Cryptocurrency Traders in South Korea Face Fines For Virtual Accounts (yonhapnews.co.kr) 74
An anonymous reader shares a report: Cryptocurrency investors in South Korea will be fined for refusing to convert their virtual accounts into real-name ones, financial authorities said Sunday. The move comes as South Korea is scrambling to rein in the virtual currency frenzy in Asia's fourth-largest economy, including preparations for a bill to ban cryptocurrency exchanges at home. According to the authorities, cryptocurrency traders will be allowed to convert their virtual accounts into real-name ones within this month, but those who refuse to accede to real-name identification will face fines.
Wrong move South Korea (Score:2)
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I'm beginning to wonder if the Slashdot editors may be shorting BTC or otherwise hold a strong anti-Cryptocurrency/pro-Banking/pro-Authoritarian agenda or bias. This is the second time in a week that a Slashdot article has copy+pasted the fake news tidbids directly misrepresenting what the South Korean government is saying their actions and positions on virtual currencies are.
I understand when some local media outlets are confused for a bit, but Slashdot is supposed to be News for Nerds --- honestly,
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This article is not about banning crypto, it's about fining traders who don't convert their virtual accounts into real-name accounts. I'm surprised it took the Korean gov't this long, what with their real name requirements for general internet use.
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Bitcoin scam (Score:1)
Bitcoin and all other so-called cryptocurrencies are just a new form of Ponzi Scheme most people cannot understand apparently. Just look at it from investor point of view and see how it is actually same as a Ponzi scheme! If they are not banned globally they would lead world economy into a crash eventually!
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Not ponzi scheme since there is not once person at the top that gets all the money at any point. I don't think bitcoin is wise as investment, though mining I can see the point for the near term. Even so, it's like a futures market more than anything else.
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false, the energy used is utterly negligible. if you paid attention at the article about it I even calculated the percent comparison to U.S. electricity consumption.....the fast answer is that it's essentially zero. Wall warts and power bricks are a bigger concern than bitcoin.
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Is there another BTC fork planned? Will it be approved by everyone, including the Bitcoin Core team? Will the mining farms switch to it, will they have any choice?
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It's winter here. I could produce heat via a heater, or I could keep my feet warm with my graphics card instead. One of these options costs me money, the other earns me more than it costs.
Resemblence to a pyramid scheme (Score:4, Insightful)
Not ponzi scheme since there is not once person at the top that gets all the money at any point.
Pyramid schemes don't have to have a single person at the top. Furthermore there IS a small group at the top, namely the folks who created bitcoin and did the early mining. They absolutely stand to profit massively from additional later people coming into the scheme who are unlikely to seem much if any profit.
Yes bitcoin has a LOT of the features of a pyramid scheme [wikipedia.org] and multi-level marketing [wikipedia.org]. Whether not it is actually a fraudulent activity the resemblance is uncanny.
Clueless (Score:2)
And? you also just described the entire federal banking system as well.
Only to someone who has no idea how the federal banking system actually works.
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At which point WTF is the bitcoin for is we're not actually using the blockchain for the ledger and are instead trusting an exchange to do the job of a bank?
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Yes bitcoin has a LOT of the features of ... multi-level marketing [wikipedia.org].
OK, now you did it! It's one thing to call it a pyramid scheme, and a way for drug users and kiddie pr0n addicts to pay for their habits. But to compare them to Amway? That's just low...
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"Fraudulent" doesn't apply until a fraud is actually committed.
BTC is like Pet Rocks ... except worse.
Re:Bitcoin scam (Score:4, Interesting)
Not ponzi scheme since there is not once person at the top that gets all the money at any point. I don't think bitcoin is wise as investment, though mining I can see the point for the near term. Even so, it's like a futures market more than anything else.
I think cryptocoins are neither currencies nor commodities. To me they look like collectibles with the "scarcity" built into the design . They could be baseball cards, comic books, beanie babies, whatever. One advantage they have though is better liquidity than other collectibles.
