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Old 26th March 2018, 23:23   #301
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Originally Posted by ragh_bhushan View Post

Good for you. I have had at least 15 instances in only the past 2 years where the payments got stuck for days and weeks. Took lot of escalation and ton of email exchanges to resolve the issues. For both personal as well as business purposes.

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Inadvertently the point you made above is one of the weakest points of Blockchain/Bitcoin or every crypto currency as of now. There simply is no dispute redressal mechanism since there is no regulator who overlooks the transactions. A Visa/ Mastercard transaction can be reversed if one can report within a prescribed time about the illegal transaction. But that is not the case with Blockchain. Once a transaction is done, whether legal or illegal, there is no way to reverse that or redress that. Another major drawback, which is surprisingly Blockchain's strongest and weakest point is the difficulty to tamper without knowing the key/password. So if anyone loses their key/password its next to impossible to get their money back. Its not that difficult to imagine how many people forget their passwords on a regular basis. In the current system they can retrieve the key to their hard earned money saved in banks. With Blockchain, at least as of today, its gone.

As far as scams are concerned, I re-iterate, it is not because of regulation but in spite of regulation. If we want to actively remove even the existing regulatory framework it would chaos everywhere.

As I said many times Blockchain as a technology will find its uses in many ways. But I am not sure if it can replace the banking system. And the day the technology becomes so effecient, one can rest assured that any cryto currency still surviving will be the one backed by a government.
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Old 27th March 2018, 00:30   #302
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

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Originally Posted by vamsi.kona View Post
There simply is no dispute redressal mechanism since there is no regulator who overlooks the transactions. A Visa/ Mastercard transaction can be reversed if one can report within a prescribed time about the illegal transaction. But that is not the case with Blockchain. Once a transaction is done, whether legal or illegal, there is no way to reverse that or redress that.
Isn't that exactly what you are asking for when you take control of your money and remove any third party? As a wise man once said, "With great power comes greater responsibility". The only person responsible for the security of one's money is the person himself / herself. If they want to be reckless with their wealth then blockchain technology is not ready for them yet.

If one is still persistent that they do not want to take charge of their own money and would rather someone else do it for them then Lightning Network technology may be able to do that as well. Not in its current form but what you are asking for is possible.

Quote:
Another major drawback, which is surprisingly Blockchain's strongest and weakest point is the difficulty to tamper without knowing the key/password. So if anyone loses their key/password its next to impossible to get their money back.
It is possible and not very complicated to recover Bitcoins in case of lost password / key. Here is a link on how to do that.
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Old 28th March 2018, 17:13   #303
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

"Blockchain, not Bitcoin" narrative is not working out as banks would have expected it to.

Quote:
Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality
(Reuters) - Wall Street has been much more excited about the system underpinning bitcoin than the cryptocurrency itself, but the global financial industry has not yet been able to do much with the technology known as blockchain.

Reuters has found several blockchain projects launched by major financial institutions that have been shelved, as development of the technology enters a hype-meets-reality phase.

The casualties include projects by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), BNP Paribas SA (BNPP.PA) and SIX Group, Reuters has found.

These were among the wave of blockchain tests touted by the financial industry over the past few years, as firms bet the new technology would displace much of the sector's infrastructure, cutting out middlemen, speeding transactions and reducing costs for things like securities and payments processing.

Yet as some projects were developed, companies pulled back for various reasons - from costs to industry readiness, underscoring that, for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days.

DTCC, known as Wall Street's bookkeeper, recently put the brakes on a blockchain system for the clearing and settlement of repurchase, or repo, agreement transactions, said Murray Pozmanter, head of clearing agency services at the DTCC.

The project, which had successfully tested with startup Digital Asset Holdings (DA), was shelved because banks and other potential users believed the same results could be achieved more cheaply using current technology, he said.

"Basically, it became a solution in search of a problem," he said.

