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Comment by raziel2701 | Hacker News Reader

What kind of things do you buy with it and where? I remember seeing some adoption back when steam started accepting it, but sometime later they stopped because it was too volatile. I thought paying fees for the transaction made bitcoin very unappealing as well. It's not anonymous either, so I just couldn't find a reason to use it as it didn't solve anything that I couldn't do with my credit card. And my credit card offers me protections against fraud.

Has anything changed that I should look into?

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I buy computer hardware (SSDs, network switches etc.), recently bought t-shirts and etsy like stuff on gethaven.app

Bitcoin has always been pseudoanonymous and its perma history is something that I am aware off and not that bothered off. Though looks like the bitcoin devs are working towards something to improve privacy called taproot and schnorr.

The thing that it solves for me compared to traditional fiat currencies is that it retains its value very well over a period of time. some of the bitcoin stuff I bought long back and spent it on hardware now means I got the hardware for nearly more than 500% cheaper if I had chosen to hold it in dollar or other fiat currencies.

Fiat currencies are a liability (depreciating value) if you are not constantly trying to invest them just to keep their value from crashing due to accelerating money printing/inflation.

I think you might be one of a small handful of people that I've heard from that continue to use BTC as a currency for goods over the past few years. It's good to know that this still happens!

Out of curiosity, you mention depreciating value for fiat being a liability, which is absolutely true. That being said, doesn't appreciation also create a different sort of liability?

For example, let's say I buy a 1TB SSD for $60 worth of BTC on Monday, and then that same amount of BTC is worth $75 on Friday. In theory, would it be reasonable for me to feel like I've overpaid?

Of course in this scenario, I pay for rent, food, taxes etc. using fiat, so I'm exposed to the difference in conversion rates. I suppose if I lived somewhere where I could transact wholly in BTC for everything and its value wasn't in any way tied to a fiat currency and the value of goods and services were negotiated in BTC in a way that's entirely decoupled from market value on exchanges, this wouldn't be an issue for me. Is this possible?

What you are describing is basically how any fiat currency is used, so it's definitely possible to live in bitcoin land. The issue is that price fluctuation for bitcoin is so extreme, not that you can buy other currencies with it.

If on Monday 1 USD buys 1 EUR and on Friday it buys 2 EUR you would have "overpaid" as well for many goods that you could have imported and maybe more directly if you had invested in EUR denominated securities etc..

Well, instead of a liability, it could also be a feature. A mechanism that allows people by choice to reduce consumption, thus lowering their ecologic footprint.

Actually there is a big wave of people using Bitcoin powered Visa cards right now to buy stuff

Go lookup currency deflation and what happens at the end. The transaction rate is to low and the energy use is to high to be useful. We are near the end stage when people and institutions start hoarding it.

The current problem in fiat money is what the new money is funding. This is a society/government policy choice and isn't an inherent flaw in fiat money. In the west the money is primary used to boost asset prices instead of used for production.

Last time I checked it was the only currency accepted by most dark markets.

> What kind of things do you buy with it and where?

Drugs, CP, cryptotrojan ransom, other crime related transactions.

Bitcoin value is directly related to relevant criminal activity.

Huh. Didn't know these were all the main exports of Nigeria

Dollar is STILL the king of criminal activity, money laundering, kidnapping, ransom ... it will take awhile for the shift to happen.

I didn't say all criminal activity is done via bitcoin. But there are segments of crime like cryptotrojans and CP trading that seem to be almost exclusively bitcoin-based. Others, like internet drug ordering, are at least partially in bitcoin.

Edit: replaced "any" with "all" in the first sentence

yeah, agreed some new type of activities were using bitcoin... but after some of these gangs were busted they seem to be switching to monero...

Its very risky to buy with bitcoin if you are in a jurisdiction that makes drugs illegal. I think still cash is king in those places.

I thought the Euro was taking over thanks to the 500EU note?

They are not printing any more 500EU notes, but they do remain legal tender for now. They might start being worth more than 500EU over time. Seems like a good note to keep your cash savings in if you live in Europe.

Decline of cash is really a shame. When the $100 was introduced it was worth about $2k in today's dollars, and in my lifetime even it was worth almost $300

Yea. When buying a used car it is a pain to count out all those $100 bills. $500, at least, would be nice.

These are all terrible uses of Bitcoin, as mentioned in the OP. All transactions are publicly visible in an immutable database. With a little investigation, law enforcement can find out who owns certain accounts and trace transactions very easily from there. If you are a criminal, you want no paper trail whatsoever, which is why they use paper money.

Bitcoin is pseudonymous if you take enough precautions i.e. always use tor, only use addresses once, coin join everything before converting.

I guess that’d work if you’re the guy from White Collar or something, but I’m not sure your average criminal would have the attention to detail and knowledge to get that all right. And one misclick or bug can pretty much seal your fate.

You are right though that you can take measures to make it much more difficult to trace.

Precautions on that or higher levels of expense and complexity, like burner phones, dead drops, networks of couriers, cell and gang org structure are standard procedures in organized crime. Un"organized" single small criminals might have a larger fraction of bad opsec, but they aren't all stupid.

A few will be caught by making mistakes, but the rest will learn from that. Criminal methods undergo evolutionary pressure.

Never heard of crypto mixing obviously

What happens when the NSA hacks the mixing services or congress passes a law forcing them to store information for law enforcement? Surely the mixing services know at least for a certain amount of time where the coin is coming from and going to.

I think those laws might already exist, imho anonymous mixing could be prosecuted under the relevant money laundering laws.

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