It all started with a random tweet that compares Chuck E. Cheese tokens and Bitcoin. The mouse-in-chief (or whoever controls its account) decided to join the fray with a bitter tweet that eventually went semi-viral.
[...] Multiple arguments went into play — from the BTC price that recently breached $10,000 once again to coin's 24/7 availability (Chuck E. Cheese cannot relate).
[...] It's not exactly clear what Chuck E. Cheese was trying to achieve with this tweet, but it definitely got what it desperately needed — media attention.
Multiple outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, have already covered what can be considered one of the strangest Bitcoin debates you will ever see on Twitter.
https://u.today/chuck-e-cheese-mouse-gets-roasted-by-cryptocurrency-enthusiasts
The tweet that started it all:
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover
Chuck E Cheese tokens are cool and all but I'd rather earn Bitcoin
(Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Saturday July 06 2019, @01:08PM
"""
The mouse-in-chief (or whoever controls its account) decided to join the fray with a bitter tweet that eventually went semi-viral.
To each his own fake currency...
— Chuck E. Cheese (@ChuckECheese) July 2, 2019
That comeback wasn’t left unnoticed by cryptocurrency enthusiastic who started arguing about Bitcoin with a fake mouse to prove their point.
"""
Boom!
This is gonna be a good weekend, this is a classic weekend story!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday July 06 2019, @01:33PM (11 children)
where what's considered newsworthy is an social media exchange between a random internet user and the marketing department of a fast food joint about monopoly money...
(Score: 5, Touché) by SomeGuy on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:26PM
Worse yet, we could honestly, realistically, non-jokingly, expect the President of The United States of America to weigh in on the matter using the exact same anti-social media platform.
The future is stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @06:09PM (8 children)
says the dumb slave that loves federal reserve notes.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday July 06 2019, @10:55PM (7 children)
I never understood Buttcoin and other crypto-nutters. How that fuck you gonna cash out when youre in the boonies surviving off berries and squirrel meat and all power and networks are down? Its more likely that crypto is CIA fundraising because apparantly selling stolen heroin to your own population is unpopular.
(Score: 4, Informative) by driverless on Sunday July 07 2019, @04:23AM (4 children)
It doesn't even get as far as that. Friend of mine has $700,000^H^H^H$300,000^H^H^H$1.2M^H^H^H$50,000^H^H^H$450,000 in BTC and he's just sitting on it because there's no way to convert it into cash. You can't go to a bank and say "please convert my BTC into real money", you have to spend months laundering it through exchanges and paying exhorbitant fees just to cash out. So even in a perfect environment, you still can't do anything useful with it, meaning convert it into real money which you can use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:06PM (3 children)
Wtf are you talking about? It isn't hard at all to cash out 100 btc... That's a trivial amount and you should be able to find an exchange that charges under 1% per trade. If you trade via the api the base fee is 0.1% at gemini https://gemini.com/api-fee-schedule/#api-fee-schedule [gemini.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday July 08 2019, @12:32AM (2 children)
OK, so now he's converted his BTC into Gemini dollars. Then what? Is it something like:
1. Mine BTC.
2. Convert BTC to Gemini dollars.
3. ????
4. Profit!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @04:06AM
https://gemini24.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/209113906-What-are-the-transfer-limits- [zendesk.com]
I presume the ???? bit is withdraw the money over a few days in up to 100k amounts from Gemini to a US bank of your choice?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @05:32PM
Get an ACH or wire transfer to your bank account...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Monday July 08 2019, @05:39PM (1 child)
Bitcoin makes way more sense when you stop thinking about normal people and start thinking about high finance. See, "freedom" doesn't mean being able to buy groceries online without being tracked (actually, the blockchain tracks everybody, and your only claim to anonymity is in the difficulty of linking your identity to your wallet). "Freedom" means being able to execute deceptive asset trading practices without regulators stepping in.
Bitcoin was never intended to be actually used. It was always intended to be traded as a speculative currency, allowing early adopters the ability to take advantage of all the poor saps that aren't usually allowed to make trades with the sharks in the first place.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @07:56PM
All the motivations for the initial development is public on bitcointalk and the earlier mailing lists.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Saturday July 06 2019, @07:04PM
I'm all for routing Twitter off the internet. Nothing good has ever come from it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday July 06 2019, @02:17PM (1 child)
A couple of the bitcoin enthusiasts who replied sure did seem to be stung hard considering they were replying to an off-handed tweet by a fake mouse.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday July 06 2019, @02:27PM
*Animatronic mouse
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @02:38PM (18 children)
If we all boycott chuck e cheese at the same time we can put an end to this abuse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @02:51PM (14 children)
If we all stop paying of scammers and black hats, can we put an end to these tulip coins?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:03PM
One coin to rule them all: Libra.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:05PM (12 children)
Your problem is you fundamentally misunderstand how the economy works. Negative interest rates are already spreading around the globe. Getting paid interest to take out a mortgage is already a thing some places in Europe, paying interest to the bank for saving your money is coming too.
This is only going to continue to get more ridiculous as people argue about how many genders there are while watching the number in their bank/brokerage account keep rising. Meanwhile those who are behind it and see what is going on are getting the actual wealth transferred to them.
