[Teutatis]

(02-16-2016 11:19 AM)Baphomet Wrote:  

(02-15-2016 05:27 PM)Teutatis Wrote:  

So when the music stops and fiat currencies are worthless and the world is in turmoil and chaos what can you do with your gold?

The same thing that you were doing with the fiat currency? I've never really understood the "what is gold good for" line of thinking, that gets tossed around in gold discussions.

Gold has been a standard of exchange for as long as history can document. No other medium of exchange, across every culture and people on the planet can touch it. I would like to understand the reasoning behind the idea that gold will suddenly lose all value in an economic collapse.

I can't wrap my head around that concept.

Gold was used in a time before modern economies, nation states, communication and technology existed. Nowadays gold is useless as a currency.

If we ever have such an extreme and serious economic collapse, so grave that fiat currencies lose their value, that will mean the world is in utter chaos and gold will be worthless because you will be fighting for food and water and medicine, no one will care about gold.

It's not even a good way to preserve or store value in economic downturns, it performs badly, but hey, if someone wants to buy it, it's their money, people should do whatever they want with it.

[jj90]

(02-18-2016 08:27 AM)praxguy Wrote:  

@whateverfuckit simply has no idea what he is talking about. Bottom line. All it takes is a minute to investigate the rules and regulations issued by FinCEN and local state regulators to know that it is against the rules to not know your customer (AML/KYC).

Any company that holds or transmits a customer's funds in the USA requires an MTL (money-transmitters license) https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/licenses, and any company that exchanges currency or checks and the matter needs a MSB license, both issued by FinCEN.

If @whateverfuckit stopped treating his comments like his username indicates, he'd see that the USA Patriot Act clearly defines the responsibilities of FinCEN in reporting back to homebase (USA PATRIOT Act (U.S. H.R. 3162, Public Law 107-56), Title III, Subtitle B, Sec. 361).

While I agree with you on AML/KYC and etc, I think you are missing the real point he is trying to make, that is: there is compliance, and then there is enforcement. 2 very different things.

[whateverfuckit]

(02-18-2016 08:27 AM)praxguy Wrote:  

(02-12-2016 08:27 PM)whateverfuckit Wrote:  

It's clear you are willfully distorting facts for your own gain.

The PATRIOT Act and other such "ID laws" apply to banks, NOT PayPal, which is NOT a bank. They do NOT have to verify your identity, because they are NOT a bank and thus not federally regulated as such.

STOP distorting facts for financial gain. It's obvious you only created your sleeper account and bought the gold membership to promote Bitcoin. Theres no issue with promoting it, but your dishonest approach is abhorrent.

@whateverfuckit simply has no idea what he is talking about. Bottom line. All it takes is a minute to investigate the rules and regulations issued by FinCEN and local state regulators to know that it is against the rules to not know your customer (AML/KYC).

Any company that holds or transmits a customer's funds in the USA requires an MTL (money-transmitters license) https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/licenses, and any company that exchanges currency or checks and the matter needs a MSB license, both issued by FinCEN.

If @whateverfuckit stopped treating his comments like his username indicates, he'd see that the USA Patriot Act clearly defines the responsibilities of FinCEN in reporting back to homebase (USA PATRIOT Act (U.S. H.R. 3162, Public Law 107-56), Title III, Subtitle B, Sec. 361).

You're full of it.

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/aml-full

PayPal is NOT required to get your SSN or birthdate. They don't verify this info, therefore there is NO way to ID you, therefore ANY point you make about what they are "required" to do or not do is null and void because they DON'T verify your identity, thus you can open PayPal accounts with whatever fictitious info you choose.

The bottom line is this: Yes, PayPal CAN freeze your accounts, but it's a moot point, since you can withdraw money whenever you want. Why would you leave several grand sitting in the account in the first place?

And even if an account gets shut-down, opening a new account takes 15 minutes, and they don't verify or check any info you provide, so your point that someones PayPal can be shut-down is entirely irrelevant.

