, or even a relatively plebeian Alfa Romeo. A decent-ish apartment on Manhattan Island can be yours for only $5k/month. Those with large income figures tend to do interesting things with it.

edit: I'm with mudcore on this one. It's not uncommon for a mid level tech or finance person in NYC to get a $20-25k bonus, so the fact that one or two of those bonuses can clean out all of the local stock in two of America's largest and richest cities speaks volumes about the PC industry's fragile supply chain.
 
Convert
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 1:48 am

just brew it! wrote:
It's the fact that it is so easy to steal so much of it at once, plus the fact that it is difficult or impossible to recover, plus the fact that a pretty large percentage of the total value of the cryptocurrency "economy" has been stolen at some point. These all point to it not being anywhere near a mature thing yet.


It's easy to steal a lot of money at once. You don't even need any mad hacker skills or have someone from Hollywood write your master heist. You just need to send a well crafted email to a business you've done some research on, a million here and a million there in less strokes than Twitter's original character count. It's also easy to steal 140 million personal records ripe for identity theft and 200,000 credit card details (Equifax). Or if translating all that into real money is too much work, how about 130 Million credit card numbers to do whatever you want with (Heartland)?

On a slightly related note, it would be interesting to know how many circulating bills have been stolen at one point in their life.

I realize playing devil's advocate isn't winning anyone over here, but I could say some of our pillars of the financial real-world could use a whole lot of maturing. As a result, it just seems like pot calling the kettle a slightly darker shade of black.

I knew a lot of older folk who kept their money stashed in the house because they didn't trust banks with it due to financial issues during their lifetime that led to stigmas. The rest of us seem to be doing just fine with it in the bank.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 5:40 am

Convert wrote:
It's easy to steal a lot of money at once. You don't even need any mad hacker skills or have someone from Hollywood write your master heist. You just need to send a well crafted email to a business you've done some research on, a million here and a million there in less strokes than Twitter's original character count. It's also easy to steal 140 million personal records ripe for identity theft and 200,000 credit card details (Equifax). Or if translating all that into real money is too much work, how about 130 Million credit card numbers to do whatever you want with (Heartland)?

Normal currencies are part of a much larger ecosystem though, so as a percentage the fraud is probably much lower. There are also mechanisms in place to protect the consumer. Even if your odds of being a victim are comparable, your odds of being able to recover the stolen funds if you do get hit are better (e.g. disputed credit card charge).
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ludi
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 3:30 pm

Convert wrote:
Heh, I think I made the mistake of forgetting people are a little too personally invested in the conversation.

I actually thought America had something like that stolen every year, not sure about the whole globe. Could be wrong though, maybe that's world wide. I just remember something like 800 million dollars, that could even be from identity theft or something. Then again it really doesn't matter if they are equal, or largely disparate as of today in the total amounts.

Oh, perhaps, but one benefit of being somewhat invested in the conversation is that you tend to both do and check your homework before sharing your answers with the class.

I'm not financially invested in crypto, nor am I mining. I'm interested the fallibility of human nature, particularly how other people are plowing such vast amounts of money into assets on theories such as (a) I can get rich quick, and (b) the government can't control it -- only to turn around and painfully prove the same lessons that were painfully learned by their ancestors, such as (a) on average, no you can't, and (b) turns out a little law and order is useful in a financial system.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 3:50 pm

Don't forget the most important part, that being:

Part C. Your coin holdings are worth absolutely nothing if you can't convert them to hard currency.
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Redocbew
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sat Jan 27, 2018 4:09 pm

ludi wrote:
(a) I can get rich quick, and (b) the government can't control it -- only to turn around and painfully prove the same lessons that were painfully learned by their ancestors, such as (a) on average, no you can't, and (b) turns out a little law and order is useful in a financial system.


Not only that, but this all sounds very similar to what people said about the Internet when it was new also. That it was decentralized, free from control and oversight by The Man, and so on. I doubt anyone here would consider the Internet to be completely free and open today, and with the mining megafarms in Russia and China already holding a significant portion of the overall "balance" of the network it's looking like crypto-currency might be headed in the same direction.
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Convert
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sun Jan 28, 2018 2:54 pm

ludi wrote:
Convert wrote:
Heh, I think I made the mistake of forgetting people are a little too personally invested in the conversation.

