Posted on 10/25/2015 3:01:04 PM PDT by Another Post-American
1. The world’s easiest bank account to open
When you are the bank, accounts are just so easy to open! With Bitcoin, you don’t need a bank or credit. No credit check, ID, age requirement, citizenship papers, or passport are needed to have a Bitcoin wallet or any bitcoin. If you control your money and bank account, you have true economic freedom. Bitcoin gives anyone this option. Your 10-year old child can forget piggy banks (unless it’s bitcoin-powered) and start their own digital empire today!
Have your own Bitcoin address, QR code, receive your first deposit, and buy something with bitcoin in less time than it takes to read this article.
2. Appreciate the appreciation
Critics of Bitcoin are quick to point out that it has lost hundreds of dollars in value since Mt. Gox. What they leave out of their assessment is that five years ago it was worth one American nickel and has appreciated thousands of percent in value in just over six years. Name any other currency or commodity, from gold and silver, to cash or real estate that has increased in value that much since 2009? You can’t, because there has never been a financial option as revolutionary as Bitcoin before.
Bitcoin hasn’t even gone mainstream or “viral” yet! Its upside potential, and the limited supply of 21 million total units, creates a truly special investment opportunity. Bitcoin’s value has already increased about 50% since its 2015-low back in mid-January. Bitcoin is so resilient because it is designed to appreciate in value over time, through simple supply and demand, unlike a dollar or euro, which are designed to depreciate in the long-run.
3. Launch your Business idea without the need for bank approval
Starting a new business can be very hard, financially. Maybe you are a coder who wants to make a great “app” but have no money or credit. Within minutes, get a QR code, post it on your Facebook or Twitter and drum up grassroots support for the next great business idea. Whether it’s a way to process microtransactions quickly and easily, a new crowdfunding platform or a partnership with your lawyer friend to do bitcoin escrow management, no credit check or bank loan is required.
Offer a product or service, something of value, in exchange for Bitcoin. This is the fastest and easiest way to get started with Bitcoin. It’s not about changing dollars to cryptocurrency. Instead, build the Bitcoin community, and start new economic activity within Bitcoin’s ecosystem. And it allows you to “opt-out” of the status quo, philosophically.
4. Quickly gain access to the rest of the digital currencies or altcoins
Bitcoin is a multi-billion dollar industry, but that is just part of the digital currency world. There are hundreds of millions invested in “altcoins” as well. In order to enter the altcoin market, and experience all the features digital currency has to offer, you’ll need some bitcoin. Bitcoin is to digital currency what the U.S. Dollar is to fiat currency worldwide. It is needed as a liquid asset to move and convert easily between different currencies. Going from a fiat currency straight to Litecoin would be much more difficult than converting bitcoin to litecoin using an instant online service like Shapeshift.
Bitcoin may not be the best currency for all situations, and something less valuable, and with quicker transaction times may be more desirable as an alternative in the future. Just like you wouldn’t use a US$100 bill to buy a slice of pizza or leave a tip, smaller altcoins could have more and more real-world value as well as their own specific niches. They will be used more as transactional currencies in the future, as bitcoin continues to grow in value, and fresh supplies dwindle.
Altcoins
6. Two words: Bitcoin IPOs!
These are starting to become a new bitcoin financing option. Offer stocks, bonds, and IPOs for your small business or corporation without any established stock exchange seat needed. Receive financing from anyone worldwide, buy and sell shares of your company. Take new investors for a day, a week, or on a timer! Sell your “app” or business model outright, or just gain partnerships to infuse capital and awareness to your vision. The possibilities are endless.
7. Programmable money has its advantages over fiat currencies
Having a truly digital currency means you can do many things a dollar simply can’t do. For example, you can have a family wallet with pre-set spending limits. Your teenage daughter can only shop at certain mall stores at certain times with the family bitcoin wallet. Your daughter in college can only buy books at the school store, not beers for the frat party on Saturday. Digital currency is designed to be easily programmable by the owner for many different parameters. Limits are not a Bitcoin thing, but it will give you these options.