Go plug Bitcoin somewhere else.

[dispenser]

(02-18-2016 11:54 AM)Teutatis Wrote:  

Gold was used in a time before modern economies, nation states, communication and technology existed. Nowadays gold is useless as a currency.

If we ever have such an extreme and serious economic collapse, so grave that fiat currencies lose their value, that will mean the world is in utter chaos and gold will be worthless because you will be fighting for food and water and medicine, no one will care about gold.

It's not even a good way to preserve or store value in economic downturns, it performs badly, but hey, if someone wants to buy it, it's their money, people should do whatever they want with it.

I sometimes think people confuse economic collapse with the Apocalypse.
Some people would still be sitting pretty, despite all the blood raining from the sky.

During the hyperinflation in Weimar era Germany, barter was common. You had city people trading jewellery to farmers in exchange for sacks of vegetables.
Under the circumstances, don't you think the people with plenty of low-value silver coins had an advantage over the people trading 19ct wedding rings and wheelbarrows of useless banknotes?
Even farmers with silver and small gold pieces would have been able to trade with each other for equipment or rare supplies. If they were accepting precious metals from townspeople, why not from each other? Forge me five or ten hammers and have a silver piece, etc. Crude but effective.

[klosck]

(02-19-2016 02:21 AM)dispenser Wrote:  

I sometimes think people confuse economic collapse with the Apocalypse.
Some people would still be sitting pretty, despite all the blood raining from the sky.

During the hyperinflation in Weimar era Germany, barter was common. You had city people trading jewellery to farmers in exchange for sacks of vegetables.
Under the circumstances, don't you think the people with plenty of low-value silver coins had an advantage over the people trading 19ct wedding rings and wheelbarrows of useless banknotes?
Even farmers with silver and small gold pieces would have been able to trade with each other for equipment or rare supplies. If they were accepting precious metals from townspeople, why not from each other? Forge me five or ten hammers and have a silver piece, etc. Crude but effective.

I agree. What a lot of people don't realize is that an economic collapse could pan out a lot of different ways. A mad max/walking dead type scenario is probably the least likely. If it did get that bad, then yes food, water, and ammo would be the most valuable resource.

In my opinion it will probably a partial collapse, similar to what happened with the Soviet Union. It was chaotic but most of their civil infrastructure remained intact.

Personally I've prepared for every scenario. Ive invested in gold/silver, a little bitcoin , and even have a three month food supply. (which honestly I think is a good idea regardless)....and in case things dont go to shit, I'm still setting aside a portion of my income towards my 401k.

[SunW]

Oh shit, praxyguy won. Good move by Roosh.

[whateverfuckit]

(02-20-2016 10:40 AM)SunW Wrote:  

Oh shit, praxyguy won. Good move by Roosh.

Not really. Praxguy was trying to convince people to move the majority of their wealth to Bitcoin for "wealth protection". Just because I open a brokerage account doesn't mean I transferred my money to stocks.

Accepting payments in Bitcoin and using Bitcoin for "wealth protection" are entirely different things.

Anyways, I don't care if he "won" or not. I just want people to have all the facts, and PayPal is plenty anonymous if you do it right. Now, I wouldn't do anything ILLEGAL with PayPal, (come to think of it, I wouldn't do anything illegal with BC either) but for Doxxing purposes, you should never fear using PayPal.

[The Beast1]

(02-18-2016 08:04 AM)praxguy Wrote:  

(02-15-2016 07:48 PM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

I don't like Bitcoin. It's too volatile. Roosh should however open a Coinbase account and use the receive address for donations. He should move the donations immediately into USD to avoid the volatility.

Back to the OP's original not subtle bitcoin plug point, I think having a stash of gold coins and some US bills in paper is a good means of keeping yourself safe. If SHTF in your 3rd world paradise use that money to get to an embassy and wait to get lifted back to America.

