Bitcoin

[bmxninja357]

guess you could just be a bitcoin billionaire...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG7zLhEWanc

peace,
ninj

[TheNewSaint]

Where's the user acceptance?

Everybody wants to invest in Bitcoin, but nobody wants to use it. It's a currency you can't buy anything with. Not even website subscriptions, which you'd think would be Bitcoin's forte. It has completely failed to find a purpose. PayPal, Venmo, Patreon, GreenDot, and dozens of other financial services already do the things Bitcoin claims it will do someday.

I think consumers just don't trust it as a means of exchange. And they are right not to; it's volatile, inherently flawed, and difficult to use.

This is all just the world's biggest, most expensive game of Cow Clicker.

[SteveE]

Very telling that a big Bitcoin conference that was heavily promoted recently wouldn't accept Bitcoin as payment for registration!

Another issue is that it appears to take considerable time to convert a Bitcoin to "real" currency on any of the for-profit exchanges that have cropped up. 4 days or more is not unusual, and there's often a significant fee involved.

Warren Buffett referred to cryptocurrency as "rat poison", and I think he's probably understating it. All of these cryptos are pure speculation, with no transparency as to who you're dealing with or where. I'd sooner collect Beanie Babies.

[notorial dissent]

Good summation. I see Bitcoin as being speculation on the order of the Tulip Bubble. with the way Bitcoin has been bouncing around it really is a crapshoot. Just me, but I'd be concerned about the amount of fraud that has been going on, and I can't help wondering if there hasn't been some hacking of some kind in the background.

[SteveE]

The kind of anonymity that is touted as a "benefit" of cryptocurrencies is an absolute godsend for crooks and scam artists.
I've no doubt that a whole bunch of bottom feeders are going to show up to help the gullible and uninformed "cash in big" on this latest new thing!

Barnum wildly underestimated the numbers of potential victims out there - especially in the age of the Internet!

[notorial dissent]

Oh, I think there are already scammers out there, but they just aren't getting much if any traction. The idjit pool is just too small and too broke and the really ripe ones don't have the ready to begin with. The only ones making money off this, presumably, are the ones who got in early.

[bmxninja357]

Here's an interesting article on bitcoin.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambr ... cking/amp/

Peace
Ninj

[JamesVincent]

Hello all. LTNS. I think it ironic that the article I return on is also one I started.

No lie, I have not been paying much attention to, well, much of anything past year or so. I have, however, seen something that caught my eyes: bitcoin ATMs.

That's right, an ATM for bitcoin and litecoin transactions. Marketed by a company called Black Frog Blockchain Ventures ( https://www.blackfrogcrypto.com/ ). These ATMs allow you to buy and cell virtual coins for good old fashioned cash. The company thoughtfully provided a Q&A sheet hanging on the side of the machine. If anyone is interested pm me and I will email you a copy if the website does not fulfill your curiosity.

Through the machine you may buy up to $1500 per day in bitcoin and between $1501 and $2999 per day if you provide a state id. You basically download a virtual wallet app (wallet) to your smartphone. You tell the machine how much you wish to purchase. The machine displays a QR code which you scan with the wallet app. You insert cash into the machine and voila, you're the owner of whatever bit amount you just purchased. I confess, was not interested enough to try to determine going rates, amounts purchasable, etc.

So, if you wish to invest into.... something.... on a budget just head down to your neighboring gas station (no joke that. The machine is in a local Exxon station) and buy your way into the future! Of what I have no idea, never was quiet on the fact that I don't believe that virtual currency is the be all, end all. And this actually brings up a couple of points I raised before and adds another dimension. Money laundering.

Before, bitcoin were purchased through quasi traceable online transactions. With this machine, buying less than $1500 a day you don't have to provide anything but a phone number for a text to be sent to. The Q&A sheet says that prepaid phones must use a state id but I'm sure there's a work around to that. So you take your funny money or stolen money, convert it to bitcoin, drive a few minutes, hours, whatever, and then turn it over at a different machine. I'm sure the company marketing this has thought about it but one thing I've learned over the years here at the Q: if my reasonably law-abiding ass can think of it, con men can do it much better.

[eric]

Actually Bitcoin ATM's are the payment method of choice now in Canada for certain types of scams that prey on a particular class of people. The old standby of Western Union transfers has now become traceable, store clerks are now trained to question someone buying 5K$ of Apple Play cards, so Bitcoin is the payment method of choice.

The popular scams that use these payment means are the ones where the victim is pressured over the space of a few hours to pay large sums of money to clear up a particular legal problem. They all start out the same with a heavily accented voice on the phone demanding cash:
1. This is the Canada Revenue Agency, you owe a lot of money for income tax, pay up now or we will arrest you in a few hours;
2. This is Canadian Border Security, your immigration status is in question, pay up now or you will be deported;
3. My favorite, that usually starts with the caller speaking Cantonese: Your family back in China is in trouble with the authorities, we are protecting your daughter/cousin/niece who is here in Canada on a student visa and we need money to pay our expences else we will tell the authorities where we have hidden her.

Actually I have received all of these calls and with my warped sense of humour I deal with them in the appropriate manner. As an aside I was born in Canada, although being born in Northern Ontario may be considered a seperate nation for residents of Toronto. Similarly, I have no Asian/East Asian/Indian sub-continent family as far as I am aware although certain members of my family may have had a few intimate encounters in that part of the world 150 years ago.

