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> Zcash is a technology, and like any technology it has multiple uses. I suspect that many of the best applications of this technology haven't been conceived of

• olegkikin 10y ago
  I love paying with bitcoin, even when other methods are available. It's just so easy, and just knowing no stupid bank can stop the payment or freeze your balance feels like freedom. If you see "nothing but scams", it only tells me you live in a strange bubble. There are tons of legitimate businesses that use bitcoin daily. There are some that use litecoin, and even dogecoin.
  • dangerlibrary 10y ago
    As a consumer spending money from a checking account or credit card, the only reasons a bank would stop a payment or freeze a balance are because they suspect fraud or illegal activity. In the first case, it's a service they are providing you - peace of mind as a result of extensive fraud protection measures. In the second case - then mostly_harmless is correct. If the only benefit of bitcoin is "no fraud protection and the freedom to use for illegal transactions" how is mostly_harmless wrong?
    • aianus 10y ago
      > peace of mind as a result of extensive fraud protection measures I don't want "peace of mind". I (a Canadian) want to be able to buy something online from a US supplier and have it shipped to me in Thailand. This is just not possible with any kind of chargeback-enabling payment method. Just because you haven't been in a situation where the "fraud protection" is impacting your life (or your sales) doesn't mean those situations don't come up for others.
      • apetresc 10y ago
        Sure, but it also doesn't mean we're under any pressure to revolutionise a centuries-old system just to enable those others' extremely niche use case.
        • ConSeannery 10y ago
          This is not "niche." Every person living outside of the states has this problem. Next time you need something even remotely specific or customized, head on over to amazon.ca and see if you can find the item you're looking for. Then when you can't, think of other countries that aren't directly beside the most consumer friendly country on earth.
          • wott 10y ago
            > Every person living outside of the states has this problem. WTF are you saying?
            • nomat 10y ago
              Cross border electronic payments are a pain because many US companies won't ship internationally because merchants are the ones that are liable in cases of fraud.
        • lambda 10y ago
          For a very large number of people, these aren't "extremely niche use cases." Something more comparable to Bitcoin than regular banking would be Western Union; they make 5 billion dollars a year in revenue transferring money. And they charge vastly higher rates than the Bitcoin network does, charging in the 5-10% range for for transactions, which is a pretty hefty overhead.
          • FireBeyond 10y ago
            Not the same since it's on the mining, not the transactions, but here we have the founders taking 20% of the value of the network for the first four years. That's a decent overhead, too.
    • nutschig 10y ago
      No conviction needed in civil forfeiture.
    • komali2 10y ago
      My bank prevented me from making a purchase at Ikea last weekend because it incorrectly identified the purchase as "fraud." Since it was Saturday I couldn't resolve that day and had to return on Monday to complete the purchase... which meant tremendous inconvenience as I still haven't had time to assemble all that stuff. Even if a bank has the right intention, poor implementation can be a huge headache.
      • katbyte 10y ago
        switch banks? When my bank does that, they have a number i can call 24 hours a day. I also believe the last time it happened they called me.
        • komali2 10y ago
          I should, yes. I need to find a good credit union out here in SF, I just came here from Texas.
      • untog 10y ago
        Strange - my bank immediately calls me in such situations and asks me if the transaction was correct, immediately restoring the card if so. They've even started e-mailing recently.
        • komali2 10y ago
          It's a Texas-based tiny credit union. I really should switch but I'm still settling in to my new job out here in SF. I agree - it should work like that.
    • AgentME 10y ago
      I've had a number of transactions blocked because my bank must've suspected fraud. I can count on zero hands the number of times it wasn't actually a transaction I wanted to go through. It's pretty awkward when I'm in the checkout line trying to pay for something or if it means some order gets delayed. I'm really thankful I have multiple credit cards which don't seem to all use the same fraud protection algorithms so I usually can just cycle to the next card, but it makes me a little uncomfortable that my solution is essentially just trusting the next service doesn't fuck up. >In the first case, it's a service they are providing you I like knowing that I have some money that I control myself, not through some service I have to worry about locking me out at inopportune times, though I admit it's mostly an ideological position than an economic one.
