from the everybody-like-bubbles-until-they-pop dept.
Something odd is going on in finance this week. One unit of BitCoin briefly exceeded the value of a troy ounce of gold before it fell back. However, this occurred during Ethereum rallying to its current peak above US$100. Perhaps this is like comparing apples, oranges, and dog-biscuits but — as of this week — we now have a situation where Ethereum is well above the US$1 credibility threshold of most alternative digital currencies and, to a simpleton, BitCoin was more valuable than gold.
What changed? Nothing obvious. Banks have teams of shirking resume builders working on trendy projects and they've been working on digital currencies for years. Likewise, tranches of investments funds have been going into technology for decades. However, after puffing and bursting a housing bubble and educational bubble, is this the next place to jub other people's money? Is it Charles Stross' Accelerando coming to life? I don't know but I'll be very concerned if there is a financial wobble within the next month.
(External hyperlinks via Vinay Gupta, an Ethereum contributor, Ethereum evangelist and all-around great guy who helps the homeless.)
[Ed Note: Asking what is Ethereum? Me too. Additional information on the above topic can be found at the IB Times]
Related Stories
After the last of the Dirty Harry films, The Dead Pool, was released in 1988, libertarians began to discuss the potential for crypto-currency prediction markets to become crowdfunded assassination markets. Many schemes were proposed and many were unworkable. The main complication is an assassin using zero-knowledge proof to claim a bounty without implicating any other party. This arrangement ignores betting exchanges where anyone can lay or back bets and no-one on a given exchange may be involved in assassination. Discussion has been sparse regarding secondary markets for fake death followed by new identity.
Whether or not a dead pool is bloodless, ire has been most often directed at government officials and the actual use of lethal force. When a BitCoin dead pool launched in 2013, Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, became subject of the biggest bounty. Perhaps it was obvious with hindsight that libertarian capitalists in possession of digital currency would focus on the person directly responsible for managing the world's largest, centralized, debt-based, nation-state, fiat currency.
Anyhow, given that a real assassination market has supposedly been running for four years, where are the high-profile deaths? Or disappearances? Is digital currency too complicated for soldiers of fortune? Too risky? Too ephemeral? Are the rewards too small? Will digital currency's increased value and flight to safety encourage libertarianism not previously seen? Or are people wimps?
German retailer MindFactory has removed many AMD and Nvidia graphics cards from sale because the products have a delivery time of 3 months. According to them, the GPU shortage affects "the whole of Germany" or even the "whole Europe".
The demand for GPUs to mine cryptocurrencies, particularly Ethereum, has led to OEMs creating products specifically tailored to cryptocurrency mining. For example, new cards that are smaller, have fewer display ports, with cooling systems:
While the GPU shortage continues, there are some signs of improvement. There are now several models of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 in stock from various OEMs, but prices remain high and relatively close to the price of the GTX 1080. There are also a few more GTX 1060 6GB graphics cards available, and the price on the least expensive one has dropped significantly, down from $484.80 to $259.99.
At the same time, however, the price on the least expensive GTX 1050 Ti has climbed by about $10, and several models now cost around $200. The price on the least expensive Geforce GTX 1060 3GB has also climbed by roughly $20, as well. This likely indicates that sales of these cards have increased somewhat, pushing prices up accordingly.
Meanwhile, several OEMs, including Asus, Biostar, Sapphire, and Zotac, have announced new mining graphics cards that are tailored for cryptocurrency mining. We have also seen a new motherboard from Asrock that can support up to 13 GPUs for mining. Biostar has a similar board for AM4 CPUs that can support six GPUs. Although we haven't seen them yet, EVGA and MSI also have mining GPUs coming soon, and MSI will also have a motherboard designed for mining. Although these may be attractive to cryptocurrency miners, one source told us that they use the same GPU cores as traditional graphics cards, and thus don't address the underlying supply problem.
The shortages go all the way to the source. OEMs are reportedly having trouble getting GPU cores from Nvidia, and Nvidia can't get enough from TSMC. This is presumably the same situation for AMD and GlobalFoundries.
