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snitkoon Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers

Look at 10 years chart. It's been going up consistently.

snitkoon Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers

Btc equivalent of USD.

snitkoon Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers

It is absolutely clear that every year Bitcoin is being used by more and more people or the price wouldn't be going up consistently over the years.

snitkoon Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers

Then I see no difference from USD. What exactly is the point? Yet another payment method?

snitkoon Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers

Lightning Network

snitkoon Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers

Why would anyone want a facebook coin that is completely controlled by Facebook which can be controlled by the government when with Bitcoin you get complete sovereignty?

snitkoon Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers

Speculative vehicle? We're paying devs salaries in Bitcoin, what are you talking about?

snitkoon Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers

Ugh. This will pass too. The value of Bitcoin is in the fact that nobody can control and censor it. It's black market money. If it didn't have this quality, it'd be useless. Nobody (meaning customers) cares about Facebook launching a coin. Facebook will not be the champion of freedom. How do I know? Ask yourself, if Facebook Coin is going to be available in Crimea (currently under sanctions) or Iran (currently under sanctions) or China (where facebook is banned). The answer is of course not. Bitcoin is available in all of those places and not a single government was able to do anything about it yet.

snitkoon The Death of the IPO

Exactly. And lotteries and gambling are legal while clearly much much much riskier.

snitkoon How to Decide What to Build

This only applies to US and a bunch of other countries that would bother to enforce the law regarding cooking regulation. Most countries wouldn't really care as they have more important issues to solve than clamp down on innocent people making informed choices about their lives. So the idea isn't really bad.

snitkoon India’s Central Bank Bans Regulated Entities From Dealing In Virtual Currencies

Forceful confiscation is pricey if you don't know whom to confiscate it from and how. A person may not have bitcoins. Or he might have it stored securely in another country to which he doesn't have immediate access. Those who have a lot already prepared themselves accordingly. And confiscating a little from many people is really pricey.

snitkoon India’s Central Bank Bans Regulated Entities From Dealing In Virtual Currencies

Cryptocurrencies don't make any sense unless they're decentralized and not controlled by governments. That's where the value is. Bitcoin has value because it cannot be controlled, printed (inflated) or easily confiscated. It gives financial sovereignty and freedom.

But, it's not for everyone. You obviously believe that governments need to control finances. That's fine. I think most people don't want freedom. But there's certainly SOME percentage of the population that really want and value freedom. That's why Bitcoin has and will continue to have value.

snitkoon Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

Have a sense of proportion. Think about how much electricity, paper, waste and money is spent to keep up the banking industry, anti-fraud departments, AML/KYC compliance teams, clerks and all that show. Bitcoin is actually an improvement.

snitkoon How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

Have you tried Telegram? It's the best.

snitkoon Building for the Blockchain

Blockchain is not a protocol. It's a concept because there are many different blockchains. Bitcoin on the other hand is a protocol.

snitkoon Building for the Blockchain

It's all the same thing every year on HN. People trying to find all sorts of excuses for Bitcoin existence - blockchains, smart contracts, ICOs - as long as they don't have to accept that Bitcoin's main purpose is and always was to have an alternative to the financial system, crippling regulations, government control and taxes. In other words, everything people hate about libertarians, they try to ignore in Bitcoin. Because they can't just ignore Bitcoin - it's not going away for some reason.

And it's not going away because there's a demand for Bitcoin. Why? Not because blockchain is some sort of an innovation. It's because people want a currency not controlled by any state institution. It's because people want freedom. Deny that all you want, it's not going away.

snitkoon Date/Time Inputs Enabled on Firefox Nightly

It looks like the date is displayed in the US format mm/dd/yyyy which is, of course, most unnatural to all other countries. Is this customizeable, or is it automatically adjusted depending on the language preferences in the browser? If it's the latter, it's not cool - my preferred language for the browser is English, but I hate the US date display format with passion.

EDIT: oh I see, automatically adjusted, but not configurable. Bad choice it is, then.

EDIT2: I mean, there are so many more better and easy solutions to that problem. You could display a date with a month name in the selected language - "Oct 1, 2017" - or start with a year "2017-10-01" which would be instantly recognizable by anyone regardless of the country.

snitkoon Bitcoin is fiat money, too

Well what does? More people using it and interested in it? Doesn't define success. More merchants accepting it? Doesn't define success. More governments paying attention to it? Doesn't define success.