I actually thought America had something like that stolen every year, not sure about the whole globe. Could be wrong though, maybe that's world wide. I just remember something like 800 million dollars, that could even be from identity theft or something. Then again it really doesn't matter if they are equal, or largely disparate as of today in the total amounts.

Oh, perhaps, but one benefit of being somewhat invested in the conversation is that you tend to both do and check your homework before sharing your answers with the class.

I don't think there's any doubt about it. From a third party looking at the conversation, there's a lot of repeating why cryptocurrency is a bad thing and semantics about numbers and the justification that the differences in the numbers equate to a hard line drawn in the sand as to whether not something is "good" or "acceptable". It's just another echo chamber on the internet. The litmus test is visting a pro crypto forum, this may come as a surprise but you all have evil twins. My sniping comment on your article wasn't appreciated I'm sure and I am sorry about that, you were trying to share pertinent information.

My admittedly foggy memory aside, my factual comment about more money being stolen from banks wasn't made to evoke equivalency, as I clarified the occurrences of theft or the ease of it hasn't played a tangible role in cryptocurrency or cold hard cash in the legitimacy of those currencies. Otherwise we are drawing a line in the sand and saying crypto is OK once it's stolen less than real money (in absolute percentages). My point is also that, who cares if crypto is stolen? All of crypto could be stolen overnight and people would just start all over again and would build in more safeguards. Just like REAL money.

A village gets wiped out by a natural disaster and everyone not only loses all their money (and it's unrecoverable) but people lose all their real possessions. They just start over again. It happens a few more times and we end up with distributed banks with guarantees and insurance companies. Welcome to the modern world, it took us a while to get here, kick back and relax, be sure pay your waiter with American dollars though, CAD isn't accepted.

Only when theft outweighs the potential benefits to the majority of the stakeholders will it become less desirable and the linked article wasn't even a stick of dynamite, it was one of those 4th of July bang snaps to the greater stakeholders. As yet another reminder, because the vast majority of posters ignore this, you don't get to choose that line for anyone else. They've chosen it. You and I don't agree with their choice, so we draw our own lines. I don't like investing my money in the stock market (one of the reasons I don't like crypto), I don't even play the lottery, instead my line in the sand is realestate and rentals. I don't need to post in a forum with similar ideals as mine to reinforce my decisions, I don't ignore the risks to my approach, the benefits of the stock market, or even the impact the greater economy tends to have on both anyways.

Then again I guess I am assuming that people share the same definition of "legitimate". If cryptocurrency can be directly converted to what is defined as legal tender in your geographic location and the act of doing that is not in of itself illegal, then whatever hassles befall it, I must consider it legitimate. Doesn't mean I'll be doing anything with it though! :lol:
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Sun Jan 28, 2018 8:57 pm

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Glorious
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:56 am

meerkt wrote:
I can't use cash over the internet, nor can I accept credit card payments that easily, or with decent fees.


I know that you are in a church where Satoshi is a saint, PoW our savior and "fees" an ancient chthonic evil, but as other posters have indicated, this faith of yours simply has no reflection in our actual reality.

OK?

Look, I really have trouble with this one. Most people don't run into this problem in regular life, and when they do, the fees are barely consequential portion of it. But yet, there are *so* many individuals promoting crypto who bluntly claim that such fees didn't just drive *them* into the throes of desperation, but they are ever-menacing plague on humanity as a whole.

That's, uh, just utterly and entirely crazy dude. It's basically those infomercials where someone, in grainy black-and-white, bumbles so comically ineptly with a generic household item that they maim their pet and light their house on fire with the host intoning "DEAR JESUS GOD SAVE US THERE MUST BE A BETTER WAY"

It's ridiculous. Stop it.

And your objection's entered a whole new dimension with crime, ransomware, taxes... Viruses & co. existed before cryptos.


I said crypto commercialized such things, and it did. There wasn't an incentive before, now there is.

And, please, come on, don't insult my intelligence: there isn't any other practical way to effect ransomware.

meerkt wrote:
They can also steal your online banking credentials. So maybe online banking is bad.


Retail (not business) banking customers are basically completely indemnified from any such loss. Captain Ned can fill you in with further details if he's so inclined.