8. ‘Smart contracts’ provide many business options
Every day, many people worldwide use a version of the “smart contract” and don’t even know it. If you go to the vending machine and give it a dollar, you are entering a primitive version of a smart contract. You send the dollar to the machine and enter into a contract. The machine has the keys to your change and your product and releases them when you send the payment to fulfill the contract you desire. Bitcoin can have a similar, but a much more advanced smart contract, for your car, for example. Nick Szabo coined this concept back in 1997.
If you get a car, it will have a digital key for you and your bank. If you fail to make the payments, your (digital) keys to the car revert to the bank’s Bitcoin account until you make amends with the bank. No more car theft, which builds on the current engine immobilizer concept, a similar primitive form of a smart contract, like the vending machine example. This can apply to homes or anything with a loan where more than one party has a claim to the property over a span of time.
8. Crowdfund your business or project even in the most remote area
What if you’re in an impoverished, 3rd-world nation? You don’t live near a metropolitan city. You live 30-50-100 miles from the nearest bank. You don’t own a car. Your local dirt road is flooded out by rain 3-4 days a week. Your nation’s currency is going through inflation at close to 10% annually, and you don’t get much of it to begin with. You support your family from a small farm you own that provides food to live on, but could provide more if you could invest in grain, materials, and more land. You know one person several miles away with a computer and an internet connection. You can get to him once a week when you shop near his location. He lets you use a computer if you need. Bitcoin’s unique abilities give you the means to transact worldwide. Now, you have options you’ve never had before.
With Bitcoin, you can get a free Bitcoin wallet online, have a web page made, and you can put your QR code online. Place an ad to gain payments from anyone worldwide!
A few US dollars in bitcoin may be worth hundreds of currency units in many countries with a swiftly depreciating national currency. In many foreign lands, US$10 in bitcoin would change the lives of entire families for 2-3 months. Websites, networks, and partnerships are being built worldwide to make these capabilities of Bitcoin easier to realize every day.
Crowdfunding
9. Don’t like your government or central banking system? Bitcoin makes a financial and political statement
Maybe you or someone you know is the type of person that hates being controlled, financially or otherwise. Maybe they are the type of person that is constantly complaining about the Federal Reserve, the government, or regulations in general. Bitcoin may be your ticket.
Bitcoin is just a technology, but it is a technology that is not owned or sanctioned by any government or centralized body or server. It is a true financial model of independence. The more money invested into Bitcoin means less money is invested directly into government, central banking, and the status quo, in general.
The more money flowing into the Bitcoin ecosystem, the more each bitcoin grows in value in the long-run; pretty much the opposite of how modern fiat currency works, which is something to consider whether you are new to Bitcoin, or not.
10. Bitcoin’s speed makes a wire transfer seem like a steam ship
Have you ever tried to take more than US$10k out of a bank? These days, you will have a conversation with the branch manager, and the transaction will be sent to the government, regardless of where you are. You are on somebody’s list. Ever try to move more than a gold coin or two through customs on a flight overseas? Yeah, you will spend some time in a room with men carrying guns.
Privacy and rights are becoming a thing of the past with the old guard of value transfer. Bitcoin steps up your security and privacy in a big way. Access your bitcoins without a need to transfer them, no matter you go. Sending a wire transfer takes days! Why waste the time? Plus, you’ll have to answer twenty questions as to who you’re sending it to and why. If you want to send a million dollars in bitcoin to someone overseas, you can send it fully-encrypted to any address you like, without an interrogation by a bank, or fear of reprisals. They’ll receive it in seconds, and get it verified within the hour. Create a “brain wallet” if you like, and access your BTC by remembering a favorite phrase.
People have been trained and conditioned to think physical money is a great asset, but when it is time to move that physical asset, this favored trait becomes a major liability. Bitcoin doesn’t have such problems. You are in full control of your money anytime, anywhere, with access to any amount. Now that’s control over your finances.
The Internet started out just like this
This is just a working sample of what Bitcoin is doing now and will do in the very near future. Bitcoin is not a conjured-up online experiment. It is a new digital ecosystem that will allow people to have the same flexibility and economic power as nation states. The privacy that is currently being stolen at an exponential rate is infinitely enhanced through encryption. Limitations aren’t built into the system through location, age, identification, or language, like they are with fiat, or paper currency systems.
