dgul

They're bankrupt now. They're just going over the paperwork. Sad thing is, it won't even be worth going to the firesale -- even with massive discounts they'll be more expensive than online.

Hmm. I don't know about the exposure, but don't quote an agency which is part of the organisation that needs to show it was a success.

That number is irrelevant. Like all the nonsense about netting up derivatives. The UK exports about £20bln financial services to the EU pa, about 1/3rd of the total worth of FS exports, and is worth about £180 billion in total (so EU export component is ~ 10% of the industry). If we lost all the EU work it would have a significant impact, but it wouldn't take everything to zero. [The contribution to GDP is also an interesting point. There are serious questions regarding the value of FS to the UK -- or, at least, the value over-and-above a minimum quantity of FS that is required to grease the economy with cash. A smaller, more efficient FS (in targeting money where required, rather than acting as a massive de-facto tax on commercial activity) might result in lower headline GDP but could actually give the result of the median person being more 'wealthy'. There is also the impact of the 'greatest and best' being attracted into FS (because of the cash); they'd offer more to society if they were being brilliant in making new medicines or technology, rather than making more brilliant tools in quantitative analysis. But this is a secondary point -- we can worry about how parasitic the FS industry is after we've worked out the impact of Brexit.]

Okay -- I'll put it a different way. In a normal SOTA robust distributed database setup, how often does it go down (obviously not often -- but never?) Then ask, how often does the Bitcoin blockchain go down.

But that makes it sound easy. The reality is robust distributed data is still difficult to do, and companies spend vast amounts of time and money getting reliability up from 99.99% to 99.9999%. Blockchain does this quite readily.

No. What I'm saying is that there are avenues that governments could take it they wanted. I'm not saying it is going to happen. I'm not saying it is likely to happen. I'm not saying that it would be necessary, or that it would be proportionate given what they allow in other financial areas. But people said 'they' couldn't do anything about Bitcoin. I gave an example of how 'they' could. Don't like it? Tough. Don't think it is going to happen -- well, there are plenty of other avenues that 'they' could take if they wanted. What I'm definitely saying that if 'they' wanted to do something, for whatever reason, they could.

The point I was trying to make is that if they wanted to make it difficult your bank would just say 'ah, we need to put that through our dedicated crypto-trust team. The background checks will be £500. That okay?' Then you'd say 'But it is obvious, it is just from this sale', and they'd smile and say 'yes, but we need to put it through our dedicated crypto-trust team.' No problem with a property sale. Less good for a £1k transaction. Much more complex when it came from a pile of transactions where your diverse group of mates* payed you back after you continuously stumped up for the cab. I'm not saying this is going to happen. I'm saying that you can't just say 'that's not going to happen'. [* including that dodgy mate of Phil's. No-one really knows where he makes his money. Kate says it's drugs, but I just don't know. etc]

Blockchain is, right now, a very workable alternative to many lock-propagate-unlock database problems. There is absolutely a compelling reason to change -- it is much more robust against damage. It is a bit like early networks vs IP -- the automatic rerouting inherent in IP resulted in networks that were vastly more robust. On chain data storage is fundamentally the same price as any journalled database (with the same number of nodes) See, the problem is you're just thinking of 'blockchain is like Ethereum' or 'blockchain needs proof-of-work' or 'blockchain is fundamentally public access'.

I was responding to Errol who first used 'they'. I'd assumed he'd be referring to states that might like to constrain crypto. Legal tender status is not relevant. 'They' could stop you using £s if they wanted to -- just demand that any deposit in a bank worth more than £100 (or whatever) was accompanied by receipts etc showing where it came from. Obviously, they're not going to do that (as it would upset voters), but they really don't care about a relatively small number of bitcoin enthusiasts.

But I agree about Ethereum. It is currently the only useful public blockchain. I intend to use it on a project that I'm putting together. My main problem with it is that even though the data storage costs (write) are meant to be independent of the Eth spot (or, at least, it is supposed to scale linearly, so same effect), the storage costs have been increasing recently. I've found this a bit concerning -- if they can't keep the write costs under control then it will become a bit of a risk for me. If it gets any worse I think someone will release a competing blockchain that can stay sensible, as there is clearly a demand for it.

