Do you currently own any Bitcoin or cryptocurrency?
Displaying poll results.21884 total votes.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce
I lost a heap (Score:4, Funny)
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I would have done it by now :P
Re: I lost a heap (Score:1)
Re: I lost a heap (Score:1)
Are you assuming we're Murican?
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Tax collectors are universally despised, it doesn't matter if we're talking about the American IRS or your own nation's organization.
Even 2000 years ago we had contempt for the tax collector, placing in on the same level as a sinner.
Matthew 9:10 "Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples."
Reading deeper, much of the New Testament verses on tax collectors (and prostitutes) was about elevati
Re: I lost a heap (Score:2)
Stilld can't get a can of coke with it. Retailers don't accept it. And the price fluxates so much you can't advertise a price in btc. You have to convert instantly.
Re: I lost a heap (Score:3)
The coinbase visa card spends dollars and then instantly converts your Bitcoin to dollars to pay the bill.
So you aren't spending Bitcoin to buy things. You are spending dollars charging it to your account, and then paying off said account instantly.
Please look up what you are doing
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Similar boat, used to use the BTC miner for stress testing overclocks. Couldn't even get a can of coke with a BTC back then.
Nowadays, you could easily buy coke with just a single bitcoin.
And maybe something to drink too.
Re:I lost a heap [of cryptocurrencies] (Score:3)
I'd give you the funny mod if I ever got a mod point to give. Not sure of your motivation, but I even think you deserve FP credit for trying to short-circuit the cryptocurrency evangelists and swindlers.
My take is that value involves scarcity, and there is no real scarcity in cryptocurrencies. Infinite supply of numbers and infinite number of algorithms to pick out some of them as special numbers. Infinity is NOT scarce. BitCoin as a particular example just picks out 21 million "interesting" numbers, but th
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Now tell me exactly how the NWBC has lower "value" than BitCoin? But you should invest in my NWBC exchange because of the value of all the electricity I saved!
You should really inform yourself about the topic, and I don't mean it in a condescending way. It all makes sense if you take in the whole picture. There are many more definitive sources, but basically the work makes the blockchain unique and unfalsifiable. There is your scarcity. That it takes too much energy and there are better methods is likely, but bitcoin developers are notoriously conservative, so it will not change anytime soon.
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I've actually read quite a bit about cryptocurrencies, including an entire book mostly dedicated to the topic. I call hokum and BS and you made no actual attempt to answer the question. I count that as additional evidence of my thesis and to make it worse I don't even care which category you're in. I believe you're a sucker or a suckee if you buy or sell (or defend) cryptocurrency.
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I've actually read quite a bit about cryptocurrencies, including an entire book mostly dedicated to the topic. I call hokum and BS and you made no actual attempt to answer the question. I count that as additional evidence of my thesis and to make it worse I don't even care which category you're in. I believe you're a sucker or a suckee if you buy or sell (or defend) cryptocurrency.
It was not a question, just public denouncement, which incidentally contained a question mark. You are clearly not informed enough, either you are not telling the truth or have selected wrong sources or have made wrong conclusions. I did respond in a good faith, which I shouldn't have done, as it ends like all internet "discussions". I also believe bad things about you with this language, but am not going to venture them publicly.
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By the way, that book was a by a strong advocate of cryptocurrency. Understanding that most of his positions can be reduced to religious twaddle is not the same as being "not informed". Obviously a terminated discussion.
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I call hokum and BS and you made no actual attempt to answer the question.
To be fair, he did attempt to answer your question, although the answer misses the point I think. And I do believe you had a question, before all the insults started flying (although "thesis" might be pushing it).
The "scarcity" of Bitcoin was a human decision baked into the original protocol. There are mechanisms by which it could be changed, but you would have to change the minds of a lot of miners to do that, miners who would probably not see a huge benefit to devaluing the currency they are paid in. U
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No, not remotely an answer to my question. Extends to prior "reply", too.
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I'm no Bitcoin evangelist, but it does do something that didn't really exist before - distributed transactions that do not require a third party.
To be pedantic, they do require a third party, but it is a distributed third party rather than a centralised third party. The value of this difference causes great debate.
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Interesting perspective, but I don't see how it makes a difference to my position regarding the intrinsic lack of value of cryptocurrencies, since there is also an infinite supply of third parties. However, I think that angle runs aground harder on the problem of bad actors among the "distributed third party".