Previously: BitCoin, Ethereum and Gold
Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?
Another slow news day; yet another sign language glove. But this time it is different!
Specifically, the DailyFail covers a New Scientist report about US$100 gloves which translate ASL [American Sign Language].
It is perhaps not as medically useful as a rectal haptic logging device or stroke recovery glove, perhaps not as visionary and audacious as the 1989 Nintendo Power Glove, but perhaps some of the numerous sign language gloves can be used as ambidexterous VR gloves? Likewise, when the crypto-currency market crashes again there'll be a huge surplus of GPUs for VR.
Full disclosure: I'm easily amused; especially with purile jokes about cyber logging and stroking aids. However, in the last two months, I filed a haptics patent (which started as a purile joke). Also, I'm working on a US$300 immersive sound system and I'll have a large number of spare I/O pins.
Cryptographic currencies are an ongoing source of comedy gold rather than actual gold. Values wildly fluctuate. After being repeatedly asked about crypto currencies, I investigated in more detail. I was aware of leading currencies, such as BitCoin, Ethereum, Monero, ZCash and, after a ridiculous conversation at my local makerspace, pornographic currencies, such as WankCoin, TitCoin, TittyCoin, AssCoin and ArseCoin. Of these, TitCoin is the most viable. Why? Young women, colloquially known as cam-whores, install applications and get paid TitCoin in exchange for showing their breasts or more explicit acts. Surely TitCoins are worthless? No, cam-whores exchange TitCoin for BitCoin which can be used to obtains drugs, designer clothing or high value gadgets via illicit channels and/or major retailers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:36PM (4 children)
All links to Twitter. BitCoin must be overvalued by trendy hype. Vinay Gupta must be a con man bullshitter in addition to signaling virtue.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:46PM (1 child)
Not all of them. The first one is to a SN submission (not containing any further links), and the last one before the separation line is to hexayurt.com, which apparently isn't related to twitter (but also not to the price of digital currencies or gold). And the links in the ed note below the separation line are not twitter links either.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @08:40PM
http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-plummets-below-1500-2017-5 [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:46PM (1 child)
You do realize that every time you say "virtue signal," all you're doing is signaling virtue?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @02:21PM
I'm gonna go with egg. Who wants 17:1 on chicken?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:39PM (7 children)
I held a bit of Ethereum, just for a lark. Also The DAO. The DAO turned into a mess, the size of the Ethereum blockchain exploded, and Ethereum seemed headed to uselessness. [soylentnews.org]
Have things improved since then? Anyone with direct experience trying to synchronize, for example?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:07PM (6 children)
i just started mining etc (ethereum classic). has gone from $4.80 to $7.25 in the last month. i'm getting in on this whole crypto currency thang. now that stuff like monero, pivx and bitsquare (still beta) exist that will allow two people to do business without a leach in between them.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @12:36AM (5 children)
Bitcoin may not be suitable for a savings account. But being able to execute transactions of monetary value between individuals without leaches having any say is a great benefit. Taxation, inflation, institutional collapses and transaction fees are undermined. Because those instruments have been abused and lost legitimacy.
(Score: 2) by lx on Monday May 08 2017, @07:36AM (4 children)
I don't know. It seems like the mining fee for a swift and successful transaction is getting larger and larger.
Pay through the nose to a banker in a suit or to a guy in his sweatpants running a botnet?
Decisions decisions...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @08:38AM (3 children)
Didn't think of that. Regardless the sweatpants is more deterministic. Nor can anyone really try to start the fiat currency printing shop in BTC.
Another possibility is to have another currency backed by BTC. Then fees can be lowered.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday May 08 2017, @12:50PM (1 child)
You mean, sort of a digital Bretton-Woods? [wikipedia.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @07:31PM
Yeah.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:54AM
Regardless the sweatpants is more deterministic.
