Well, I am in Europe so I am not reading too much what Rand says there, but the US is behind the Europe on this matter.
Please read this (https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/going-cashless-can-learn-swedens-experience/) instead of rolling eyes.
Why should all transactions on it be recorded forever? Why should Alice's purchase of a pack of condoms be something she has to deal with the rest of her, and her descendent's life, because it is there forever?
What is recorded is that address A moved value to address B. There is no indication that why the transfer was made. Was it for the condoms, cigarettes, piece of soap, or something else
You're kidding, right? By that metric, I can pay my drug dealer with Venmo, as long as I don't put "ILLEGAL DRUGS" in the comment field. The authorities will never be able to figure it out. *facepalm*
In this case it was a question of condoms purchase (legal stuff), not from drugs (illegal stuff). And presumable from the point of general public, not from the point of law enforcement. In the case that I answered the general public (or law enforcement) don't know what Alice purchased. In case the Alice purchase something illegal, law enforcement can track the actors down based on their other activities and then find out that what was purchased by asking it from those that were part of the transaction. Same applies to your Venmo case too.
And complaining about Civil Asset Forfeiture is completely off-topic to my question.
I think that it is good example why you "as a non criminal should use digital coins". It would give you more control to your assets. Of course, if you know all regulations by heart, it is not a issue for you, but for many (https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_customs-agency-cash-seizures-airports-cost-travelers-millions/6171058.html) it is.
Further.. in this chain there are also represented other valid cases why somebody else could/should use digital coins. If you agree with any of them (e.g. Hotak's case in this story: https://www.bbc.com/news/world...), then the next question is that with whom they can trade with?
and it is with you.
Same way as voting keeps up democracy, using cash/digital coins will keep up our (and others,who might need it more ATM) right to own our assets and move them as we like.
what benefit do digital coins give us over cash and "regular digital money"?
Why you want to couple cash and "regular digital money" together, when digital coins are providing the same benefits that outgoing cash (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41095004) is doing? Wouldn't it be good to have some option when cash isn't around anymore?
Why should all transactions on it be recorded forever? Why should Alice's purchase of a pack of condoms be something she has to deal with the rest of her, and her descendent's life, because it is there forever?
What is recorded is that address A moved value to address B. There is no indication that why the transfer was made. Was it for the condoms, cigarettes, piece of soap, or something else. However, I agree that the privacy should be still improved.
Looking at my Postfix/Dovecot mail server I wonder how this "recall" feature will work.
Most likely it works so that the client don't send it to the server, so that the send actually means that send it 10 sec later.
Is that kind of feature needed at all? How it can be the most useful feature??
I have to ask a dumb question: When one buys into a currency, what is one looking at, other than hoping that for some random reason, the currency gains steam, or some bigwig is able to manipulate the currency in their favor, so you can sell before other forces cause it to fall?
Well... European people might want to buy USD now as FED is able to rise interests, where EKP seems to be unable to do it. It is expected that inflation will rise there, and lead to devaluation of euro.
Why even bother with cryptocurrencies?
If you don't want to wait so long. There is more volatility. That is what makes living for all the stock brokers too.
If I buy a lot of stocks and "hodl" them, I get dividends, even if their value goes down, so if I do nothing, I get cash.
All companies don't pay dividends (they might need all the money for the growth e.g. Tesla, or they are going bad e.g. uber)
You can also get interest rate for the crypto's if you like.
If I have real estate, I can use it for farming, lease it out, put a shop on the property, or rent it out, where I make money. What does cryptocurrency give me? Not stability. I gain zero by keeping it around, and it has no intrinsic value and represents nothing... it is just a number, that isn't even tied to a currency backed by a country.
Yep, crypto currency is not real estate.
Then, there is security. The average Joe does not have the skills to adequately secure a non-custodial wallet, and a custodial wallet can be drained of its contents at any time, should a dodgy exchange decide to "get hacked". It is a minefield out there for the unwary, and "buying crypto" can mean someone loses their life's savings to some scammer at many links, be it the exchange, the wallet, buying/selling, and so on.
There are many good custodial wallets in big companies which are as good as any stock brokers. Securing non custodial wallet is not harder than writing few words down and storing them. However, I admit that it can be too hard for many.
Add to that the tax issues, and cryptocurrency just isn't really worth it compared to something like buying a bunch of blue chip stock.
If you just "hodl" as you stated at the start? What is the difference?
As for using cryptocurrency for trade, with the fact that the transaction is there forever, and expensive to do, what do most cryptocurrencies give over PayPal?
Well are we now talking about you or others? About 1/4 of the population is unbanked. It will give them a possibility to use "PayPal" what they could not otherways do.
There are a few cryptocurrencies which have privacy and anonymity built in, like Monero, but most don't, and it is expensive to buy in and buy out.
yep, however with USD or EUR don't have privacy when they are used with PayPal or credit cards, or bank transfers... You still can pay (in some places) with cash and have anonymity, but those are quite seldom already.
I'll just leave the cryptocurrency stuff to "people who drive better cars than I do", because I'm sure they can do more schemes with it than I can ever dream up. I prefer stuff that is tried and true, and where dealing with the IRS is easily done for capital gains or losses.
That is a good plan.
Perhaps you are then privileged first world people (as I am), and the benefits are not so visible as everything goes fine here without them and doesn't cost too much.
However, there are huge amount of people (over half of the earth population) that don't have bank accounts and thus doesn't have a way to move or store money electronically. Cryptocurrencies will allow them to do it. I guess that you can also see that to be able to store and send money electronically is a huge benefit.
Cryptocurrencies with blockchain (open shared ledger) will eliminate the need for trust (e.g. to Bank/Credit card company), and peer-to-peer transaction costs will be minimal (less than 1 cent). That is something that the bank/credit card companies cannot compete with, and what will make cryptocurrencies to succeed.
> We keep being told that cryptocurrencies are safer than regular currencies because of the blockchain. Transactions can be audited and proven whenever desired.
Transactions can be audited and proven as you said, but that is not all that is needed for "safer".
> And yet, we have heard so many stories about crypto currency theft, perpetuated by various means, and now this.
Because crypto is *new* and interesting technology that will be the future for the money. (Almost all countries are looking to introduce a digital money that has more or less at least some privacy included). Crypto has as much theft as with traditional money (around 2%), but the "normal" theft with "normal" money don't get press coverage, because it doesn't have any novelty. It is not interesting.
When the majority didn't have credit cards, shops didn't want payments with them, but once the majority had them, then all shops "wanted" to use them.
Crypto adaptation is still so low that currently, it is "one more" option to already many other payment options, and just an additional hassle for many shops.
However, crypto will offer clear benefits for many compared to credit cards and their usage will grow.
It would be interesting to see what are the numbers in the same survey next year.
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