      • waterphone 10y ago
        Same. Every single time my bank has killed my card for "suspected fraudulent use", it's been legitimate. The one time I was actually hit by a fraudulent use, they didn't even notice and I had to catch it myself and notify them. Even normal things like buying gas often get my card shut down and I have to call them and go through a long verification process to get access to my money again.
        • UweSchmidt 10y ago
          Strange - no one in the game has any interest in you not conducting your business. Note that in cryptocurrency, there is no bank to call when your crypto "coins" are gone. Then it's gone harder than anything else that ever went, ever: - you can't explain to your family or friends what happened - law enforcement will hardly consider it a crime and in any case can't do anything about it - the community will berate you for not watching out better for yourself and somehow call your loss "a good thing" - if it's anything like Ethereum's DAO hack the fraud will not even be considered any wrongdoing at all - everyone in the game has already made their money by pre-mining or getting in early and nobody has your interest in mind
          • jjnoakes 10y ago
    • corv 10y ago
      There are a lot of reasons a consumer wouldn't get a bank account in the first place.
      • drivingmenuts 10y ago
        Aside from not having enough money to start one (which blocks out a whole lot of other opportunities), I'm having trouble coming up with any.
        • oldmanjay 10y ago
          A person I met a few years ago told me rather proudly that he refuses to use banks because the courts can use the money in his account to pay his child support when he doesn't want to.
          • nickpsecurity 10y ago
            This is probably a huge market given the number of those people I have run into in small towns. Another is tax BS with the IRS where they try to garnish but person can't afford a lawyer to show it's bogus. They seem to have trouble doing it with things other than regular, bank accounts. People getting payed on cards often have no trouble.
        • MichaelGG 10y ago
          Privacy. No need for any transaction details to be given to my bank. Just use BTC to buy cash, exchange for prepaid cards, for instance. (Or direct BTC->cards.) Since it's hard to use BTC anonymously, Z Cash allows nice insertions of hard privacy points.
    • jldugger 10y ago
      Fraud protection doesn't necessarily protect you -- there was a campaign to fund the open source drivers Nouveau and in the developer's bank account balance was frozen because there was a large volume of international deposits. It's difficult to see how this protects the consumer from fraud, but fairly easy to see how it protects the bank.
    • jdright 10y ago
      Or because they were imposed to.. like, Visa/MasterCard/PayPal to Wikileaks. Cryptocurrency is the way to avoid this kind of power and censorship.
    • int_19h 10y ago
      Freedom to use for illegal transactions can be a pretty big deal, when you consider the kinds of transactions that some countries consider illegal.
    • scurvy 10y ago
      I fail to see how a bank is providing a service to me, when they're the ones liable for fraudulent charges (credit card). Fraud systems are there for the bank, not for you. Don't ever think otherwise.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • Funnnny 10y ago
    Most if not all successful cryptocurrencies, like BitCoin, are only premied a genesis block, a few block for confirmation and then maybe a few days of beta release. 10% is hilariously greed and maybe fit "nothing but scams"
    • empath75 10y ago
      Oh come on, the early bitcoin adopters got WAY more than 10%. The first bitcoin transaction was 10,000 BTC for a pizza. That should tell you how easy it was to mine bitcoin when it first came out.
      • wmf 10y ago
        That's the point. The people complaining about "premining" want to be early adopters and take that 10% for themselves (even though it probably doesn't work any more due to the maturity of the cryptocurrency ecosystem). As if reading forums obsessively and firing up your GPU at the right time is more deserving than writing the code in the first place.
      • Retr0spectrum 10y ago
        I agree. Even if you don't pre-mine, the random early adopters will be getting an "unfair" share. I'd rather it went to the founders than random users.
        • CyberDildonics 10y ago
          > random early adopters will be getting an "unfair" share The 'random' early adopters of bitcoin were experienced cryptographers whos investment in bitcoin helped it grow.
          • JBReefer 10y ago
            Eh, more cypherphreaks and cypherpunks. Not academics, and definitely not the sort of people at banks who'd call themselves "experienced cryptographers."
