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Bitcoin ...really money laundering


shootingstar

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Somone's daughter at work, who has a friend figured out computer program to mine for loose virtual money on the 'Net.  So sounds like a form of hacking.  As one knows, running a computer, electricity and burning out your mother board.  And all the info. I read so far in this sort of circuitous explanation and sh*t, it's obvious this is not regulated.  The info. says so. Repeatedly.  So daughter's friend bought a couch using bitcoin.  This group of friends are doing their university degrees in computer science.

Lookin' for those who have more wisdom on this.

Then, I can't ever invest in this.  It's wrong and we're being hosed.

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It prob wouldn't survive without criminals pumping money into it.

At this point in time, it's a lousy idea. One expert described it as the Wild West of money.

Bitcoin mining is legit, but its also like a pyramid scheme. The guys that got in early made a lot of money, now you can't make a profit without making a large investment. It's very expensive to get that much processing power, and you'll need to rewire the house to feed it enough power. The power bill alone could bring you to your knees. There's one state in the Pac NW that has banned large scale bitcoin mining, because they don't want to have to do a big expansion of power generating and adding on to the grid.

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19 minutes ago, late said:

It prob wouldn't survive without criminals pumping money into it.

At this point in time, it's a lousy idea. One expert described it as the Wild West of money.

Bitcoin mining is legit, but its also like a pyramid scheme. The guys that got in early made a lot of money, now you can't make a profit without making a large investment. It's very expensive to get that much processing power, and you'll need to rewire the house to feed it enough power. The power bill alone could bring you to your knees. There's one state in the Pac NW that has banned large scale bitcoin mining, because they don't want to have to do a big expansion of power generating and adding on to the grid.

Just show me in law, that this is legitimate.  I really mean this: haul up the lawyers on ths one.  Show me in ...law.

Sorry, I do some of this legal research...in paid work now and in former jobs.

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32 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

What little I know of crypto currency keeps me out of it, although some financial types say it "may" be a better hedge than gold.   I might look at it more closely if China comes up with a gold backed crypto as they are suggesting.  That kind of takes the "crypto" out of it though. 

Sorry, until someone can explain to me specifically the algorimths….and the law, I'm walking away.  We have near kids fooling around in bitcoin now.  

To me it's like giving me a chart of data visualizations....so how were the calculations derived?  Let's see the real raw data and its sources.  I got into a big discussion with someone at work, on data analytics.  I argued as soon as you give statistics presented in data visualization online dashboard:  that's evidence, that's a record.  It's just transitory but someone can take a snapshot..in time.  That's information with context.  

Lets see the real original sources of bitcoin ….without the theoretical, conceptual obsfuscation.

Sorry, to be abit hard azz.  But the world now demands looking hard under the car hood at times.

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43 minutes ago, late said:

Bitcoin mining is legit, but its also like a pyramid scheme. The guys that got in early made a lot of money, now you can't make a profit without making a large investment. It's very expensive to get that much processing power, and you'll need to rewire the house to feed it enough power. The power bill alone could bring you to your knees. There's one state in the Pac NW that has banned large scale bitcoin mining, because they don't want to have to do a big expansion of power generating and adding on to the grid.

I almost got caught in these areas of life:

  • a pyramid scheme....to invest $5,000 with a bunch of other people.  It's amazing to hear the lead yap away how she got $20,000 which was basically swindling money off other people.  There was even an off-duty police officer there in this circle.  My friend did invest and lost.  At the time, it felt too abstract and so wrong to hand off the money with no other purpose..but rip off others.
  •  Saw an online ad apartment to rent.  So in email exchanges....the renter asked me to wire money to this mysterious address.  I thought:  What the hell for?  Why would a Canadian wire money to another Canadian?  Stupid. I would never wire money to my mother in Canada.  I emailed back that if I can't meet you in person and why in the hell, would I ever use wiring money.  I said I would contact the police.  I was dropped.  Good.

I see bitcoin as the same pile of crap.  If a bunch of university students see it as a lark, with computer programming.....hacking.  There's a whole generational mindset...that fiddling right now.

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1 hour ago, shootingstar said:

Just show me in law, that this is legitimate.  I really mean this: haul up the lawyers on ths one.  Show me in ...law.

Sorry, I do some of this legal research...in paid work now and in former jobs.

Like I said, Wild West.

It's not adequately regulated, and it may need to be taken over by governments. That's the story of how the Modern world came to be. Slowly, in one crisis after another, the government got dragged into getting involved.

