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Winklevoss Twins Plan Regulated Bitcoin Exchange
itwbennett writes They of the square jaws and famous dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over the origins of Facebook, are also believed to be among the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world. Now they want to launch a regulated Bitcoin exchange—named Gemini, of course. To bolster confidence, they said they have formed a relationship with a chartered bank in the state of New York. "This means that your money will never leave the country," the twins wrote in a blog post. "It also means that U.S. dollars on Gemini will be eligible for FDIC insurance and held by a U.S.-regulated bank.
not least of which, allowing an organisation that is answerable to none but the United States Supreme Court to regulate a virtual currency that is in direct competition with its own pet, the Almighty Dollar.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I've tried to use BTC recently. I think it's an interesting concept, but the block chain is goddamn awful to deal with as a normal user. It's fucking massive. We're talking about many gigabytes of data to download. BTC becomes a lot less convenient to me if I have to wait a day or more to fetch the block chain data just to begin using it! I know there are services out there that can help alleviate some of these problems, but that just defeats the whole purpose of BTC. Not having to depend on third parties is one of its most significant benefits, so giving that up just to make it usable is totally self defeating. Why would I want to use a third party service just to make BTC practical when the main reason for me using BTC is so that I can deal with it independently without having to deal with third party services?!
It also means when the time comes for the traditional banking institutions to lobby the authorities to seize all the assets of this "illegal currency", they can easily do so.
Are there 2 people who have less to offer the tech world than the Winklevi?
an ill wind that blows no good
Who would trust them?
First this: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/ed...
(bitcoin trust)
Then this: http://www.investopedia.com/ar...
(bitcoin payment system)
Now this thing... ("regulated" exchange that can't leave the US for an international virtual decentralized currency...)
Perhaps they just didn't get that memo about their relevance having tanked somewhere after they wanted to
renege on their FB settlement and go for a do-over uh-gain:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Their fifteen minutes of fame is up. The harder they try and bring themselves
into relevance the funnier it gets. The bell has rung. Time to get off the stage little boys.
E
As a citizen of an european state, having a guarantee that my money will never leave the US is a problem, not a feature.
The insurance is the least of their problems. For a good fee anything is insurable. The problem lies in the replacement. Banks/Feds/Insurance when losing money just replace the number in their databases or print the money, no insurance company nor bank nor the Feds actually has a reserve of cash to cover all their accounts in case of a massive hack that empties all their accounts. Not as easily done with cryptocurrency, once it is gone you can only replace it with more cryptocurrency. So you actually need to stash or be able to lend the insured amount instead of just relying on someone to bail you out with fake money.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
who could not manage to outmaneuver ONE Zuckerberg? What could possibly go wrong?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
their "about" page - which actually has a pic of an astronaut on fire strolling through NYC as their (inspiration?), or their "portfolio" page which lists all of their ventures, none of which are everyday brands. I would expect a less-off-putting / more reassuring "about" page and a more familiar set of ventures.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Your lack of understanding about what goes on in financial institutions is disturbingly terrifying.
Bitcoin [spawns] payment gateways that evolve into PayPal equivalents (once they're big enough they cut Bitcoin out of the loop).
But the important part of these is that they cut PayPal out of the loop. I imagine that a lot of BTC adopters got burned by some policy ruling by PayPal.
So what they want to do is pump the value of BTC up so they can dump their 'largest holding of bitcoin'.
You can't handle the truth.
The lack of "understanding" of some poster on slashdot is so terrifying as to leave you mentally disturbed? Holy shit, how do you get out of bed in the morning?
A long time ago, gold was only used to make jewelry and trinkets, and few people had use for it. But it was rare, so demand always outstripped supply which meant the price stayed relatively high. It was also lightweight, durable, easy split, and comparatively easy to distinguish the real thing versus fakes. It was around the best store of value available in the day. So eventually people who had no need for it's original uses as jewelry, used it as such. This increased the amount of value a piece of gold could have, which in turn, increased its demand. Eventually this feedback loop slowed and came into equilabrium and this is how gold became so valuable today.
Sure there are crashes and bubbles but the price of gold always is a premium over its use as a trade good, because it also is a convienent store of value.
BTC also is useful to a small group of people, where bureaucratic red tape, high fees, and/or lack of trust makes trading with traditional currencies less convienent. And it too is useful as a store of value. You can hold 0.0001 as easily as 1 million BTC. You can transfer it quick and easily to anyone. You can even plausibly deny you own it. This gives it the status of best store of value for some use cases, today. So, I believe, eventually it, too, will go through same feedback loop that gold did.
If the Winkletwins want to hype it up long enough so that I can dispose of the last of my BTC stash while 1BTC is still over US$200, I'm game.
