Bitcoin - A tool or an investment?

Communications Center Out Of Pod Experience
61

From what I understand Bitcoin is used by people to avoid the law, if it’s not private how have these people been able to operate? This is fact, authorities are unable to catch up with them.

Have a look into TOR browser, annonymous domains can be purchased which I beleive many retailers have done.

Then have a look at Bitcoin Mixing

Bitcoin mixer - Bitcoin Wiki(or,different%20bitcoins%20to%20their%20destinations.

If these techniques are used the authorities will never catch these people who actually know what they are doing.

Here’s a link to info about Bitcoin Tumbling which isn’t actually illegal.

Are Bitcoin Tumblers Detectable? | Talk Business.

I also took the time to google “How much Bitcoin was used for crime in 2023?”

“2023 in crypto-crimeIn 2023, the value of cryptocurrency transactions received by illicit addresses dropped significantly to $24.2 billion. However, this figure is a lower-bound estimate and will likely increase as more illicit addresses are identified.”

Source: An In-Depth Look at Crypto-Crime in 2023 Part 1 | Trend Micro (FI).

So no, there is no nonsense here, just cold hard facts you can verify yourself. $24 billion in illicit crypto funds is concerning, based on this figure alone I’m unsure how BTC could be seen as not private, BTC is part of the privacy toolkit along with other services and well thought out techniques, people have devised methods of making it private.

It’s funny really, money launderers have always been around, this role seems to evolving into crypto/money laundering.

62

It’s not for retail, I use it for black markets.

63

Could you explain further please? (keeping in mind the terms of usage of this forum)

64

I’ve only ever used Crypto on Bovada. For Super Bowl LV I bet that Brady would win, would receive the MVP, and that team Brady would score at least 3 touchdowns.

65

Dude, he’s been trolling you .

66

I move a lot of product internationally.

1 Like
67

image

68

Whole shiploads of Antimatter I suppose? :rofl:

69

:joy::rofl::sweat_smile:

1000001759
1000001759810×1080 186 KB

70

:sweat_smile:

That is already the case for months without a break. The blocks are always full. The problem is that block size scaling has a big cost on node hardware requirements and it has negligible increase in throughput. Effectively it would hurt the decentralization of Bitcoin because you need more storage and faster CPU etc. Remember that this is a database will simply grow forever.

Lightning is an attempt to increase the transaction throughput, but it changes the limitation for how many transactions to how many people can be onboarded. Lightning is not trivial to use so it is sot something people with no technical skill will use, and because it still needs an onchain transaction to onboard it may be to expensive and not accessible for most people.

But it turns out, that Lightning is still a very good technology to wire other layer 2 solutions together. The most promising l2 are in my opinion federation based system. There is for example a sidechain called Liquid, it is run by a federation of signatories and is much faster than the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin can be locked on the main chain and then used on this sidechain.

Another federation based technology, my favored is a so called fedimint. It is basically an ecash mint, which is a very privacy friendly technology that predates Bitcoin, but that failed because it still had to be centralized. This is now combined with a federation of independent guardians that each hold a key and together they can operate what basically is a bank that is funded with Bitcoin. People can easily onboard for free and freely send each other money, there is even possibilities for recovery if you lose your phone, it is much more comfortable. And there could be thousands of those existing in the world, run by communities, banks, even governments, and they all can be wired together with Lightning so it doesn’t matter on which mint you are, you can always send money to everyone else.

Basically Bitcoin + Fedimint + Lightning already is the technology to have a completely functioning global scalable financial system, that fully leverage cryptography to be as automated as possible. It’s even similar to the existing financial system, basically Bitcoin is the central bank that issues the money, Fedimint is used to create automated banks and Lightning is the clearing network between this banks.

Obviously all this technologies have their own trade-offs and it’s different and more complicated than if everything could be done simply on the blockchain. But I don’t think a blockchain only system can scale to global requirements and still be decentralized.

If this will be adopted this way, we will see. I’m not sure, but the technology for sure exists and I’m sure there will be many more solutions with different trade-offs with time.

