Filippo Tessarotto
Harald Grunsky
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@GreenSky I gather that Bitcoin can be useful for laundering drug profits as well.
Jérémy Pagès@TimWardCam @GreenSky Bitcoin is mostly useful for helping dissidents like Snowden, Assange and Navalny.
essollteskalierenAnd you're sure that high profile criminals will prefer a payment system for laundering, where every transaction is visible to everyone on a public ledger? .. over cash, which has worked quite fine over centuries and is probably harder to trace.
@essollteskalieren I don't hear gossip from "high profile criminals". I might occasionally hear some from kids who sell pot and mushrooms to each other.
_You_ introduced money laundering to this discussion.
Who launders money? High profile criminals? Or kids who sell pot and mushrooms to each other?
Stuart Celarier ❌👑@GreenSky Bitcoin theft is a primary funding source for North Korea. No joke. Not funny.
Would you please name/describe one scam that can happen when someone directly trades with Bitcoin.
The scams in the "crypto" bubble (e.g. FTX) were related to people trusting shady exchanges instead of trading directly with Bitcoin.
Noone who trades Bitcoin directly can be scammed.
As to rent-seekers .. please name one economic field where you cannot fiend "rent-seekers".
j.r / Julian@essollteskalieren @GreenSky how exactly can't you get scammed while trading bitcoin directly? The other party can very easily screw you over, without any insurance of getting anything back...
@jr @GreenSky There are indeed services like PayPal, where there's buyer protection integrated into the payment method.
But this is not the default. I'd claim that with most buying transactions, such buyer protection is offered by the shop/platform instead and it has nothing to do with the payment method itself.
So trustworthy shops could well also use Bitcoin as payment method and then provide the same buyer protection.
This has nothing to do with Bitcoin but with trusting the shop/seller.
dexternemrodYour claim is not correct.
Most card payments can be returned in case of fraud.
Aarøn 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 
Web3 is not Bitcoin. I'm not talking/writing about web3 or "crypto".
I recommend you don't mix everything together and then call the _whole_ useless because there's _some_ useless in there.
Tom Ritchford> Noone who trades Bitcoin directly can be scammed.
You have just got to be joking. "Direct" crypto scams happen all the time!
For example, you send someone bitcoin "directly" for a good or service, and they send you nothing at all, and you have no recourse.
Or, you or someone else using your machine downloads malware, which sends all your bitcoin "directly" to some criminal, and you have no recourse.
1/
The smartphone is only two years older than cryptocurrencies, but there are almost ten million smartphone apps, and a hundred thousand successful ones.
But in all that time, there hasn't been one successful web3 application. Cryptocurrencies continue to use country-sized amounts of energy, while powering less than 1% of 1% of all financial transactions.
The only two uses for crypto continue to be unfounded speculation, and crime.
Get a grip!
Web3 is not Bitcoin. I'm not talking/writing about web3 or "crypto".
I recommend you don't mix everything together and then call the _whole_ useless because there's _some_ useless in there.
> .. continue to use country-sized amounts of energy, while powering less than 1% of 1% of all financial transactions.
True.
> .. only two uses .. unfounded speculation, and crime.
May be your personal perception, but it's not true at all.
Many use it as a store of value.
Call it speculation, but then buying _anything_ you don't need/consume/use right now and instead could buy later, but which you think will become more expensive over time is speculation.
Again, where's the difference?
Regulation applies to who? Mostly businesses, right? So if you use Bitcoin with a business, then they're regulated to maybe provide money/Bitcoin back. And they'll do so, otherwise you can sue and their reputation is damaged.
If you sue someone or a business there's no difference whether they owe you Bitcoin or USD or whatever. If the court rules they refund you, they likely will, because otherwise their problems will only grow bigger.
I see mostly one use case where you can't get a refund with Bitcoin as easily as with say bank transfer: when you privately, without a proper contract/business agreement, send money/Bitcoin to some person somewhere, even though you can't really trust the person.
And usually you wouldn't send such a person money via bank transfer either, would you?
Sure, you can construct an artificial case where you can easily get scammed.
Does it prove that Bitcoin is the enabler of scams? No.
Where's the difference to other payment methods in the case you describe?
Yes, with PayPal you've got some buyer protection service.
But in general, regardless of the payment method, you as a buyer _always_ depend on the goodwill of the seller if you want your money back. Has nothing to do with Bitcoin.
Banks may offer optional insurances, yes. But can you just send USD 3000 to some shady person by bank transfer and ask the bank for a refund, no questions asked?
It is absolutely not the case that you depend on seller's goodwill!
You have the power of the laws and regulation. In Europe, I can demand a refund and get it every time for very many classes of transaction, because of regulation. America's less certain, but courts exist in both places.
Cryptocurrency deliberately bypasses all that regulation and gives you nothing.
You could also address the rest of my argument.
1/
In 2024, touting pure unregulated capitalism in the form of cryptocurrencies feels much like touting Stalinism in the 1960s: an idea that was wrong from the start and now is obviously wrong to everyone except a tiny number of zealots with near-religious intensity.
Given how cryptocurrencies have completely failed to provide a use case for 99.9% of the world, and are wildly consumptive of the world's resources, the vast majority would be happy if they went away.
You don't know me, so you cannot know that I'm firmly opposed to letting capitalism go unregulated.
You're going after the wrong person. Probably because you can't understand how Bitcoin does _not_ at all contradict the notion of the state controlling/limiting businesses and business owners and investors.
