Nom Nom Nom
Do you think it's weird? This whole drama of Tesla accepting Bitcoin as payment for a car? You should, it's weird. Also now Amazon is hiring "blockchain experts" and there's a lot of speculation there as well. Big Tech is slowly capitulating and jumping into crypto, because that's where the new money is.
But make no mistake.
Tesla and Amazon don't care about accepting crypto in exchange for their products. No. That is just a marketing ploy; a loss leader that's going to end up paying for itself another way: DATA!
The regulators want to KYC your wallets, and they are going to use Big Tech to do it. Oh look, you just bought socks on Amazon for $10 from a wallet that had $100k in it? Oops, the IRS would like to speak with you now.
It should come as no surprise that Big Tech wants data because that's how they've been making all their money this entire time. The more crypto goes mainstream the more data there will be for them to collect and analyze.
What should we do?
Don't give them the satisfaction. Don't attach the correct identities to crypto wallets. If anything, connect the wrong identities to your crypto wallets when given the opportunity.
Actually, don't do that.
In the game of poker it is almost always correct to never show your hand at the end of the round if you don't have to. If everyone folded and you win, you should muck your hand and never give away that information to your opponents for free.
The same is true when talking to police or any government agency like the IRS. You should NEVER talk to them. You should never give them any information ever, because the chance that you beat them at their own game is low, while providing zero information and stonewalling is almost always the correct play, even if you haven't done anything wrong. Providing information to these jackals can only hurt you or be a neutral wash, it can never be helpful.
What you say can and will be used against you, but it can never be used to help you. Lawyers get to pick and choose what is true and what is not while constructing their narrative. The system is broken, if we haven't figured that out yet.
The same is true with Big Tech.
Imagine buying various things on Amazon with a crypto wallet for friends and family. You haven't KYCed yourself, you are fooling their algorithms! All of a sudden Big Tech scrapes social media and realizes that ABC wallet has paid for things for XYZ people, and all those people connect to you. Oops! Now everything you've ever done on that wallet is connected to your real-world identity.
The same thing happens in poker. Players constantly showboat when they win, giving away free information to everyone at the table. The same thing happens in interrogations. 99% of the real-crime documentaries I've watched involve someone incriminating themselves for no reason during questioning. Not talking is a draw, and tie goes to the defender. "Innocent until proven guilty," as the saying goes.
So Big Tech wants your data...
Don't give it to them. Simple as that. There is no reason to buy things with crypto when it's just as easy (or easier) to cash out money directly to your bank account and do it the "old fashioned way". Seriously, who's going to buy a Tesla with Bitcoin? The only reason to do it is the novelty of it.
They are still going to mercilessly KYC you, and now everyone knows you have so much crypto that you straight up bought a Tesla with a small fraction of what you own. This automatically makes Bitcoin users a target for the IRS, advertisers, and whoever else Big Tech sells the data to. Avoid being their product at all costs. WEB2 needs to be punished for their ridiculousness.
But when do I get to buy stuff with crypto?
When the vendors stop demanding a name and address. This is the whole point of Web3, as censorship resistance and privacy are now a top priority. No reason to jump the gun and give the competition and leg to stand on as we forge a cooperative economy.
On WEB3, your wallet address is your identity.
Simple as that, which is why DPOS networks like Hive and EOS that have usernames built into the wallet are grossly understated at the moment. We have the backend ready, but the frontend developments just haven't caught up yet. We have to wait for infrastructure to materialize before we become more relevant.
Market Watch:
Now that we've escaped that declining wedge we are back to unit-bias trading. Every $5k block is highly significant. Now that we've reached these higher levels traders seem to love trading within these blocks. Selling at the top of a block will be a net win over time, while buying the bottom of one seems to work as well. These $5k sections have been marking support and resistance for a while now.
It's hard to believe we can break $35k on such piss-poor volume, but hey you never know what's gonna happen after such a definitive supply shock, fully rock-bottoming at $29k. If we do break $35k soon I think it's all but guaranteed that we test the next level at $40k, and volume should pick up quite a bit as the FUD flips FOMO.
Binance Gift Cards?
So I read that Binance is offering "gift cards" today. Unfortunately, this is another marketing ploy, as real gift cards would increase regulatory scrutiny exponentially. All you can do with these "gift cards" is send crypto to another Binance account, so it's a glorified frontend for sending crypto to other users already within the network.
If Binance was somehow able to sell actual gift cards this would change the entire game and open a Pandora's Box of money laundering and tax evasion. Imagine being able to drop thousands of dollars on gift cards with zero KYC using random crypto monies. Yeah, that's obviously not going to fly anytime soon.
American Regulators aren't going to allow vendors to sell gift cards to Binance. Things should get interesting for the economically neutral countries who are willing to allow this. That's just free money sitting on the table waiting to be scooped up by some Podunk nation looking for income.
Conclusion
The price of Bitcoin does not reflect the fundamentals we find ourselves surrounded by. Big Tech is dipping those toes. Soon trillions of dollars around the world are going to have a financial incentive to support crypto in a big way.
We haven't even come close to the mega-bubble we've been expecting in 2021, which makes sense because the timelines call for Q4 at the earliest. The market tried to price it in early, just like it always does, and now here we are, in a weird middle ground of uncertainty, where fundamentals do not line up with speculation (as is often the case).