What on earth would define success? It's like nothing is ever enough for you people.

snitkoon China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close

> Is there a good Bitcoin use by country breakdown?

No, because you can't effectively track wallets/usage. However, you can, for example, look at Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

snitkoon China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close

In fact, the opposite is true. Most of the people who are open to Bitcoin live in third-world countries (including myself) and have a natural distrust for government.

Also, saying some people "are wrong" is not an argument.

snitkoon China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close

You think it's for good reason. Many people think it's for bad reason. Those people invented and developed Bitcoin. Now the people who think state has no business messing with money and private lives of people have an actual tool upon their hands.

snitkoon China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close

The sustainable business case is permissionless nature of Bitcoin. Everything else comes down to it. This talk of blockchain technology being somewhat of a new wonderful invention that's supposed to magically make companies more profitable...? Not so.

The reason why Bitcoin exists is because governments want control over money. Bitcoin gives people freedom. Period. Everything else is noise.

snitkoon Central Banks Can’t Ignore the Cryptocurrency Boom

I wish. I actually faced many of those people in real life. People are really angry about Bitcoin.

snitkoon Central Banks Can’t Ignore the Cryptocurrency Boom

It's not enough, because it's money. When it comes to money, most don't care what it smells like. That's why it's so unstoppable.

snitkoon Central Banks Can’t Ignore the Cryptocurrency Boom

It's been said many times before, but Bitcoin allows people who have certain worldview (libertarian) to self-finance their projects and bypass investors, VCs, politicians etc. This is very powerful. It's not just some asset you invest in in the hope for some future gains. For many people it's a way to stop being couch political activists and start actually implementing what they believe in. That's why so many people are angry about Bitcoin - they truly dislike what it represents and allows.

Here's a tweet that said it perfectly: "Cypherpunks are libertarians who stopped whining." https://twitter.com/oleganza/status/902942938820263937

snitkoon Central Banks Can’t Ignore the Cryptocurrency Boom

> Who is buying goods or services using bitcoins? Anyone?

Excuse me, I am. Expedia, Cheap Air, NewEgg, Microsoft, Dell and lots of other merchants accept it and I used them.

snitkoon Central Banks Can’t Ignore the Cryptocurrency Boom

It's virtually impossible that all governments get together and outlaw it. And it's not even like with drugs where it can be argued that they are harmful. So there will still be plenty of countries in the world who wouldn't outlaw or heavily regulate it and they will thrive, while others will miss out.

snitkoon Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

One simple reason why I think it may make sense to want more money is to do interesting important things. If you earn more money, the market obviously thinks you're good at producing things that sell. It's not perfect as sometimes the market (e.g. the people) prefers something rather stupid. However, in general, I think entrepreneurs are the ultimate redistributors of money in the society. I don't believe government is effecient at doing the same job: it doesn't care whether it wastes it, it always knows it will get its share (taxation is not voluntary) and it's filled with people who have no idea how to actually make a useful product. An entrepreneur earned his money by people voluntarily giving it to him for something they want. He knows what a failure is.

So yeah, I think wanting to earn a lot of money is great and no one should feel ashamed of wanting that.

snitkoon What CSS minifiers also leave behind

Embedding css into a webpage forces this css to be loaded every time. Even if the css only contains what's needed for the page, it can still be a lot. Caching it is just common sense. I think if you try and calculate, there will be a lot of bandwidth saved if you separate css into a file.

snitkoon Russian police arrest anti-corruption leader, hundreds in nationwide rallies

This is absolutely completely untrue. I've heard this so many times from my Ukrainian friends. If Russia and Ukraine swapped populations somehow, but leaders would remain the same I guarantee you would do absolutely nothing in the circumstances in Russia.

In Ukraine, the leader was weak, the opposition well financed, the quality of life was less satisfying than in Russia and there was a clear window of opportunity. And even then it all ended up with a different group of corrupt oligarchs taking control. In essence, nothing changed in Ukraine, at least for the better. You can't blame war for everything.

> Russians are more inclined to believe they cannot change anything, just like the opinion you expressed in your comment.

First of all, this would clearly be considered racist by some, but luckily I don't care. I'm sure there are people in Ukraine who are also level-headed and realistic enough to consider how real politics works. Again, I highly recommend the book to get a realistic perspective.

Finally, just to make it clear, I do not support any kind of war and have nothing against Ukraine wanting to break ties with Russia.