A Coinbase account defeats the purpose of what Bitcoin was intended to do, since the user does not control his own private keys. On the other hand, if Roosh follows my simple instructions, he can directly receive Bitcoins to a more sandboxed environment like a cel phone, and then arbitrage those bitcoins out in Russia for over 50% the spot price of Bitcoin on the same day. This practice will eliminate any worries of volatility and actually make Roosh considerably more money, while increasing his security and further disconnecting him from relying on the very system that he tries to convince ourselves to drop every day.

Please post a datasheet on this. I'd like to learn more about this process.

[Peregrine]

A commodity that's possible to geoarb 50% over spot. That's exactly what I want to use for asset protection purposes.

[The Beast1]

(02-21-2016 01:32 PM)Peregrine Wrote:  

A commodity that's possible to geoarb 50% over spot. That's exactly what I want to use for asset protection purposes.

I'm less interested in asset protection and more for speculating

[praxguy]

@The Beast1 I don't really understand what you're requesting. Ask me questions and I'll answer them

[The Beast1]

(02-18-2016 08:04 AM)praxguy Wrote:  

(02-15-2016 07:48 PM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

I don't like Bitcoin. It's too volatile. Roosh should however open a Coinbase account and use the receive address for donations. He should move the donations immediately into USD to avoid the volatility.

Back to the OP's original not subtle bitcoin plug point, I think having a stash of gold coins and some US bills in paper is a good means of keeping yourself safe. If SHTF in your 3rd world paradise use that money to get to an embassy and wait to get lifted back to America.

A Coinbase account defeats the purpose of what Bitcoin was intended to do, since the user does not control his own private keys. On the other hand, if Roosh follows my simple instructions, he can directly receive Bitcoins to a more sandboxed environment like a cel phone, and then arbitrage those bitcoins out in Russia for over 50% the spot price of Bitcoin on the same day. This practice will eliminate any worries of volatility and actually make Roosh considerably more money, while increasing his security and further disconnecting him from relying on the very system that he tries to convince ourselves to drop every day.

Prax, how do you do this? What is your process? Please do a write up on this.

[praxguy]

(02-23-2016 10:12 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

Prax, how do you do this? What is your process? Please do a write up on this.

Certainly @The Beast1.

Let's start off with sourcing of bitcoins. There are 3 main types of ways to purchase bitcoins, and all of them have plus and minuses.

1. Cash (straight forward)
2. Credit/Debit Card/Wire Transfers (Coinbase, exchanges)
3. Value swap (gift cards, Amazon purchases through purse.io)

Each has time associated with it to get delivery of bitcoins. Bitcoins act like cash, in that they constitute INSTANT SETTLEMENT, so the most straightforward way to purchase bitcoins is to trade cash (dollars, fiat) for cash (bitcoin). In this case, digital dollars ARE NOT CASH, because Wires, Credit Card payments, and Debit Card payments can all be reversed. This is why Coinbase takes around 7 days to deliver bitcoins once a purchase is executed.

Once you've decided to purchase your bitcoins, you will need to generate a PUBLIC key on an app or website to receive your bitcoins. Coinbase will manage this for you, but the downside is that you do not control your PRIVATE KEYS (the password, if you will, to spend your bitcoins). This means that if Coinbase were to be compromised (as so many website are), you funds could get stolen.

On the other hand, there are a plethora of apps made for iPhone and Android that use very secure methods of key-generation using strong random-number generation already built into modern smart phones to protect the safety of the key. Some of these apps live only on the smart phone (like mycelium) and have to be backed up manually to ensure that a user can access his bitcoins in the event that he loses his or her phone. Other apps, like the one designed by my company use sophisticated client-side encryption to hold an encrypted copy of a wallet on peer-to-peer decentralized servers. That means that if the servers were compromised, hackers would not be able to decrypt the key file unless they had access to the username and password that the customer generated on their phone.

