Topic: Another reason bitcoin will succeed: US to target Putin's $40 billion stash - page 5. (Read 5814 times)

I think Smooth made a good point here:


To various extents, the elites are all at the mercy of the direction in which the political wind blows.  As the threat that one can have his bank assets taken increases, the usefulness of the western financial system as a store of value decreases.  As the usefulness of this store of value decreases, so do the legitimacy of the fiat ledgers. 


The free market will select the best payment network run from the most legitimate ledger.  And the elite represent a large swath of the economic majority.  Now put yourself in the shoes of an elite.  I expect what is important to you is:

- A large market cap with ample liquidity,
- A ledger with wealth distributed efficiently across a broad group of people, that has been "shaken" by numerous bubbles,
- A simple protocol run on a robust decentralized network, that has thrived in spite of efforts to thwart it.

You probably no longer care about block-time targets, writing scripts with for() loops seem a play thing for geeks at best and a threatening complexity at worse, while bitcoins draining into side-chains may look to you like a hole in the core of the system.

You wouldn't dare put your money in Litecoin, or worse yet NXT, simply because you will move the market to a much greater extent, re-creating the booms and busts of bitcoin's past but with an unknown end result.   

You'd store value in bitcoin because it has the largest market cap and the most proven track record.  If your actions make a diverse group of intelligent people who spend their time improving bitcoin more wealthy, you would view this as a good thing.  For you know they will defend the source of their wealth which in turn defends your own. 

And ideology and ideas about fairness will all be secondary considerations.  What matters most (and many won't even consciously realize this) is the strength of our shared agreement that the blockchain is the legitimate ledger and that you prove your spots on this ledger by producing a signature with your private keys.

   

Are you referring to the Cyprus hair-cut? He tried his best to help Cyprus. Russia was ready to give loans to Cyprus. But the EU officials bullied the Cypriot officials to not to accept them.

Putin is probably a bad example.  Putin has no problems with corrupt governments seizing private wealth ... as long as it is the corrupt private wealth seizing government he controls.  For the rich who don't control nation states the risk is more real.

I'm not sure a billion dollars worth of merchant exchange is currently going on. This method might still take upwards of five years. Unless Bitcoin takes off mainstream.

Or you can just get a contract with all the merchant processors and buy all the coins that come in every day.

What's with the zerocoin/zerocash trust?

Even the experts that have invented it admit to an insane gaping hole: Someone needs to make the accumulator and then 'destroy' the key.

If that key is kept some third party can un-anonymise all the zerocash transactions forever.

It's likely the key will be kept and sold to the NSA for however many billions, in anticipation of it taking off.

Hi, wouldn't it be more beneficial for him to put it all on Zerocoin? (allegedly will be 100% anonymous).
What would be the advantages of putting it in BTC really? If I had that kind of money, I would like it to be untraceable. Im a poorfag so I dont really care, so BTC is enough for me, but for people that move millions and are in deep shit, why dont they just use Zerocoin (or DRK, whatever is more secure)

I disagree: if you buy 2 million bitcoins over a certain period of time x on the exchanges, I am pretty sure the price will settle well above the starting point and not much below the last buy you make (maybe even above, it'll overshoot quite a bit after you bought your 2 millionth coin).

It would be so much fun to execute. Mr. Putin, I'm ready to help.

I wonder if when Vladimir will understands bitcoin.

before or after his fiat stash is taken?

Putin don't have any private yachts and right now he and Abramovich is not in good terms with each other.

USA Is like a big dog that's barking like its ready to attack another big dog but tied, and when that dog is free it's just put his tail behind the ass and does nothing. In other words USA only "attacks" weaker countries so no way they will try to take money from someone like Putin and even more so since the money isn't in USA. The other funny thing is, Russian oligarchs don't have their assets in other countries, so from that side they are secured. And the power of Tzar Putin was best shown in the case of Khodorkovsky. I can only imagine Obama doing something like that to some rich American. No secret service would save his life....

You have no idea of the vast amount of wealth held by the elites.  A close associate of mine is a private chef for Roman Abramovich (NW ~ $14.8 billion).  He's been sailing on the world's biggest yacht in the Mediterranean and Black seas, while other elites visit by helicopter, and I am quite certain that Putin's been a regular confidant.  Recently (and not on the yacht) he witnessed a beautiful young twenty-something female, wearing the finest furs, get dropped off by helicopter, walk into a waiting Ferrari, and then speed away.  It's a completely different world, Bryant Coleman.  


EDIT: Bryant, some people on this forum have $40 million; it's really not that much in the big Pareto distribution of the world's wealth.

I think that Obama has gone nuts. Putin's personal wealth might total $40 million, and not $40 billion. Ask anyone in Russia and they'll vouch for it. Obama is still living in dreamland and he thinks that he can make Putin concede Eastern Ukraine by using hopeless sanctions. Most of the Russian politicians don't have any financial assets in the Europe.

I don't think that Vladimir understands bitcoin but i'm sure he has people who can navigate him through it.

40 billion dollar btc pump, awesome.

Well the idea brings a smile to my face. At $3,000,000 per day it's likely bitcoin would surpass the $100,000 per coin mark in several months and the $1,000,000 coin will be within a couple of years.

It's not artificial if he keeps buying, and especially if other elites do the same thing (which they will).

Putin alone supposedly has $40 billion. He can put $1 billion per year into bitcoin for the next 40 years. There will be no loss of principal.

At the moment getting a billion into bitcoin and not losing your principal because you pushed to price artificially high is simply not possible.

Less than 8% of all bitcoins are available on exchanges and other sources for purchase.

Putin would be better off buying about $500,000 worth per day for the foreseeable future, it's not going to be a billion for a long time, but it's the safest way to do it. Even now I think $1,000,000 a day would be too much.

Other sources are the holders of 100,000+ bitcoin, but why they would sell and loss an instant 25% to tax I don't know.

Putin could get a hundred million fiat into bitcoin if given a year, but a billion is not realistic.

Of course in a couple of years, if Ethereum or Bitcoin is truly a 100,000,000,000 economy, getting 1 billion becomes much easier (Of course if this happens, his 100,000,000 this years becomes worth billions in its own right)

These two contradict each other. If he can't go ahead and buy 2 million bitcoins at the blink of an eye (which he can't) then he's going to have to do it over a period of time, in which case his continued buying will continue to support the price.

He won't be the only one of his type buying either.

This will drive the price to much higher levels and keep it there for a very, very long time, once it happens.


He can set up his own farm. If he mines and holds, fewer bitcoins go onto the market from other miners, and the price goes up.

Really interesting thought Peter R. Think it is beyond our imagination what happens of some Francs from the Swiss mountains are moved into bitcoin.

Now lets pretend we are Putin, and he wants to move one billion from his Swiss bank account into bitcoin. Lets try to help him, because I really see a few hurdles:

- Volume on online exchanges is way too low: getting 2 million bitcoins is near to impossible
- Therefore the price of one bitcoin needs and will rise, so less bitcoins are needed. But this only happens because of the one time instant demand, and likely pops afterwards. Not really a safe storage of value, when 50% of your Francs are happily converted from bitcoin again in fiat by all the current bitcoin holders.
- Think it would maybe be interesting to get a deal with a large mining pool?
- Better ideas?