Once you start considering bad actors, you have to notice that many of the advocates of cryptocurrencies are criminals who want better ways to launder dirty money. I see that as a losing justification
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Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, just like bills and (to a great extent) coins. Coins used to have value, back when they were made of useful metals, but now they're manufactured at the lowest cost (zinc pennies with a pinch of copper for color, nickel because it's abundant and cheap, etc).
Money as we use it today only works by mutual agreement - we all agree that a dollar or a euro have some value, so they do.
I had a conversation with a co-worker early on in the Bitcoin era, and I argued that Bitc
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Most of what you say makes sense, but I still have to be colored extremely skeptical. Maybe I'll feel different after the current two books, one on blockchain and the other mostly focused on Bitcoin.
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OP's point is there are in infinity of potential crypto-currencies, not that there's an infinity of Bitcoin-in-particular.
My own point is that, much like the situation with gold, if we adopted it as a currency for easy use in the US, meaning there were savings accounts and CDs and the like, not just a paypal-equivalent, then the government still controls the money supply. The entire foundation of modern economics is that the supply of physical currently is only barely related to the money supply, and nothi
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Imagine not understanding the 51% attack, which China is capable of exploiting any time it chooses to do so.
I hope you don't have any dependants if you're """investing""" in cryptocurrency.
Re: I lost a heap [of cryptocurrencies] (Score:4, Interesting)
Value involves scarcity, yes, but that's not the only element. Consensus (the network effect) is a massive part of how modern currencies get their value. A dollar is worth a dollar because we've all agreed to operate on the myth that a dollar is valuable.
Consensus can be organic, as in the case of Bitcoin, or it can be compelled, as with most national currencies. But without the network effect, your currency isn't going to be worth much.
Also working against your shitcoin is the fact that these sorts of networks tend to create natural monopolies within a closed system. So, not only do you need to figure out how to grow your network to Bitcoin scale, you also have to figure out how to overcome the natural monopoly BTC already has in crypto. This - in turn - drives the value of Bitcoin up.
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At first I thought we had some areas of agreement (about the supply of suckers?), but then I looked a bit more closely and found nothing solid. Maybe you want to try to clarify what you are saying? Or if you were trying to answer my question, then you need to try quite a bit harder. Or maybe you're just extremely confused about what "natural monopoly" and "closed system" mean? Or perhaps crossing up your buzzwords and you meant to say something about "first mover advantage" or "fiat currency" or "gold stand
Re: I lost a heap [of cryptocurrencies] (Score:3)
No, I mean natural monopoly. That's not the crux of the argument for why it's valuable, but it is the case. There are infrastructure costs for each new coin. Risk assessment, network implementation, etc. Over long enough timeline, useful crypto-currency will turn into a monopoly because it's just more useful that way.
Bitcoin does have first mover advantage, which is why they have a clear majority of the crypto-currency "market" in general and pretty much an absolute monopoly of the hard money crypto-currenc
Re: I lost a heap [of cryptocurrencies] (Score:2)
And by closed system, I am referring to the idea that if there are very distinct economies, for example North Korea vs the U.S., then it's possible a different coin could dominate in each economy.
Another more potent example is that if we ever leave the planet, each planet would probably need its own crypto-currency to work around latency issues.
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Just for grins, I'll bet you can't imagine what happens if the US Government decides Bitcoin is too annoying and decides to respond. For example, a simple law that criminalizes accepting USD payment for Bitcoin. Which currency is going to win?
Nor am I curious about your motivations, though I'm now convinced you're a scammer of some kind. There's no rational discussion here.
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I recovered mine from a HD I formatted and my parents had been using for years, and was able to still get the right keys. Let me know if you still have access to this disk, my methods are repeatable.
Insider info (Score:1)
I mined thousands of Bitcoins back in the early days where a single CPU could hit a block of 50. Formatted that hard drive before I sold it.
So in theory, that makes the remaining Bitcoin all the more valuable since there is less that is usable...
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Everything I have is invested in gold-pressed latinum.
I keep my latinum in my two-compartment stomach. It affects my health terribly, but it is secure enough for me.
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Everything I have is invested in gold-pressed latinum.
I keep my latinum in my two-compartment stomach. It affects my health terribly, but it is secure enough for me.
That's a lot of latinum. No wonder your hair fell out!
What, you didn't make your own cryptocurrency?? (Score:2)
Come on, this is Slashdot. We're tech pioneers! I'll bet that Slashdot members have made over a dozen different failed cryptocurrencies.
The one that I did was a failed ERC20 reward token, that I gave out for quality posts at another tech forum. People weren't all that interested when they found that they couldn't trade them for real money, though.
