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Bitcoin's Fluctuations Are Too Much For Even Ransomware Cybercriminals (theguardian.com)
Bitcoin's price swings are so huge that even ransomware developers are dialling back their reliance on the currency, according to researchers at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint. From a report: Over the last quarter of 2017, researchers saw a fall of 73% in payment demands denominated in bitcoin. When demanding money to unlock a victim's data, cybercriminals are now more likely to simply ask for a figure in US dollars, or a local currency, than specify a sum of bitcoin. Just like conventional salespeople, ransomware developers pay careful attention to the prices they charge. Some criminals offer discounts depending on the region the victim is in, offering cheaper unlocking to residents of developing nations, while others use an escalating price to encourage users to pay quickly and without overthinking things. But a rapidly oscillating bitcoin price plays havoc with those goals, Proofpoint says.
Except because of transaction times, overhead, time until cashing in the coins, and volatility, it's impossible to accurately pay a value of X USD/X GBP/X Euro in bitcoin. Even Steam, a service that sells virtual goods and could therefore just take "tried to pay X" as good enough, no longer accepts bitcoin.
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Except because of transaction times, overhead, time until cashing in the coins,
Even shitty exchanges lock in the price at the time of your purported transaction. This has little to do with it.
volatility
This is half of the problem. The simple fact is nobody's going to pay you a bitcoin for a sandwich when that bitcoin could, tomorrow, buy three sandwiches. That's just fucking retarded.
The other half of the problem is the technology is shit, and transaction fees are beyond the realm of fucktarded. Nobody's going to pay you $20 in fees to buy a fucking sandwich.
Of course, magic woo is coming to fix BLOCKCHAIN and probably your local hosts file to boot, SOON(TM).
BTC isn't fucking currency, and anybody who says it is will probably offer you a great deal on a bridge that was only driven over by a little old lady going to church on Sundays.