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Originally Posted by Bergerboy
I do not consider myself knowledgeable on cryptocurrencies as all I know is from a couple of documentaries on it and the Winklevoss twins. There are a few things that I cannot get my head around in relation to cryto. If possible fill in the blanks for me.
I have a hard time ever seeing a government allowing commerce with this vehicle as that would erode the financial backbone. If businesses and people start it will become illegal and about as legit as trading white rhino horns.
The value of cryto is only backed by other people who give it value since its not related to any actual commerce. This reminds me of the ostrich business of the 90's. The price was going nuts from speculation between farmers but at the end of the day there was no market to support the business.
What is stopping the operators of a particular cryptocurrency from simply walking away with your money. There doesn't seem to be anyone appointed to the securities committee, I mean if you read up, they cant even determine who initiated some of the blockchain script. Einstein Exchange did this.
Anyways, let me know your thoughts on my comments.
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Government and regulatory are unpredictable, after all there was a time when it was illegal to own Gold Bullion in the US. This could happen in the US or Canada with Bitcoin I suppose. It's not going to happen throughout the world as some Countries have already moved to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender. Unlike gold, bitcoin does not require a physical existence nor can it be confiscated. If the US is targeting wallets for regulatory KYC rules, I say good luck. I can randomly generate an address, key and record it virtually anywhere, even cryptographically. I think for now regulators will need to be content with applying KYC and other regulations to exchanges were fiat is on/off loaded in mass. As always though, who really knows what could happen. Bitcoin is exposed to the full wind of a global free market. I can say this for sure though, here forward the price will go up and it will also go down haha. My bet is the value of CAD hits $0 before XBT.
Quite a few investment savvy folk have suggested Bitcoin is an anomaly or bubble citing tulip mania, dot-com etc. We're now cresting over 10 years since the inception of Bitcoin and it strikes me that these predictive comparisons become less and less likely as the years go by and Bitcoin persists.
There is no Bitcoin operator. It's a decentralized, globally distributed chain of hundreds of thousands if not millions of miners and nodes all contributing to an agreed upon ledger through consensus. It eliminates the need for a trusted 3rd party in transactions. This is bitcoin's true value and unique offering. It's essentially a digital content type that cannot be replicated. Nobody can walk away with your Bitcoin, but make no mistake it's the wild west. If you trust your Bitcoin on an exchange, what you are really doing is trusting the exchange to manage your private key. That's burnt more than a few people.
You are also correct, Satoshi is the anonymous initial creator, however the project quickly became a collaboration and has since grown and developed further based on the principles of consensus within the group or network I mentioned earlier. The concept of consensus is a risk to Bitcoin's continuation as well. It has already faced that community challenge and you can read all about the Bitcoin Cash fork to understand how it has played out.
Anyway, I've probably rambled enough, and I've probably just created more questions than filled in any blanks for you!