Instead, everyone in the Bitcoin distributed network gets a chance to succeed, and the establishment has no built-in advantages. Bitcoin levels the global economic playing field, just like the Internet did 20 years before it for global transfer of information.
Actually, you have an advantage over the establishment because you have just opened a window into “the future of money” that many people have not. You’re now a step ahead of the competition. What will you do to stay a step ahead? With Bitcoin, the world is full of innovative, amazing new options. Take advantage of this opportunity.
Ping!
the evil FACTA legislation will be a boon for bitcoin...
11. Mt. Zot has already stolen all the money it can.
1. The world’s easiest bank account to open
Thank you very much, but I am a welcome visitor in any bank, and I have no difficulty in opening accounts. Perhaps it might be tougher for an illegal immigrant, but it's their problem.
2. Appreciate the appreciation
What's the point? All pyramid schemes have appreciation built in. The earliest investors make money, the later investors lose money. We are in the "later" stage, where BTC holders are frantically searching for fools someone who will purchase their BTC for an "old and obsolete" stack of US dollars.
3. Launch your Business idea without the need for bank approval
Oh, great - you think it is that easy? I don't even use Facebook or Twitter. Aside from that, there are already services that specialize in such things - and they don't require Bitcoins. They gladly take whatever currency you have.
4. Quickly gain access to the rest of the digital currencies or altcoins
Shades of late night sales pitch. Not only you get this piece of junk, we will also give you these two pieces of junk, valued at a hundred trillion bananas each, entirely for free! Besides, BTC is not "a multi-billion dollar industry," no matter how hard BTC owners would love it to be true. BTCs are just numbers; they don't have value until someone purchases such a number for real money.
6. Two words: Bitcoin IPOs!
You can't be serious. IPO is not a joke, and not an experiment. The guy doesn't even understand what he is speaking of.
7. Programmable money has its advantages over fiat currencies
Yeah, I see that some helicopter parents would love to program where their child can shop - instead of teaching the child to shop in decent places. Go ahead, use technology to program your children, this will work just fine for both of you :-)
8. ‘Smart contracts’ provide many business options
None that I see useful. Except that yes, I'd love to give the bank the right to lock me out of my car whenever the bank chooses to do so.
8. Crowdfund your business or project even in the most remote area
That is funny:
What if you’re in an impoverished, 3rd-world nation? You don’t live near a metropolitan city. You live 30-50-100 miles from the nearest bank. You don’t own a car. Your local dirt road is flooded out by rain 3-4 days a week. Your nation’s currency is going through inflation at close to 10% annually, and you don’t get much of it to begin with. You support your family from a small farm you own that provides food to live on, but could provide more if you could invest in grain, materials, and more land. You know one person several miles away with a computer and an internet connection. You can get to him once a week when you shop near his location. He lets you use a computer if you need. Bitcoin’s unique abilities give you the means to transact worldwide. Now, you have options you’ve never had before.
If you are an impoverished peasant, living knee deep in mud in Lower Elbonia, it does not matter if you can receive BTC for your goods. You don't have any goods worth selling, and you have no means to ship them.
9. Don’t like your government or central banking system? Bitcoin makes a financial and political statement
Oh yes, the best way to make amends if your government or the banking systems are off course is... to isolate itself from that society and to set up your own economy, with your own toy money. A truly excellent idea :-) Do not bother trying to fix the country for your neighbors, for your children, for the world. No, just walk away and live your own life (apparently, within confines of one's own head.)
10. Bitcoin’s speed makes a wire transfer seem like a steam ship
Funny as well:
Have you ever tried to take more than US$10k out of a bank? These days, you will have a conversation with the branch manager, and the transaction will be sent to the government, regardless of where you are. You are on somebody’s list.