[Burnaby49]

I've had the Canada Revenue Agency one frequently. We keep getting a recorded message of some woman babbling away in Chinese so that may be the same one you're talking about. Not had the border one yet. Also my credit card / Paypal account / Telus phone account / hydro connection are toast unless I respond immediately. Or I get emails about a tax refund (not too low an amount not to bother with or too high to trigger skepticism). A good rule of thumb for any Canadian readers. The Canada Revenue Agency never contacts taxpayers via email.

[eric]

The only reason I know about the Chinese family scam is that I picked up the phone when the call came through and did some follow on research. With respect to the Telus account scam there is a simple solution that will also save you from many other scam calls. If you have some form of Telus service they have probably pushed you to enable some form of two factor authentication to access your account. One problem with two factor authentication is that the provider has to be honest. Telus is famous for the fact that crooked employees will sell metadata (names linked to valid cell numbers) to scammers. I ended many scam calls by phoning Telus and raising a stink to remove two factor authentication and changing my cell number which wasn't even through Telus. Btw, Telus is aware that they do have crooked employees, they just haven't been able to fix the problem.

[Burnaby49]

I have a much simpler solution to the Telus scam, I don't have a cell. My only phone is a landline with the phone screwed into a kitchen wall. BC Tel, Telus's predecessor, installed the line over 40 years ago.

[JamesVincent]

I have a much simpler solution to the Telus scam, I don't have a cell. My only phone is a landline with the phone screwed into a kitchen wall. BC Tel, Telus's predecessor, installed the line over 40 years ago.

Oh. About the same time you bought your old computer.

[Chaos]

I have a much simpler solution to the Telus scam, I don't have a cell. My only phone is a landline with the phone screwed into a kitchen wall. BC Tel, Telus's predecessor, installed the line over 40 years ago.

Oh. About the same time you bought your old computer abacus.

fixed for accuracy

[Burnaby49]

I have a much simpler solution to the Telus scam, I don't have a cell. My only phone is a landline with the phone screwed into a kitchen wall. BC Tel, Telus's predecessor, installed the line over 40 years ago.

Oh. About the same time you bought your old computer.

Actually my current computer is about 13 years old and the operating system (XP) about 19 years old. I used 'current' because I just had a brand new, right up to date computer delivered today. It will probably be a month or so before I fully transition and abandon my old faithful relic. I loved XP and, at 70 years old, the learning curve on a new system will be difficult. Many of the programs I currently use can't be transferred to windows 10 and peripherals like my printer and scanner will have to be replaced. My email system, Outlook Express, doesn't work on the new one and I'm not sure I can carry my address book over, my wife couldn't when she made the leap a few years ago. It's a new world for me.

What was the last straw? Webhick. She arbitrarily banished me from Quatloos when she updated some settings on the program underlying Quatloos. I was totally locked out and the only information I had to tell me why was a page full of computer gibberish accusing me of being a bot. I had to beg through back-channels for reinstatement. So she relaxed some of the settings and I was back in. But the writing was on the wall. I haven't been able to update Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer for years and my whole system was getting hopelessly dysfunctional.

An old acquaintance recently told me (jokingly I hope) that if he had to chose between his cell phone and his wife he'd have to start looking for a new wife. Not an issue for me since I don't have a cell but put XP in the sentence instead and I can at least understand his comment. But pondering such hypotheticals are irellevant since advancing technology forced the decision on me.

[fortinbras]

XP was a good system and if my previous PC hadn't died of extreme old age (the harddrive is the only moving part and usually the first to go sour), I'd still be using XP.

Bitcoin and its cyber-money competitors are not very different from the Liberty Dollar con. It primarily operates as a warehouse bank in which sneaky and crooked people stash their money to hide it from the IRS, ex-wives, creditors, etc. The viggorish charged for transactions is, to them, an acceptable service charge for the analog to a Swiss bank account.

About six months ago the owner of a Canadian cybermoney competitor to Bitcoin very inconsiderately died and, even though he knew he was in failing health, he supposedly took the passwords to his cyber-bank with him to his grave. So nobody can get at their money. His widow insists that searching throughout the house and all his papers has not disclosed the password (if she had that password she conceivably could extract everyone's money and keep it all for herself -- but she swears that hasn't happened).

[JamesVincent]

About six months ago the owner of a Canadian cybermoney competitor to Bitcoin very inconsiderately died and, even though he knew he was in failing health, he supposedly took the passwords to his cyber-bank with him to his grave. So nobody can get at their money. His widow insists that searching throughout the house and all his papers has not disclosed the password (if she had that password she conceivably could extract everyone's money and keep it all for herself -- but she swears that hasn't happened).

One of my original points was that since virtual currencies like bitcoin were not issued or regulated by an actual government then there was no real recourse if something went south. Case in point.

[NYGman]

These ATMs are problematic, they also provide a great opportunity to launder dirty bitcoin. Send out some Smurfs across a big city to cash out the payments from all those ransomware attempts, and then purchase new coin. May as well set up a shop full of them and call it an e-Laundromat.

[NYGman]

Leaving this here, not sure if it deserves its own thread... Don't have time for a full summary, but it is about an ongoing Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme, which is a rebranding of another. Bonus points for some participants names, and I like the term "Ponzi Pimp" as used in the article below.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/23/bit ... wealthboss

[Arthur Rubin]

These ATMs are problematic, they also provide a great opportunity to launder dirty bitcoin. Send out some Smurfs across a big city to cash out the payments from all those ransomware attempts, and then purchase new coin. May as well set up a shop full of them and call it an e-Laundromat.

Is there any way to determine if a bitcoin is "clean"?