Post-trade services provider, SIX Securities Services, a unit of the group that operates Switzerland's stock exchange, has also decided not take into production a prototype built by DA for the processing of securities, SIX spokesman Jürg Schneider, told Reuters.

"We wanted to go into another direction," Schneider said.

The partnership with DA, run by former JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) executive Blythe Masters, was announced in 2016.

French bank BNP Paribas in 2016 said its securities services division had partnered with startups including SmartAngels to build a platform for private small businesses to manage their securities.

The bank stopped work on the project, and will instead team up with other financial institutions on another blockchain initiative called LiquidShare, said a source familiar with the matter. "Creating an enterprise-wide robust blockchain platform requires the full cooperation of the whole post trade ecosystem," the source said.

PROOFS OF CONCEPT

The DTCC, BNP Paribas and SIX tests were among a barrage of blockchain "proofs of concept" announced with great fanfare by financial institutions.

"A large part of the problem has been expectation management, or rather lack thereof by many vendors and large consultancies that made claims that could not be fulfilled in the time spans they had said on stage at fintech events," said Tim Swanson, founder of technology advisory Post Oak Labs.

Reuters reported last week JPMorgan was considering spinning off its marquee blockchain project Quorum. In July a partnership between settlement provider Euroclear and startup Paxos to develop a blockchain service was dissolved.

Still, other projects are moving forward.

Pozmanter said the DTCC is still examining another project with DA and that it is close to testing a blockchain-based trade information warehouse set to launch next year.

"We're still bullish on the technology," Pozmanter said.

The repo test with DA "met all its stated goals" and led to a new project that DTCC is examining, said DA spokeswoman Vera Newhouse.

SIX is working on a blockchain project with Nasdaq (NDAQ.O) and Australia's stock exchange ASX Ltd (ASX.AX) said in December that DA will help replace its registry, settlement and clearing system, in one of the most ambitious projects to receive a green light.
Source

Fact of the matter is as of now there is only one proper working example of Blockchain - Bitcoin. It works not because of its price but inspite of it. Price of Bitcoin is really irrelevant. What makes Bitcoin powerful is its highly decentralised and distributed nature. This may look trivial but is actually the most difficult aspect of Blockchain to achieve - Decentralisation and distribution.

People like to use the word Blockchain because it sounds cool. In reality it actually is the one of the worst possible database structures that exists.

Blockchain technology that people find so fascinating to talk about is nothing but The Merkle Tree cryptography which was invented way back in 1979. If it is going to change the world then it certainly is taking a lot more time than expected.

What financial institutions need to realise is that it isn't outdated technology that is preventing them from making faster global transfers / transparent ledgers / settlements. It is in fact the heavy duty regulations by central banks that has become the bottleneck. That is a more fundamental problem and cannot be solved by outdated tech.
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Old 28th March 2018, 18:08   #304
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by ragh_bhushan View Post
"Blockchain, not Bitcoin" narrative is not working out as banks would have expected it to.



Source

Fact of the matter is as of now there is only one proper working example of Blockchain - Bitcoin. It works not because of its price but inspite of it. Price of Bitcoin is really irrelevant. What makes Bitcoin powerful is its highly decentralised and distributed nature. This may look trivial but is actually the most difficult aspect of Blockchain to achieve - Decentralisation and distribution.
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What financial institutions need to realise is that it isn't outdated technology that is preventing them from making faster global transfers / transparent ledgers / settlements. It is in fact the heavy duty regulations by central banks that has become the bottleneck. That is a more fundamental problem and cannot be solved by outdated tech.
Unfortunately, that Wall street has not clue of how to use Blockchain, or that nobody ever has any clue of how to use Blockchain is not any kind of validation for Bitcoin.
Above, you have mentioned the same mythology stuff discussed in the previous pages. Bitcoin is not a proper working example of anything. It is not how a currency would run, it is not anything like an asset, although it is being mentioned again and again as it is without any economic basis. Come to think of it, it is a working example of Tulip mania, where a lot of people tried to get rich quick. As of now, that is it.