I personally think my app is the most friendly user experience, and since I know how it was designed, I think it has the most sophisticated engine running it. But no matter how you choose to host your bitcoins, once you've acquired them, the only next question is where to sell them if you want to "cash out".

For Roosh, "cashing out" (trading bitcoins for fiat currency) would be as simple as spinning up an anonymous account on LocalBitcoins.com (the largest market for in person trades) and putting a sell price for his bitcoins and his preferred method of payment.

Because the rest of the world that is not in western Europe or USA have little to no access to the full banking system, acquiring bitcoins at near-spot prices is virtually impossible. And, as I said before, because even Coinbase at 1% over spot takes 7 days on average to deliver bitcoins into the possession of the buyer, time-factors come into play (the time-value of money). In the US, the typical premium at Bitcoin ATMs is between 10-20%. The disparity between the instant deposit of bitcoins for a buyer to the advertised exchange "spot" price is SIGNIFICANT.

As I said in a previous post, in Russia, Argentina, Venezuela etc, bitcoins are even more valuable because once someone has exchanged their hyper-controlled currency for bitcoin, they now enjoy the freedom to send their money anywhere they want with the freedom that we Americans take for granted. And actually, it's more convenient because it goes through zero intermediaries, and therefore loses no more value since the delivery of bitcoins is instant.

If Roosh gets donations in Bitcoin, the premium he can charge for those coins in Russia is 50-100% depending on where and how much he wants to sell.

Any more questions?

[Peregrine]

Good writeup. I'm assuming you must be in Russia to make this play?

[The Beast1]

Like the writeup Praxguy. How are you selling these bitcoins in those local markets? I'm assuming you're local as with what Peregrine said.

[praxguy]

(02-25-2016 12:05 AM)Peregrine Wrote:  

Good writeup. I'm assuming you must be in Russia to make this play?

Well not exactly. You can make this play anywhere, but the question is: can you get enough income in bitcoin to make it worth your while. Roosh can because he lives off sales and donations. Unfortunately, if you tried to make business off of taking your cash money from bitcoin sales, and then depositing it into a bank account and sending it a bitcoin exchange, the banks will shut your account down due to the high-risk nature of an all cash business. It's not that you're breaking the law--you can report all income to the IRS--it's that the banks don't want to risk getting in trouble if you happen to be nefarious. It's a very tough business. Russia though, is a whole 'nother story. There's a reason Roosh is there and not over here: he's got some real freedom.

[praxguy]

(02-25-2016 10:45 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

Like the writeup Praxguy. How are you selling these bitcoins in those local markets? I'm assuming you're local as with what Peregrine said.

I live in the states. As much as I like the returns found in Russia for the sale of bitcoin, there's a reason why it's so much higher over there than over here: capital controls. They're a bitch. When you run a business, you need to be able to source your bitcoins from anywhere in the world, and the restriction on wires can be incredibly burdensome. Remember, every trade for currency has two completely different animals: Dollars (or other fiat money) and bitcoin. One is controlled by a central, draconian authority. The other is a decentralized peer-to-peer currency where no one person makes the rules, but everyone agrees as a majority to operate by fundamental principles inherent to the specific iteration of the code.

[edlefou]

Has anyone had success with what Praxguy is proposing? It sounds too good to be true.

I checked the prices in Kiev and Moscow on localbitcoins.com and I didn't see any buy offers for 50-100% over the market price.

All the buy offers are pretty much at the market price and the only way to sell is to select one of the buy offers.

[DVY]

Who cares what your potential return could be if the bitcoin can devalue in half almost overnight....

Thats my thoughts

[jj90]

Your entitled to your opinion DVY, but perhaps you are being a little harsh on praxguy. You know as well as any other just about any asset can half overnight.

[polar]

JJ90: Yes, but what is the historical volatility? What are the implied odds?

