Thursday, 28 March, 2024

Thailand: World’s First Bitcoin Ban


Five years ago, I found myself in Buenos Aires, Argentina on a long-awaited vacation to the South American country. The country has a very European flavor with some 97% of its population having Euro roots. Specifically, there is a concentration of Italian and German surnames in that country. It was interesting to me as a native Central American how there were so many famous people from Argentina with Italian names (Manu Ginobili of NBA fame and Gabriela Sabatini from the world of tennis). This Italian heritage definitely comes into play in Argentine politics.

In the beginning it was the crime. People would offer to sell something for free bitcoins and not pay. Or offer to sell bitcoins and never deliver. You get this in almost every online marketplace. It erodes the trust in the system and is common. Most internet savvy folks know just how to prevent the worst of it. Since bitcoins is still confined mostly to techies, it has been even less of a difficulty. Sites instantly sprang up that listed trustworthy sites, buyers and sellers as well as those never to do business with. The machine was self policing in a nutshell order.

A short history lesson: When people first started setting up actual business based on bitcoin, they used all of the tools available to any merchant. They sold by credit card and PayPal. The problem with this business model was quickly spotted: bitcoin superstar erfahrung transactions are not reversible by anyone except the recipient of the money. Credit cards and PayPal have strong buyer protection policies that make it relatively easy for people to request a chargeback. So, nefarious individuals realized this and began making purchases of bitcoin and then sooner or later requesting a chargeback. And, since bitcoin is a non-physical product, sent by new and poorly understood technological means, the sellers were not able to contest this. Because of this, sellers stopped accepting credit cards and PayPal.

12/19: Episode #133. The PokerNews Podcast crew is back in the Western Hemisphere, and they break down all of the latest news. They are then joined by Marvin Rettenmaier, who talks about the rigorous task of competing for the Player of the Year, and Allen Bari, who pretty much rants about everything. [Visit Website] [Download MP3].

Examiner.com caught up with Jered Kenna, CEO of Tradehill, the second largest exchange platform for bitcoins after Mt. Gox, before it had to shut down last year due to a payment dispute with startup Dwolla. Tradehill relaunched successfully in March with a new B2B service, Prime, seed investment, and a new team.

Both charge a fee for the service, but if you’re hungry and don’t want to wait the three to five days for your PayPal money to hit your checking account, they’ll get you your pizza tonight.

The next question that may logically follow is, “do I really need a Valcambi CombiBar Gold payment system; will things ever really get that bad?”. Well, the obvious answer to that is “I sure hope not”.

These projections would seem to indicate that the current policies of the Fed are not helping the economy to recover, and are merely sustaining it artificially. The Keynesian school of economics explains this through the concept of a liquidity trap, while the Austrian school of economics explains this through the concept of malinvestment.