The advocates of Bitcoin keep on applying half baked economics to Bitcoin. I guess in last page, there was a probabilistic prediction on the prices. I guess the first lesson in economics is that this is a study of human behavior. Mathematical models work in weather predictions because the weather doesnt give two hoots if we know about the prediction. Markets in general, and cryptos specifically -- not so much. A prediction that you or anybody makes is heard and thought about by people participating in the market and thus has an impact over and above the models. But, so would governments and politics.
And regulation being thought about as some sort of a bottleneck is an argument against fact. Of how the human kind has been in the last two centuries. Intuitions are not economic arguments.

And the immutable or any other kind of remarkable nature of Bitcoin is not an economic argument either.

BTW, blockchain is an amazing solution looking for a problem, I think it was mentioned sometime previously in the thread.
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Old 28th March 2018, 18:52   #305
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

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Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal View Post
Unfortunately, that Wall street has not clue of how to use Blockchain, or that nobody ever has any clue of how to use Blockchain is not any kind of validation for Bitcoin.
It is a validation that Blockchain works as it cannot be denied that Bitcoin has been functioning as it was designed to function and that it is the longest running blockchain till date. So if Blockchain has to work in other fields, Bitcoin is the only working example and can offer insights on why and how Blockchain works.

Quote:
Bitcoin is not a proper working example of anything.
It was designed as peer-to-peer value transfer mechanism without the requirement of any third party. You send one Bitcoin to a person, that person receives one Bitcoin. That's it. Nothing more than that. This has been working ever since it started working almost a decade ago and hasn't stopped even for a minute. Now what value one decides to assign to that one Bitcoin is entirely upto that individual. Bitcoin network doesn't care about what Bitcoin value is in terms of USD or INR or any other form of currency.

Quote:
It is not how a currency would run, it is not anything like an asset, although it is being mentioned again and again as it is without any economic basis. Come to think of it, it is a working example of Tulip mania, where a lot of people tried to get rich quick. As of now, that is it.
Different points of view on this has been discussed extensively in previous posts.

Quote:
I guess in last page, there was a probabilistic prediction on the prices.
Probability and statistics have got nothing to do with the field of application. It can be applied to anything and everything from weather to markets to election results to even human behaviour.

How a person is most likely to respond to certain situation can be probabilistically determined based on his / her historical data points.

Probability is not about being right or wrong all the time. It is about what is more likely to happen. Doesn't mean it will happen.

Quote:
BTW, blockchain is an amazing solution looking for a problem, I think it was mentioned sometime previously in the thread.
It has been mentioned in the article that I have shared above.
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Old 28th March 2018, 20:41   #306
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

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Originally Posted by ragh_bhushan View Post
It is a validation that Blockchain works as it cannot be denied that Bitcoin has been functioning as it was designed to function and that it is the longest running blockchain till date. So if Blockchain has to work in other fields, Bitcoin is the only working example and can offer insights on why and how Blockchain works.


It was designed as peer-to-peer value transfer mechanism without the requirement of any third party. You send one Bitcoin to a person, that person receives one Bitcoin. That's it. Nothing more than that. This has been working ever since it started working almost a decade ago and hasn't stopped even for a minute. Now what value one decides to assign to that one Bitcoin is entirely upto that individual. Bitcoin network doesn't care about what Bitcoin value is in terms of USD or INR or any other form of currency.
So now, bitcoin is like a hug. I think it started as a currency, then as an investment, and somewhere as something really immutable like the Great wall of china, and now it is "value" traded freely. I am not really sure there is anything related to economics there.