There are a lot of gimmicks to look out for. Telsa accepting Bitcoin is not a big deal. Amazon accepting Bitcoin is a Trojan Horse looking to monetize the data. Paypal and Venmo incorporating crypto is huge, because it legitimizes it for a gigantic target audience and you can actually buy the assets from them, unlike traditional vendors.
At the end of it all we have to look at each corporation individually and ask ourselves why they are entering. Are they afraid of being left behind? Are they going to monetize the data and sell it to the highest bidder? Is it purely a money making strategy? Is it a novelty marketing ploy? Is it a hedge against the legacy economy? Maybe it's a bit of everything. Who knows.
The point is we shouldn't be so quick to cheer just because number go up. A bunch of bad actors buying in isn't bullish: it's a money attack, and we need to learn the difference, and fast. Bad actors need to be punished for their "crimes", if possible. Don't give free data to companies that monetize it without getting something in return. The attention economy demands payment to the users, not just free service.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I really appreciate your perspective on things. I really want to see a mass adoption of crypto, and it seems like the big companies have the power to drive that. But as you said, I don't like what that means for privacy. Not one bit.
I think we loose everything without privacy. But I do see the counter point here about mass adoption via big companies getting in.
I am very angry but can't do shit about these big against gains in business that are playing with crypto I am angry with tesla the most and now Amazon might do the same I am sure of it
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I think so as well. It’s great people are getting introduced but it’s all centralized companies people (casual newbies) are leaving there funds on.
On a more speculation mention
Think there might be a day we dump 2 million dollar bitcoin for a privacy chain? Monero or something like it? If bitcoin becomes what we fear or user base stays on mostly big companies.
I hope Bitcoin doesn't become what we fear it to be
Gracias por la información lo tendré en cuenta, bastante interesante, saludos.
yeah info is very helpful in seeing what is going on
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Yea that's what bugs me about all the people buying those Alexa things from Amazon. I know a friend who has 5 in her house.
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Ah yes I have one of those friends as well.
You can't even turn on a light without asking permission.
Makes a whole lot of sense.
they will of course
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Thats pretty scary but till the time you are not avoiding anything in taxes, I dont see any need to worry about IRS. However, the data by these bigtechs can also be used in many other ways and what would that be is of real interest
Bitcoin isn’t really private though. All you need is someone’s wallet address and you know how much they have. I do agree with it being a way of tracking things so the have a better idea of where to look. Thanks for your thoughts.
What do you mean by "someone's"? Perhaps you are referring to the surveillance police state we live in and associated KYC. Bitcoin is 100% private. It's the unrelenting/illegal control grid that is the problem.
Also, if you have a hardware wallet, you know this isn't true. Hardware wallets like Trezor will only use a wallet once. Every "account" has infinite wallets for input/output. It's not nearly as easy to track an "account" as it is to track a single wallet. Not only do hardware wallets have infinite wallets per account, they have infinite accounts per Trezor.
Also, if you start funneling the money through centralized exchanges the only way to track those transactions is with permission from the exchange. Even then, a single transaction on Monero or another privacy coin breaks the link and stops the tracking.
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I agree with what your saying, but this is more about your personal practices. Bitcoin in itself is not anonymous is what I am saying. I also agree with what your saying about moving things through privacy coins, unfortunately many people do not know how to work with these exchanges or how to buy some of these privacy coins.
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Really loved your point of view, thanks for the great content
My issue as a vendor that accepts crypto for physical items, you kind of have to at least have a shipping address, don’t really care about your name, but we have to get the item to you somehow. But I do get your point.
This is important information to ponder so we can always be vigilant. !BEER
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BEERKING.Very interesting perspective. Of course it can never be completely anonymous as mentioned by @thelogicaldude. How would a vendor deliver your purchases to you without an address? So I guess there needs to be some sort of co-operative relationship between vendors and buyers whereby there is a contractual agreement not to link address and wallet together in any vendor databases/systems and/or to delete such temporary links, if necessary, within a certain period of time eg: by the expiry of any statutory returns date. Thereafter, the only party who may legally retain the linking data is the buyer. The buyer and his/her wallet would still remain anonymous on the blockchain.
Use coin mixing services. Use privacy coins. Use burner wallets. Take precautions and assume someone is either out to steal your keys or plans to rat you out.
I never thought about it that way but yes they are collecting data on our wallet addresses. Most exchanges right now (the one where you can convert to and from fiat) tends to be centralized though so that needs to change before we can move to Web 3.0
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so we need decentralised privacy stores
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Exactly! What I fear is when big tech and the government release their own crypto asset that they will use it to gather information on you once you do use it. Your wallet addresses and how they are all connected and start tracking and building a profile around you for crypto assets. Same thing goes for tech. Big tech makes billions if not trillions for knowing information about you and selling it to others it's legit disgusting what they do.
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We still need these huge brands in the space to help with adoption. Bitcoin's popularity and acceptance can easily be accelerated by these brands. I know how the value of the coins on my wallet application from https://atomicwallet.io/, can easily shoot up with such news.
Its a chess game.. We need to be 3 moves ahead of them
You got some good points. Thanks for the post.