Not only does that completely not exist in crypto-currencies, I'm not even protected if my "bank" (exchange or other third party) gets "hacked" and not me. They might, maybe, give me something, but more often they fold or otherwise haircut me.

meerkt wrote:
Ransomware is facilitated by the internet, etc.


You are so set on dodging this point, aren't you.

Ransomware exploded after cryptocurrency become prominent enough. Prior to that it was either theoretical, small-scale, or done through nexuses that the Feds promptly neutralized or completely nuked (like Liberty Reserve). It was basically a non-factor in anything.

Now? It's a huge factor in everything. People used to care about bad actors getting root, now? Not so much: you can rebuild a system and it sucks, but those pictures are GONE FOREVER.

meerkt wrote:
And taxation concerns? Don't tell me you support these ideas that started floating around, and are partially enforced in some countries, to curtail cash usage and force a shift to credit cards or centralized digital forms of payment. I find it disturbing, even though in 99% of the cases it won't affect me.


You should pay your taxes. I support that, a lot of people promoting crypto OPENLY DO NOT.

meerkt wrote:
BTW, what you said earlier about obscure altcoins and syncing multiple wallets. Litecoin isn't obscure, that's what makes it useful. Besides being very very similar technically to Bitcoin, it's supported by practically all exchanges.


Uh-huh.

Look, dude, it's not even top 5. It's top ten (currently #8).

Again, YES, *YOU* want litecoin. But that means that you have find someone else who has what *YOU* also want, but ALSO wants litecoin.

But what if they want Ethereum? Or Ripple? Or BCH? THAT'S THE POINT, DUH.

Or what if he's willing to accept litecoin, but doesn't have that particular wallet ready? It'll take him like a day to sync it from scratch

meerkt wrote:
Going deeper into alt territory, I don't think most people keep alts in their direct control, but probably on an exchange. It's also possible to convert on the fly with the likes of Changelly and ShapeShift. But the real solution would be decentralized exchanging.


In other words they might as well be trading digital gift cards, in fact, no. That would actually be better: the financials behind gift cards are audited.

Either way, that kind of thing has *ABSOLUTELY ZERO* do with "crypto-currency" as a meaningful concept.
 
mudcore
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:11 pm

What? Opening a wallet for Litecoin and being able to send and receive is quite literally a matter of a couple minutes, mostly all due to actual inputs required by the user. A whole day to sync? What?

Anyway, just more anger. Just more projection. Just more laughter because its the only possible reaction to have here to a person who is so clearly personally upset they missed out its pathetic.
 
Glorious
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:23 pm

I dunno man, lately Wells Fargo has been making great strides in innovating around that archaic "real money" requirement.


Oh boy, another coiner canard.

What Wells Fargo actually did was set impossible quotas for their customer-facing staff combined with incentives for pushing certain "products" like new checking/savings account, lines of credit, credit/debit cards.

Basically, if you didn't get x number of clients you interacted with to do y number of things, you'd get berated, demerited, demoted, and maybe even fired. But, if you did really good at pushing that stuff, the opposite would happen: Praise, raises, bonuses, promotion.

So, of course, duh, a bunch of employees who were fed up with the IMPOSSIBLE expectations just said "screw it" and started just pretending that customers asked for it. Thus a bunch of accounts and such were opened for customers who never asked for it, never authorized it, and were never officially informed about it.

Somehow, this wasn't caught by internal controls at all, but escalated until the government made them stop with fines and penalties, with Wells Fargo initially acting like nothing was wrong with their ridiculous sales strategy.

----

This kind of cross-selling pressure ENRAGES me, and normally I'd like to see the rank-and-file get amnesty while every manager burns, but in this case, this was financial fraud, and we just can't let low-level employees who did that continue to work in banks. Yes, I understand the plight, but as unfair as it is, they had to go.

ANYWAY, this has nothing to do with "real money". Money wasn't lost, leveraged, or built on "dangerously risky" grounds and so on. Nope, they just opened up accounts that customers didn't ask for. Money wasn't misappropriated to any other purpose, and this wasn't done to perpetuate any larger fraud. So as dastardly as Wells Fargo is/was, the common coiner story about how Wells Fargo is "just as bad" is laughable.

Redocbew wrote:
Not only that, but this all sounds very similar to what people said about the Internet when it was new also. That it was decentralized, free from control and oversight by The Man, and so on.


