Topic: Is Bitcoin and Crypto Currencies the great equalizer? (Read 1039 times)

We are entering a reality where three billion of the world's poorest people have access to smartphones but not to traditional financial services. That means despite digital connectivity, the world's poorest remain unable to send and receive money via financial institutions, visit their local bank or write a check. The economic and human implications of lack of financial opportunity are huge and virtual currency may just be our great equaliser.
I am excited for the future of cryptocurrencies. My money's on Bitcoin as a hugely disruptive force for good, with practical applications that could bring finance to the masses, and inclusion to those currently left out of our global banking system. Cryptocurrency may just be the great equaliser that so many have been seeking.

Well it seems to be going in that direction... and when ppl like Jamie Dimon dictate their concerns and ppl like us voice our opinions it helps spread awareness about the fundamental difference between the two systems..
Like they say, at this stage .. no publicity is bad publicity.. It'll serve us well in the long run ...

I certainly hope this is the case!

Thank you for your views.. Yes it is possible, with technology adoption can happen within a few years and it does not have to happen 100% .. Both digital currencies an fiat can coexist .. and it has to... they can't have all the monopoly how much ever they try..

About the Governments crackdown, aren't we the ones that elect them... even though major corporations might pay for their extravagant campaigns ..
For the revolution to take shape in the interest of the common man first the undisclosed fundings  of the Politicians/political parties must end.. their should be an ethical standard that should be implemented.. Banks should be held accountable for their actions and crimes.. Not just a fine after 10 years of the event , but a more robust and empowered Judiciary system must exist.. No one should have absolute power..

I sincerely hope they don't drive it into a black hole.. Since we are aware of the impounding challenges and resistance can we not do something about about it proactively? Work towards a win-win solution?

Thank you for sharing your views

What's your point ? The banks still dominate the market,don't think they're going anywhere for the next 100 years..


Once it starts affecting the big businesses or the market designed by the centralised government.They will simply ban bitcoins,ban shut down exchanges and impose strict laws on the regulation of bitcoin .Unfortunately that's how the system is designed..

If bitcoin was completely immune to government intervention, then possibly yes. unfortunately, we know thats not the case. we all live somewhere, and thats usually in the borders of a government. let me use America as an example. Despite trying not to as hard as possible, corporations pay the majority of taxes due to the amount of revenue that they generate. therefore, the opinions of corporations matter. not as much on a federal level, but certainly at a state/local level. corps do not want this tax basis, ans subsequent basis of influence, to shift. the government, satisfied with the status quo, is not willing to see that shift unless it is more profitable and pre regulated. so, the momentum is against bitcoin succeeding.

i think they will take the lesson of blockchains, and regulate bitcoin into a black hole. and then build something in its image.

It is bridging the gap between the poor and the rich by reminding us how silly and lopsided the old system is. The old system failed the world. Now the intelligent are taking over. The product of intelligence is Bitcoin. And as a wiseman once said that you cannot steal intelligence and buy intelligence. There are things that money can never ever buy.

Exactly, I concur with your views.. Just subscribed to Mike Maloney on youtube (GoldSilver).. Thank you for that and the comment..

Thanks for your comment ..

Most definitely, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are the great equalizers for the financial strait we are in. Fiat currency is mathematically unfair because of how credit is created (hint: used to be backed by gold; now out of thin air by Central Banks) and has the potential to implode at any moment. The only thing truly holding up our current financial system is the government and central banks themselves.

Bitcoin will bring about money 3.0 and represent a world of fraud-free, inflation proof transactions that the world as a whole can enjoy regardless of location. 

I would recommend Mike Maloney's series on YouTube if you want to get a true sense of where the economy is and where it is going.

Yes that is possible for bitcoin to be the bridge to fill the gap between rich and poor because bitcoin can help the poor people to earn money through different ways and that will make the poor people to improve their life and become a middle class type of people and if they will continue working then they can become rich also.

You are mixing together a variety of ideas - and sure it becomes easy to get all fucking mixed up about a variety of the concepts and the supposed deficiencies in bitcoin that are propagated by a large number of bitcoin challengers from a variety of perspectives.

If we attempt to look at bitcoin's situation in context - and even let's say from about 2013 and then more recent contentions that began to amplify in about mid-to-late 2015.

In 2013, we had two explosive growth periods that resulted in nearly an 80x increase in price from $15 to $1163, then year long correction through 2014 that brought BTC prices into the mid $250s for most of 2015.   Sure, some of the correction was probably necessary and natural; however, there was a lot of misinformation spread about bitcoin too.. and even starting in late 2015, with the various scale or die proposals that went from XT, to Classic, to emergent consensus, to B-cash (and also segwit2x).  

