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Does anyone here use Bitcoins?
Renegade:
Brown or otherwise. ;)
-40hz (July 01, 2014, 11:28 AM)
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Speaking of brown, get ready to shit your pants.
http://www.gulf-times.com/eco.-bus.%20news/256/details/398622/kuwait-finance-firm-suggests-trading-oil-in-bitcoins
Kuwait finance firm suggests trading oil in bitcoins
Oil producing countries, particularly in the GCC, could benefit if they would use bitcoin in oil trading, instead of dollars, Markaz’ research department argues.
There have been a number of proposals in the past to trade oil and gas in another currency than the US dollar, for political as well as for monetary reasons. Some OPEC member states not particularly friendly to the US, whenever there was a crisis of some sort, have been making repeated noise about denominating their price for hydrocarbons in another than the US currency, but have never quite managed to agree on an alternative.
The most active countries today that pursue a no-dollars-for-oil policy are Iran, which encourages all trading partners to pay for oil in a currency other than the US dollar, and Russia, whose flagship company Gazprom, the largest extractor of natural gas in the world, recently told oil importers from China and Japan that they should pay their bills not with greenbacks, but preferably with yen, yuan or even ruble.
But a new report (Disruptive Technology: Bitcoins, Currency Reinvented?) recently issued by Kuwait-based investment banking and asset management firm Kuwait Financial Centre, also known as Markaz, even goes a step further: Oil producing countries, particularly in the GCC, could benefit if they would use bitcoin in oil trading, Markaz’ research department argues.
This comes a bit as a surprise, since bitcoin as an unregulated and — as of now — highly volatile cryptocurrency, has no manifestation other than bits and bytes stored somewhere in the virtual space and seems not to be the most reliable means of trade for the world’s most sought-after commodity. The idea is not new, though: There has been an Internet debate about one year ago on what would happen if the Opec would adopt bitcoin as transaction currency. The outcome: Firstly, the US would certainly not sit and watch the dollar losing its petrocurrency status and would do whatever needs to be done to defend the greenback; secondly, China wouldn’t allow it as it wants the yuan to be a petrocurrency as well; thirdly, in the moment oil and gas gets priced in bitcoins, it would be exposed to the cryptocurrency’s extreme volatility with massive consequences and fiscal uncertainties for petroleum-exporting countries. Speculators had a wide and anonymous field to play.
So what did Markaz actually mean? They basically said that using bitcoins would save payment transaction costs for oil exporting countries, because sending and receiving bitcoins of any denomination is just a matter of seconds and costs next to nothing. For the clearance of oil payments through conventional banks, exporting countries currently have to wait one to three days and pay the usual banking fees.
But just for saving some transaction time and costs, would the GCC, where the oil industry currently accounts for 90% of exports and 75% of government revenue, as per Markaz’ own research, really be wise to channel these massive money flows through bitcoin clearing houses, which are, as per their nature, unregulated, work with open source codes and can get — at recent history shows — easily hacked and digitally robbed? This is open for debate.
Before any barrel will ever be paid for in bitcoins, it will be the Chinese yuan that has taken on the role as the dollar’s challenger. China already pays Russia’s and Iran’s oil in yuan and is busy setting up yuan clearing houses in major financial centres all over the world to facilitate the global money flow of its currency. This is, for now, probably a much better solution until the world knows what will rally happen to bitcoin.
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I'll give you some time to go clean out your shorts. ;)
For everyone else who might be bored of scrolling, here's http://www.doodie.com/ :)
Back? ;D
That it has even been mentioned by that kind of organisation is almost unthinkable.
I've joked about that with people, but never seriously thinking that it would ever happen. Hopeful? Yes. Serious? No.
Yeah... I know... it's not going to happen. But... Those people have been thinking about it.
That's a big deal.
It's like Mother Theresa thinking about whether or not she wants to go to an S&M dungeon party and be a slave or dominatrix.
Stoic Joker:
Interesting (Ren vs. 40), I actually fall somewhere between these two schools of thought..
Who else wants popcorn?? :D
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Crap, Ren got ahead of me...I was referring to 40hz's post above.
40hz:
But what happens when governments do a Mt. Gox on the rest of the Bitcoin exchanges? :tellme:
-40hz (July 01, 2014, 06:13 AM)
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That's a very odd thing to say. Are you sure you know what happened at Mt. Gox? It was pretty simple - extremely bad management. It had nothing to do with government.
-Renegade (July 01, 2014, 09:24 AM)
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In the US at least, Bitcoin exchanges are subject to FinCEN regulation.
So they're not the big "revolutionary agorist" monetary system some people like to think they are.
Fail to obey said regulations and follow "suggested" guidelines and you risk having your assets seized.
Even worse, if there's "probable cause" (that magical phrase that makes enforcement action possible in advance of proof of wrongdoing) for a government to think what you're doing is illegal - you're offline. And all that's ultimately required is a signature on an order from a compliant judge to shut you down completely until the matter gets "resolved."
So again, what is stopping any government from doing the same? All you need to do is convince a judge some Bitcoin exchange needs to be seized and it will happen. And with these crazy international trade agreements trumping local law, the alleged crime doesn't even have to be local in the jurisdiction the enforcement occurs in.
No different than Swiss accounts. Their vaunted "secrecy" is crackable with a warrant too. ;)
Mt. Gox, AFAIK was shut down because DHS filed for "probable cause" that Mt. Gox was transferring money illegally.
40hz:
Interesting (Ren vs. 40), I actually fall somewhere between these two schools of thought..
Who else wants popcorn?? :D
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Crap, Ren got ahead of me...I was referring to 40hz's post above.
-Stoic Joker (July 01, 2014, 12:13 PM)
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Yeah? well..the only reason this ping-pong match is going on is because it's been a slow day. And I don't feel like learning anything technical right now. :P
barney:
That's a very odd thing to say. Are you sure you know what happened at Mt. Gox? It was pretty simple - extremely bad management.
-Renegade (July 01, 2014, 09:24 AM)
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Ya might wanna rethink that statement - aren't government and extremely bad management pretty much synonymous :P?
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