There is a more important factor at play. Bank fees are flat, $40 or so, no matter how much you send. BTC fees are proportional to the sum that you send. If you send very little, then BTC is cheaper. If you send a good amount, the bank is cheaper. Add the necessary insurance (free with a wire transfer and necessary with a large transfer,) and per calculations that I did a year ago or so the break-even line was somewhere around $7K to $10K. The bank is also simpler - you do not need to buy and sell temporary tokens (that is yet another risk and loss, as the spread between buy and sell is not exactly zero.) Let's focus on this aspect, as I just happened to find the numbers [coinbase.com]:
We charge a 1% fee when you buy or sell bitcoin using a fiat currency like dollars, euros, GBP, etc. Thanks for using Coinbase!
You lose 2% on just buying BTC, sending it for free, and selling it back on the other end for exactly what you bought it for (ha!) If the 2% is $40, the 100% is $40*50 = $2,000. Well, that's pretty bad already. You'd be better off using the bank for transfers above this figure. If you are sending $10K through the bank you pay only $40, and that is only 0.4%. Bitcoin players charge far more for their services. This also explains why BTC does not interest businesses: even outside of the issues of trust, it's just awfully expensive.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:42PM (3 children)
Actually, I forgot about Puerto Rico's bankruptcy [soylentnews.org]. That would be enough to move markets.
1702845791×2
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @06:05PM (2 children)
Tuna Fish
by Andrew Kaye
Jonathan ate elves because they were high in protein and vitamin B, and he fed them to his wife for the same reason. She was three months pregnant and couldn't stomach most foods; only elves satisfied her without bringing on a ripple of nausea in her belly.
He prepared them for her like a tuna fish sandwich, chopping the cooked meat into small, moist chunks and mixing it with mayonnaise and a blob of sweet relish, then smearing the resulting paste between slices of toasted Wonder Bread.
The elves had to be fresh. The processed kind prepared in factories and vacuum-sealed in thick plastic kept for a long time but just didn't taste the same, and their eyes were always glassy and staring like the squid Jonathan also refused to buy.
Fresh elves could be bought in delis and butcher shops, of course, but Jonathan didn't like the uncertainty of where the meat came from. Salvador's down on 24th Street had a decent selection but also a trio of dumpsters around back. Jonathan worried old Sal was trapping elves himself--fresh, but no doubt glutted on garbage and unsuitable for his pregnant wife.
Jonathan took matters into his own hands, sticking to trapping elves in more natural settings to avoid any unhealthy taint. City parks were the closest things he had to forests. He set his traps in discrete locations, appealing to the elves' notorious sweet tooths by baiting each accordingly with candy bars and chocolate chip muffins. Every morning, just before the streetlamps popped off, Jonathan quietly collected his traps and the wriggling, bright-eyed elves within.
It wasn't a perfect process by any means, and the nature of the bait meant he captured more than just elves. Squirrels. Small birds. Children were the biggest problem in the most literal sense. They were the dolphins to his cans of tuna fish, too large to remove from the traps without also freeing the elves.
In the end, Jonathan's wife didn't notice any difference in taste.
The End
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @06:21PM (1 child)
This audience should be expected to appreciate a soylent story. But, no, they call it "spam". Maybe the green site will like it better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @06:34PM
Your mistake is not mentioning the children's parents are registered Democrats. Know your audience and SoylentNews belongs entirely to elderly GOP voters.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by archfeld on Sunday May 07 2017, @06:21PM (17 children)
Crypto currencies are the wet dream for the cartels and other entities seeking a way to launder funds. If you literally had a house full of cash that you could not do anything with, you could in 'theory' trade in for a lot of some crypto currency in a shady market, even at a minor loss as that much cash is only so much paper to you, and then shuffle crypto currency through several markets changing types, selling here and there in different currencies in the end emerging with clean, untraceable funds in legitimate countries where you could even pay taxes on the cash and invest in legitimate businesses. I would not be surprised to see more of these types of electronic currencies appear, peak and then drop into obscurity.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2, Informative) by dbv on Sunday May 07 2017, @07:34PM (6 children)
No, cartels don't use Bitcoin for money laundering. They use too big to fail banks [usatoday.com].
