Bitcoin and Crypto Thread

[Australia Sucks]

This is cope. Because Bitcoin is a public ledger, all transactions can be easily traced, and wallets can be blacklisted. Any Bitcoin held on exchanges can be seized/frozen. At best, you might be able to protect Bitcoin held in cold storage from confiscation. But you couldn't transact with it or convert it to fiat. And then there's always the old-fashioned wrench attack.

Firstly all serious bitcoiners self custody there bitcoin they never leave it on exchanges except for small amounts they may want to transact soon. And yes you can transact with bitcoin in a cold wallet even if the wallet address is blacklisted because there are enough bitcoin miners who don’t care about OFAC or whatever else and will process the transaction it might just take longer. How do you think people in Venezuela or Iran or Edward Snowden Snowden type of people transact. As for wrench attacks almost every asset is vulnerable to that in some form or another. It’s not unique to Bitcoin.

"Not true, gold was the first money and both a currency and store of value," may I remind you there were very good, practical reasons we switched over to paper "backed" by gold and then fractionalized.

That is because gold is difficult to transport over long distances hence the need for paper gold/fiat. If gold was easy to transport there would have been no reason for fiat to exist. Bitcoin generally takes at most an hour (for 6 block confirmations) to send anywhere across the world an a minimum of ten minutes (1 block confirmation).

And if it’s necessary to make transactions faster for micro transactions you can use something like lightning no need for fiat.

USD stablecoins serve this purpose much better than Bitcoin does, which is why there is huge demand for them. Look at the failed Bitcoin experiment in El Salvador to see how much demand for Bitcoin actually exists among normal people (almost none).

Yes because in El Salvador most people are too poor to have long term savings.
They only have short term savings for which US dollar stablecoins do the job quite well. Inflation is not too much of a problem if you are going to spend those stablecoins in the next 6 months so why deal with the risk/volatility of bitcoin or gold, etc?

If the country was richer and people had more long term savings Bitcoin adoption would be higher.

 

[chance vought]

As for adoption, let’s be real. 95% of people will never have their own bitcoin. Maybe 99%. 50% of the population is dumber than average. That’s fine. Most people don’t know how money works, but they still use it. With products like STRC, bitcoin will, over time, morph the financial infrastructure from debt based to capital based.

 

[Australia Sucks]

Here is the AI answer regarding transacting blacklisted bitcoin:

Yes, blacklisted Bitcoin can still be transacted on the Bitcoin network itself, as the network is decentralized and cannot inherently block transactions
. However"blacklisting" usually means centralized entities (exchanges, payment processors) refuse to process those coins, making them difficult to convert to fiat currency.
Here is a detailed breakdown of how this works:

1. The Decentralized Network (On-Chain)

• Irreversibility: Once a Bitcoin transaction is confirmed in a block, it cannot be reversed or stopped by any central authority, even if it is flagged as "dirty" or "blacklisted".
• No Central Ban: No single entity can ban a specific address from sending or receiving Bitcoin. Miners generally do not censor transactions, meaning "tainted" coins can still move from wallet to wallet.
• "Taint" Removal: While blockchain analysis can track coins, users can sometimes bypass this by moving funds through private, non-custodial wallets or using mixers (though this raises other red flags).

2. Centralized Intermediaries (Off-Ramp Problems)
The "blacklist" is effective primarily at centralized off-ramps like Coinbase, Binance, or Kraken.

• Exchange Freezes: If you send blacklisted BTC to a regulated exchange, they will likely freeze the funds and, in some cases, require you to verify your identity and explain the source of the funds.
• KYC/AML Risks: Once coins are identified as "tainted" (e.g., from a known theft or darknet market), they can be blacklisted by compliance systems, making them "unspendable" in the legitimate economy.
• Sanctions: Addresses sanctioned by bodies like the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) are immediately restricted by reputable exchanges.

3. Key Distinctions

• Bitcoin vs. Stablecoins: A Bitcoin address cannot be "frozen" by a central authority, but a centralized stablecoin (like USDT) can be frozen by its issuer, rendering that specific asset untransferable.
• Taint Spreading: While "dirty" coins can be used, they often taint any wallet they enter, meaning the entire balance of a wallet can become suspect.
• P2P Transactions: Blacklisted Bitcoin can still be used in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) transactions, as these often bypass the strict chain-analysis checks of centralized exchanges.
  Reddit +4

In summary, blacklisted Bitcoin remains technically functional on the blockchain, but becomes economically isolated from the mainstream, regulated financial system.