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46 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

I almost got caught in these areas of life:

  • a pyramid scheme....to invest $5,000 with a bunch of other people.  It's amazing to hear the lead yap away how she got $20,000 which was basically swindling money off other people.  There was even an off-duty police officer there in this circle.  My friend did invest and lost.  At the time, it felt too abstract and so wrong to hand off the money with no other purpose..but rip off others.
  •  Saw an online ad apartment to rent.  So in email exchanges....the renter asked me to wire money to this mysterious address.  I thought:  What the hell for?  Why would a Canadian wire money to another Canadian?  Stupid. I would never wire money to my mother in Canada.  I emailed back that if I can't meet you in person and why in the hell, would I ever use wiring money.  I said I would contact the police.  I was dropped.  Good.

I see bitcoin as the same pile of crap.  If a bunch of university students see it as a lark, with computer programming.....hacking.  There's a whole generational mindset...that fiddling right now.

I think your actions are prudent.

But technically, bitcoin mining is creating money. It's an odd way to do that, but it's not intrinsically bad. One way to look at this is that when you take out a loan, you create money. When you pay off the loan, you destroy money.

I know, counterintuitive. Its like when you stumble across big infinities and small infinities and you get a headache.

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2 hours ago, shootingstar said:

Sorry, until someone can explain to me specifically the algorimths….and the law, I'm walking away.  We have near kids fooling around in bitcoin now.  

To me it's like giving me a chart of data visualizations....so how were the calculations derived?  Let's see the real raw data and its sources.  I got into a big discussion with someone at work, on data analytics.  I argued as soon as you give statistics presented in data visualization online dashboard:  that's evidence, that's a record.  It's just transitory but someone can take a snapshot..in time.  That's information with context.  

Lets see the real original sources of bitcoin ….without the theoretical, conceptual obsfuscation.

Sorry, to be abit hard azz.  But the world now demands looking hard under the car hood at times.

I agree and for now, I am out. 

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11 minutes ago, Further said:

I don't understand where the money comes from. I semi-understand that bit coin mining is analyzing data streams and plucking out the bit coins ? But how do the bit coins get in the data stream to start with ? And where is this data stream ? 

I really don't think we boomers are capable of understanding it. :D:(

 

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3 hours ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

I really don't think we boomers are capable of understanding it. :D:(

 

I think we are.

3 hours ago, Further said:

I don't understand where the money comes from. I semi-understand that bit coin mining is analyzing data streams and plucking out the bit coins ? But how do the bit coins get in the data stream to start with ? And where is this data stream ? 

I think it's the space when transactions are happening or something like that.  Probably more variations.  Pretty scary.  By the way, I'm guessing... just on 1 facet. Any nefarious opportunity that you can think of to digitally sneak around....

Come on you folks...algorimths are invented by human beings...computers are just a container/engine.  The software program is the vaccum cleaner...and there's a person running that vacuum cleaner.  How can one trust the vaccum cleaner....you got to be a programmer yourself to fight back.

So this employee, same person who told me about her daughter's friend, said to me:  "Oh, my daughter would never do anything like that."

I said to her:  "You don't know. Adult children are independent of their parents".  I wasn't trying to be mean, folks. But her daughter lives at home, onto her 2nd degree (computer science), worked in retail jobs as a cashier.  Desperately wants to shore up her self-respect to earn money....  I'm sure she's fine...but it doesn't take much to tip over on other side, especially if you have a friend already dabbling in bitcoin.

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It seems to me like the 1600's Dutch Tulip Craze where certain single tulips could pay for a house.

There is nothing physical to back up the value of Bitcoin and it's usefulness, if any, seems temporary - except for criminal money laundering.  To gain in value, it requires the next-bigger-fool scenario.  It's a short-term and gamble and almost surely a long-term loser.

In any case, approaching 70 and in good financial shape, I don't need to risk my nest egg on something that seems all wrong.

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13 hours ago, Further said:

I don't understand where the money comes from. I semi-understand that bit coin mining is analyzing data streams and plucking out the bit coins ? But how do the bit coins get in the data stream to start with ? And where is this data stream ? 

Let me say sorry right up front.

Anything can be money. Just before Shay's Rebellion, the Massholes in Boston had sucked all of the hard coin out of the rural areas, and made the American paper dollars worthless. That's why Shay rebelled. He was a vet that had just liberated the country, and his reward was for the Massholes to rig finances so they could steal his farm. He couldn't use his pay, in dollars, to pay his taxes, or any other debt owed in Boston.