But that was completely and utterly make-believe. The internet doesn't really inter without ICANN, and before that it was some guy doing it and getting directly paid by the DoD to do so. It is also not decentralized, that's nonsense, and considered the "The Man" originally built the thing, I mean, what?

Redocbew wrote:
I doubt anyone here would consider the Internet to be completely free and open today, and with the mining megafarms in Russia and China already holding a significant portion of the overall "balance" of the network it's looking like crypto-currency might be headed in the same direction.


Russia isn't really known to be non-trivially involved...?

China already dominates mining, and has for years.

Meanwhile, the internet is significantly more "free and open" today than it was in its nascent stages, I mean, using ARPANET for anything other than government stuff was officially illegal, and you used to get warned if you posted something commercial-sounding on newgroups etc...

-----

I'm not trying to pick on you, but these kinds of claims are typical coiner canards that drive me crazy.

Convert wrote:
All of crypto could be stolen overnight and people would just start all over again and would build in more safeguards. Just like REAL money.


Lol, it wouldn't even remotely start over in the same way, and you know it.

Yes, some die-hards obsessed with the idea will restart it, and that aspect of it will never die. But that's going back to the time-frame of before the 10k pizzas, when it was novelty with little ostensible value.

I mean, sure, some people will believe the former glory might return, and it'll be worth more than just that, I'd guess, but a massive disaster like that that evaporated ~billions of dollars would cool off regular interest completely.
 
mattshwink
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:35 pm

mudcore wrote:
What? Opening a wallet for Litecoin and being able to send and receive is quite literally a matter of a couple minutes, mostly all due to actual inputs required by the user. A whole day to sync? What?

Anyway, just more anger. Just more projection. Just more laughter because its the only possible reaction to have here to a person who is so clearly personally upset they missed out its pathetic.


Except opening my wallet and pulling out a dollar (or using my credit card, which is what I do almost always these days) takes seconds. And I really have to work hard to find someone that does not take credit cards these days (and those that don't readily take my dollars, even in other countries). Virtual currency is not anymore convenient for me (in fact, it is less convenient). And I am somewhat technically savvy, those that aren't are left at the mercy of others (or exchanges, which have had significant issues).

Do I wish I got in on bitcoin (or litecoin, or etherium, or ...) when it was worth nothing? Absolutely. But I feel the same way about getting in early on Microsoft. Or Apple. Or Amazon. Or.....you get the picture. No one is prescient in such matters (if they were, there would be a bunch of people who make money on every trend, but those people do not exist). A relative few people get in early and make a boatload of money. The rest try to follow the trend to lesser (or negative) success. Have crypto "currencies" peaked? Don't know. Will crypto "currencies" be worthless in X years? Don't know either. And truthfully I do not care. I am not speculative investor.
 
Glorious
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:37 pm

mudcore wrote:
What? Opening a wallet for Litecoin and being able to send and receive is quite literally a matter of a couple minutes, mostly all due to actual inputs required by the user. A whole day to sync? What?


First off, the ltc blockchain is like ~15 GBs, so it's not even *PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE* for it to be "literally a couple of minutes" unless you have an internet connection faster than my LAN. :roll:

Second off, I am going by what people report: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/quest ... ore-wallet

Third off, it's only "faster" like that if you bootstrap it, which is evading much of the point behind cryptocurrency in the first place. :roll: (not to mention, downloading ~15GBs in any fashion just to send money is going to strike most people as "insane")

It's also not what I said, just scant words after I said the part you honed in on.

I mean, I *EXPLICITLY SAID* "FROM SCRATCH"

Glorious wrote:
It'll take him like a day to sync it from scratch


and here you, like all coiners, completely ignoring anything and everything that contradicts you. :roll: :evil:

mudcore wrote:
Anyway, just more anger. Just more projection. Just more laughter because its the only possible reaction to have here to a person who is so clearly personally upset they missed out its pathetic.


Ah, look, another coiner idiot who doesn't even understand the fundamental principles of what he extols as the inevitable future.

Enjoy your Dunning-Krugerrands.
 
mudcore
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:10 pm

mattshwink wrote:
Except opening my wallet and pulling out a dollar (or using my credit card, which is what I do almost always these days) takes seconds. And I really have to work hard to find someone that does not take credit cards these days (and those that don't readily take my dollars, even in other countries). Virtual currency is not anymore convenient for me (in fact, it is less convenient). And I am somewhat technically savvy, those that aren't are left at the mercy of others (or exchanges, which have had significant issues).