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Sunday May 07 2017, @08:57PM (5 children)
Just because they use one, and got caught for it, doesn't mean they aren't and don't use other methods as well. The US Customs and Border Patrol pat themselves on the back for stopping a few billion at the border while the other 60% gets by unseen.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 1) by dbv on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:17PM (3 children)
They used HSBC, for years and to the tune of billions. Do you have any proof at all of them using Bitcoin? Maybe they don't like the publicly available blockchain for transactions that large?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tftp on Sunday May 07 2017, @11:33PM (2 children)
They could use many one-time accounts (tens of thousands) to obfuscate the transfers. But a better question to ask is this: what is the daily volume of BTC transfers? The answer to that [blockchain.info] is from $200M to $400M per day. Doesn't look like a handful of geeks paying for pizzas or coffee. It's equally unlikely that it's all immigrant workers who are sending money back home. I do not know anyone IRL who would be dealing in BTC at all, let alone in such numbers. This volume suggests some persistent activity, and it may well be one of ways to finance illegal activities.
(Score: 1) by dbv on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:21AM (1 child)
Could, doesn't look like, may. LOL. Pretty thin.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:27AM
The complaint published when Ulbricht was arrested included information the FBI gained from a system image of the Silk Road server collected on 23 July 2013. It noted that, "From February 6, 2011 to July 23, 2013 there were approximately 1,229,465 transactions completed on the site. The total revenue generated from these sales was 9,519,664 Bitcoins, and the total commissions collected by Silk Road from the sales amounted to 614,305 Bitcoins. These figures are equivalent to roughly $1.2 billion in revenue and $79.8 million in commissions, at current Bitcoin exchange rates...", according to the September 2013 complaint, and involved 146,946 buyers and 3,877 vendors.[12]
This one site generated at least $2M in revenue daily - and that was retail. Transaction-wise, if you look at the chart [wikipedia.org], it would be six times as high.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:51PM
Hahaha. Where do you think that 60% is? Bitcoin? Cash like in Breaking Bad? Really? lol
Is that what you have to believe so you can live in a Just World?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:12PM (4 children)
yeah, i'm sure there is a lot of money laundering (who gives a shit? what people do to make their money is not my business unless you're stealing it from me or mine.) but there are also people who just believe in the right of a free individual to be able to do business without some usurer getting a cut or some useless sack of crap in government stealing some of it. fuck the banksters and the pigs in government.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Sunday May 07 2017, @11:38PM (3 children)
Personally I agree, just because I pointed out that bitcoins are a perfect vehicle for money laundering doesn't mean I oppose it but that it and other crypto currencies are a very good place to do some money shuffling. The market is confusing and no one is sure of the impact this kind of 'new' market is having or could have on the economies of the world.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/05/07/1417231 [soylentnews.org]
Not only does it effect the US economy but the world market as a whole, not sure if it is good or bad at this point but when it causes a noticeable blip on the world market, someone is getting rich off it. I just wish it was me :) At what point do you think that anything that happens in the economy DOESN'T effect you and yours ? If the government ends up paying out to cover the dirtbag banksters, or losing money by it 'we the people' will get to make up the difference in more unfair, unwanted taxes enacted by elected douchebags employed by the corporations. One way or another they will find a way to screw us.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @12:35AM (2 children)
i wasn't really trying to give you a hard time with my reply. just cussing the bastards, not necessarily you. i hope everyone in the world abandons fiat currency. It has the potential to kill big government and the banks with their fractional reserve banking scam. We don't need them or their taxes. I know it affects me. that's why i'm divesting from the scam. feeding it won't satisfy it. it's a monster, it's proven that. no income tax and less and less fiat currency. it's beans, bullets, band-aids and bitcoin time. i'll pay my local sales tax for now, when i have to. eventually we should be able to work around that too. Eventually the whole house of cards will come crashing down. interlopers and thieves is all they are. fuck them all, consequences be damned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @06:50AM (1 child)
Since pre-Biblical days, its been the human condition that the masses were subject to one war-lord or another.
