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Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

psionl0 said:
A large factor in the price of bitcoin is "hodling". People buy them and hang onto them.
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If Bitcoin, once purchased, could never be transferred or sold who would buy them and how much would they be willing to pay?

My guess is that if not for the hope of making money reselling them, no one would buy them at all. Selling them, not holding them is clearly the appeal. Of course if it were a viable currency spending them would be the appeal, but that it pretty much off the table at this point.
 
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The_Animus said:
According to some guy named Madoff, fiat money is so awesome that no one ever gets scammed.
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Had Madoff run his scams entirely in bitcoin it would have been all but impossible to seize any of the assets or recovered any of the money after he was convicted. Newer crypto-currencies do an even better job of this now so even the criminals are moving on from bitcoin.
 
Belz... said:
Feels like you're moving the goalposts. It's adequate at it for a small subset of goods and services. Few people accept BTC.
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I haven't moved anything. You said it's only good for speculation, I said it's good for buying certain things to the tune of billions a year, which it is.

That is a very small number.[/QUOTE]

It may be considerably less than the amount of fiat currency spent but billions is not a small number.
 
The_Animus said:
I haven't moved anything. You said it's only good for speculation, I said it's good for buying certain things to the tune of billions a year, which it is.
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I've alredy explained that "adequate" isn't the same thing as "good".

It may be considerably less than the amount of fiat currency spent but billions is not a small number.
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Yes it is. Not for an individual, but for a currency, yes.
 
lomiller said:
Had Madoff run his scams entirely in bitcoin it would have been all but impossible to seize any of the assets or recovered any of the money after he was convicted. Newer crypto-currencies do an even better job of this now so even the criminals are moving on from bitcoin.
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It depends, but I would agree it's generally easier to recover fiat money than crypto. Fiat/crypto already spent on services and consumed goods is gone regardless. Fiat/crypto spent on non consumable goods can be sold off to recover some of the funds. Fiat can be moved around and hidden and may or may not be recovered. Obviously finding a paper or digital trail can assist in that. Crypto can be moved around and hidden in various wallets. Finding a hardware wallet or passwords/phrases for digital wallets can let you recover the funds.
 
lomiller said:
If Bitcoin, once purchased, could never be transferred or sold who would buy them and how much would they be willing to pay?

My guess is that if not for the hope of making money reselling them, no one would buy them at all. Selling them, not holding them is clearly the appeal. Of course if it were a viable currency spending them would be the appeal, but that it pretty much off the table at this point.
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The onus is on you to prove that there is no "hodling" going on.
 
Belz... said:
I've alredy explained that "adequate" isn't the same thing as "good".
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Okay Belz. Define "adequate" and "good" and the difference between the two in this context. Then give an example of a product or service commonly purchased using bitcoin and why it's use for such only rises to adequate instead of good.
 
The_Animus said:
Okay Belz. Define "adequate" and "good" and the difference between the two in this context.
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What I mean is that while BTC can be used to pay for stuff, it's difficult to find places that take the currency, and so not everything can be purchased with it, as opposed to regular currency, with which you can buy everything. That's a ig difference, for me.
 
Belz... said:
What I mean is that while BTC can be used to pay for stuff, it's difficult to find places that take the currency, and so not everything can be purchased with it, as opposed to regular currency, with which you can buy everything. That's a ig difference, for me.
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I agree with you on that. And for the vast majority of products it is better to buy them with regular currency. A limited number of things, usually illegal, can be cheaper and safer for the consumer to purchase via bitcoin.
 
psionl0 said:
The onus is on you to prove that there is no "hodling" going on.
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How so? It was your claim that people were buying it to hold. At a bare minimum you should be willing to explain why people would do something like that.
 
Dr.Sid said:
You mean if you send good old dollars to Nigerian prince, you will get them back ?
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Many banks have systems in place to make it harder for people to be scammed this way - eg. withdrawal limits, personal confirmation required for international payments, credit card fraud protection, educating their customers about scams etc. It's actually quite difficult to be scammed by a 'Nigerian Prince' these days - you have to work around the protections. Even if you do manage it, if the scammer is not actually in Nigeria but a country with a working legal system (a distinct possibility) the authorities may be able to track them down and perhaps even recover some of your money (not that you deserve it - a person has to be particularly thick and greedy to fall for a 419 scam today).

With Bitcoin there is virtually no chance. With Bitcoin you could be scammed by your neighbor and can't do anything about it because there is no trail back to them. Since Bitcoin is such a risk it would make sense for banks to refuse to deal in it. That way they would at least protect their own customers from Bitcoin scams (and Bitcoin itself). Ideally there would be no connection at all between Bitcoin and fiat banks.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Many banks have systems in place to make it harder for people to be scammed this way - eg. withdrawal limits, personal confirmation required for international payments, credit card fraud protection, educating their customers about scams etc. It's actually quite difficult to be scammed by a 'Nigerian Prince' these days - you have to work around the protections. Even if you do manage it, if the scammer is not actually in Nigeria but a country with a working legal system (a distinct possibility) the authorities may be able to track them down and perhaps even recover some of your money (not that you deserve it - a person has to be particularly thick and greedy to fall for a 419 scam today).

With Bitcoin there is virtually no chance. With Bitcoin you could be scammed by your neighbor and can't do anything about it because there is no trail back to them. Since Bitcoin is such a risk it would make sense for banks to refuse to deal in it. That way they would at least protect their own customers from Bitcoin scams (and Bitcoin itself). Ideally there would be no connection at all between Bitcoin and fiat banks.
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Western Union wire is still a common vector for scam payments. So are electronic gift cards. These are basically same as cash transactions that are largely irreversible.

