On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 02:57:04AM -0500, grarpamp wrote:
On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 1:22 PM, The Doctor <drwho@virtadpt.net> wrote:
Why would somebody trust a centralized entity that interfaces with a decentralized system that deals with something people perceive as valuable? "Hey! I'd rather work with a central point of failure!"
Probably because they don't currently have a choice. ie: afaik, there's no good decentral/p2p fiat-BTC exchange. Localbitcoins might be close in a way... distributed transaction locations in person... but it has a long way to go as far as volume and price sanity in any given area. And there seems to be some rollup of your transaction stats to the site, possibly including your price and volume, which a great many would not care to share. Until the commute to your local btc trader is tolerable, and under your desired level of regulation (or not), the big exchanges will remain the only real way to move nontrivial amounts in/out. That's not a problem for most players, they just want a place to play that looks stable long enough to push their transaction of interest through, or make enough money trading to offset the risk of trading there.
I've said it elsewhere.. The legally accepted way to launder money is hide it in high-frequency trades. Why would you want to trade on a centralized and reporting-to-the-regulators exchange? Well, its the perfect (and only) place to gain a sufficiently large anonymity set, and then when the exchange goes bust and large amounts are 'stolen' the entire corrupt Bitcoin 1% cartel now has plausible deniability that they were ever involved in Silk Road, or that fiat money bankers engineered the crash and subsequent 'ressurection' and additional 10x price jump you'll see in 6 to 9 months. See, it WAS those evil anonymous and distributed hackers that did it, really, not us central disaster capitalism planners. At least us farmers who remember the energy crisis, the farm crisis, the following mortgage crisis, and now the Bitcoin crisis sorta see a pattern here. My long-term bets are on more disaster capitalism when the great lakes freeze and the artic melts, and that the real money is in political theatre. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Troy Benjegerdes 'da hozer' hozer@hozed.org 7 elements earth::water::air::fire::mind::spirit::soul grid.coop Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, nor try buy a hacker who makes money by the megahash