I highly doubt everyone gets caught and it took authorities time to catch up to a novel way of conducting illegal activities. And how is this relevant to the activities of bad actor states like Russia and NK or warlords who use it to get by US/EU backed financial systems? Well because USD cash is KING. My whole point is the BTC isn't doing anything useful outside of speculation under a digital mattress.
Imagine having BTC around for so long and you can't actually explain what it does besides speculation. Please, concisely tell me what BTC is doing useful right now. I just hope you folks are cashing in because it's a moot point if you don't buy low and sell high.
So what? Sorry it's accruing value too fast for you? It isn't immune to change in valuation, but it *is* immune to supply increases. Again, "speculative" means nothing. All assets are speculated on. It's the best money. Scoreboard backs this up. It'll be the best money when it goes on a bull run in 2025, and it'll still be the best money when it crashes 75% back to 100K in 2026. Whose retirement account.... -Has no issuer/controller -Has a supply that is completely immune to demand -Has a 60% AARR ?
It's doing what it has always done, store and accrue wealth better than any asset on the planet. I don't know how to explain to someone who doesn't understand what money is or how capital is preserved why these things are important.
Again, you continue to struggle with your understanding of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not an American product and it is not regulated by any authority whatsoever, especially by poorly informed people like yourself. It was a product designed to be used by anyone. And it never promises anonymous transactions. In fact, its quite the opposite. Every transaction can be tracked to a digital wallet address. If USD cash is king, then why is the vast majority of wealth tied up into something else BUT USD cash? Again, keep doubling down. Your opinion of speculation means very little. Nobody is forcing you to buy it. HFSP.
That's great if it's just a speculative asset.... Which has produced a ton of volatility regardless of your ideology about fixed supply. I'll never deny that BTC is a great way to speculate and make money.... it's all that other high minded nonsense by you true believers that I take issue with. Money does the following: 1) A unit of account 2) medium of exchange 3) store of value. 1) You constantly use USD and not BTC to quantify it's value 2) BTC is pretty gimmicky and most vendors don't accept it. Prices are set in USD. 3) You have a disclaimer about this where you basically need to put qualifiers on how to store it. No, speculative asset. The fact that Wall St and Donald Trump want to engage in regulatory capture speaks volumes about this particular product. And yet... lots of folks are retiring well if you play the game.
The current US admin is about to start regulating it moreso. BTC is measured in USD no? I'm sorry if aside from speculation, BTC's most useful feature is illegal. People ain't buying groceries with it. Uhhhhhhh because USD is that useful.........BTC is measured in USD.... I just enjoy having these debates with you true believers. Nobody is forcing you to engage.
Over a 15 year time period and has experience wild volatility. Highly dependent on when you buy and sell. Because we already have vehicles that preserve and grow wealth/capital over many decades. Time will tell if this is just a bigger tulip/beanie babies mania.
IOW, all the stuff you haven't bothered to research. An asset's monetary adoption curve is always SOV > MOE > UOA, but it does not need to do all 3 of those things, it can simply be a store of value alone. It cannot be a UOA or MOE without first being an SOV, though. Given how Bitcoin works this statement makes little sense at face value. Please elaborate. I could retire at 65+ if I "played the game", but instead I'm going to retire before 50 thanks to Bitcoin. That's 15 years of my life back. Meaningful. My wife has been able to semi-retire to spend more time with our young children. All because I'm storing my wealth in the hardest money ever created or discovered.
It's extremely difficult, nearing impossible, to find anyone who has lost money holding Bitcoin longer than 4 years. Time won't tell because you are refusing to stipulate when you will no longer consider it a "bubble". You're playing tennis without the net. BTW Tulip mania lasted a year and that line only went up. We're 15 years in now and have lived through several peaks and valleys.