I don't really see the Twitter hack as a uniquely Bitcoin scam. If anything, the unpopularity of Bitcoin likely limited how many people this could target.
 
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Dr.Sid said:
Well if you buy for 20k, you want to sell when the price is more than 20k. So that's very good reason to hodl.
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Unless the price keeps going down, in which case it's better to sell now! How long do you HODL before deciding it's time to throw in the towel? If you bought really low and don't need the money then you could argue that it's better to HODL and hope the price goes up again. But people who bought in during the mania 3 years ago will probably never get their investment back.

Then one day you actually need the money (eg. due to falling ill or losing your job - a high probability these days) and have to cash out at whatever the price is at the time. It's only then that you realize what an idiot you were for HODLing. Once enough people get into that position, Bitcoin will tank like there's no tomorrow (which for Bitcoin there won't be).
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
If anything, the unpopularity of Bitcoin likely limited how many people this could target.
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But that is outweighed by distinct advantages - including the total anonymity of the scammers, lack of intervention measures, and capturing those who are most likely to fall for something that isn't what it seems (ie. bitcoiners).

Western Union wire is still a common vector for scam payments. So are electronic gift cards.
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Western Union is mostly used by immigrants sending money back to their families. Gift cards are... gift cards! People don't expect to get anything in return. Also they are not normally used for large sums of money. But Western Union is a well-known scamming vector, and they keep their customers informed about it.

Fraud Awareness with Western Union US
One of the things that sets us apart from other money transfer businesses is the trust that we build with our consumers... In addition, we work harder than ever to educate consumers about fraud so that they can take action to protect themselves. Western Union has invested a tremendous amount of time and resources in developing and continuously improving our consumer protection compliance programs.
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Bitcoin? The warnings are brushed off by coiners who accuse us of being shills for fiat banking.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Then one day you actually need the money (eg. due to falling ill or losing your job - a high probability these days) and have to cash out at whatever the price is at the time. It's only then that you realize what an idiot you were for HODLing. Once enough people get into that position, Bitcoin will tank like there's no tomorrow (which for Bitcoin there won't be).
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So large numbers of bitcoin holders will lose their jobs and have to cash in their bitcoins?

That's quite a bit of fortune telling there. In any other thread, somebody making a prediction like that would be dismissed as a kook.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
But that is outweighed by distinct advantages - including the total anonymity of the scammers, lack of intervention measures, and capturing those who are most likely to fall for something that isn't what it seems (ie. bitcoiners).

Western Union is mostly used by immigrants sending money back to their families. Gift cards are... gift cards! People don't expect to get anything in return. Also they are not normally used for large sums of money. But Western Union is a well-known scamming vector, and they keep their customers informed about it.

Fraud Awareness with Western Union US

Bitcoin? The warnings are brushed off by coiners who accuse us of being shills for fiat banking.
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I think the real benefit of a bitcoin scammer is that it can be done quickly from a home computer. The scam victim only has to believe the scam is real for a very short time, assuming they already involved with Bitcoin enough to know how to do transactions.

The Twitter security breach was pretty brief, and word got around quick about the hoax. Probably too fast to make Western Union a good option. Some sort of irreversible, electronic transfer from home was needed to cash in on the short scam window.

In that regards, Bitcoin was a good option.
 
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psionl0 said:
So large numbers of bitcoin holders will lose their jobs and have to cash in their bitcoins?
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Rule of so? I never said it will happen.

Then again,

Unemployment rose higher in three months of COVID-19 than it did in two years of the Great Recession
The COVID-19 outbreak and the economic downturn it engendered swelled the ranks of unemployed Americans by more than 14 million, from 6.2 million in February to 20.5 million in May 2020...

The rise in the number of unemployed workers due to COVID-19 is substantially greater than the increase due to the Great Recession, when the number unemployed increased by 8.8 million from the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2010. The Great Recession, which officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, pushed the unemployment rate to a peak of 10.6% in January 2010, considerably less than the rate currently
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14 million is definitely a large number, though of course we don't how many of them were bitcoiners.

Unemployment has reduced since we opened up, but now we are having to lock down again because the virus is spreading even faster than before. If we don't get a handle on it soon the number of infected could reach 10 million or more, with a large proportion having long-term health issues. How will this affect unemployment? We don't know exactly, but I bet it won't be good.

For Bitcoin's sake I hope that few Americans have significant holdings. However it wouldn't take a large number to have a big effect if they do. It would only take a few 'whales' cashing out to spook the market.

That's quite a bit of fortune telling there. In any other thread, somebody making a prediction like that would be dismissed as a kook.
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I made no predictions, so there is nothing to dismiss.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
I think the real benefit of a bitcoin scammer is that it can be done quickly from a home computer. The scam victim only has to believe the scam is real for a very short time, assuming they already involved with Bitcoin enough to know how to do transactions.
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You can send money quickly from your computer with a credit card too. The difference is...

The Twitter security breach was pretty brief, and word got around quick about the hoax. Probably too fast to make Western Union a good option. Some sort of irreversible, electronic transfer from home was needed to cash in on the short scam window.

In that regards, Bitcoin was a good option.
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The other advantage is that bitcoiners are always looking for an excuse to pay for something with it, to prove that it really is the fiat-beating superior technology they imagine it to be. So they get scammed trying to show us how smart they are.
 
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