https://twitter.com/iamdylancurran/status/977559925680467968 Is this old news? The depth and breadth of data collected is far worse than I expected. On top of that, this: https://pjmedia.com/trending/cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-facebook-may-listening-home-work/ Privacy is dead.
Now for the scary part. Given that this is what they know about you, what do you think they can safely assume when they throw a shitload of CPUs and machine learning at the problem? Remember when Target (a relatively unsophisticated operation when compared to Facebook, Google, etc), in 2002 (when companies didn't have nearly the datasets nor the processing power they do now) figured out a teenage girl was pregnant just from her shopping history within their fluorescent tomb and data they could buy on the open market? https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
Ten NSA agents watched you spank it to amputee porn last week through your phone camera. And ten agents were watching each of them through THEIR phone. We have the documents.
Playboy says it's leaving Facebook http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/28/technology/playboy-leaving-facebook-data/index.html First Elon Musk, now Cooper Hefner.
FYI, most machine learning is done with GPUs... not CPUs. I work with a ton of machine learning guys that are serious PhDs and neckbeards, and they're laughing at the sudden public outcry... "well, duh... we've been saying that for years." We're applying some ML to bitcoin stuff... and in case you didn't know this, that shit is nowhere near as anonymous as you think it is.
Am I wrong for thinking that all these bitcoin millionaires and everyone jumping on that bubble, is gonna be standing around with their thumbs up their asses in a few years when it becomes worth nothing? I think it's just a matter of time until someone somewhere figures out how to make it completely not anonymous, and then releases a batch of names of people who have used it to launder money and other criminal activities.
I guess it depends how sophisticated your operation is. We're still CPU-peasants in a GPU master race world.
I’ve said from it’s inception that Bitcoin is a bet against Uncle Sam. If/when bitcoin or another crypto reaches a certain market share, the government will feel the impact of lost tax revenue. Then they will shut it down, despite what BTC fanboys think.
I am fascinated by the billions being wiped off the board as people finally (!) see the downside of Facebook's insane data collection, as well as Trump's tweet at Amazon being taken seriously. So many of the tech companies have an enormous market cap that makes little sense to me, to paraphrase Lewis Black: "If Facebook is worth $25 billion, my dick has to be worth at least $10 million, because my dick exists. And if I could tie it in a knot, it'd be worth $20 million". Am I insane for thinking this was a bubble that was going to burst sooner or later? And companies like Facebook are in peril of a mass user exodus that could happen within months? I mean, MySpace was once a thing. So was Google Plus. LinkedIn (at least for me) is increasingly fucking useless. It stands to reason that these tech giants hold massive sway over elections, then they face regulation, right?
BTC was never a currency, just a commodity that was easy to trade anonymously. Currencies need governments, armies. That's where "full faith and credit" derives from. Your neighbor's pinky sworn oath isn't enough. I find it incredible that proper banks are entertaining this mania.
It's all about selling shit. As in targeted marketing. Facebook's only real revenue stream has been the ability to capture marketing demographics in order to make it very effective to sell shit to people. As in, join a hunting FaceBook Group and then you can have a captive audience for selling the latest crossbow. That is the basic understanding that normal people had of what FB was doing, so they were OK with that. Now people realize that what was going on was way, way more than that... and the media is really focusing in on it, and people feel violated, and in reaction to that sense of violation are bailing out of FB. I think this is also being exacerbated due to their own sense of "I really didn't understand how it works, and now that I realize that I don't know how it works, I'm afraid of what they're doing"... there was some sense of comfort to the end-user because they thought they understood what they were giving up by using FB. Regardless, the exodus means that it is becoming less and less effective at doing that core marketing thing that makes them money, so they are making less. Couple that with the social stigma that they have, albeit maybe somewhat temporarily, and the marketers are being public about pulling out in order to try and keep the end user happy with their brand. Myspace and Google Plus were nothing like FB, because there was no real monetization of those platforms. An argument could be made that G+ could have been a money-maker because it was just increasing Google's already huge data slurping capabilities, but they just fucked up the implementation so it never took off enough to be a threat. The key thing behind Google and FB, at least for now, is that Google is keeping all of that data internal, and using it to sell shit, whereas FB is selling that data to companies who are then using it. You can pay for access to a professional/commercial FB data API to do your own data mining of the data they are collecting, not so much with Google.