Based on what? Because I don't believe all these use cases that keep popping up and evolving. I certainly read the debates between yourself and RC Cola and don't feel like your argument has won. I see a bunch of vaporware. You literally have a disclaimer on SOV..... seems like it still has ways to go before its less volatile. BTC is based on USD right? You think Trump and Wall St aren't going to use regulations to extract as many fees , etc. as possible from it? As long as you buy and sell at advantageous times just like managing and growing any portfolio. Funny how how BTC rises as risk appetite increases.... it's almost like this era of cheap money fueled schemes. It certainly didn't pop when inflation climbed to 40 year highs. You're using 15 years as the basis to make the claim it's the "hardest money ever created or discovered". That's just crazy.
I don't think anyone's arguing against it being a SOV... It's the other stuff that's still up in the air and anytime someone asks about it.. it's either "you are too stupid to get it" or "you need to go educate yourself".
The US can't regulate Bitcoin. They can regulate YOU and anyone who falls under US authority, but no, US is not regulating bitcoin. You can measure Bitcoin in whatever you want. There is no rule that states you must measure an asset in a certain form. There are hundreds of trading pairs on exchanges that are not noted in USD. I dont think you understand trading very well. Just stop saying this. Using Bitcoin for illegal activities in the US is incredibly stupid and will land you in jail. Not might. Will. Do you know what else you don't buy groceries with? Literally everything but USD. USD is a debt instrument designed to be used as a medium of exchange. Stocks, bonds, real estate and even Bitcoin is not a medium of exchange. If you're unsure what any of this means, go on Khan University and do a 101 on economics. It should only take you a few hours.
On the topic of whether Bitcoin is useful for illegal activities... ...OF COURSE IT IS! Ransomware and other illegal activities (including human trafficking) wouldn't be exploding if Bitcoin/crypto didn't exist. https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article-abstract/32/5/1798/5427781 https://www.reuters.com/technology/...record-1-billion-2023-chainalysis-2024-02-07/ https://www.trmlabs.com/post/the-rise-of-cryptocurrency-in-the-synthetic-drug-trade Can pull others (including things like sanction evasion, which is also illegal), but you get the idea. Does it suck for doing some of these things (including for some of the reasons mentioned)? Yes. But in some cases, it is really the only game in town...because all other options also suck (it turns out there is no easy/good way to do illegal stuff!). You can't really use cash or other payment options for some of these options, especially those involving large amounts of money. Let's see the Mayo Clinic send $15M in cash to some hackers living in Russia to solve their ransomware problem. That 80-year old grandma who just wanted to fix her computer will easily be able to send $200K to a bank account in India right over the phone. Etc. If you can get involved with an exchange that doesn't follow KYC/AML rules, I'm not even sure it really matters that the network is showing everything on a public blockchain (because who cares if that information doesn't really help authorities arrest the bad guys). Now I do think if you want to buy drugs in the US or something like that, yeah you'd likely just use cash. If anything, I kinda wish BTC sucked (even more) for these other things but was really good for buying weed down the street. Probably a lot less harm in a world that worked that way. I referenced him numerous times (and doubt anyone pro BTC really cared to throw his talks into their "my own research" folder), but here's Nicholas Weaver talking about some of this: I think he probably spoke about this better in some other format, but the important bits are mostly the same in every talk he gives, so this is probably good enough. Don't really have a ton to add on the debate about "number goes up." Besides the quantum computing thing, the other statement where I will generally agree with Bitcoin proponents is that yes, Bitcoin probably will reach XYZ price (or variations of that thought). I don't really care what that price is, but given how much value I place in how this number is created, I have little doubt that the folks involved can get it to eventually reach whatever price XYZ is. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/18/bitcoin-hawk-tuah-memecoin-hailey-welch-trump/ But after that, don't do any more studying. Especially don't do any work that would earn you the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics. Otherwise, you'll probably end up thinking Bitcoin/crypto is highly useful for illegal activities. ...OK I'll go back to playing Baldur's Gate 3 while "Number goes up" talk continues. Have fun.
