If banks and exchanges can hold our money against our will, crypto is essentially pointless.
Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin explicitly to return financial autonomy to the holder of value, from the hands of middlemen, governments, and banks.
Now, the masses of those flocking to invest in crypto seem to be fine with middlemen, governments, and banks. Look, I get it. Not everyone is into cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology for the purposes of becoming more free and independent of interfering third parties. Some just want to invest.
I have to say, though, that the need for truly decentralized exchanges and active, private trading markets seems to be greater than ever.
Check out this nice little message I received from bitFlyer this morning:
When do they give me this message? After I've already deposited significant funds, which I need to pay my bills. Now they are holding my money indefinitely. This is the exact opposite of what Bitcoin and crypto is all about. I would have done better here, in this case, not to have used it at all, it would seem.
Who's behind it all? The Japananese Financial Services Agency, of course. All these businesses like bitFlyer, Kraken, etc, WANT TO PROVIDE a service to their customers! They want to. They want to succeed and make money. I WANT TO USE their service! Seems like a match made in heaven, right? Well, it is, until these goddamn leech parasitic governments interefere, regulating, taxing, and fining everything into an entirely impractical oblivion. Kraken has suspended service to Japanese residents due to the regs, and now bitFlyer has thousands of dollars of my funds that my family needs. Fuck you, FSA. Make your own goddamned money, you worthless gnats.
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as DLive and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)
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Are you able to mine? ROI isn't super fast, but it gets you a lot more control.
I'm currently debating whether to mine solo or with a pool.
I've heard coinbase has been doing the same thing here. Not sure if it's true though, as I've not used them recently. It's not surprising. They're very cooperative with government. Going so far as to report transactions totalling over $20k to the IRS for theft purposes.
I don’t have a machine for mining, no. Just my laptop.
Yes, Coinbase is awful as far as privacy and financial autonomy are concerned.
BitFlyer is the comparable Japanese exchange, so none of this is too surprising. Just highly frustrating and I want some free market solutions. Currently brainstorming some of my own.
Wish I could upvote that last sentence for $500.
Check into PC mining electroneum on your laptop. I can't on my windows 7 pc because the hardware is too old. Working on getting win10 for another rig, and I have a loaner rig from @ogbrog that's mining ETH right now.
Brainstorm all the things fam!!! A secure node on ZENcash is pretty inexpensive right now. Might be worth some investigation. And there's always hash renting for Bitcoin and BCH, though they don't serve decentralization much.
I was going through pretty much the same thing with Bittrex. I hadn't used it for a while and when I came back they said I needed to verify my identity. Told me my withdraw limit was 0.
I was looking into WAVES. I haven't read up on it enough yet, but it's DEX looks good and the team seems pretty active.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll look into it.
Relevant content. I hear you loud and clear Graham now that I am on the same boat and have a sizeable chunk of my savings parked indefinitely in crypto. And I have seen crypto access has gotten from bad to worse in India and Canada with all big banks and credit cards avoiding any and every crypto transactions. That's another reason why buying the dip is becoming increasingly difficult.
Have you used any decentralized exchange yet? What is your opinion of the same?
Thank you, @amit86. I haven’t really gotten involved deeply in any DEXs yet. I am looking around though.
Man that really sucks. I hope they give you your money back.. I'm so sick of governments I could scream. (for about a decade now)
As livid as I am, I can't say I'm surprised. With aims of a cashless society by 2020 in Australia, all currency will come completely under the control of banks/government and they won't have it any other way. Crypto works exactly the same as fiat in that it isn't tangible. All the easier to bring under control via exchanges.
Hope you can get your bills sorted soon.
Thanks. Yep. I am not surprised, either. Many seem to think that this "crypto revolution" is still going to transpire via these major banks, governments, and exchanges who stand to lose everything should such a revolution occur. What is needed is markets that move and act fast, and utilize the currencies freely, regardless of, and ahead of, the regulation. Then for the regulators it will be a choice of shifting with the paradigm or withering. Or exercising brute, violent force, which we all know is not beyond them. There is always a risk to living freely when tyrants are in power.
Crypto is not at all like fiat. For the people that know the technology its permissionless and cannot be frozen. The problem is that 99% of the users are not geeks and cannot be their own bank. So they use exchanges and then government regains (some) control. What we need is better wallets, better user-interfaces, decentralised and open banking accounts that provide some user protection.
I was meaning more along the lines of it being intangible and conceptual.
Even if we were all geeks the government could still exact control via banning businesses from using it or making it too problematic for them to want to use. Just like anyone employed had no choice about paying tax because the business is removes it from their wages for them.
I do hope that they release your funds soon. Government bodies do this to get their cut of other people's money which they clearly don't deserve, Fortunately their days are numbered :)
I agree. Holding cryptoassets with private keys is important.
"Your keys, your coins. Not your keys, not your coins."
Sadly this is still a reality and massively limits adoption by the masses
I agree with you that encryption is important
Really great article