Recent historical volatility is the best short-term predictor of volatility in the near future, and Bitcoin has all of the properties of a speculative investment. More akin to penny stocks or even roulette than blue chips or real estate.

Aside from a cataclysm, there's no way that real estate, gold, or diversified portfolios of stocks and bonds would half overnight.

The volatility of an asset and its attractiveness as a currency (a method of exchanging value between two individuals) are inversely related. Similarly, to invest in volatile assets, you would want to have better information and keep track of your investments frequently.

If you like bitcoin and are invested in it, I hope you have a good reason, and are able to handle the risk of loss. As for me - no thanks.

[jj90]

@polar: I do agree with your points, but to avoid a discussion on the nuances of semantics, volatility, investments, and asset allocation that would range a few pages and could devolve into a pissing match, I'll say this:

Improbable doesn't mean impossible. We'll have to agree to disagree somewhat on the probability of certain scenarios, but there is of course upside vol as well, from a purely statistical view.

We may have quite different definitions of investments, but Bitcoin currently isn't for me as well. Just trying to keep perspective in this thread.

[DVY]

Just saying that id avoid giving advice on an asset class w/out mentioning that this asset class is basically based on zero. Liquidity and thus value can dissapear overnight which means it is not "wealth protection", hence my thoughts on staying away unless you are using as a money exchanger from one form of currency or value to another and I would definetely not put a large chunk in there at a time...

[praxguy]

I'm sure this won't sway your guy's opinion, but I happen to personally know 2 of the largest market makers in Bitcoin personally. They are former Wall Street algotraders that are basically on the other side of any daily bitcoin trade. Their sophisticated arb robots make it so that the volatility is really not what it used to be. Sure bitcoin will go up or down 3% in a day, and maybe 15% in a month, but these aren't violent swings.

As I said before, being in a first world country, you guys just don't understand what it means like to the people of Russia to lose 50% value of their currency over night via fiat decree. You don't know what it's like in Venezuela where people have to smuggle toilet paper in. You don't know what it's like in Argentina where people buy cars as an appreciate asset.

So because of that, you start with this ridiculous claim that stability is the standard and most desirable feature of a currency, and you forget how much people are willing to lose in order to freely move around their capital in a way that you guys take for granted.

You take it for granted. Bottom line. And that's fine, it doesn't offend me or anything, it's understandable and enviable. But folks, I'm here to tell you that the daily bitcoin REAL USE-CASES in New York alone are upwards of $10 million a day. That's one metropolitan area. Underbanked people in this privileged country are willing to lose upwards of 20% on their money just to be able to transfer value over time and space.

You guys just can't identify because your financial transactions are low in volume, highly reported and tracked, and probably tied to a long history of good credit.

I'm here to tell you guys that there exists another world. A world where people don't have credit histories. They don't have a Chase Quickpay or access to Paypal. They get their daily wages in cash, or a check they have to take to a casher. This world is also buying real resold gift cards for Amazon, Ebay, and even Hyatt rewards points at massive massive discounts. I'm talking 30-40-50% under the prices you guys buy at those same places. And this is all thanks to cryptographically secure digital currency.

Does it take more time yes? But in this world, time is what poor people have a lot of, not money.

[DVY]

OK I can see that being the case w/fiat controls because people will pay big premiums to move their $ away from unstable countries.

NY maybe because of all the immigrants... But why wouldn't they use Western Union or Moneygram. It works out to a be 7-8% cut and it goes cash to cash.

WU and moneygram serves most of the underbanked population. M-pesa is still in the thought experiment stage and still hasn't gained traction outside of a few countries.

I just don't see the utility for an average US resident (for now).

Most people want to send $ home. WU accomplishes this cash-to-cash transaction in less than 24 hrs w/basically zero headache up to 2k cash. Thats 99% of the needs for most underbanked. Most people want a quick fix for their problems. Pay the fee and be done w/it. Just trying to hash out WHY you think this is superior....

Unless you are talking about drugs, porn, or shady stuff.