Do I wish I got in on bitcoin (or litecoin, or etherium, or ...) when it was worth nothing? Absolutely. But I feel the same way about getting in early on Microsoft. Or Apple. Or Amazon. Or.....you get the picture. No one is prescient in such matters (if they were, there would be a bunch of people who make money on every trend, but those people do not exist). A relative few people get in early and make a boatload of money. The rest try to follow the trend to lesser (or negative) success. Have crypto "currencies" peaked? Don't know. Will crypto "currencies" be worthless in X years? Don't know either. And truthfully I do not care. I am not speculative investor.


You seem to be confused. I am not trying to, or really interested in, making you switch from using paper currency and cards for your day to day. My point was simply Glorious suggests getting up and going takes much longer than it does in reality. He created a false situation, that it must be done "from scratch," which isn't some set in stone principle. Or really how anyone expects a majority to use it.

This all comes down to the fact that Glorious presents a narrative about how crypto should be. He basically goes "here your bible, now you live by this or I'll call you out" and all people say "Nah dude, there's no hard rules here" and he flips out. And then he falls back to "Ah, look, another coiner idiot who doesn't even understand the fundamental principles of what he extols as the inevitable future. "

Which perfectly sums this up. Glorious presents a hardline view of the scenario, but most of the users and people involved do not. Its absurd to try talking about something this new and evolving with literally no over riding structure, rule set, "fundamental principles," etc. with someone who refuses to even acknowledge this. It cracks me up. Even Bitcoin wasn't ever thought and conceived of being the same forever, part of its design is to acknowledge its likely need to change and evolve in the future. But yeah... let's still act like anyone but irrational detractors is still treating the Bitcoin whitepaper as a bible or something.


In my opinion you can change your perspective on this massively just by ignoring the speculators and such involved and focusing more on the people working on the infrastructure, protocols, etc, themselves. They're very different groups.

EDIT: Highly diverse and varied groups are converging on to this same idea or "movement" all at the same time but for numerous different reasons and goals. It's because everyone's needs and desires are so different, so varied that it gives me some confidence that a real shift will happen IMO. If everyone's goals were actually unified in this then I'd be scared. But yeah, just another point where trying to shout people down because they're not arguing the same points or arguing from the same "fundamental principals" misses the mark so hard its comical. Crypto must work its way into being fully antifragile. This is a messy, chaotic path.
 
Convert
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:31 pm

Glorious wrote:
Convert wrote:
All of crypto could be stolen overnight and people would just start all over again and would build in more safeguards. Just like REAL money.


Lol, it wouldn't even remotely start over in the same way, and you know it.

Yes, some die-hards obsessed with the idea will restart it, and that aspect of it will never die. But that's going back to the time-frame of before the 10k pizzas, when it was novelty with little ostensible value.

I mean, sure, some people will believe the former glory might return, and it'll be worth more than just that, I'd guess, but a massive disaster like that that evaporated ~billions of dollars would cool off regular interest completely.


Whaat? You are clearly underestimating people's desire to get rich quick :D

Having crypto start all over again would be a second gold rush. It would be like a Diablo 3 season starting over for the miners. For the investors, it would take a while for some to return, but they would if there were "safeguards" put in place. The regular mom and pop investor? Probably not. I'm not saying it will be worth the same as it is now the day after it restarts, and even if it reverts to 10k pizzas, I'm still willing to bet history will repeat itself and we'll be talking about $14k+ coins again. I mean, I'm not entirely disagreeing, I certainly have no real idea. Perhaps the mom and pop investors are the only reason the coins are so high and without them the coins would forever be stuck at the sub dollar exchange rate?
Tachyonic Karma: Future decisions traveling backwards in time to smite you now.
 
Glorious
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:36 pm

mudcore wrote:
You seem to be confused. I am not trying to, or really interested in, making you switch from using paper currency and cards for your day to day. My point was simply Glorious suggests getting up and going takes much longer than it does in reality. He created a false situation, that it must be done "from scratch," which isn't some set in stone principle. Or really how anyone expects a majority to use it.