Had it ever occurred to you, young padawan, that the bank and the government are already fully aware that you have $10K or whatever that is in your bank account? One can withdraw whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and those armored cars (Brinks etc.) that you sometimes see in the street are employed in exactly that business. The sob story about difficulties of handling money is very appealing to those who don't have access to that kind of cash. However those who do are, actually, treated as kings.
Sending a wire transfer takes days! Why waste the time? Plus, you’ll have to answer twenty questions as to who you’re sending it to and why. If you want to send a million dollars in bitcoin to someone overseas, you can send it fully-encrypted to any address you like, without an interrogation by a bank, or fear of reprisals.
Obviously, the guy who wrote that had never seen a form for a wire transfer. There is nothing further to say. BTW, the form is free, and he could have looked at it at any bank.
They’ll receive it in seconds, and get it verified within the hour.
And if they don't receive it, or say that they haven't received it? Who do I complain to? Where is the paper trail? Dear padawan, there is more to a wire transfer than meets the eye. Businesses *insist* on meticulously kept documents. As matter of fact, it happened once that my wire transfer was returned because the account on the other end got closed. I'm ecstatic that I haven't used Bitcoin for that transfer, because there would be no chance of getting the money back!
People have been trained and conditioned to think physical money is a great asset, but when it is time to move that physical asset, this favored trait becomes a major liability. Bitcoin doesn’t have such problems. You are in full control of your money anytime, anywhere, with access to any amount. Now that’s control over your finances.
Why do I get a feeling that this was written by a young creative person in a corner of a Starbucks store in SF? The author does not comprehend the possibility that the Internet may one day stop working; or that there are places in the world that do not have cell phone coverage at 4G speeds.
This is just a working sample of what Bitcoin is doing now and will do in the very near future. Bitcoin is not a conjured-up online experiment. It is a new digital ecosystem that will allow people to have the same flexibility and economic power as nation states. The privacy that is currently being stolen at an exponential rate is infinitely enhanced through encryption.
The author refuses to understand that currently cash transactions are entirely untraceable; and bank and card transactions can be traced only by the banks and governments. However Bitcoins are a public system that is based on the fact that everyone, everywhere has a complete list of all purchases by every single user. The users are hiding behind numbers of their wallets, but it's not rocket science to unravel this by starting somewhere and then mining the database (blockchain) of all current and past purchases and transfers. BTC is a wide open book for anyone who is willing to read it. BTC has no privacy, and it is not even supposed to provide one. The nearest analogy is that you can get a bank card with an alias on it, and spend it thinking that nobody in stores will know that "John Doe" is actually $your_real_name_here.
Bitcoin is an interesting technology, but it is mired in problems that range from technical (it does not scale; purchases require up to 15 minutes to confirm) to social (who are the initial miners who secretly mined 1/4 of the BTC mass while nobody was aware of the BTC?) The BTC is a dead end. The idea of digital currency is not a dead end, but it needs to be rebuilt from scratch, using the lessons obtained from the BTC experiment. It must be put to trial in various countries, and the deficiencies fixed. Only then it can become usable. Until then... there is nothing wrong with the money that we have today. There is no urgency to fix it - unless, of course, like the secretive BTC creators, you want to profit from selling your own fiat currency to the world.
Thank you.
You seem pretty biased. But to claim there is “nothing wrong” with fiat is a bit silly, don’t you think? Or is the totalitarian imposition of an arbitrary fiat currency subject to manipulation at the whims of central bankers now thought to be consistent with the goals of Free Republic?
I suppose there are still a few poor souls buying stamps and trenchantly sending out all their mail via the post office too. But for the rest of us, email has proven a better alternative. I expect the same for the battle between banks/government fiat and cryptocurrency as well.
Good post. Thanks.
I had just created a wallet and signed up with Mt. Gox when the shtf. Thanked my stars I didn’t lose anything. Figured I’d stay away. Might be time to take another look at bitcoin. I have noticed lots more vendors taking it lately.
Where fo go now, to buy some? Trusted...?
Everyone knows cash is more-or-less untraceable. Bitcoin combines pseudonymity with the convenience of digital transfer. You are right in your description of the total transparency of the blockchain, but identifying the real persons connected to each account will vary from simple to impossible depending on the care they take.