We have our worker bees which produce everything, and we have our elite, many of which are nothing but pure parasites.
I can't lop all elites in that group, as there are also many there who perform vital leadership and planning functions.
Its like comparing Elon Musk to George Soros. Personally, I'd much rather Elon Musk keep every dollar he gets, as he does things with it, while I see nothing wrong with taxing every dollar Soros gets.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cafebabe on Monday May 08 2017, @01:55PM
Are you mad? You support PayPal [wikipedia.org] co-founder Elon Musk? PayPal survives because it is shiftier than the average credit card scammer [paypalsucks.com].
1702845791×2
(Score: 1) by WillR on Monday May 08 2017, @02:49PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday May 08 2017, @07:37PM (3 children)
Because bit coin is international, and can be exchanged in many places for several other types of currency, both virtual and actual, and virtual currencies can be generated and exchanged by agencies outside the traditional banking circles which are very well regulated and interdependent. While the US Fed's aren't the most current or reactive to virtual currencies. Heck they just noticed that there are other methods beyond wire transfer available. The motions of virtual currencies are not so well understood, thus it is much harder to follow and predict.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 1) by WillR on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:54AM (2 children)
Right, I get the advantage of shuffling your millions between different cryptocurrencies and using several brokers to cash out, it's the cash IN I don't get. How do you turn 50,000 $20 bills in a bedroom in LA into cryptocurrency without the money going through a conventional bank account somewhere under US jurisdiction on the way?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by tftp on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:34AM
How do you turn 50,000 $20 bills in a bedroom in LA into cryptocurrency without the money going through a conventional bank account somewhere under US jurisdiction on the way?
Something like this, perhaps? [localbitcoins.com] I clicked on just one random link, and the trader is willing to accept up to $20K in one transaction.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Tuesday May 09 2017, @04:29AM
The money overage I was thinking about is in stash houses in Mexico as a result of drug trafficking. I am sure that Colombia has a similar locales.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/09/19/22-billion-dollars-found-photos-of-a-mexican-drug-lords-home-after-being-raided/ [veteranstoday.com]
https://www.google.com/search?q=drug+money+stash+houses&tbm=isch&imgil=JEwzyFciEhhTvM%253A%253B1PvNyMLuWtiABM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.snopes.com%25252Fphotos%25252Fcrime%25252Fdrugmoney.asp&source=iu&pf=m&fir=JEwzyFciEhhTvM%253A%252C1PvNyMLuWtiABM%252C_&usg=__YK1JjxqgLIOXo0lu7TOTjysfPSU%3D&biw=1273&bih=617&dpr=1&ved=0ahUKEwj149T7--HTAhWFLmMKHTglDx8QyjcINg&ei=wkQRWfX6L4XdjAO4yrz4AQ#imgrc=JEwzyFciEhhTvM:&spf=196 [google.com]
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arcz on Sunday May 07 2017, @08:15PM (10 children)
Litecoin seems more promising than etherium. I think ETH is kind of a bubble, because ETH doesn't really provide anything useful. The ETH virtual machine can't really do anything useful, IMO. Litecoin I think, will be the currency of the future. Reason being faster transaction processing, and a better hash. Frankly, scrypt is just plain better than SHA256. The difference means a huge impact on the large scale economy IMO. First, scrypt is more memory limited than SHA, which means it benefits less from custom silicon. I.e. more mining power in the hands of average users than in the hands of silicon vendors vs bitcoin. This fact, alone, convinces me that scrypt is the better hash algorithm. I don't think bitcoin is a bubble, but I expect litecoin to overtake it eventually and become the new bitcoin.
