Nixonz00

XMR

Unreasonable

Nope. Many countries are fully embracing the technology. Some are playing wait and see. But none of them have any "kill shot" planned, nor would be capable of doing so. Regulations are a good thing folks. It allows for Institutional money to come in and make the area legitimate. Legitimacy means loads more money, means the prices sky-rocket.

Baconmon

From what I've seen in crypto news, this is true..
Even coinbase (currently the largest digital currency exchange in USA) is being sued by the IRS, because the IRS wants every one to pay taxes on bitcoins and wants coinbase to hand them the information of every single person that is using coinbase so they can find out who isn't paying bitcoin taxes..
The banks (especially bank of america) are applying for and grabbing up TONS of blockchain patents..

Crypto-currency is probably (in my opinion) the 2nd biggest disruptive technology in history (the 1st being the internet)..
But it strikes at the very heart of the control that international banker elites have, by bypassing fiat currency completely and rendering it obsolete.. The elites will try every thing in their power to prevent their control from slipping away.. They don't ever want to lose the ability to print billions of dollars any time they please (which is like every day)..

They already realize that they can't just make the blockchain disappear.. So instead they are going to embrace it fully, and take over control of it, and create their own coins, which will be taxable (hell, they already tax you on bitcoin though)..
And eventually they will make it illegal to use any crypto-currency besides their own .. You won't even be able to use bitcoin, because it doesn't allow them the ability to print new money on demand..

Isn't freedom to use your own currency the reason why the american revolution started?..
Well, it might be that time again soon..

On a side note, you guys should seriously invest in digital currencies.. The rate of return is UNGODLY .. In normal investing, you would do well to make 10% in gains a YEAR (for example, putting your fiat currency in the S&P 500).. But with digital currencies, it is more like around 30% A MONTH.. That means if you put for example $1000 in to digital currencies, and wait a month, you would now have about $1300.. And if you keep it in there for about 2 years with out taking any out, you will be semi-rich.. I've only been investing in it for a few months and already made some mad money.. But DON'T put all your money in one coin; Diversify!.. You should probably be splitting your money in to at least 3 coins.. For example, maybe bitcoin, litecoin, and ethereum.. That way, even if one goes down for a while, you will still make a profit.. Disclaimer: For some unforseeable reason the whole digital currency market could collapse and you lose all of your money, so invest at your own risk..

Tor1

Before Elon Musk, what's now called PayPal was probably the most disruptive potential technology ever.

Instead of credit cards tied to your central bank, or even to any foreign bank, there were credit cards that completely bypassed the established dinosaur banking establishment.

Radio was the first disruptive technology, and potentially could be again. There is nothing stopping us from a two way radio style internet, or a two way television signal style internet. Or from each of us building a local proprietary internet in each of our neighborhoods, yet usually we don't do these things.

In the same way Elon was bought off by being allowed to play with rockets and electric cars for the ruling class.

We're allowed to play with potentially disruptive toys as long as we don't do anything they see as overly destructive. But you are right about the spirit that inspired them to allow some measure of new freedoms and autonomies.

Freedom is something you have to build for yourselves. It can't be given to you. It can't be bought. You have to learn its forms and principles. These are the same principles required to understand and use cryptocurrencies. Fortunately learning about one, teaches you about the other.

Wuttier

Any recommendations on what to use? Like which Wallet, which coinage, which apps, etc.?

Baconmon

Right now I'm storing every thing on coinbase, but will probably start using bitflyer instead when it opens some time very soon in the USA (supposed to open in USA in 2017 autumn).. However, I don't want to keep my coins in those types of wallets, because I was one of the people who got their coins stolen by mt.gox (I only had 1 bitcoin at that time), and so I don't want the same thing to happen again.. Keeping your coins in an exchange like that means that either 1: the exchange could be evil again and steal your coins; 2: Their system could get hacked and some one steals lots of peoples' coins; 3: the government could force the exchange to give them your coins.. So that is why I want to move them in to just a normal personal wallet on an air-gapped computer (maybe a raspberrypi running raspbian for the OS or some thing).. At that point, I will only be using exchanges to buy coins, and then moving the coins straight to my personal wallet.. If I want to sell off some coins, I just do the reverse (personal wallet > exchange > fiat currency > my credit-union/bank account)..

I suppose I will end up using the normal bitcoin-qt client for the personal wallet on the air-gapped computer.. And I need to find the equivalent clients for litecoin and ethereum as well..
I actually don't have a cell-phone, so I wouldn't even know which cell-phone apps to use, but not sure I would trust putting any sort of wallet password in to a phone any way, unless I had sent a small amount of coins to a seperate wallet just to pay for some small things..