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I simply have no interest in libertarian internet play-money.
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Somehow, I still remember "poke 36879,8" was my preference for the vic20. Weird what sticks with you over the years.
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And still prefer dark themes i guess? :)
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We must all serve governments because their monopoly of violence makes them legitimate. Got it.
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Blurry writing makes your good points hard to pick out.
Re: BITCOIN IS A SCAM!!! STAYAWAY!!! (Score:2)
Yep, you are right. The fantasies about Bitcoin are that there is no "federal reserve" with elevated powers. There basically is. Also, there is no valve for inflation control, so it can't act as money. In a society that uses bitcoin as currency, the most profitable move would be to hold bitcoin, invest in nothing, spend nothing. Economy would grind to a halt. People were rightly complaining about shadow money to superpacs to fund candidates, BTC is that times 100 for corruption and crime, and it has monetiz
Re: BITCOIN IS A SCAM!!! STAYAWAY!!! (Score:2)
The argument would generally be that the federal reserve notes are more legit because the government legislates dollars as the unit of account. You must ultimately convert everything you earn into dollars and pay dollars in taxes, regardless of if you are paid a salary in Bitcoin or Beanie Babies or in sexual services.
Re: BITCOIN IS A SCAM!!! STAYAWAY!!! (Score:1)
Re: BITCOIN IS A SCAM!!! STAYAWAY!!! (Score:2)
But that's just via a payment gateway that sells the Bitcoin for $ for you.
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The only good bitcoing (Score:2)
The only good use for yours is something like this [vice.com]:
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So-called 'cryptocurrency' is just another way to launder money and hide criminal activity.
Missing option: (Score:5, Interesting)
I owned bitcoins and i spent them.
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Re: Missing option: (Score:2)
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FWIW, coinbase has been stable, and nobody has lost coin there.
But still keep your private keys.
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I owned Bitcoins and I sold them ... kinda similar. (And amazingly, I didn't actually lose much on the deal).
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I pwned them and spent them. [grin]
Information wants to be free! (Score:1)
Lost my bitcoin (Score:1)
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Mined bitcoin back around 2000. Hard drive failed and I lost it all.
Considering that Bitcoin was created in 2009, you could probably just use your time machine to recover that HD. Or, you know, kill Hitler.
I hope people aren't answering this question... (Score:3)
It's akin to "Do you have a million dollars stuffed in your mattress?"
Uhhh, even if I did, I'm not fucking telling you!
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This is a question you should never answer.
So I should never answer "I don't own any Bitcoin or cryptocurrency of any kind" ??!?!?
Or do I?!?!?
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EVERYONE RAID OzPeter's MATRESSSSSSSS!!!!
Wide range (Score:1)
It's akin to "Do you have a million dollars stuffed in your mattress?"
I think the question is more akin to "do you keep any physical cash".
Because you don't know if the answer means they have $1, or $1 million...
Same for the answers to this poll, I have some but how much is secret to which the answer is only known to myself and a few thousand federal databases tracking transactions.
Now if you had to answer how or where where you kept the BTC, that I would be more reluctant to divulge...
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I'm going based on what I understand from people who are part of the community, so I don't really know... but the concept of using it as a retirement fund is one that I commonly hear.
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The people that I know hold kind of minimal amounts, more than a few hundred dollars but nothing like "retirement account" level holdings...
I'm sure there are a number of people who have been in it from the old days who hold significant amounts (sadly I am not one of them even though I used to mine a little, the amount I mined amounted to almost nothing and then was lost anyway).
But in that run up I think added to the mix, were a lot of people who basically put "Weekend at Vegas" level bets into Bitcoin and
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No, the question is along the lines of "do you have any money anywhere", not do you have a specific amount of money in a specific place. Very different.
It wouldn't be dangerous to tell people that yes, you have used fiat currency, and in fact currently own some. That would simply be considered normal. Knowing you have bitcoin is no different.
I have bitcoin. It's not a ridiculously high amount, nor is it somewhere accessible. But I can still answer the question in the affirmative with no more risk than telli
Still waiting .. (Score:3)
I'm still waiting for the Bitcoins that Elon promised to send to me. I'm sure they're going to arrive any day now!
There is ownership and ownership (Score:1)
It's become a criminal's playground (Score:3, Interesting)
Whether intended that way or not, cryptocurrencies have been taken over by people who are up to no good -- ransom payments, drug deals, hiring a hitman... All of these things become more convenient to accomplish with bitcoin so bitcoin encourages more of that kind of thing. Again, whether intended or not, that's how it is.
