On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 22:27:01 +0000 Sean Lynch <seanl@literati.org> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 3:02 PM Juan <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, 7 Jul 2015 15:21:50 -0400 grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:
Creating a system in which a Botswanan can give a few bits of their impoverished wages to their friend in Mumbai
What? Bitcoin exists so that rich people in western countries especially the US can become even richer. So far it worked pretty well.
Really? What rich person has gotten richer through Bitcoin so far?
It seems kinda obvious that virtually all bitcoin developers and users *in the west* are richer than people in Africa and India. That's what I was getting at. Bitcoin devs - *already rich by 'third world' standards* - are richer now. Millionaires even (notice that grarpamp was talking about impoverished wages...and people)
Remittances seem like the biggest use of Bitcoin at the moment. Sure, there's plenty of speculation, but your claim that Bitcoin's purpose is to make the rich richer is also speculation. And FUD.
So what amount of btc is being used to make payments between Botswana and Mumbai? What amount of btc is being used to speculate/gamble in a few big, centralized and fully NSA-AML-monitored exchanges?
Bitcoin hasn't led to any meaningful political/economic change yet, apart from possibly triggering the demise of government cash, which would be a complete disaster. Talk about 'unintended consequences' (unintended?)
I can't imagine you've read a single thing written by the people who influenced the creation of Bitcoin if you think that the collapse of fiat currencies is an unintended consequence.
But I said *cash* not fiat. And the collapse of relatively untraceable *cash* is *bad*. What we may end up with is FIAT currencies and NO CASH option* for those fiat currencies. Bad. Pretty bad. *aka credit cards.
Any fiat currency that is so bad that its users prefer to use Bitcoin deserves to collapse. Of course, so far, while Bitcoin has become popular in places like Argentina
Do you know where I live? Of course you don't have to know where I live. But you'll know it in a second anyway. I live in argentina - and let me tell you, bitcoin isnt exactly 'popular' here.
and Venezuela, the US dollar remains by far the more popular alternative currency in those places.
Yep, that's quite correct as far as argentina goes. I suspect it's true regarding venezuela as well.
And if Greece exits the Euro and starts printing Drachmas there, they will have to worry about people trading their Drachmas for Euros, not for Bitcoin.
A likely scenario exists in which there wouldn't be any independent crypto-currency. There would be fully 'traceable' electronic currencies controlled as always by the state and the banking mafia.
By what evidence do you estimate that this is a "likely" scenario?
The evidence is called 'history'. That, and the nature of government and its business 'partners' - or accomplices.
You may be right that many nation-states and banks will be loathe to accept an untraceable and uncontrollable crypto-currency, but that's the whole point;
You seem to be assuming that an uncontrollable and untraceable crypto-currency exist? I'm not seeing anything of the sort.
they're not going to have a choice. Cryptocurrencies don't have to be legal to be disruptive.
And yet there seems to be a fair amount of people in the bitcoin 'community' who are quite eager (or desperate) to have bitcoin 'regulated' so that it becomes 'respectable', 'legal'...and usable. Of course, this isn't a shortcoming that only affects btc. Anything that the government 'outlaws' becomes harder to transact.
The main problem that they've run up against before now is the lack of healthy underground markets to take advantage of them. Given time, governments' and banks' opinions and policies about cryptocurrencies will become irrelevant.
I do wish that was actually the case, but I think that view doesn't fully take into account the capabilities of the 'enemy'. J.