Right now the coins I have are just all the ones that coinbase offers (which is only 3 right now: bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum), although they are going to add bitcoin-cash on 2018 january 01.. By that time I will probably be using bitflyer exchange to buy coins instead, mainly because I think they will have more coins to choose from.. kraken also has more coins to buy than coinbase, but I had a lot of buggy glitches and other problems when I tried to use kraken.. I will probably just end up buying/holding any coin that bitflyer offers, because I am investing in the whole crypto-currency sector in general, not just one coin.. Bitcoin won't stay the king for eternity..

What I do is, every month I calculate the profit (not the entire total that you have in there) that was made during the month, and then multiply it by 0.09 (which gives you 9%), and I convert that 9% in to fiat currency and send it to my credit union as my kind of "monthly allowance".. (I initially used 10%, but my OCD wants to compensate for the fees that the exchange charges to convert money back and forth from fiat<->crypto, so I make it 9% instead)..

So if you have like $5000 worth of coins, and in a month the value goes up by about 30%, then you now have $6500.. So your profit you made that month is $1500.. So decimate that profit (1500) by 0.09 (9%), and you get $135.. So I convert (sell) $135 worth of coins in to fiat, and send it to my credit union.. (I usually just take it out of which ever coin has the highest dollar amount in my wallet, because if you take it out of all of your coins equally, you end up paying conversion fees on every coin type)..

You keep the other 90% of the profit in there, so that it makes even more profit next month.. You COULD take the whole $1500 out, but you would be ripping your future self off big time when you calculate how much your stash accumulates to over the next several months/years.. If you really want more money now, you could bump the monthly-allowance percentage up to like...24% or some thing...I don't think I would go higher than that.. And even though your allowance that you grant your self starts out meager, just remember that every month that allowance will (should any way) get bigger each month..

I want to touch quickly on the reason WHY crypto-currencies keep going up and never down.. It is simply because they are hugely under-valued.. The entire world is only now realizing what this disruptive emerging technology is, and eventually they will realize that fiat currency is now obsolete.. Basically, they don't realize how much crypto-currencies are worth, and the market reflects this.. So basically you are buying these coins at a huge discount, and as people slowly realize what crypto-currencies actually mean, the value/price rises.. The value also rises as more places adopt and accept crypto-currencies and as they become more common-place..
You can also see this in the fact that hardly any one (except very stupid investors) are willing to short these crypto-currencies.. The market to short bitcoin (and other crypto-currencies) exists, but is very shallow.. It is because most every one can see that crypto-currencies are here to stay; and it is already starting to do the job it was created for: Giving the power of money back to the normal people..

By the way, storing coins in a personal wallet has its own risks obviously.. Maybe your exchange can't steal them, but if you lose your private key to the wallet some how, your coins are gone.. What you might do is use a very secure computer (maybe air-gapped) to make some text file with all your sensitive information, like wallet addresses their private keys, and then encrypt it using some thing like scrypt.. On linux you can type some thing like: scrypt enc -t 480 info.txt info.txt.sc
That would encrypt info.txt in to info.txt.sc, and it would take 480 seconds (8 minutes) for each guess.. Meaning you personally would have to sit there for 8 minutes to decrypt the file, but an attacker would also have to wait 8 minutes just for 1 guess.. You shouldn't have to access this file very often any way.. The reason scrypt is good is because it requires lots of memory to encrypt/decrypt, so an attacker with a super computer would also need lots of memory to attack the file very quickly.. You could also double or triple encrypt it with different things if you want to..
An other strategy might be to split your stash in half, keeping one in the exchange and one half in a personal wallet, so that way if you lose your personal wallet some how, you still have half your stash.. Or if the exchange steal your coins, you still have the half in your personal wallet..

Wuttier

Thank you. This is a lot information to digest. Will look into all of it.

Tancred

Seeing cryptocurrencies as investment is the reason for the bubble that Bitcoin had.
It is the reason for the volatility that makes it a bad currency.

gazillions

I don't want the government to have the ability to monitor every purchase I make. They can do that now with plastic, so I like cash. I don't use customer rewards cards either.

They will regulate everything into submission.

EngelbertHumperdinck

Seems like the author doesn't understand the tech.

LewsTherinTelamon

Agreed.

Amadameus

What kind of methods can we develop to combat attacks that we haven't seen yet?

Honestly I don't think this represents a lack of concern on cryptocurrency's part, rather everyone is in a wait-and-see sort of situation.