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French Tobacco Shops Will Sell Bitcoin and Ethereum Starting January 2019 (venturebeat.com)
Tobacco shops are a staple of daily life across France, selling cigarettes, newspapers, magazines, and lottery tickets. Come January, these most traditional of merchants will take a plunge into the future by adding cryptocurrencies to their wares. From a report: The French Federation of Tobacco Vendors (French Confederation Nationale des Buralistes), which represents the 27,000 tobacco shops in France, announced that it has approved plans for its members to sell Bitcoin and Ethereum to customers. The program is expected to start in 3,000 locations in January, eventually rolling out to all tobacco shops across the country. Of course, the timing is somewhat less than ideal, as prices of cryptocurrencies have been in free fall most of this year. Just this week, Bitcoin hit a new low for 2018. While the effort is seen as a new potential revenue source for these merchants, it remains far from clear how interested the general public is in owning cryptocurrencies.
The average person doesn't give a shit about government control and monitoring. They do however give a huge shit if the money they have today is worth 50% less tomorrow. Crypto currencies I think have had their rep irreparably damaged at this point, people are fine while it skyrockets but the Zimbabwean type slumps are sending people away and they won't be back.
They do however give a huge shit if the money they have today is worth 50% less tomorrow.
That is more of an investment concern than what I am talking about.
I don't think people will replace nation-currency with Bitcoin or anything like that. Bitcoin will simply eventually become the engine of commerce as I said, for grey and black market transactions... small amounts for most people, to get things the government does not want them to have (like drugs in most of the world, or sugary drinks in New York).
As such it doesn't matter if it undergoes even fairly large fluctuations, when most people wouldn't have more than a hundred or two at any one time.
Think about how much Bitcoin would rise again if even 10% of the people in most modern cities around the world bought and started using a few hundred $ worth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"French Tobacco shops... selling cigarettes, newspapers, magazines, and lottery tickets."
Well, that's the stamp of financial legitimacy right there. Classy!
Wasn't the original point of crypto to act as a replacement for cash in order to purchase goods and services? Not the other way around? Shouldn't the tobacco shops be accepting crypto as a form of payment for goods and services?
One pack of Luck Farts? That will be 3 bitcoins please. Four if you don't hurry
There is no ban on sugary drinks in New York. If you require "alternative facts" to make your point, maybe your point just sucks.
Or are you lying out of "love" again?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Wasn't the original point of crypto to act as a replacement for cash in order to purchase goods and services?
Yes, but the point is you would buy the bitcoin from the tobacco shop to use to purchase things you could not buy at the shop, hint hint...
Either way you are buying something to burn later for some form of enjoyment.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A) If you were PopeRizzo, maybe you would understand a joke when you read one.
B) "the government does not want them to have" != ban
C) Future-proofing the joke for later readers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This should convince even the most ardent cryptocurrency believer that it’s over - it’s time to move on.
#DeleteChrome
I will not buy this bitcoin, it is trashed.
While I am enamored by the cleverness of the entire proof of work system it seems like there's an inescapable problem with the proof of work concept.
To boil bitcoin down to it's most elemental irreducible aspect there is one and only one thing that all cryptocurrencies have to do. This is prevent double spending the same token without using a central authority to regulate when a coin is transferred and can't be spent again. There's other nifty bells and whistles but that is the one thing they must do.
The bitcoin solution to this is to make it prohibitively expensive not impossible. It works by making it so that in order to spend twice you have to be able to hash the ledger at least twice as fast as the rest of the system's combined effort. If you can do that then you can spend a coin, let the transaction close, then go back to the old ledger without the coin being spent, and hash it two more times quickly. Now you have the longest blockchain and it by fiat is the one that will be accepted. In practice you might actually need to be more than 2x.
So when would it be worth it to acquire so much computing power? When the double spend value to you exceeds the compute cost.
Therefore to make it prohibitive the compute cost has to be pegged to be near (or half) the most you could steal in one transaction.
That is the irreducible cost. It's not that the computation is expensive, it's that it HAS to be expensive ot the whole process fails.
Therefore the larger the transactions on bit coin and the more outstanding coinage there is to steal, the higher the transaction costs needs to be.
Thus bit coin baked in the seeds of it's own destruction. It can't expand past a certain capitalization without becoming too expensive to hash. that part of it cannot be removed.
So it's trash
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Think about how much Bitcoin would rise again if even 10% of the people in most modern cities around the world bought and started using a few hundred $ worth.
Now think about how much it would be worth if they didn't.
PS: Currencies aren't supposed to "rise", they're supposed to be stable.
You'll be mocked mercilessly until you grasp this concept: A thing can't be both an investment instrument and a working currency at the same time.
No sig today...
I am anticipating poor sales, as BTC is circling the drain.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
A thing can't be both an investment instrument and a working currency at the same time.
A) I am saying it's mostly going to be a working currency, however...
B) are you really trying to say that currencies are never are treated as investments? Really?
Even the USD (sort of stable) is used by people around the world as a hedge if nothing else. Just what life experience makes you think any currency cannot work for people and also be an investment at the same time? The more I think about it I am pretty sure you have the mocking direction backwards on that one. But I for one will not mock you for that deeper understanding of the workings of currency, as most people don't think about it that way...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They even sell activist stickers on ebay that say something like
"Your privacy from this camera was enabled by this sticker, go here to buy more".
Can you buy them with bitcoins?
"French Tobacco shops... selling cigarettes, newspapers, magazines, and lottery tickets."
Well, that's the stamp of financial legitimacy right there. Classy!