• jandrese 10y ago
  10% right to the founders is a hilarious level of greed. If this were real money they would be worth about 16.5 trillion dollars[1]. [1] http://gizmodo.com/5995301/how-much-money-is-there-on-earth http://gizmodo.com/5995301/how-much-money-is-there-on-earth
  • hood_syntax 10y ago
    Embarrassing that they can announce that without a hint of shame. Despite that, I'm betting they'll still find people looking to get in on the pump and dump
  • empath75 10y ago
    Why does everyone assume the end state of a successful cryptocurrency is replacing all other currency? This won't even replace bitcoin, let alone the dollar.
    • jandrese 10y ago
      Well obviously not if the founders are taking a 10% cut right off the top.
    • JBReefer 10y ago
      Because the second most important thing that to a currency is network effects. If it doesn't 100% replace my credit card, I still need a credit card, which so far works MUCH better for me than Bitcoin.
• komali2 10y ago
  I was about to argue that I found cryptocurrency tremendously useful when I wanted to shift a largish volume of money from HK to the USA without messing around with banks and immigration, and then I realized that probably fell a bit under "illegal activities." Heh, you may be right.
  • dfrey 10y ago
    This is how you get put on lists.
    • deleted 10y ago
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• eloff 10y ago
  A lot of the replies here demonstrate a significant amount of ignorance about just how hard it is to pay for things outside of the US. It's not too bad in Canada and Europe, but once you have an address and credit card in a small developing nation, you have substantially limited payment options. With my Panama credit card (which is a premium card) I can't buy from most places outside of Amazon.com. PayPal fortunately accepts my card, so I shop anywhere PayPal is accepted online.
  • nicolas_t 10y ago
    Panama is a bit of a special case as it's considered to be a fiscal paradise by most countries. I have a card from Malaysia (which is a developing nation albeit relatively rich compared to its neighbours) and I can use it pretty much anywhere. The only issue I really sometimes have is that my bank will sometimes block transactions which they find suspicious and call me to confirm that it was me who did the transaction. That card does support 3d secure though so usually if the merchant supports 3d secure then the card works perfectly and has no issues.
    • eloff 10y ago
      I think it has less to do with fiscal paradise, since that's probably not overly correlated with fraud, but rather the fact that it's a country of 3.5 million people. That means there's little to no incentive to support transactions from Panama - so it tends to be blocked by default along with most other countries you're not likely to get sales from.
  • int_19h 10y ago
    Interesting. I usually found the reverse to be true - i.e. my Russian credit cards worked just fine in New Zealand, Canada and US, but my Canadian and US cards are usually rejected by Russian online stores.
    • eloff 10y ago
      In person the card works just fine, but online retailers won't accept it.
• deleted 10y ago
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• uxcn 10y ago
  People and businesses in countries like Venezuela, where the native currency is volatile and under strict government control, use cryptocurrencies. They're more stable (not as stable as USD/EUR though) and easier to transact (particularly cross-currency).
• Kubuxu 10y ago
  It isn't premine, they get 10% of mined Zcash over first 4 years. Unless something changed.
• deleted 10y ago
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• JBReefer 10y ago
  I just don't understand why people can't be honest and say "this is great for mail order drugs, guns and kiddie porn, which I enjoy." I really do hate cryptocurremcies because of their ludicrous waste of fossil fuels, and because so many arguments smell of the above.
  • aianus 10y ago
    > I really do hate cryptocurremcies because of their ludicrous waste of fossil fuels It'll never be economical to mine cryptos with fossil fuels in the long term. Commercial mining will end up concentrated in Iceland etc. where the electricity is both cheap and difficult to export. Short term, yes, unfortunately they're using fossil fuels but only because of Chinese capital controls that effectively subsidize Chinese miners.
    • rspeer 10y ago
      That's your long-term vision for how cryptocurrency goes clean? How would you say Iceland's last foray into finance went? Not sure what you mean by the "etc." in "Iceland etc." -- I don't know of a country besides Iceland that has more power than they can use.