What market share, exactly? I'd be interested in learning how you define the market you're referring to. Right now, crypto is nowhere near replacing normal currency for a number of reasons. I also don't think it ever will, for many reasons. There is no magical way of converting what you get paid in (fiat, or "real money"), into crytpocurrency... it goes through a bank, and is tracked by the government for taxation purposes. Anti money-laundering rules still apply to cryptos (government reporting, "bad players" list checking, etc). "Know Your Client" rules (as you have in normal finance) are coming in weeks if not months. For instance, we are already doing FINTRAC reporting: http://www.fintrac.gc.ca/intro-eng.asp Right now cyrpto transactions are anything but real-time, and come with relatively high transaction fees. In my opinion, right now, crypto is a boiler room scenario in an unregulated environment. That's why you hear "HODL" all over the place... it's being used as a hype-driven "investment" where the push is to use it as anything but a currency. I'm leading a large team doing work for a cryptocurrency exchange... straight up exchange features, as well as heavy machine learning around transactions, fraud detection, blockchain analysis, transaction prediction modelling, account/user verification, etc. The amount of fraud in this area is off the fucking charts. You have NO idea. There's a reason you're seeing banks starting to stop any CC or bank transfers for the purchase of cryptocurrencies. In once case, we had a 98% fraud for transactions in a week. Legit credit card or bank accounts that were ripped off due to phishing being used to purchase bitcoin, and then transferred out, and then a week later the fraud was detected by the end-user/bank and rolled back. But the bitcoin is already gone, and can't be clawed back. It's so bad that MailChimp is now no longer doing any crypto-based emailing for companies. It's also why most banks now treat bitcoin purchases as cash advances. If you do payment processing, you'll understand how that shift of fraud responsibility impacts things... and why only the "scummy" payment processors will do the actual payment processing for exchanges. In some cases, there are big payment service parent companies that are buying up all the small services and becoming the only game in town if you want to do this kind of online processing... and the fees are insane. They are charging what they want and being ruthless on fraud in that they are accepting no liability for the fraud, and are getting away with it because, again, they are the only game in town. We're also starting to work on a number of smart contract projects for things like supply chain management, etc. But yeah, I have no idea what your basis for "it'll replace fiat" is, other than reading the bullshit marketing hype in Reddit forums... but I'd be interested to hear more about any details you may have around that.
In a nutshell... I consider Bitcoin to be very much like Beanie Babies... it's all hype wrapped in mystical technology that appeals to non-techies, and it only has value because people think it does... there's nothing really backing it, and once it tanks, it'll crash faster and harder than people will believe possible.
In a world where this is happening: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ong-island-iced-tea-rename-as-long-blockchain Some reality is setting in: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...jects-as-euphoria-meets-reality-idUSKBN1H32GO
I think you’re confusing posts. I never said it’d replace fiat currency. All the bitcoin fans love to tout its benefits as a currency yet trade it speculatively. Can’t have it both ways. Either it’s a stable currency (which it’s not) or its simply a spec trade. I think blockchain technology will be around for decades to come, especially in the supply chain, but as far as currency goes BTC is a flash in the pan. They’re not mutually exclusive to each other.
Bitcoin controlled 80% of the crypto market. Holders are just painting a big target on their backs with that much control. A lot easier to stomp one big cockroach than a dozen tiny ones. And a lot easier to make an example out of them.
Lost tax revenue isn’t an issue when converting to BTC, its the millions of transactions after its already been converted where lost tax revenue will take place.