There are both good and bad reasons for such anonymity. Crime is an obvious reason, but on the flip side companies will not want to have all their transactions viewed by competitors. So anonymizing technologies and altcoins like Dash, Monero, Bitcoindark and many others are helping fill this niche.
As I mentioned, thousands of developers are building the bitcoin infrastructure. Calling it a dead end is as stupid as calling the Internet past its prime in 1995.
And yes, there are now hundreds of alternative cryptocurrencies in competition with bitcoin. All this competition will help make the winners better and every more highly optimized for every financial niche. What innovation is going on in the world of fiat by comparison? Shall I snigger at that question? ;-)
Complaining that early miners benefited because bitcoin has turned out to be a raging success is no different than complaining about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or any other inventor or early adopter who took a risk and has reaped great reward. What are you, a Bernie Sanders plant here on Free Republic?
Like you, I signed up for Mt. Gox too late to be hurt by it. In fact, I got a rejection email from my account verification attempt literally the same hour that news of their implosion was announced. So ever since I've been joking that their last official act was in rejecting me as a customer! ;-)
Ironically, I got into bitcoin after I did some evaluation work comparing the characteristics of various forms of money (dollars, gold, etc.) and came to realize that this "bitcoin" thing I'd vaguely heard of might be a better option for conservatives as far as sound money was concerned. So I began studying and charting and grading it. It wasn't perfect but it scored much better across most categories (11 of 16 if I recall correctly) than fiat. And so within a few weeks I'd built myself an altcoin mining rig and jumped in with both feet. It was a bit of tough sledding getting involved on the wrong side of the Mt. Gox bubble, but I've done well nonetheless and am happy to see things have turned around.
I wouldn't suggest people do anything rash, but I think it would be prudent for anyone with savings to get themselves a bitcoin wallet and a modest stash of it. Partly to learn about the technology and take advantage of deals with it (such as saving 10-30% off anything at Amazon*), and partly in case the SHTF with fiat, which seems a certainty in the long run.
*I regularly average 20% off anything I buy at Amazon using Purse (https://purse.io/?_r=XClu2O)
There is indeed nothing wrong with fiat money that is properly administered. If you are a baker, you can carry with you ten loaves of bread to exchange for other goods, or you can carry with you ten pieces of paper that you can equally well exchange for other goods. Fiat money also offers divisibility (something that a rancher would appreciate) and invulnerability to passage of time and other dangers. (My money in the bank is safe even if the local branch is destroyed by a stray asteroid.)
You can argue that fiat currency that we have today is being poorly managed. That is perhaps true. Then that's what you need to focus on, not on finding a new coin that will be similarly mismanaged. You want an example? Don't need to go too far - look at the chart of BTC's own values over time. The bitness of the coin did not prevent it from becoming an instrument of speculation; that would happen just the same if Ferengi dropped onto our planet 21 million units of Latinum. (It would be even better because everyone would get their share, and there would be no cost of manufacturing of the coins, and we would be unable to make more.)
This means that "central bankers," as well as all other bankers, would quickly find a way to profit off of scarcity of the BTC. Just as one example: they can purchase all of it, for any amount of paper money - and then they abandon the paper money. Who is the winner here?
I suppose there are still a few poor souls buying stamps and trenchantly sending out all their mail via the post office too. But for the rest of us, email has proven a better alternative. I expect the same for the battle between banks/government fiat and cryptocurrency as well.
I did mention that BTC has a huge skeleton in their closet: the huge pile of BTC that was minted in the first year or two of BTC's existence, nearly with zero effort, by a few early adopters (and the inventors.) If BTC becomes the coin of planet Earth, these people will own a quarter or a third of the planet's wealth. Do you want to so richly reward them for their invention?
The problems with money that the civilization is experiencing today have little to do with the technology of money, and everything to do with the decisions of the administrators - and with passivity of the audience. BTC aficionados naively believe that they can create a technological solution of a social problem. That never worked before, but surely this will work now. Money is being attacked simply because it is the easiest and most direct path to wealth without working. Any monetary system will be attacked similarly; and all well known monetary systems were attacked in the past, by various means.