No. You're missing the potential of blockchain. You're stuck with thinking of it like a public transaction record keeping system. For the ticketing application -- BA went down earlier this year because their database wasn't sufficiently robust. A blockchain approach would pretty much resolve this potential problem. This is of massive benefit to the airlines. All that mucking about with helping insurance companies is just fluff.

Stand back from this for a moment. Are you trying to state every reason for the reduction in value whilst keeping your core belief intact? Or is your core belief what was wrong?

People have been saying for the last month that Bitcoin has been pumped up specifically for people to make money shorting futures while they dump. They've also been saying that it has been setting up for at least 6 months. If the regulated futures were a catalyst, it was for the massive rise in prices since early Summer -- any crash is just a side-effect.

If they actually wanted to stop it they'd just shove a layer of money-laundering requirements on top. Say, you'd have to submit records to the bank dealing with the £ side of the transaction detailing where all the elements had come from, perhaps going back in the chain to show that there'd never been any 'where's that come from' money. That would remove all the high street banks from taking money from the exchanges, and you'd be left with a handful of specialist banks with suitably specialist fees. Result -- they effectively eliminate crypto without actually 'banning it'.

Blockchain is just a robust distributed database (with journal). I'd imagine that for most applications all the crunching would be done on company owned (but distributed) servers. I'm thinking things like share records, flight ticketing, that sort of thing. Note -- you (the user) won't touch (or be able to see) the blockchain. It is all for the company providing the service. For smaller players, there will be a role of blockchain in providing public accessible data services but where there also a requirement for the data to be certain to live beyond the entity creating the data (eg, document signing). For this purpose you've got things like Ether. However, for this purpose you don't actually need the currency part -- a data storage fee would do. For some smaller players it might even be sensible to actually outsource your database to an independent blockchain -- it isn't a particularly cheap way to store data, but, then, it isn't particularly cheap to run your own (robust) databases. And, right at the end of the chain, a niche of a niche, is the 'blockchain to record peer to peer transactions'. Sure, you might need it to have the form of 'currency' -- but even then I'm not convinced about its necessity.

You're both linking blockchain to crypto too strongly. Blockchain is a revolutionary technology. It'll be everywhere soon. Cryptocurrency? An interestinging/academic application of blockchain.

I'd absolutely agree with that. I'd say the prob. of gold2 is quite low, though.

I see actual blockchain transactions down a bit -- If there's panic selling it's all off-chain. Anyway, transactions fees appear stable at about $130 per. I'd say all the action will be at the exchange level; they'll also be making income from the spread.

The crash is certainly going too fast to be sustainable. [unless we lose an exchange -- then all bets are off]

Sounds likely to me. Frankly I thought this whole thing was just so they could get the residual Christmas trade (this weekend is likely to be busy) and then stiff up their landlords (and the pension fund) come Feb.

Right -- so the antiquated slowness of the financial system is a positive feature... Anyway, if the BoE did their job properly there'd never actually be a run on any bank. And the important bit in that? That the BoE was looking into creating its own digital currency. That is where the future lies (or, at least, that is the future they'll force us to go in).

The site is down, but I guess it is to do with where the fees go. But if the exchanges are bidding up the fees then that supposes they're acting in cahoots with the miners. Maybe they are.

I think you might be right. Also, it is possible that the current high fees are occurring because most people (well, late entry inexperienced people) are just accepting the software/exchange's recommended/default/advised fee, and they're setting it high (don't know why they'd do this, though). Difficult to know for sure, though, so we'll wait on the result.

How can you say this nonsense. You'll next be advising that Japan would be a cheap place to visit because you can get a Yen for a penny, unlike those nasty Dollars that nearly cost a whole Pound. All that matters is the market cap and the potential for advancement. Sure, Ripple is lower than Bitcoin, but it is still at 1/5th the cap of Bitcoin, so if it took over the mantle the potential gains are IRO 500%; it wouldn't go to $10k (for the same cap). I could agree that there might be a future in Ripple*, but the cost per coin isn't what makes it a better investment compared with other alts. [* there won't be]

There is no current fundamental value transfer. The steps are: 1. Hardly anyone has heard of it, let alone think it might be worth something in the future. 2. Some people think it might be worth something in the future 3. Quite a few people think it might be worth something in the future 4. Many people think it might be worth something in the future 5. Everyone things it is worth something right now. But it isn't really used for transactions 6. Everyone thinks it is worth something right now and it is used for many transactions. I'd say we're at level 2 at the moment. I'm not sure we'll get to 3.