Quote:
Probability and statistics have got nothing to do with the field of application. It can be applied to anything and everything from weather to markets to election results to even human behaviour.
How a person is most likely to respond to certain situation can be probabilistically determined based on his / her historical data points.
Probability is not about being right or wrong all the time. It is about what is more likely to happen. Doesn't mean it will happen.
It can be applied alright, but it is pointless ( in constructive manner) to apply in areas where it cant mean anything. Here is the deal -- weather doesnt care whether you predict it, the market does. Probability is not right, but applying probability in market is to manipulate the market.

I will just try to point out what I am trying to say here. The bitcoin advocates are mostly behaving like McDonald sellers and not like McDonald eaters. There is a difference between eating junk food and selling junk food. With no obvious connection to the metaphor used.
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Old 5th April 2018, 16:30   #307
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

Quite an interesting development has happened today. RBI is setting up a committee to look after the feasibility of introducing a Fiat Crypto currency. As and when more nations join the bandwagon, I think private crypto currencies would lose their appeal.

And in what can be, and most probably is, a death knell for crypto currency enthusiasts in India, RBI has banned any entity regulated by it from facilitating payments for crytpto currency transactions. In effect no body would be able to transfer money for purchase of crypto currencies.

RBI Bans Regulated Entities From Dealing With Virtual Currencies
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Old 7th April 2018, 15:23   #308
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

A couple of fantastic hard hitting articles on blockchain.

https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/d...e-c1ca122efdec

https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-...in-ee98c180100
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Old 7th April 2018, 18:43   #309
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

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I beg to differ. Last week we had a example of a solution based on blockchain go live. And this is closer home, in India.

Source: https://www.gtreview.com/news/fintec...live-in-india/
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Old 13th April 2018, 06:26   #310
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

so some real world issues, let's see what happens next.

In what is being regarded as the biggest theft of cryptocurrency in the country so far, a leading bitcoin exchange firm has lost bitcoins worth Rs 20 crore after most of its wallets were hacked. Altogether 440 bitcoins were stolen in this way.

https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/#
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Old 17th April 2018, 13:23   #311
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Dangerous interconnectedness: Economists' conflicts of interest, ideology and financial crisis

If anyone has watched the documentary "Inside Job" on Netflix, then I would love to hear your views on the same. If you haven't, may I suggest that you do so as it reveals why our financial systems need massive overhaul.

Many economists and their ideologies has been discussed in this thread with much importance given to the qualifications than the substance argument.

Bitcoin has been dismissed by many based on not only its value against dollar but also on its poor economic policy as it has been formulated by "technocrats" and not elite economists. After watching the above documentary, I did some research to see if there was a conflict of interest between prominent economists and the financial services industry.

Luckily I found a research paper that highlights the dangerous interconnectedness of banks and other financial institutions with prominent economists and how they influence not just ideologies/courses being taught in academic institutions but also the whole system of regulation itself. Here's a link to the paper.

Title of the article: Dangerous interconnectedness: Economists’ conflicts of interest, ideology and financial crisis

A quote from the article:
Quote:
We investigated the financial affiliations of 19 prominent academic financial economists who were associated with two economist groups proposing financial reform measures in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. We assessed whether they had private financial affiliations, and identified the degree to which these economists disclosed these affiliations in their academic and media publications from 2005 to 2009 and again from January 2011 through April 2011. We found that private affiliations were common but that these academic economists disclosed these affiliations infrequently and inconsistently.
Shocking to say the least!
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Old 17th April 2018, 13:56   #312
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Re: Dangerous interconnectedness: Economists' conflicts of interest, ideology and financial crisis

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Originally Posted by ragh_bhushan View Post
If anyone has watched the documentary "Inside Job" on Netflix, then I would love to hear your views on the same. If you haven't, may I suggest that you do so as it reveals why our financial systems need massive overhaul.
Done and dusted long ago on the economics thread.

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Originally Posted by ragh_bhushan View Post
Bitcoin has been dismissed by many based on not only its value against dollar but also on its poor economic policy as it has been formulated by "technocrats" and not elite economists.
You can't cure bad economic policy with no economic policy. Then it will be like what USA did by electing Trump. They thought electing a non-politician (Trump) is better than electing a bad politician (Hillary). Now they are paying the price for that.