These two statements disagree with each other. I think it's more appropriate to say that it's useful for some illegal activities in some jurisdictions. Regardless, this is a tired talking point. It could be the go-to vector for criminals and it would still be preferable as the base layer of money. I don't see digital assets dethroning cash as the king of crime. If anything, its criminal use-case will only narrow over time.
There is a world outside of this BBS. It took me hundreds if not thousands of hours of research to come to the conclusions I have. You can follow my posts over the life of this thread and see my opinions change and evolve as I learn more over the course of several years. Meanwhile, you've been active in this thread for 10 years and are still getting wrong even basic, easily google-able facts about the subject. I have no idea why someone who clearly lacks curiosity about something would continue to talk about it so much. That's not my disclaimer. That's the universe's disclaimer. I didn't make that rule up, it has existed since the dawn of civilization. BTC volatility is trending towards zero. If that scares you, fine, but you cannot have the upside without the down side. Volatility is opportunity. BTC is based on energy. We measure its value in USD for obvious reasons. So what? That applies to every asset. Nope. As long as you buy and hold. Timing the market is a fool's game. Every time an asset rises risk appetite increases. OK, so plant your flag in the ground. If 15 years is too few, how many years is enough? This is lazy thinking, btw. Bitcoin is the hardest money because of the laws of physics which dictate how much power/energy it would take to corrupt it, not some arbitrary measure of time. 1) You might want to read the last two pages 2) If you don't understand money or the Bitcoin protocol then yes, you do need to go educate yourself.
My intention was to state it is useful (and more useful than alternatives) for some activities in some jurisdictions. In other words, it is another tool to help people do illegal things (providing things alternatives cannot), and thus it is useful to illegal activity overall. I don't see where we're disagreeing here, but if that was unclear, then apologies. My only point was to make it clear that yes, Bitcoin (and crypto in general) is used for illegal activities. Yes, you wouldn't use it to buy cocaine down the street or pay for a prostitute, but you 100% would use it for ransomware. I'm not even sure ransomware would be much of a thing if Bitcoin/crypto did not exist. That one research article I linked estimated $76B per year in illegal activities (46% of Bitcoin transactions) with one quarter of Bitcoin users being involved in these. Some updated numbers would be nice as this wasn't super recent, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were similar numbers. I know some people like to say it is dumb to do something illegal with Bitcoin for XYZ reason (e.g., public blockchain), so therefore it isn't a problem. But clearly people *are* using it for illegal activity, so perhaps it is more complicated than people like to think. if anything, right now it appears that the criminal use case is growing. Certainly ransomware is exploding as that one link mentioned ($1B in 2023, nearly double from 2022). The other link talked about its rapidly growing use in China for synthetic drug trade. I do think other types of activities might have waned (seems like general hacks/frauds might be down?), but I'm not so sure it can easily change unless you start messing with some of the alleged good properties of Bitcoin. Having said all of that, I do agree that cash is king for illegal acts overall, and there are possibly even other forms of "payment" that will be advantageous over Bitcoin/crypto depending on the type of illegal activity. I also think it is likely true that most people with Bitcoin are primarily interested in it as a speculative asset, and they have no desire to do any of these illegal things I mentioned. At one point, "I have Bitcoin" probably did mean you were just using it to buy drugs or something (via Silk Road), but I don't believe that is the case anymore. It probably doesn't require any further discussion assuming we all do agree on these basics. I just wanted to clear up one point, but there's nothing really meaningful to discuss beyond that. FWIW I am ignoring the possibility of classifying wash trading, crypto market manipulation, rugpulls, wealth consolidation, etc. as illegal activity (and not saying they should, but that could change the math in some ways). That's honestly a whole other discussion.
Bitcoin ledger is too public. The way these orgs get away with it is largely through a privacy crypto like Monero, a crypto tumbler, stables like tether, then a legal offramp. That scheme has mostly nothing to do with btc, and it's too visible to try it in large amounts.