> Given how cryptocurrencies have completely failed to provide a use case for 99.9% of the world, and are wildly consumptive of the world's resources, the vast majority would be happy if they went away.
Please bookmark this statement and make a calendar entry in 20 years to review it then.
(I will, I do this frequently.)
Wouldn't surprise me at all if you see Bitcoin differently then.
People have been telling me, "Just wait till next year" for a decade now." If I bookmarked each such case I'd have no room for bookmarks of actual value.
So what? Just because people estimated the adoption too early doesn't proove anything.
Also:
> .. I'd have no room for bookmarks ..
Such an absurd statement suggests to me: your goal isn't to actually discuss but rather just dismiss my point on no foundation.
After being told for many years that something was going to happen, and having it not happen, means that when a decade later someone else tells me just the same thing, I have every rational reason to be skeptical.
Adoption of cryptocurrencies has not happened because for the vast majority of humans, it offers no benefits, and no new benefits have appeared. "web3", touted by the same people, has not had even one success.
Look, you wrote that people told you "wait till next year".
What did I write?
"".. make a calendar entry in 20 years .."
Spot the difference?
As an aside. Lecturing me about captialism and using gmail as email provider, that's funny :D
The idea that you can't criticize society if you take part in it is an obvious non starter.
This empty argument is so old, it has a name: Mister Gotcha.
You're being imprecise.
I didn't say "you can't criticize society because you're taking part in it".
My point: the discrepancy between your actual doing and your criticism shifts the latter a little closer to virtue signalling.
Asking someone to opt out of society before they can criticize it would be absurd. There's no alternative to society.
Asking someone to change their email provider, though, is not absurd. Other email providers do exist.
Your analogy limps, a lot.
@essollteskalieren Insults are not an argument.
Goodbye now.
Wow, pointing out inconsistencies equals insult now, awesome :D
Hey, if you see inconsistencies with my views, please do point them out.
I might not like it, but at least I might get a starting point to learn something new about myself.
@essollteskalieren What part of "goodbye" did you not understand?
> Noone who trades Bitcoin directly can be scammed.
I should clarify:
Noone who trades Bitcoin directly can be scammed ... just because they're using Bitcoin.
If a scam happens, it results from the _circumstances_ of the transaction, not from the way Bitcoin works.
Say you give someone cash. Can you magically pull it out of their pocket after you realise you don't trust them? No, of course not.
Or say you buy real estate. You and the seller will often employ some fiduciary/notary so that both seller/you can be sure not to get ripped off.
The payment method is completely irrelevant here. There's no conventional payment method that magically solves the trust issue here, only the trusted third party does.
So again, the scamming has nothing to do with Bitcoin, but with the other party and the circumstances of the transaction.
cowboybanjobiker 🤠🪕🚴The baddies are always out to spoil anything good and decent.
KiwiRed@GreenSky That sounds like the free market to me.
digitaldonkey@GreenSky that applies to capitalism too 😉
Li ~ Crystal System@GreenSky it's almost like the "free market" and capitalism isn't actually good or something
Janneke@GreenSky
I don't get the "Instead" in the original post.
I don't get the "Instead" in the original post.
@GreenSky This person (unfortunately not on Mastodon) would explain you a few things about Bitcoin and climate change
Bernhard Luecke
Mathijs Booden@GreenSky Should've left out 'instead'.
Hermannus Stegeman
Kevin Karhan 
@GreenSky almost as if #capitalism is a #scam at the cost of everyone who isn't a #billionaire!
Lars Fischer@GreenSky Why "instead"? That's the true free market right there.
Lionel Jeannerat@GreenSky @loevenbruck
Pendant ce temps, je vends des tickets d'événements et des livres avec #bitcoin. Je me paye des repas en bas de chez moi, j'ai voyagé et utilisé Bitcoin pour payer en Afrique, en Amérique centrale.
Bitcoin n'était pas supposé démontrer quoi que ce soit, vous vous attaquez à un homme de paille.
Et le réchauffement climatique dû à Bitcoin, c'est juste un fantasme, basé sur aucune étude sérieuse. Les études tendent plutôt à prouver son utilité dans la transition énergétique
Pendant ce temps, je vends des tickets d'événements et des livres avec #bitcoin. Je me paye des repas en bas de chez moi, j'ai voyagé et utilisé Bitcoin pour payer en Afrique, en Amérique centrale.
Bitcoin n'était pas supposé démontrer quoi que ce soit, vous vous attaquez à un homme de paille.
Et le réchauffement climatique dû à Bitcoin, c'est juste un fantasme, basé sur aucune étude sérieuse. Les études tendent plutôt à prouver son utilité dans la transition énergétique
@ludomire @loevenbruck Payer avec ? Mais la valeur fluctue énormément.
Oui, le taux de change fluctue, plus que EUR/USD, mais moins que les monnaies dans des pays à l'inflation galopante. Et il y a des moyens de se prémunir de la fluctuation.
Après ça peut vous paraître incongru, mais je paie en BTC lorsque j'en ai l'occasion. Le chiffre d'affaire en BTC de ma maison d'édition augmente d'année en année (il reste minoritaire).
Le nombre de commerce acceptant Bitcoin augmente de jours en jours.
Bryce@GreenSky weird how crypto currency has all the same attributes as.... *checks notes*.... currency. Wow!
Reid 
@GreenSky almost as if right wing libertarianism is a naive ideology that simply doesn't work in the real world
Fábio Costa 🐇🕐🎩☕@GreenSky they did what a true free market does