No, bad economic policy must be countered with good economic policies, and not zero economic policy. So bitcoin or crytpocurrency is like Trump presidency. It is chaos, not cure. That is no solution.

I have addressed this before, you can't cite corruption as a reason for not having governance. We should strive for better governance, not remove it altogether. These are mere examples of principal-agent problem.

Last edited by Samurai : 17th April 2018 at 14:00.
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Old 17th April 2018, 15:23   #313
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Re: Dangerous interconnectedness: Economists' conflicts of interest, ideology and financial crisis

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Originally Posted by Samurai View Post
You can't cure bad economic policy with no economic policy. Then it will be like what USA did by electing Trump. They thought electing a non-politician (Trump) is better than electing a bad politician (Hillary). Now they are paying the price for that.
As discussed before, good or bad is a relative term. Few people who understand Bitcoin and its economic policy would disagree on this comparison. There is no central authority on Bitcoin so this comparison with central political figures does not make sense to me.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Samurai View Post
No, bad economic policy must be countered with good economic policies, and not zero economic policy.

...you can't cite corruption as a reason for not having governance. We should strive for better governance...
How to resolve the massive conflict of interest that you have highlighted in your post? If everyone is hand-in-glove then who will bring about the regulation or sound economic policy?

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Originally Posted by Samurai View Post
I was shocked at how systematically the financial services were de-regulated to literally ensure this crisis. What shocked me most was that the economics professors of Harvard and Columbia were fully hand-in-glove. What kind of training are they providing to future economists and financial professionals?

If anyone has not watched this movie, please do watch. The final shock of the movie, most people who were instrumental in causing the crisis were re-appointed by Obama when he took office. So nothing changed...
As you rightly pointed out, nothing changed. An article from 11 April, 2018.

The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread-20180412photo00004409.jpg

Last edited by ragh_bhushan : 17th April 2018 at 15:25.
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Old 11th June 2018, 00:38   #314
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

Long article...

https://thenextweb.com/syndication/2...or-the-future/
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Old 11th June 2018, 04:41   #315
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re: The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread

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Originally Posted by Samurai View Post
Have you seen stock advice articles from reputable sources? They often have a disclosure about their holdings. Infact if a stock adviser holds a stock, they cannot shill it.

I see a lot of long articles from people in the banking industry, the industry which stands the most to lose from decentralization.

Of course people from the crypto world also write shill "lambo" articles.
Its all he said she said

Using fancy terms like crypto-medevial or banko-slaver does not change facts. And the fact is that block-chain is a technology. Like many other technologies. What it will amount to eventually is anybodies guess. It may not replace fiat, but its not going to go away either. Smart contracts have a valid use case.

Of course your 1000$ is not going to become a lambo after 10 years. People thinking that are delusional. However financial CEOs thinking their monopoly over money will never end is also delusional.

Look at his arguments
Quote:
Auditing software is hard! The most-heavily scrutinized smart contract in history had a small bug that nobody noticed — that is, until someone did notice it, and used it to steal fifty million dollars. If cryptocurrency enthusiasts putting together a $150m investment fund can’t properly audit the software, how confident are you in your e-book audit?
So this means if any money was ever stolen from a bank due to software bug, whole banking system should be eliminated.

What I feel is eventually a parallel system will emerge, heavily regulated. Already there is heavy business acceptance of crypto in the western world. I sold a bike carrier using doge recently just for the heck of it as it was a tiny amount.

That small amount is not going to become a lambo, or even a ford. But every day such small transactions slowly chip away at the traditional banking system, causing these guys to spend hours writing such articles (or paying someone to write it) rather than making money through HFT.

Don't you think its a bit rich coming from guys who lost billions and then got bailed out by taxpayers
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