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RE: HowTo Buy Crypto – Part 2: Coinbase

in #investing7 years ago

Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying. Yes, I agree that decentralized means independent of governmental involvement in so far as the creation of money goes, much like gold and silver are independent of government "sponsorship", to use another word that helps define what we're talking about. "Money" or "currency" has traditionally been backed by governments, mainly in order to create the faith and trust necessary so that everyone agrees that it has value and to use it. Gold and silver, on the other hand, have never needed any kind of governmental backing in order to be commonly accepted as units of value. Crypto is very much within that second group, in my opinion, independent of any kind of official support to make it viable as a storage of value and means of exchange.

What I thought you were referring to was the "anonymous", governments can’t see what you’re doing, aspect of crypto. ZCASH is probably the most famous in that they claim that their transactions are completely anonymous. DASH and Monero are two others that seek to do the same. There are tons of others starting with PIVX and working your way down the line. It’s everyone’s main selling point: privacy! And that’s where governments and regulators step in to say enough is enough – you can have your privacy, but up to a point, and that point where you have to pay taxes. That’s what I thought you were referring to. As I said, I think the absolute privacy idea is a dead end road, and not a strong long term marketing point at all. Coinbase, at the end of the day, in spite of being privately owned and therefore not decentralized, is only "controlled" by the government to the extent that they have to comply with existing laws – like we all have to do, even decentralized organizations. Any cryptocurrency that is basing their long term strategy on anything but being fully compliant is in for a very bad surprise sooner or later . . . as I see it.