All Forum Posts by: Jerry Shen

The transaction can be traced, but not the person. That's what makes it popular in the underground & one of the reasons why the banks don't accept it. Granted, once I know you as an individual are tied to a transaction, then I can see what you have done in the past and any future transactions. But I first have to positively identify the person with a certain transaction. The block chain being public is irrelevant, if I can't do that.

BTW, hardware wallets are insecure as well, just a little bit harder to crack into than the software based ones. Mainly because the opportunity to break into it, should not be available as much, as a software wallet. 

FYI, my day job "might be" focused around LEGALLY breaking into things out on the interwebs.

@Jerry Shen I apologize if this is a repeat of info or if it constitutes an "application" that you don't trust, but your thread prompted me to locate Propy.com, whose website says "Propy allows buyers, sellers, brokers, and escrow/title agents/notaries to come together through the utilization of a suite of smart contracts on blockchain to facilitate transactions."  I have no stake in anything crypto, thus appreciate the interesting thread and feedback from all.

 How has the property in the Springs worked out for you so far?

I read a WSJ article about this.

Personally I have no interest in bitcoin.  My main reasoning:

Money is often defined in terms of the three functions or services that it provides.Money serves as a medium of exchange, as a store of value, and as a unit of account. Medium of exchange. Money's most important function is as a medium of exchange to facilitate transactions.

For none of these 3 things does Bitcoin pass the sniff test - some might say it might be in the future - I don't buy it.

I'm selling the stuff.  The other thing that creeps me out is the anarchic bent of many of the evangelizers.  In some circles you will be ostracized/labeled any number of bad things by saying anything bad about bitcoin.

It’s funny you should ask. I saw a condo for sale in the Miami market today, and the seller will *only* accept bitcoin for payment.

Interesting thread, although I think you just set up a straw-man argument with the statement about the internet in 1995. The internet was a viable platform back in the '90s. The internet companies that failed, failed because they didn't have a viable product or service, not because of the underlying technology of the internet. BC is not a currency being used by the masses for any reason.

Like I said earlier, I remember bitcoin when it first came out & it was still in the single digits per bitcoin. I could of mined it. I doubt most people even know that at one time, you could of "created" your own bitcoins & litecoins out of computing power magic. The novelty of bitcoin for non-criminals, was finding places that accepted bitcoin to spend. Bitcoin was also & still is the wild west in regards to it's use in the darkweb, the INSECURITY of storing your bitcoins, etc. Now they have exchanges, which are still not as secure as they are advertised to be by the operators. They are still insecure to those of us who know what they are doing & have a desire to steal bitcoins. I still remember an article about a guy who threw out some old hard drives, which unfortunately had his bitcoin wallet on them. At that time bitcoin was still in the $200-$500 range, and he had over a $1M in bitcoins on them. He was an early adapter and mined his coins.

Unlike bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, we know where gold is stored. Once an exchange or your wallet is hacked, which has and still is happening, you are out of luck.

BC is still not a true investment, in that there is no underlying asset. Unless you count "hope it goes up" as an asset. I mean why is it today $16K vs several years ago when it was $500? What in the "real" world has driven the value up? Block chain is truly the investment. It's not a smoke & mirrors concept. It's straight up math & technology. Various industries are now starting to utilize it for true real world services. IMO, the "pipe dream" of BC is definitely driving the creation of all these other crypto currencies. With all of these crypto-currencies, which one is going to 1)be accepted by the world-wide banking industry, 2)be accepted by the regular man on the street that wants to buy some gas at a gas station, groceries, clothes, etc. At the price point now, BC can only be "used" for big ticket items & that if it is accepted. Sure  you can cash out, but what happens when a bubble is determined, like the housing & stock markets, it's value will crash and crash hard. If it is not accepted by the banking industry, it won't rebound to where it was. Parts of this country haven't rebounded from the real estate market crash.

I do wish I had spent more time setting up my lab to mine both BC & LC. Who knows, I definitely would of been a crypto multi, multi millionaire, but I doubt it b/c I'm sure I would of cashed out at some point before it headed north of several hundred dollars

Jerry Shen has raised the issue that concerns me most about bitcoin.  There are lots of people in the world and certainly companies that have enough money to cause a collapse of bitcoin.

We do not know who the insiders are in bitcoin.  Jerry Shen might be Satoshi Nakamoto.  We do not know if big players are shorting their own positions because they plan on collapsing the bubble.

I do hope Jerry Shen was able to turn his fortune from Yahoo!  (Does the "!" show my age?) into 5000 times more money with bitcoin.

I wish George Soros was here.  He is brilliant in shorting currencies and their equivalents.

I'm curious what lender would take something that can have swings of 50% on a weekly rate as collateral? I understand annuities, bonds, bank accounts but bitcoin?

Just deal with it - Either sell the bitcoin for USD, or keep it in hope that it goes up. 

At one time I had over 2000btc, sold a great deal when while was under $100/btc to start my rental business. Now i'm planning on being around 85 units end-of-year. I don't regret selling the Bitcoin one bit. I got my first BTC back when you could go on one of the many faucets and collect 0.5btc/1btc a day. I lost it a year later after a Javascript injection looted something like a quarter of all bitcoin wallets. I've seen the price from 10c to now nearing $20k. 

So, don't be shocked when 99%+ of banks won't take it as collateral. If you ABSOLUTELY want to do it, just spend a few satoshis and find the contacts for a private lender that will do the deal. There's ALWAYS options out there but you're going to have to go around and do most of the work yourself.