CBOE pulling their futures contract. It started at the peak so maybe this marks a bottom? Likely has no impact and CME still going but neither has much trade or interest. This was an exciting bubble but the writing is on the wall that bitcoin is pretty useless and I still can't wrap my head around it ever having value.

Is it worrisome that most/all of these advantages aren't really advantages to a crazy high % of people that tend to invest in the market/bonds? These people have been using banks for 20+ years, they already pay someone to do their taxes or are smart enough to do their own, either don't own crypto or have that separate and don't mind the separation, have no use for micro investing and have access to whatever their local currency is.

We're on a poker forum and you can't wrap your head around a way to send value online that can't be censored and doesn't require a 3rd party bank, government, or corporation middle-man having value?

That said, bitcoin may not be the winner long term, but you can't unring the bell of decentralized digital assets.

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmc.../#4ffc14fb4b01
- pretending that people trading cryptos and stock dont have a hard time properly reporting taxes seems fairly innacurate aswell
- obiously people targeted are not people already trading for 20 years, a ton of young people started investing in crypto only and those people are the target of that kind of app.
- micro investing is obviously not targeting old wealthy people either. It s like saying playing online poker for pennies is useless

TY

TY

The problem is that it will mostly only be useful to people who are already into crypto. It isn't really bringing anybody else in. Doing your own taxes for stocks is also already easy.

Azteco - With Azteco, buying Bitcoins is easy. Go to your local convenience store and buy an Azteco Voucher with cash or a credit card. The store issues you an Azteco Voucher just like the ones you use to top up your mobile phone. Enter your Azteco Voucher number and your Bitcoin address at the Azteco website, and the Bitcoins arrive in your account instantly. It's that easy.

This is an illegal money transfer business without the appropriate licenses in place to facilitate these transactions.

If I remember correctly he said there were quite a lot Chinese using the app as a way to get exposure to certain things they normally are not allowed to have exposure to.

It's easy to reason from your (probably US centric?) own view. But the world is a big place, predicting what people do and don't want to do is a very hard thing. Fact is, that atm it's really hard for billions of people to have access to a global marketplace. Bitcoin is the ultimate gateway to a global economy.

Bitcoin inherently has NO restrictions for anyone to use it. I can tell somebody in Africa to download Samourai wallet on his Android, send me a BTC address and he'll have BTC in his account within 1hr. This 'simple' fact offers tons of opportunities.

You can buy bitcoin with fiat with abra aswell.
let s be clear abra is pretty much a robinhood alternative, that alow more crypto trading(i dont think you actually buy real crypto on robinhood)and less stock trading(you dont really buy stocks with abra).

So what % of those 1.7B people that don't have a checking account do:
-have access to a computer
-have over (random small dollar amount) $100
-don't need that $100 to eat/live for the next 3 months
-are willing to risk that $100 in an investment that can go down

I can't imagine investing in stocks via crypto is simpler from a tax standpoint than from USD (for an American), but maybe I'm missing something. I have never had a tax issue when investing in stocks, options, bonds, mutual funds, etfs or anything else I've tried - maybe that is unique I don't know.

BTC isn't going to become a worldwide currency (or even take a reasonable amount of market share from fiat) by a bunch of the poor people in china and Africa (the 2 places most recently mentioned ITT) starting to use it.

I'm not trying to be super critical, but people celebrate the smallest wins for BTC as if each win will change the future of BTC... "hey, did you hear that the 2nd largest distributor of hacky sacks is now accepting BTC? WE GOIN 2 da MOON!"

Nobody credible ever said the btc will be a worldwide currency. It's a tool. gray/blackmarket payments (poker anyone?), international payments (1hr/pennies vs 48hrs/$$$ intl wires), digital assets, smart contracts/digital oracles, micropayments (LN)...there are tons of viable, real use cases. These don't happen overnight, and for those who claim "omg bitcoin crashed, it's over" this is an interesting perspective:

Bitcoin Yearly Lows

- You dont need a computer you need a smartphone
- doing all your trading in a single app is much easier than from multiple places, alot of people had a problem last years to get their trades on many exchanges for taxes purpose
- whether bitcoin become huge or not is everybody's guess at this point

And it's also not so much about Abra, it's more about the concept of being able to collateralize investments with BTC. You're looking at a huge TAM. If there's a scenario where 1% of the stock market gets collateralized with BTC in the next 5-10 years, you are already looking at a huge boom in demand for BTC. Maybe it never happens, but it only needs to happen at a very small freq for BTC to be a solid bet.

Keep in mind that this is only one way the scarcity of BTC could accrue value.

I'm not engaging with the trolls just to engage them, but there are some things people who might not realize that should be shared, like Gavin being a complete pariah for a long time, well before this, well before any splits.

Abra's product is real interesting, I didn't get it at first, but I actually got the chance to talk to Bill and picked his brain and it made a lot more sense. Basically they are selling you rights to the value of the asset, but not the actual asset. The mechanics underneath are interesting where they borrow BTC based on the BTC locked into contracts. Super nice guy, I wish him the best.

Anybody have a counter to this? It's a pretty compelling stat, or is it oversimplistic or what am I missing?

It's correct. But it just shows price history, which is a bit lame. What's compelling about it? It's to be expected as BTC has performed amazing over the last decade. It doesn't tell you anything about the future though.

Don't get me wrong, there are tons of compelling things about BTC's future, but this stat isn't one of them. The stat is more a consequence of BTC's soundness.

The counter is that bitcoin's growth has been largely due to increasing market share of black and grey markets and has now reached the point of market saturation.

Transactional volume is an incredibly insignificant part of what gives Bitcoin value, due to the velocity of it. A single hodler of 2 years adds more to the value than 200 black market transactions of that size that flip every 3 days.

TomCollins, resident bitcoin expert, confirms that bitcoin's inflated value comes mostly from ponzi speculation and not its use as a currency.
Also confirms above that the lead bitcoin developer for years is, and I quote:

and that
TomCollins doing my work for me.

also, and his main point...

TS: CW is so obviously satoshi it's a fact and no other explanation
TC: uh no

Just because he was trying to make a point doesn't change what he wrote.

This gem has nothing to do with Satoshi:

I really wish Toothsayer's embarrassing $1000 prop bet loss taught him something.

Majority of Bitcoin Trading is a Hoax