There was no money. So people used receipts as money. It's a kinda sorta barter system. It's crude, but it works, and seems to happen spontaneously when what had been money disappears or stops being money. (Think Germany in the Depression when a loaf of bread would cost hundreds, and cost even more manana.

Anyway.

Here's an oversimple example. You take out a loan, money gets created. You pay off the loan, money gets destroyed.

Every bitcoin has a unique identifier. These numbers were easy to find in the beginning, now they are freakishly hard to find, and expensive to find. If you find a valid number, you register it, and whatever the value of a bitcoin is, that is yours to use as you like.

This is not to say I am a fan. I've never touched the stuff, and never will. There are serious problems with it. When one guy died, his bitcoins died with him. You can get robbed without any real chance of recourse. That type of bitcoin can go out of business and their value can just disappear.

Btw, if you are ever in a city with a museum of money, and you're going to think I'm daft for saying this, do not miss the chance to go. It was common in the old days to mix base metals with silver or gold. Just look at a few coins, and you know. It was a sort of inflation before they had the word to describe it. Prob doesn't sound like much, but it's actually fascinating to see all the different ways people had of making money.

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12 hours ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

I really don't think we boomers want to understanding it.

You can read this if you want.  https://www.investopedia.com/news/how-bitcoin-works/   Me.. I decided not to get involved in this at all.

I'll assume... bitcoin may be used as a financial tool for money laundering, is an unintended consequence.  This is secure monetary exchange that can't be confiscated or seized during a drug bust, etc.. by any government.

It appears that mining is a reward for proving the bitcoin transaction is indeed valid.  "I paid you $" is validated.   Why I paid you doesn't enter into the calculation at all.  

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From bikeguy's link:

Recording a string of transactions is trivial for a modern computer, but mining is difficult because Bitcoin's software makes the process artificially time-consuming. Without the added difficulty, people could spoof transactions to enrich themselves or bankrupt other people. They could log a fraudulent transaction in the blockchain and pile so many trivial transactions on top of it that untangling the fraud would become impossible.

By the same token, it would be easy to insert fraudulent transactions into past blocks. The network would become a sprawling, spammy mess of competing ledgers, and bitcoin would be worthless.
 
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On 1/25/2020 at 10:06 AM, shootingstar said:

Just show me in law, that this is legitimate.  I really mean this: haul up the lawyers on ths one.  Show me in ...law.

Sorry, I do some of this legal research...in paid work now and in former jobs.

Just wondering, in any sort of thing like gold or art or tulips, what does the law have to do with it other than to tax it? You have buyers and sellers that determine the value of a bitcoin, and if people or merchants want to accept or use bitcoins, that's up to them.

The WHOLE point of bitcoin is to get away from government control.  Trust it or not, it is something that you have to CHOOSE to participate in.  Opt in, not opt out.  Don't like the rules, don't play the game.

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For sure buying stocks on the market can be a game also.  Crafty people "short" the pricing, by driving a stock price very high in order to enrich themselves by selling and then it falls a lot.  the biggest difference is anyone on the stock market can look at the pricing and track it ...It's a decision you can see along with all others worldwide, to make your personal move or..not.   

Bitcoin has no open transparent system to look at or even if we could.....we couldn't understand it.  There is no point for me to invest, in something one cannot see nor understand at the most basic level in terms of its patterns/trends. When there's fraud there's no recourse right now....the law has not yet kept up nor have the regulators figured out methods to detect.

I appreciate the concept of "trust" since we buy/exchange goods and service with money...concepts of understanding the value of currency and how to calculate cost and value. We teach it to chlldren and solidify understanding with increased complexity which morph into accounting and large scale financial systems.  So for bitcoin, is it arming children with coding practices?  I understand some elementary school children learn to code at the most basic level.

There are some things, I look forward in digitization but in bitcoin and cryptocurrency, no.  If there is currency system that doesn't allow all participants equal footing because they can't /read code....because the tricks are hidden in the code, then it's a flawed system of inequity.

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7 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Just wondering, in any sort of thing like gold or art or tulips, what does the law have to do with it other than to tax it? You have buyers and sellers that determine the value of a bitcoin, and if people or merchants want to accept or use bitcoins, that's up to them.

The WHOLE point of bitcoin is to get away from government control.  Trust it or not, it is something that you have to CHOOSE to participate in.  Opt in, not opt out.  Don't like the rules, don't play the game.

Yea, one gets a chance to join a pyramid scheme.  Thank god, I walked away from temptation. Believe me, it's seductive.

as for govn't control.  This makes me laugh. The very people who don't want govn't control, whine to govn't when they are in financial/emergency trouble.  It's just pathetic

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