Having bitcoins kept in a US bank seems to defeat the purpose of bitcoin, but it it helps me with my previous point, then by golly, full speed ahead.
But what about first mover advantage? The stability and security of bitcoin is far ahead of all the other crypto currencies.
I don't know which dumbass keeps modding me "overrated"... don't you know that people with an excellent karma automatically post with a score of 2?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Oh yes, let's take a complete circus run by lunatics (the bitcoin network) and attach it to a regulated exchange. How are they going to prove the bitcoins added to the exchange were obtained legally? Anyone thinking of FDIC "loss" fraud will be occurring daily? Then how do you prove your customers are actually in the US? Then how do you report on profit from investment without proving or disproving that offsetting losses were incurred at a different exchange? This is such an unbelievably stupid and impossible idea, I can't even believe they're thinking of it.
You think banks keep a record of the serial number of every single note? You think there's a magical system somewhere of checking notes as they pass through POS terminals, ATM's, etc.? A bank gets robbed, and the serial numbers are NOT marked in a database unless the bank has recorded them, which I extremely seriously doubt they do, especially since of the millions or billions of dollars in a bank, the notes are mostly in denominations of $100 or LESS. You think there's an up-to-date moment to moment list of every $1, $2, (yep, they still have them,) $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500 (do they still have them?), and $1000 note in any given bank's possession?!? What about coinage? Do they record the nonexistent serial numbers of coins? I understand banks carry a fair amount of coinage...
Anywho, as for the idea of logging bitcoins into a bank, I'm no fan of Bitcon, (as I think of it,) but seems to me that letting a bank keep tabs on them, control (and report) their movements kinda defeats the purpose of their existing. Why would ANYONE use this, again?
Shit. I wish I had mod points today. I'd mod you "overrated" just for fun :)
They are both actually the same person.
Don't even think of considering bit coin as a commodity.
First off, the name, "Coin" is used in the name "Bit Coin" to refer to some form of currency, and is treated as such, thus it is a form of currency.
Secondly, bit-coin doesn't fit the common definitions of commodity:
noun a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee.
Another definition of commodity is: an article of trade or commerce, especially a product as distinguished from a service.
Bit-coin is not a tangible item or article. It is a measure of value in an electronic form, produced by an UNAUTHORIZED entity. In my opinion, anyone who deals with bit-coin should be prosecuted and jailed.
the New York Stock Exchange seems to be doing well, even on the back of all that banking fraud that you seeem to have slept through.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
define "real money"?
The US Dollar is backed against itself. It is a fiat, or debt currency.
As is Sterling (which used to be backed by the Gold Standard, then it was the Silver Standard, now it's backed by guarantee of the Treasury which means about as much as... well, not a lot, actually).
As is the Euro.
The last time any Western economy had a real currency was 1914 when the Bradbury was issued. This was backed by the authority of the Crown, hence everything owned by the Crown, and was initially intended solely to prevent a run on Sterling and enable the purchase of war materials. It was replaced by the Bank of England fiat note in 1928.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
The thing is that you are guessing about how it might work, not actually knowing how it does work.
If your account gets hacked and the money is transferred within the country, it can simply be recovered by transferring the money back because all the accounts fall under the same 'governance', even internationally there are some agreements for returning stolen money.
On the startup podcast, one of their investors accidentally wired the money to the wrong account and they only got most (about 2/3) of their money back because the other side had withdrawn another portion. The bank and police offered no assistance in getting back the rest.
Except you can clone it into an instant competitor and the ming speculators will follow you screams like gold prospectors
Sure, lots of me-too clones have cropped up - however, the vast majority of investors/users aren't fooled. Alt-coins make up less than 10% of the market, all combined. Clearly first mover has a ton of advantage in terms of adoption, investment and developer time.
Wow - just because it has "Coin" in the name hasn't stopped the CFTC from calling it a commodity. Somehow, I think their opinion matters more than yours does. And seriously, anyone that thinks that someone who deals in tokens produced by unauthorized entities should be jailed just doesn't understand math. Every self-signed certificate is an "unauthorized" item. Anyone that works with prime numbers creates "unauthorized" work. The same holds true for digital works of art. Troll harder, moron.
By this definition, your Internet service provider is a third party. If the blockchain is really several gigabytes, that can be more than a month of the typical data quota on cellular Internet, satellite Internet, or Iowa DSL, all of which are billed by the bit.
I don't mind if I get an "overrated" to cancel the moderation made by someone else, but my baseline "2" is neutral and doesn't have any significance (insightful or whatever).
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
A great move for the Winklevoss Twins. This gives bitcoin some much needed credibility.