Some of the attack mechanisms are even built into the BTC. I have already mentioned the mathematical upper limit on the number of coins. As more and more people on Earth produce more and more goods, there will be more goods chasing the same Bitcoin. The value of the Bitcoin has to go up, all the time. You can now become rich by sitting on your stash. Today you cannot do that with your USD - they are deflating; this means that you need to let someone else use your USD for a while to make a small profit. This creates credit, which finances new construction, new inventions, new everything. But there will be no credit in the BTC world - and if you can convince someone to lend you a few coins, you will not be able to pay back the interest - it will be too expensive. BTC stifles credit and stops circulation of money within the economy. This is just one of the examples of what's wrong with the BTC as it is today. Note that I do not deny that digital coins may become useful in the future; but BTC as such is only a rough technology demo that is nowhere ready for public adoption.
Thanks. Lots of new players and catching up ahead.
As matter of fact, there is a lot of innovation in fiat currencies. You might have noticed that the US merchants are switching (or have switched, they have a deadline in October) to the "Chip and Signature" method of authorizing cards. Some are experimenting with NFC payment methods. Going back, banks offered online access to everything and provided you with a number of one-time use card numbers. Going further back, online purchases became possible. It's quite a lot of innovation that happened within just last 20-25 years.
I cannot say much about all the alternative cryptocurrencies. If some are better, more power to them. However it is essential that a cryptocurrency that is selected for a major one in a country has to work at least as well as the existing systems. How long does it take today to authorize a card scan? A second or two at most. How long does it take to confirm a BTC purchase? Five to fifteen minutes. As you can see, BTC is simply not ready to become a viable payment instrument. By design, it never will be. I assert that the BTC is a good, interesting experiment that demonstrated something good and something bad. The blockchain was a significant invention - and it is also the Achilles' heel of the whole design. BTC is a heavyweight design with extremely high cost of each transaction. Compare to current banking systems - they are decentralized, they are scalable, and they have very low cost of transaction. The customer does not need a blockchain; he only needs his goods. The math of confirming the purchase is not his problem, it should stay between the merchant and the bank. It is too much to ask the whole planet to vote on my purchase of a cup of coffee.
Bump for later reading.
A couple points of clarification:
1. BTC transactions are logged and propagated within seconds, not 5-15 minutes. There is a lot of confusion about this. The propagation rate of a bitcoin transaction through the network is a few seconds, at least as fast as a credit card purchase. And 0-confirmation technology is deployed now by processors like Bitpay that confirms the spend is valid with confidence. What you are talking about is the blockchain confirmation process which can take an hour or so to prevent double-spends. But this back-end process is comparable to the credit card settlement process involving chargebacks, which can extend out 3 months! As a merchant you will know you have your bitcoin from a customer long before you’ll have confidence your credit card transaction won’t be reversed.
2. Altcoins all have much faster confirmation times at any rate, and Bitcoin’s Lightning Network proposal will enable it to compete with them. Your claim that the blockchain is a weak point slowing things down compared to private trust-based fiat systems is thus erroneous. They are the slow ones, particularly when it comes to final settlement.
3. If concerned with the cost of mining/transacting bitcoin, go with Proof of Stake coins, rather than Proof of Work coins like bitcoin. Those do not rely on mining hashpower, so they may be a better option in the long run, based on market demand. Again, the innovation is out there, and claims that bitcoin/crypto are fatally flawed are wrong because the protocols can be updated many times faster than fiat systems.
Ran across this article on using blockchain in other transactions. Could be beneficial in a lot of areas.
Today Corrupt Officials Spend Your Money—Tomorrow Blockchain Will Stop Them
http://singularityhub.com/2015/10/20/today-corrupt-officials-spend-your-money-tomorrow-blockchain-will-stop-them/
This fad isn’t over yet?
Sending a wire transfer takes days? Did a liberal Dem idiot write this article?
I can send money instantly to anyone I want. I can wire money to another customer at my bank over the computer. I can use PayPal if they have an account.
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