Your point was wrong.

But that doesn't bother you, because as coiner, it doesn't matter what the facts are.

mudcore wrote:
This all comes down to the fact that Glorious presents a narrative about how crypto should be. He basically goes "here your bible, now you live by this or I'll call you out" and all people say "Nah dude, there's no hard rules here" and he flips out


This all comes down to how, like most coiners, you are ignorant unto functionally illiterate.

I mean, sure, you say "no hard rules", but when someone screws up in crypto what do you kind-souls say?

Heck, I don't even really mean to pick on Kougar(he's just saying what coiners regularly say), but in another thread where I just responded: "The NAM coin heist was due to minimal security at the exchange, had read it didn't even follow the NAM coin creator's own security guidelines"

So yeah, don't follow the "hard rules", but if you didn't, IT'S YOUR OWN FAULT. :roll:

mudcore wrote:
And then he falls back to "Ah, look, another coiner idiot who doesn't even understand the fundamental principles of what he extols as the inevitable future. "


I don't "fallback" into anything, rather, you clowns routine fall in it like you just can't help yourselves.

mudcore wrote:
Which perfectly sums this up. Glorious presents a hardline view of the scenario, but most of the users and people involved do not. Its absurd to try talking about something this new and evolving with literally no over riding structure, rule set, "fundamental principles," etc. with someone who refuses to even acknowledge this. It cracks me up. Even Bitcoin wasn't ever thought and conceived of being the same forever, part of its design is to acknowledge its likely need to change and evolve in the future. But yeah... let's still act like anyone but irrational detractors is still treating the Bitcoin whitepaper as a bible or something.


Do you think it's clever, or something, to state this smugly with the pretense that by doing so, you can never, ever be wrong?

I feel sorry for you, I really do.

I'm even nice enough to tell you that you really ought to cash out now, while (relatively few, but at least some of) you still can.

mudcore wrote:
In my opinion you can change your perspective on this massively just by ignoring the speculators and such involved and focusing more on the people working on the infrastructure, protocols, etc, themselves. They're very different groups.


Funny, I routinely do both.

But, being basically illiterate, you've never read any of that and assume I haven't. :roll:
 
Glorious
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:40 pm

Convert wrote:
Whaat? You are clearly underestimating people's desire to get rich quick :D

Having crypto start all over again would be a second gold rush. It would be like a Diablo 3 season starting over for the miners. For the investors, it would take a while for some to return, but they would if there were "safeguards" put in place. The regular mom and pop investor? Probably not. I'm not saying it will be worth the same as it is now the day after it restarts, and even if it reverts to 10k pizzas, I'm still willing to bet history will repeat itself and we'll be talking about $14k+ coins again. I mean, I'm not entirely disagreeing, I certainly have no real idea. Perhaps the mom and pop investors are the only reason the coins are so high and without them the coins would forever be stuck at the sub dollar exchange rate?


If society was collectively unable to ever learn from investment scams, we'd see cycles of people ruined by insane investments in tulips, stamps and stuffed animals.

We do not, in fact, see that: people seem to become inured to the generic concept and the angles must become novel.

This is an empirical observation.
 
Convert
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:47 pm

Well, I am glad someone places so much faith in humanity, maybe we aren't all as doomed as I tend to think.

I just see the same scams repeat with a slightly different packaging.
Tachyonic Karma: Future decisions traveling backwards in time to smite you now.
 
mudcore
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:49 pm

Convert wrote:
Well, I am glad someone places so much faith in humanity, maybe we aren't all as doomed as I tend to think.

I just see the same scams repeat with a slightly different packaging.


In some ways he's right. It's just that suddenly people jumped a couple steps up the ladder and now he's pissed off because the institutions and systems he places faith in have lost all trust by the masses. Doesn't understand the mind set or impetus.
 
Glorious
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Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2002 6:35 pm

Re: So who here is actually mining?

Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:52 pm

Convert wrote:
I just see the same scams repeat with a slightly different packaging.


Yes, but the analogy to what you are saying here is that beanie babies would have been reincarnated as "Cutey Children".

It wasn't. There were plenty of wannabe Ty Warners who I am sure tried, but it didn't take off.

Yes, the same basic scam/bubble/whatever does indeed repeat ever so often, but the difference involved is always a little more substantial than naive re-branding.

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