Disclaimer: I own amounts of both bitcoin and litecoin.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:22PM (9 children)
Scrypt is asics mineable, AFAIK. Don't they already have litecoin asics available for preorder? antminer s3 i think? ETH and ETC are more memory hard and are not currently asics mineable, once again, AFAIK. Also, DAPPS on ethereum and/or ethereum classic could be an important usage. Anon(?), distributed web apps? oh yeah! screw your(not you, them) domain registrars and your thought police. just because there isn't much yet doesn't mean it won't grow. The good thing is that more and more money is coming into crypto(total market cap went from 30 billion to 45 billion in the last month), so as long as you pick something with solid governance and tech or usefulness then it should go up or stick around, depending on purpose/design. I like pivx for currency and etc and others for investment. hopefully we can develop a way for people around the world to do business without outside control.
(Score: 1) by arcz on Monday May 08 2017, @03:22PM (8 children)
Evrything in theory is ASIC minable. It's only a question of how much the design benefits from ASIC vs a regular Von Neuman design. Memory-hard problems like Scrypt benefit less from ASIC. In theory, ETH could also be ASIC'd. ETH does have some ASIC resistance but it is also I believe a Kekkack hash. I am not convinced that ETH/ETC cannot be ASIC'd effectively though.
ETH has a hash algorithm here(supposedly):
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Ethash-Design-Rationale [github.com]
I'm not super familiar with python or whatever they use but it looks to me like a case of a linear algorithm that could be made random access with some adjustments. (I'm not totally sure because I don't understand the programming launghe they used though.) Anyway, the use of a cache doesn't really make it a memory hard problem. Because it looks to me that the cache is shared between all invocations of the hash. So yes, it uses a lot of memory, but if you have a huge number of hashes sharing that same memory pool then it doesn't do very much good. Bottom line is that Kekkack is not a memory hard hash, Scrypt is.
I thought that ETH might be able to do anonymous web apps, but when I looked at the design it didn't seem to be able to do that. Maybe if they give us a better way to interface with it then it'd be useful. Maybe I just don't know how to use it, but I think ETH is not mature enough yet in design to call it anything but a bubble. In any case, I wasn't able to figure out how to use it, and I am a skilled C++ programmer and also have experience with server adminstration. It's definitely not user friendly if it is possible to do so.
I don't think Litecoin is perfect but I like it a lot better than ETH. TBH, I'd like a coin with a minting rate that better tracks population growth so that it avoids the deflationary spiral issue that modern cryptocurrencies have, and possibly a ramp up time to avoid early adopters dumping currency on the market to crash it, but it seems we aren't there yet.
Disclaimer: I own bitcoin and litecoin in significant amounts and not ETH/ETC.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday May 08 2017, @04:05PM (7 children)
I like Monero myself. The benefit of making SRAM the ASIC is that you can buy general-purpose equipment without making it obvious what you are doing.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @07:34PM (6 children)
Why would anyone care if someone is mining?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday May 08 2017, @11:57PM (5 children)
The exchange of money is heavily regulated. You are barely allowed to hold 3 months' emergency cash without being suspected of a crime and having it seized.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @03:54AM (3 children)
If it ain't got no server and ain't got no person to nail. Then they can crime it as much as they want.
I suspect this is the USA? the land of capitalism won't allow people to have massive amounts of cash on their bank account?
Values outside the bank system will as always be quite invisible.
(Score: 3, Informative) by archfeld on Tuesday May 09 2017, @04:43AM (1 child)
Actually these days it is the cash outside the banking system that is drawing the unwanted attention. The US has an ongoing issue with certain localities and civil forfeiture. Any large sum of cash that you can't provide documentation to can be seized as potential drug money and then you have to go to civil court to 'prove' you have the money from a source other than drugs or assumed illegal sources.
Papers please...
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @04:58AM
Salary checks?
Regardless, they can't have full control over what people do with assets not registered.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday May 09 2017, @03:07PM
And to be pedantic, concurrency does rely on servers. They are just distributed and redundant.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Wednesday May 10 2017, @08:05PM
In the kleptocracy former known as the United States, it works as follows:-
1702845791×2