Do you think today's ransomware scams would be as widespread and (apparently) lucrative if the crooks had to ask you to send them a wire transfer or bring a suitcase full of cash to your local bus depot?
I wouldn't touch bitcoin with a ten foot pole (or a fifteen foot Ukrainian).
I wouldn't go to the toughest area of the red light district and start wandering around the streets looking like a rube. For the same reason.
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Where's the CowboyNealCoin option? (Score:3)
I need the CowboyNealCoin...
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Public ledger great! Monetary value mess. (Score:2)
Dogecoin (Score:2)
Dogecoin for the win!
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Nothing could replace the value of butane lighters and plastic silverware in a real collapse.
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Depends which Beanie Babies you have, https://www.ebay.com/i/3127089... [ebay.com] . BTC Is more valuable in opinion, in that at least it's a somewhat liquid asset.
No BTC, only DOGE (Score:1)
Yeah I know, DOGE. It was cheap. Still is. Either I've tucked $50 into a rainy day fund with a fluffy shiba inu on the jar, or it'll skyrocket and someday I can sell it all and buy a boat and stuff.
Who knows?
Would be nice to hit the crypto lottery in a big way.
I don't, but if I did... (Score:2)
... I sure wouldn't advertise it on a public forum.
Firstly, there's the risk that Slashdot would be hacked, and I'd either get scammed, hacked or physically 'encouraged' to hand them over
Secondly, there's a chance that the government might subpoena my IP details and investigate how and why I have cryptocurrency.
Finally, I'd say that Bitcoin has no more physical basis than any fiat currency, they're both subject to the whims of the market. I just wish I'd bought a few kilos of gold when it was really cheap.
XMR FTW (Score:2)
My crypto is WOW gold (Score:2)
I have enough World of Warcraft gold to buy about 5 years of game time. What's that worth, a few hundred dollars?
Sure, I had to "work" for it, and I had to pay to play in the first place. But it's more money than I got trying to mine BTC.
And it's more money than those people whose exchange wallets got wiped out have now.
This Is Not A Declaration (Score:1)
Nice try, IRS!
I'm still not sold on the concept (Score:3)
I'm still not sold on the concept. Crypto currencies have value only because people think they do. Now the same argument can be applied to fiat currency, but among the "people" who think it has value is the government, and that's a somewhat important distinction. The proliferation of alternative coins to bitcoin kinda proves the point, anyone can make a crypto currency, and based on the ramp-up in difficulty, whoever starts one that is at all successful will become extremely wealthy just due to being in early. This looks like a very fragile house of cards to me. To make it worse, it only takes one person to find a flaw in the underlying technology, and it's all suddenly worthless.
That said. People HAVE decided it has value, and it hasn't crashed yet. Many years ago there were all sorts of sites that would give out free bitcoins back when they were worthless (mostly to encourage adoption, though sometimes in exchange for showing some ads). I didn't get in quite early enough to get any whole ones, but I did get a bunch of small fractions of them, which added up to a total value of about $0.10 at the time. When bitcoin hit $10,000 I dug through some old backups and found them. I sold half of what I had for about $500 (and yes, I did report the transaction to the government), but I kept the rest, and figure I'll hold for a while longer. If it all goes to zero, they didn't cost me anything anyway so no real loss, and if they keep climbing, maybe I'll have some actual money some day.
Banks are getting into Crypto (Score:1)
Here's some reading for everyone:
Bitcoin Investment Thesis - Fidelity Digital Assets: https://www.fidelitydigitalass... [fidelitydi...assets.com]
Development with U.S. Banks and Cryptocurrency Custody: https://www.forbes.com/sites/h... [forbes.com]
JP Morgan created the JPM Coin: https://www.jpmorgan.com/globa... [jpmorgan.com]
Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones back in May 2020 said he's buying bitcoin: https://markets.businessinside... [businessinsider.com]
Point I'm making is the banking sector of the world knows the world Fiat currencies are in trouble. They're all diversifying their as
I don't own or care for cryptocurrencies tbh (Score:2)
How do you own Bitcoin? (Score:2)
CureCoin (Score:1)
brought to you by the irs (Score:2)
HODL! (Score:2)
I bought $1USD of Bitcoin and watched it fall down to 33 cents. Good thing it was not a larger amount.
Do you currently own any Bitcoin or cryptocurrency (Score:1)
I'd rather play a slot machine (Score:2)