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Bitcoin Foundation Boss Urges Cautious Investment (bbc.com)
The head of the Bitcoin Foundation, Llew Claasen, has urged people to invest "no more than they can afford" in the crypto-currency. From a report: He was speaking at the TEDGlobal conference in Tanzania about the potential for Bitcoin in Africa. Billions lack access to formal banking, but the uptake of mobile money means many are willing to embrace alternatives. Bitcoin had been adopted in Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, he said. The digital currency had particular resonance in countries with volatile economies, he said. "It offers people a chance to protect their savings from government abuse of monetary policy. A lot of people in Zimbabwe are interested in it as an alternative financial system, but that is not an easy thing to do formally as we don't want to be perceived as wanting to disrupt economies," he told the BBC. The Washington-based Bitcoin Foundation is a non-profit organisation that promotes the use of Bitcoin around the world.
Bitcoin isn't any less volatile than said countries' volatile economies. While I certainly hope it's going to become very stable, I doubt it.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
"we don't want to be perceived as wanting to disrupt economies" Who is this "we" that you speak of? Bitcoin had no central spokespeople.
Damn. Now you tell me? I just invested 2.38 MILLION Dogecoins to buy a single Bitcoin!
#DeleteFacebook
Don't hesitate. Cash in your 401k and buy BitCoin. Ask your parents to give you your inheritance in advance and buy BitCoin. Get a second mortgage and buy BitCoin. Do it now and you will be rich beyond dreams of avarice.
And please don't sell any until at least the close of business a week from Friday. KTHX
You are welcome on my lawn.
I always get annoyed when investment-prodders say "Never invest more than you can afford." It's impossible to do so anyway. If i have $100, I can't invest $10,000 in anything. What they need to say is, "Don't invest more than they can afford to lose," but they don't want to because that would make the product they're selling seem like a bit of a gamble. Which it is.
Here are the rent seekers.
Lesson: Don't do anything for free.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
New means for politicians and leaders of 3rd world countriesto launder money undetected. Maybe not just corrupt countries, but a few leaders of 1sr world countries too. I think outcoume or repercussions of this digital currency to world economy has not yet been seen, could be good or it could be bad too.
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I know some countries are *relatively* unstable when compared to Dollar/Euro/etc but compared to bitcoin they are relatively stable. They may take big hits on occasion and suffer unreasonable inflation but those are usually singular events or extend over months/years. With bitcoin your gas and grocery money could become just grocery money on the way from the bank to the grocery store.
Not to mention all of the other issues surrounding bitcoin logistics in a 'developing economy'.
"Never invest more than you can afford."
"To lose"
Goatse.cx is launching goatse cin apparently
"It offers people a chance to protect their savings from government abuse of monetary policy"
If the global economy fucks itself, what's your shitcoin going to buy?
Not a goddamned thing.
Investing in guns and ammunition is a better and smarter investment. That's how stupid fucking Bitcoin is, that implements of destruction are a better investment.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
...arms dealers urge their customers to be nicer to their neighbours, credit card companies urge shoppers to only buy what they can afford, and drug cartels recommend not letting recreational drug use become habitual.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
They pretty much discredited themselves into complete oblivion a while back. Naïve of the bbc to even go and talk to them.
"Bitcoin had been adopted in Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, he said."
Really? I find that hard to believe. Let's assume that Bitcoin is a magical, completely scaleable protocol, able to handle an infinite number of transactions every second. (It isn't, and I'll get back to that, but anyway.) In order to be able to use it, you need computers, and you need those computers online to be able to transfer funds. (Unlike, say, cash, where you just hand over a piece of paper, or a metallic disc.) Kenya's electrical supply is rather unreliable. So is Nigeria's and South Africa's. I find it highly unlikely that a country would adopt a currency (whether or not Bitcoin qualifies is beside the point for this comment) that requires infrastructure and resources that they simply do not have.
That's without even looking at the point that the Bitcoin network can handle, at most, seven transactions per second, under ideal conditions. Worldwide. In comparison, Paypal ran about 115 TPS in 2014; Visa, 56,000; and Western Union, 29.
Bluntly: Bitcoin, as it stands, is a complete non starter - not even for a single country, not even if you assume that it will stay solely within that country. An interesting experiment, perhaps, but it quite literally cannot do the things that its proponents claim it can. Not without radically changing its underlying protocol - and even then, there are a whole slew of other problems inherent in its design that I don't see being fixed.