So keep calling bitcoin tulipcoins, keep calling gold/silver "barbaric" as you work harder and harder for the same lifestyle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:18PM (10 children)
Do tell where in Europe the borrower gets paid for taking a mortgage?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:24PM (9 children)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-23/bankers-stunned-as-negative-rates-sweep-across-danish-mortgages [bloomberg.com]
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:44PM (8 children)
How is a negative interest rate mortgage structured in terms of monthly payments?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @04:40PM (7 children)
It's exactly like a normal mortgage id imagine.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Saturday July 06 2019, @05:16PM (6 children)
Well, take a look at the equation that gives monthly payment M as a function of principal P, monthly interest rate r (expressed as a decimal fraction), and number of payments n:
M = P[r(1+r)^n/((1+r)^n)-1)]
When r=0 (an interest free loan), instead of getting M=P/n, you get 0/0. So I don't trust this for negative values of interest rate. What does a banker do in this case?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @06:04PM (3 children)
Gotta look into how that equation is derived. It must assume r> 0 somewhere to simplify things.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Saturday July 06 2019, @09:01PM (2 children)
OK, I eagerly await the results of your research! ;)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @10:28PM (1 child)
I didn't work out the consequences but probably here:
http://www.hughcalc.org/formula_deriv.php [hughcalc.org]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:26PM
No, that's not the problem. Read through your link. The problem is the assumption that you're dealing with a geometric series, whose sum is given by the standard formula for geometric series.
But that sum doesn't work when the common ratio of the series is 1, i.e., when interest doesn't compound and the amount of interest paid each month is the same (zero in the case of interest =0%).
Essentially the formula for loan payments looks a bit like what happens when you run compound interest "in reverse," since the part of the loan principal you don't pay until the end effectively gets compounded interest all the way back to the beginning of the loan. If there's no interest charged, it doesn't compound, so the amount of your monthly payment is simply the principal divided by the number of payments.
The assumption you quote (where Q=0 at the end because the loan is paid off) is still true, obviously. But the problem is the sum of the series doesn't equal equation 2 in the case where the interest rate is zero... The sum of the series will just be number of payments times M.
(Score: 1) by sensei_moreh on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:54AM (1 child)
It works for any non-zero rate of interest, positive or negative
Geology - It's not rocket science; it's rock science
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:58PM
Thank you sensei and AC. The geometric series on which the mortgage formula is based doesn’t work for r=0, but does work for all other values positive and negative. I picked an interest rate of 6% because that makes r=.005, and did some arithmetic, and here’s what I got:
For a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 of principal at +6% the monthly payment is $628.
For a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 of principal at 0% the monthly payment is $312.50.
For a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 of principal at -6% the monthly payment is $125.
Note for this last case the bank only receives a total repayment of only 40k on the original 100k loan.
I understand that negative interest rates tend to only emerge in a deflationary economy, but isn’t this still giving money away? Is it because 40k is worth more in 30 years in some sense than 100k now? 30 years is a long time to be making that sort of a bet. I know the negative interest rates quoted in the article were much lower in magnitude, but would a bank really do this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @06:25PM
Banks charging you interest is already a thing too:
https://money.cnn.com/2015/02/12/news/economy/danish-bank-charges-savers-interest/?iid=EL [cnn.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @05:12PM (2 children)
Do not underestimate the appeal of getting plastered while the kids run around playing shit redemption games. It's an honored past-time among the working class, seems like.
Hmm, now I wonder how we could implement that business model but with something spiritually uplifting like cannabis instead of a depressant like alcohol. Lots of vape tanks have replaceable mouth pieces, so maybe give the customer a freshly washed/sanitized vape tank and disposable mouth piece. Problem with cannabis though is that we don't want to expose the little tykes to second hand smoke/vape. Guess alcohol is superior in that way.
Could do cannabis infused fruit or vegetable juice (freshly prepared for sattvic/vegan/hipster bonus points), but problem with recreational edible cannabis is that it takes a while for effects to start, and they last all day. (If medical is feature not bug but this is recreational.) Alcohol begins working almost immediately, and the body can metabolize about 1 drink per hour. Inhaled cannabis also goes to work immediately and can fade within an hour or two (depending on strain--legal weed SWIM gave me this month lasts like half a day I swear, is too long--my favorite cultivar atm [White Widow] I grow in my legal weed closet only lasts 3 hours tops, usually 1-2). Maybe if they just served medical cultivars (high CBD/recommend high CBN as well/low THC) that target stress and anxiety. Put like giant vent fans above the area where the grown-ups sit and vape.
Of course, to bring this back on topic, I propose that such a pizza/shit redemption game/dude weed lmao lounge should accept payment in Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Monero. Issue tokens for the shit redemption games denominated as smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. Or I've also seen arcades use magstripe cards. Load those up as a wallet with some DudeWeedLmaoTokens backed by an Ethereum smart contract.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @03:13PM (1 child)
"spiritually uplifting like cannabis" and "depressant like alcohol" are not comparable, you pot head. Both are depressants. "spiritually uplifting" is just an opinion of a drug addled pot heads mind. Just Say No to drugs. You'll be a LOT better off in life. Be a part of The Social Contract, not a detractor.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday July 08 2019, @09:20PM
Be a part of the Social Contract! It’s double plus good!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:43PM
If this is news, I don't know what isn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @08:16PM (1 child)
This is the 30th comment. 13/30 comments posted under a pseudonym, 17/30 posted by AC.
What is it about cryptocurrency stories that prompt so many to check "post anonymously"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @08:17PM
and 4/13 comments posted under a pseudonym, were posted by one person.