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The only collectibles with excellent liquidity are wines.
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One advantage they have though is better liquidity than other collectibles.
Disagree. I never had to pay a 30-60 $ transaction fee to get or dump a Beanie Baby.
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One advantage they have though is better liquidity than other collectibles.
Disagree. I never had to pay a 30-60 $ transaction fee to get or dump a Beanie Baby.
Liquidity is more about a robust buying and selling environment than the transaction cost which eats into the profits
Here's an interesting article on the Beanie Baby bust
http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/... [fortune.com]
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Liquidity also has an element of time.
BTC has a built-in time lag so large, juxtaposed against BTC volatility that value is a fleeting thing.
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That's still better than the old money, where 90% of the wealth is owned by 0.1% of the people. Your numbers prove that crypto-currencies are 400% more fair for everyone!
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Rule of Acquisition #10: Greed is eternal.
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Whether intentional or not, because of its unregulated nature, all crypto currencies are some hybrid of an MLM/Ponzi/Pyramid scam.
The most charitable view of them at this time is an unregulated form of gambling, with near zero risk possibly actually zero risk for the house.
So many salty nerds (Score:2, Informative)
99% of the anti-crypto-currency posts on here are from nerds that missed the boat and are pissed that their friends are paying off houses and driving fancy cars from small investments made just a couple years ago.
Even if you think that BTC/Crypto is a crazy tulip bubble, that doesn't change the fact that a $100 investment in eth a couple years ago would be worth $375k now.
There are still cheap coins with potential, there are still opportunities. Accept that you missed a couple boats, that doesn't mean you
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There are still cheap coins with potential, there are still opportunities. Accept that you missed a couple boats, that doesn't mean you have to sit on your island and scream over the empty water.
Investing in the vast majority of crypto currency now would not be too wise. Bitcoin was the real breadwinner in the group, and whilst other coins have enjoyed appreciation of their value, they were being pulled up by the value of bitcoin. The days of making easy quick money in cryptocurrency is most likely over; they seem to have peaked now. They may go up again in spurts but overall, I think we've hit a plateau. Fantastic for those who invested a year or more ago; less fantastic for those joining in m
Re: So many salty nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing was made.
Some gambled and won, most will lose.
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Some gambled and won, most will lose.
Look at it like an accountant. X dollars have been paid by buyers, and X dollars have been paid to sellers, minus Y dollars paid in fees. Of the X-Y dollars paid to sellers, a significant amount has been paid to criminals who stole various amounts of bitcoin. And another quite signifcant amount has been paid for mining hardware and mining power.
Not sure what role the losers are playing who managed to lose various amounts of bitcoin.
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A fair bit of the pro-pseudo-currency investors are too young or have too short a memory to recall the previous bubbles. How is pets.com stock doing these days?
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2006 housing bubble. same thing. when you see a bubble forming, hop on that shit. then hop off the gravy train when you realize suckers are getting in (mom and pop investors getting into BTC as example)
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It's still not too late to buy a few thousand Digibyte, Reddcoin and Dogecoin.
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The funny thing is they are still missing the boat. The slashdot fogey skepticism is no different in the 10K range now than it was in the 1k range, nor than it will be in the 100K range.
Other than the total collapse of the dollar, i dont know what it will take to wake them up... the geeks of yesteryear became the luddites of the present day.
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The math doesn't work, does it?
First, we have to know the population of /.ers, both registered and Ac.
Then we'd have to know how many of those have friends.
See where this leads?
Ban exchanges at home? (Score:2)
There are other currencies for which BTC can be exchanged*. And an unnamed account hosted on a server 'somewhere' will be pretty difficult to tie back to a South Korean national. So, good luck with this.
*The US dollar comes to mind. Probably the world's most liquid and negotiable currency. So I doubt many South Koreans will have problems loading up dollar denominated prepaid cards from BTC and using them at home. In fact, who do you think whispers in the foreign banking communities ears about how something