1 Like
71

Because looking at a complex process with a bipolar mind is going to be quite the confusing situation. Lots of Bitcoin criminals have been caught, some not because justice doesn’t have the time or resources to deal with it and also some aren’t noticed until it’s way too late.

As your friend Karak Terrel already explained you over and over and over and over, the BTC transaction ‘CAN’ be private as the transaction itself if you take enough precautions. However, when you try to get real money from it, it will be more public one way or another.

Doris Day once said :
“Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be”

I bet you gank those transports too just to get double the value… :smiley:

1 Like
72

My dear dolly Polly shut your eyes
Lie still, lie silent utter no cries
For the Taxman, heartless, cold
Paid in coing of gold

He’ll chop and slice you
cut and dice you
and eat you awhole.

1 Like
73

Yes, I agree it will be public, but with bitcoin mixing and tumbling authorities may not be able to see that a seemingly legal crypto account owned by someone on a popular crypto exchange is actually illegal. This person is then free to exchange crypto for real cash as long as there is nothing linking them to fraudulent activity.

Once Bitcoin is mixed and tumbled it seems difficult catchup with the criminals, so even though Bitcoin is very public in order to get a conviction there needs to be evidence which a jury can believe beyond reasonable doubt, if no such evidence exists then there is no conviction I’m afraid.

So, Bitcoin has a feature where you can use a wallet once and then never use it again. It’s possible to create bitcoin wallets as and when needed, as more and more wallets get created/discarded It seems to become an impossible task where there just isn’t enough manpower to monitor all of it.

If I follow the logic of what criminals could do it would go something like this;

Criminals conduct their operations and recieve BTC, the BTC then gets transfered through 3 or 4 possibly more BTC mixers and tumblers, After that process the BTC is sent to a created BTC wallet which authorities aren’t aware of due to manpower being low.

Now, at this point criminals have options where the most effective might be to get an ordinary citezen who has fallen on hard times to create a BTC account with a crypto exchange and recieve the BTC and withdraw it where the criminals give the ordinary citezen a small cut of the money. Criminals could also put an add in the Job/Employment services where 1000s of people could reply, and then feel out if interviewies might be prepared to do some shady work.

Using this sort of process criminals can stay in the shadows, if the ordinary citezen gets arrested then they will say someone called “peter” employed them and got them to do it. criminals will then go an recruit someone else to launder their money and the cycle continues.

Googled: How many bitcoin wallets are there?

“As of March 2024, there are just over 46 million Bitcoin wallets holding at least $1 of value. This figure is based on the number of unique addresses. In total, approximately 460 million Bitcoin wallets have been created. However, around 90% of these wallets are inactive or hold minimal value.”

74

You can still buy now and make a decent run.

Plenty of room left to go till 3k-4k an ounce

75

:rofl:

1 Like
76

Bitcoin is a tool. It is meant to be a secure ledger for business, supply chain, and logistic nerds among other niche community groups.

I personally don’t believe we are any closer to having ISK in real-life. Aka 1 centralized digital global currency :man_shrugging:

idk but I think this can happen to Concord LOL

1 Like
77

That is definitely not what it is. You don’t need expensive decentralized consensus for problems that are long solved with cheap centralized databases.

78

well that’s so “they” say. :man_shrugging:

I honestly don’t know why bitcoin was created in the first place.

79

It was created as a Proof Of Concept : to prove that the idea works and find out flaws if it does not work.

1 Like
80

Because with every other digital money you always have a central issuer who has power over everyone else. People searched for decades for a way to create digital money that does not have this central issuer and administrator and there are many predecessors to Bitcoin that where stepping stones but did not quite get there.

Satoshi Nakamoto was the first to solve that problem when they revealed Bitcoin to the world. They gave the knowledge and software away for free for everyone to use and do with it what they please. Then they vanished again and we still don’t know who they where.

It’s all open source and every aspect of it can be inspected and be understood. It’s not even very complex and certainly much much easier to understand how it works than the regular financial system.

How useful it is and how much demand there will eventually be for such a system if finally everyone understands it and realizes that it is here to stay is everyones guess. Obviously there is a lot of speculation involved concerning this.

1 Like