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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
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
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
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.
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?
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