A lot of these scaling talking points were campaigns by persons with purported differing visions of bitcoin; however, they were also propagated and supported by forces that were hostile to bitcoin (whether banksters or government or other traditional institutions that felt threatened by the decentralized nature of bitcoin).  So there has been a constant guise that suggests various ways that bitcoin is technically deficient (or that it should have goals to immediately be able to compete with visa) , while the real goal has been to attempt to undermine bitcoin's governance and to make bitcoin easier to change.  So if there is some way to accomplish undermining the governance of bitcoin and to make bitcoin easier to change, then bitcoin becomes no longer decentralized, no longer a threat, no longer valuable.  So whether you are a banker, a government official or some short-sighted alt coin pumper, your goal may have been to consider it in your interest to undermine bitcoin and to join alliances with these various big blocker camps and to spread propaganda, including your point about whether proof of stake is better than proof of work.  Further nonsense asserting deficiencies in POW, which really is part of the innovativeness that bitcoin brings to the table and differentiates it from previous systems.

So, in essence what I am saying is that a lot of the information that we have been encountering have been guises to undermine bitcoin, and if you can see through the nonsense, then you won't get your bitcoin's shaken from you you will continue to BUYDL and HODL... and just try to accumulate to the best of your ability without overinvesting (because everyone has to surely attempt to cover his/her monthly expenses and not get shook out of bitcoin because of volatility and bad planning of those expenses in advance and with strategies whether you have high income or low income).




I would not get too worried about the variety of upstarts, even if they are supposedly technically superior.  The problem with a lot of them is they are not truly decentralized, including Ethereum.  Bitcoin is really the only game in town with a bunch of competitors trying to attempt to act like they are Bitcoin 2.0 or that bitcoin is dead or that bitcoin is technologically deficient.. blah blah blah.

On the other hand, if you have some faith in the long term prospects of some other coin(s) to take over bitcoin market share or to possibly surplant it, then of course, you can put some of your money in that direction.  Each of us are going to come to different judgements regarding the viability of these various other projects and whether there is much of any truth in the various bitcoin is dead or broken claims.



Sure there is some truth to the claims about first mover advantage, but the fundamentals are much greater than a simplified description of first mover advantage.  A lot of bitcoin denigrator folks strive to put down bitcoin by suggesting that bitcoin is technologically deficient and that all it's got going for it is it's first mover advantage - which frequently involves over exaggerated claims - and a bunch of fucking so what.  Bitcoin is a project that competes on the merits and does not have marketing - and so there are a bunch of folks in bitcoin working on a bunch of scattered projects that are going to take a long time to innovate, improve and adopt.  And, bitcoin's security and computing power brings value. Even if 80% of the miners were to leave bitcoin, bitcoin is still secure - but don't get me wrong, I doubt that there is going to be any vast exodus from bitcoin.. because the value remains with various networking effects that continue with bitcoin.. and if we see it leave or believe it is leaving then, there would be an advantage to leave, as well, but those various projects that you name are not threat to bitcoin as you seem to imply, including Ethereum.


I think that Ripple was around before bitcoin, but it was transformed in light of bitcoin, so yeah.. ripple attempts to be another distractive competitor that is also largely centralized and manipulated in its own rights.


I don't think that we can really say that there is any best - because sure there are better case scenarios that could play out, but in the end, the market is going to evolve and folks are going to chose where to invest and systems will adapt to such movements.  Don't get me wrong, because there is almost no fucking way that bitcoin is going to become wide spread adopted without a large number of continued battles that may well become more and more intense during any time periods that banks, governments, traditional institutions believe that they have ways to attempt to undermine and/or weaken it.  In the meantime, expect continued manipulation, volatility and misinformation, and try not to gets scared or shaken away from the level of bitcoin that you believe to be prudent for your own financial, timeline and viewpoint circumstances.

Of course, you can do  much better if you already have wealth; however, the poor person is not excluded from this system, if s/he can figure out a way to invest.  A problem is that frequently poor people will not have as much access to information or time in order to sort between the good information and the bad information, and they may well get tricked into investing into some crap pump and dump alt coin rather than in the real deal, bitcoin.
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I am loving this discussion and like your perspective. I'll take the opportunity to share another doubt that I have regarding Bitcoin being the at the Helm for ever..
I've been reading about the upcoming hard fork and how the signatories have not been in sync with what is the way forward POW vs POS etc..
If enough ppl were to get onboard the other ship could Bitcoin cash be bigger than BTC and there's also the Russians "Universa" claiming to be a 100 to 1000 times faster than BTC or ETH with lower cost of operation..
Bitcoin has the first movers advantage but is that enough to keep it ahead of the game?  

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There may be some banksters that can see the writing on the wall; however, a lot of them are likely still cocky and engaging in various attempts and campaigns to undermine bitcoin.  Surely, we cannot see everything that banks are doing - and some of them are likely just sitting back, too.. so there is even variation in the banking sector, and some of them could be hedging their bets too...

Still seems like early stages to me, and it could be that at some point in time there is going to be more coordinated attacks from banks... and other cryptos, again varying on jurisdiction, too.  But there is probably going to be some confusion, too, about what is being attacked, whether bitcoin or some other pump and dump alt coin.
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Some say Ripple was introduced so that the banks could have the market share and also be able to influence the market... I think the best way for BTC and others to survive will need us to get accepted into the legal framework because since the banks have more money they could play unfair ..

