.

I think what he meant is a 10x leap is a generation. like if right now, when the average user has about a few 100 GB to 1 TB of storage on average, suddenly a new product comes out with 10x the capacity and comparable speed/price (or better) and instantly make the competition obsolete

The product in the post,if real sounds more like a "CD-ROM" for the next decade. Where you really did have what seemed like excessive capacity at the time at very low cost, but with obvious shortcomings

Maybe I didn't understand correctly but how can anyone use keepass if that is the case?
I thought that by using a strong master password I was encrypting the database so that none would have access to it.
If all it takes is system access, that means I can just copy the kdbx file and and extract everything at my leisure on a machine I control.
How is this not terrible? It practically eliminates the main use case

If he really is dead or the coins are inaccessible in general for now, the incentive to crack those specific legacy accounts will be huge.
Eventually they will succeed and flood the market with a massive amount of coins.
It might be years before the price recovers then, with whatever other permanent damage it does to its (already bad) reputation as a volatile asset.
I know it's not technically cracking bitcoin but still..

I thought excel supported writing your own functions in VBA since almost forever!
How was it not turing complete all this time?

Tell that to Microstrategy's CEO, or to Greyscale's clients

Cryptocurrency is a misnomer and the "coin" part of "Bitcoin" is misleading but at this point it's impossible to do something about it.
Indeed, when it launched, bitcoin's vision was to become some sort of medium of exchange not bound by the rules and regulations of any state.

This would of course not make it currency even if it succeeded in this respect. You can't price goods in btc any more than you can price them in gold or any other commodity. Your business is bound by the laws of a state and you have to use its legal tender. Even if volatility was not an issue. But in any case, bitcoin is a poor medium of exchange and those are moot points.

Bitcoin seems to do a lot better as a reserve asset, similar to gold and that is the narrative that is driving the current wave of investors. It is also what made me interested, except I always saw it like that from years ago. Replacing fiat was never even a passing thought. Censorship and seizure resistance are the killer features.

If you think the gold standard was bad, I can see why you find little value in btc but I beg to differ. I think many of today's economic problems are a direct result of dropping the gold standard and indeed if we hadn't, I doubt bitcoin and all its failed predecessors (which you never heard of because decentralization and digital scarcity were never achieved previously) would have emerged.

In the end, stablecoins (cryptocurrencies pegged to a national currency like USD) which are NOT issued by a government do exist and are actually used for transactions. They too can be used to launder money and they are not the same as central bank digital currencies or even the traditional electronic money despite the superficial similarities.

I know bitcoin is not for everyone but it amazes me how consistently negative the members of slashdot have been on crypto over all these years.
Even now when institutional investors are finally warming up to it and openly supporting it.
I would expect a far more technical than average crowd to at least do better than dismiss it as scam, ponzi, harmful, criminal or whatever else it has been called over time.

I thought it had no charge at all!

Of course they are not equivalent in general, but what they said is they would count it as equivalent *for related roles*

Take for example the support technician position which is mentioned in the article. I have very little reason to believe a 4 year course in CS or similar would produce much better (if at all) IT support professionals than a 6-month course that actually teaches what is advertises (I looked at the curriculum).

In fact, personal determination and motivation (and maybe even talent) are far more important.
Sure those highly specific skills will age a lot faster but everyone needs to be updating their skills constantly anyway regardless of credentials.

All it tells me is they did a piss poor job hiding their tracks. Shuffling the amount among a dozen addresses is not laundering by any means, except against amateurs.

They could have signed up to an exchange that requires no KYC, deposit the bitcoin there (log in through tor) and withdraw it either in bitcoin again or preferable a different currency altogether, even on specializing in truly anonymous payments.

But even they withdrew it in btc again, it would come from a different exchange address and would be deposited (of course) to a brand new address. Again, zero links unless the can subpoena the specific exchange. In that case, withdrawing to an anonymous currency and laundering there would be safe but we are already in paranoid territory.

Oh, and lightning network, with their payment channels routing operating already in a tor-like fashion will have anonymity baked in as well

They don't need to be IT, but a modicum of competence in their everyday tools of the trade is assumed and expected. And yes, computers ARE their tools of the trade as well. Not just ours.
Sadly they don't have that competence in so many cases. I have had to support so many users in various places that didn't even KNOW they had a username that came along with their password to log into their PCs. You see, they didn't have to type it every morning so they forgot it existed!

When someone is supposedly capable to drive a car for example, they cannot say they only know how to go up to third gear, can't change lanes and don't know how to park it because they only need to "drive" and make right turns to go wherever they need. Oh, and they only understand the stop sign. No other sign is needed.
Would it ever be OK because they are not a professional driver or a mechanic? It seems this sort of excuse is supposed to pass in an analogous IT scenario.

ANY 8 char password? Does that include special chars like ©?
If we include those, the number of possibilities increases immensely, to the point that I certainly wouldn't worry if I had such a password.
Most people, even on this thread seem to exclude even the common, easily accessible symbols from their strategy.

That is correct. But blockchain-based voting can still be useful and reduce voting costs.

Ideally, you would keep the requirement of showing up at the polls. You would verify your identity manually and be issued a private key on the spot with your smartphone, with a token to vote.
You would use that immediately in a terminal where you would cast that vote much like you scan a qr code and pay with a bitcoin address.
Later in the day, or the next day, you would verify your vote is included, in a similar way that you check bitcoin address activity on a block explorer.

This does not solve all problems but massively reduces the risks mentioned in the original post. Of course you can still have spouse coercion and stuff, like "show me who you voted" etc.

Crypto veterans and true enthusiasts have seen this happen before. The 2014 bear market lasted over 2 years. They are not worried.

It is disappointing however to see posts like this and the usual replies.

Those people mentioned taking loans or thinking about sticking it to the man are just pathetic and they deserve what they got. If it wasn't bitcoin, it would have been the dotcom bubble or something else.
Particularly the Korean woman who lost 90%. That could only have happened if she invested in shitcoins, probably expecting higher gains than typical.
When something goes parabolic, a heavy correction is inevitable and that is irrespective of the value of the asset, whatever you may think it is. Anyone who fails to understand basic concepts has no business investing in anything.

And again, nobody focuses on actually learning what the tech is about, how it can be useful and why. All they care about is making money fast and easy. I'm sorry it doesn't work that way and it's not bitcoin's fault. There is only one way this could go for people like them.

The others, who know why they put their money (not more than they can afford) into bitcoin and actually bothered reading up before doing so are not worried.

In the end, if you believe that bitcoin has a future and adoption will increase, today's marketcap is far too small, and (longterm) increase is inevitable.
If you believe it's just the latest craze and will die out, you should never invest a penny in it.