True, no where near the financial legitimacy as say a Magic the Gathering Trading Card Exchange that was handling 70% of all bitcoin transactions in 2014, before it noticed that 850,000 bitcoins were missing and shut down and filed for bankruptcy.
Seriously, I did not make that up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Now my financial investments can go up in smoke, in addition to my other purchases from that shop.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Think about how much Bitcoin would rise again if even 10% of the people in most modern cities around the world bought and started using a few hundred $ worth.
How does one "use" bitcoin in daily life? In many national jurisdictions with those modern cities bitcoin is considered an asset. So when you buy a cup of coffee with bitcoins you have to note the price of those coins when you received them, note the current price at which you used them, calculate the gain or loss that was just realized and report that gain/loss to your tax authority when you file your tax return. Just as if you sold an asset such as stocks.
Of course buying that coffee was theoretical. Except when engaging in some sort of public stunt, a product or service purchased with bitcoin has to be one where it is OK to wait about an hour for the bitcoin transfer to verify.
Bitcoin is not a currency at this time. It is currently two things. (1) A highly speculative investment vehicle. (2) A method to transfer funds person to person. Note that in such bitcoin transfers neither party usually holds bitcoins for an appreciable amount of time, typically bitcoin is purchased with a real currency, the bitcoins transferred and verified, and the bitcoins immediately sold for a real currency (which may be different than the previous currency). Similarly merchants that engage in public stunts where they accept bitcoins for goods or services typically use a payment processor that immediately converts the bitcoins received to a real currency in some manner. There merchants usually do not hold bitcoins. Bitcoins are generally held only by the speculators.
But they'll help you die penniless as well. What a brilliant idea.
Slashdot was always a disgusting hole, but this yuk. For a start, most of the things you're describing aren't even things a woman likes! Some young clueless man is going to read this and wonder why she ran away when he shat on her chest. Come on... I'm against censorship.
Don't make them wield it against valid but offensive opinions and facts that "trigger" people - with the excuse being *your* poor taste and disgusting attitudes to sex.
This stuff *reeks* of Anti-Fa and the far left false-flagging these posts so that the censorship *they want* is implemented!
I have a solution:
1) No More AC
2) No Censorship
3) Public Discussion and Moderation System Functions As It Should
4) Add "ignore" per-user to every post. Cut that idiot out of your "circle". Posts by users who pass an "ignore threshold" are not shown to anonymous users or search engines (appeal-able, decisions to be given to the actual moderation system en-masse)
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Think about how much Bitcoin would rise again if even 10% of the people
So you are hoping for even more wild swing in value of a purported 'currency' that people are going to trust.
You're not doing Bitcoin's case for becoming a stable currency people trust as a means for exchange any kind of favor.
In the revolutionary (non-corrupt) days of the Soviet Republic, they lined speculators up against the wall.
Kendall plays the bassoon?
"And for your non-white markets. Hard physical cash is king."
When has that been the case? Black market only strives on times of trouble and times of trouble bring inflation.
If there's one situation you definitely don't want to depend on hard cash is on an inflationary economy.
"So you are hoping for even more wild swing in value of a purported 'currency' that people are going to trust.
You're not doing Bitcoin's case for becoming a stable currency people trust as a means for exchange any kind of favor.
In the revolutionary (non-corrupt) days of the Soviet Republic, they lined speculators up against the wall."
My opinion of bitcoins as currency is not any higher than yours, but this is as much a strawman argument as it can get.
His argument was not that bitcoin was a good currency because of its speculative prospects but that speculation could very well be the means for bitcoin to become mainstream. Those that get on board early would get the speculative profits while later adopters would use it just as expected for a currency at whatever the exchange rate it happens to be stable enough.
The same would happen for, i.e. a "blue chip" stock: those that went into, say, Google early on may become millionaires while those buying it today (with more or less a stable valuation) would "merely" use it for its long-term retirement founds' value -note that it was the speculative phase the one that allowed this stock its growth to reach its current strong and stable status.
"A thing can't be both an investment instrument and a working currency at the same time."
What compleat horse shit you have crapped out, there. Of course it can. It depends on the timing and duration of the investment.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No one is offering to BUY Bitcoin and Etherium? Suckers...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It depends on the timing
A yes, the famous I will "time" my way to riches. Wall St. is absolutely paved with the shirts of all the people who uttered those words.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Go buy some coffee with shares of IBM.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's always the camera you DIDN'T see that gets you...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Cash, grass, or ass (where ass can mean physical labor in exchange for goods and services; and not just the giggity definition).
This space unintentionally left blank.
Until you can get Bitcoin from a shop or bank it will never be adopted as a currency. Frankly, it's a pain in the ass to buy and even more so when it's depreciating by the day. On this basis it's useless as a currency for casual shoppers.
I wonder who will use that service. Except for the case of people getting infected with ransomware, the interest for cryptocurrency in the general population is rather low.
The unfortunate reality is that you are probably right. I can be so naive!
Also, to the idiot who called me a leftie. my posts years ago were from the left, but I left the left sometime in early 2010's. I felt very alone for a while!
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
It sounds like you're trying to double down on the idea that this Crypto"currency" should be an investment vehicle.
No. The whole point in a currency is trust and stability. When the value of a currency swings wildly, it's called "inflation" or "deflation" and it disrupts the entire economy. Currencies are supposed to be very stable means of exchange. A dollar's worth of sand should be a dollars worth of sand five weeks from now.
at whatever the exchange rate it happens to be stable enough needs to be so static an exchange rate that there really aren't any speculators involved at all.