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We are not going to expect any kind of transformation to take place quickly; however, if you think about it, this phenomenon of bitcoin is becoming quite powerful quickly, and it seems likely to me that people who are able to identify such power are going to be rewarded immensely as long as they can accumulate and HODL their bitcoin in spite of various likely volatility and manipulation and FUD spreading.  So, it does not matter if you are rich or you are poor, you will be able to better your station in life if you recognize the power of bitcoin and are able to act upon that recognition without over-investing and able to persist with your strategy and not get shaken out.  

Of course, you can do  much better if you already have wealth; however, the poor person is not excluded from this system, if s/he can figure out a way to invest.  A problem is that frequently poor people will not have as much access to information or time in order to sort between the good information and the bad information, and they may well get tricked into investing into some crap pump and dump alt coin rather than in the real deal, bitcoin.





I don't know.  Governments are all over the place on this, and each of us, as individuals, have to figure out our accumulation and HODL strategy - which is going to vary depending on jurisdictional and geographical options that are available to us.

whatever the fuck governments should or should not do, I don't give a ratt's ass because I just try to figure out what I am going to do based on what "is" rather than what "ought to be", and what "is" will be continuously changing and vary somewhat depending on location - even though bitcoin is global.



There may be some banksters that can see the writing on the wall; however, a lot of them are likely still cocky and engaging in various attempts and campaigns to undermine bitcoin.  Surely, we cannot see everything that banks are doing - and some of them are likely just sitting back, too.. so there is even variation in the banking sector, and some of them could be hedging their bets too...

Still seems like early stages to me, and it could be that at some point in time there is going to be more coordinated attacks from banks... and other cryptos, again varying on jurisdiction, too.  But there is probably going to be some confusion, too, about what is being attacked, whether bitcoin or some other pump and dump alt coin.




[quote author=KaranRaut link=topic=2186087.msg22014617#msg22014617 date=1505859034

So if more and more individuals participate and believe in the value of a decentralized system the banks would have less control..
 
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Yep.. sure with the passage of time, more and more difficulties to stop individual and decentralized participation..  We are still in very early stages of the spread of this bitcoin phenomenon.. stay tuned...   

Thank you for the comment: Really appreciate you sharing your perspective .. I wonder sometimes because of the push and pull that the industry experiences (industry=cryptosphere),I mean w.r.t. the governments and banks (the current powerhouses of our society/world) being pessimistic about it, if we will actually revolutionize the world/economics... Don't get me wrong but they are right in certain aspects (too much fraudsters lurking around) but then again that's true in the fiat world as well.. Governments should focus on curbing the wrong doers and not the system, like in the case with fiat or banking..
Banks are super scared because they would get hit the hardest unless they have some innovative way of evolving.. This leads me to think maybe the banks bought the coins and short sold them short to cause panic and they will do this again.. So if more and more individuals participate and believe in the value of a decentralized system the banks would have less control..
 

That is ridiculous to judge the price of bitcoin as compared with various alts based largely on unit price - rather than fundamentals and deeper context. 

Sure there has been a considerable price appreciation in bitcoin and also in various alts, but that does not mean that bitcoin is more over appreciated compared with various alts... which seems to be your suggestion to invest in alts because they are possibly more affordable... NONSense!

I will concede that all of the cryptos are somewhat gambles as compared with some traditional investments, but bitcoin likely remains the strongest of the cryptos in terms of fundamentals and in terms of its various network effects - and that is considering longer term prospects for bitcoin, as well.

So, yeah, be careful if you are overvaluing various alts based on unit price and some kind of perception that they may or may not be going places or they may get pumped (or dumped), and sometimes, you just need to establish and follow a manageable strategy .. which I would suggest putting the large majority of your focus on bitcoin rather than some misplaced ideas about getting rich quicker through gambling.

Of course, you could also play your cards correctly on some alts, but the safer long term bet is likely to figure out some kind of dollar cost averaging investing into bitcoin (and attempt to be reasonable rather than fantasizing about getting rich quick with some manipulated alt).

I guess you are wrong on that.  You maybe correct if you said Bitcoin alone but crypto means all cryptocurrency including Bitcoin and altcoin.  Though they might be some argument about getting into bitcoin is still easy because it does not need us to buy a whole of it (1 BTC) rather we can buy smaller chunks.  Altcoins are far cheaper than Bitcoin so that would be an option if we still wants to get in cryptocurrency and have no capability to buy a whole of bitcoin (that is if you want to buy 1 whole coins/token)

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I guess Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is not the great equalizer for the reason that it can still be exploited by rich people.  Rich people getting richer and poor people left behind.  Remember before anyone can access cryptocurrency, they need to have to meet the minimum requirement, that is to have a gadget and an internet.   Poor people are having difficulty to acquire these, worst they really cannot buy these things.