Wow they are all in it overtime to prove my hypothesis here at 43: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_13545.html#1666072
I know when I'm looking for a stable source of value, I go for one run by a guy who changed his name to an Ayn Rand novel best known for providing the plot to a Rush rock opera.
Everything about this, you guys. Amazing.
Is it Amaze-balls? Because then I'd read the link in the OP.
So...they're sort of like commodities indices, but easier to trade, right? That doesn't strike me as a bad thing, if not exactly earth-shattering. Am I not hating hard enough?
Paranoid libertarians love cryptocurrency because that means they don't have to trust each other. They can prove that it exists, for some definition of "exists." But the idea of, "yeah, we'll exchange this thing and trust this company that it really has a bank vault full of gold" doesn't strike me as something that will go over well.
So...they're sort of like commodities indices, but easier to trade, right?
Probably easier in theory, but in practice, far more difficult. One of the many reasons that Bitcoin hasn't taken off is because actually using the thing is a huge pain in the ass.
Do you still have some kind of interest in a gold mine in the Yukon?
Because if there's one currency that's resilient to a DDOS, it's an internet based one. All those suckers with their paper notes!
I like how Bitcoin is going to be the last currency standing in the post-apocolyptic hellscape of the future, because of course there will be electricity and a functioning Internet there.
13: Thank you for the that phrasing.
I've never understood why 12 and 14 aren't completely conclusive of the whole silly fantasy.
I had a discussion at a party over the weekend with a woman who's brother (living in Alaska natch) is stockpiling arms in case the economy blows up. Ok, sure, like the lock on your car door, you're going to be able to protect yourself from lazy people. You can't put out a fire in your attic with that thing, though . . .
|| Pardon me for stepping on this thread, as it's still under 40 comments and scorn of bitcoin rubes is near and dear to my heart.
(This rambles so and is long and shittily written for which I apologize.)
So I'm trying to sell my car. I just met with a potential buyer who seemed really enthused about my car - we'd been texting about it all day - and he wanted to pay cash then and there. Only he bought a friend of his along, some guy who, as he tells it, makes a living buying and selling junk cars. And he sounds like he knows what he's talking about too. And coincidentally, he grew up around the block. It turns out his parents bought the house of a family that was close to mine when I was growing up. Two of them were childhood friends of mine.
So he's checking it out, I'd already priced it pretty low given a number of cosmetic issues but it's got low mileage, like about a third of what would normally be expected for a car of that age. And it's a Civic Si. But a bit beat up. His friend does a bit of the negotiating and seriously lowballs, like below offers I've already gotten. Which is what I tell him. So eventually we come to terms and agree on a price and shake on it. The guy wants to do the deal right there and is counting out money. I'm emptying the glove box and am about to grab the bill of sale and title and get something to scrape off the registration and take the plates off the car. At last, I'm thinking, one of the major tasks hanging over my head before leaving the country is done. And I have several thousand much needed dollars in my pocket to boot.
So I go inside to get a bag to put the stuff in the glove compartment in and I'm walking back outside and the guy, I'm not sure if it was the buyer or his car savvy friend, I think the latter, says that they're going to check out another Honda across town first and then they'll get back to me in about a half hour or forty minutes. Don't worry, the savvy car buyer guy says, I'll get back to you, we're neighbors. And I'm like, well ok but I'm thinking fucking hell, dude, you shook on it and after I came way down. WTF?! Who does that? That was over an hour ago. My brother thought I should have taken the first offer I'd gotten and I think he was right. It wasn't near what I'd wanted but at least I'd be rid of this aggravation. And on to trying to figure out how to ship my effects overseas (which is baffling me).
|>
Man, I fell down a rabbit hole. (An/them Ha/yek Blanch/ard does seem to be this guy's birth name, as his dad, well: Jim's adventurous instincts and love of liberty combined to put him on the front lines of important struggles around the world. On my return in 1986 from visiting with activists in the anti-communist underground in Poland, I went to Jim with a request. I advised him that for $5,000, pro-freedom forces in Warsaw could translate Milton Friedman's Free to Choose into Polish and then print and distribute hundreds of copies throughout the country. He wrote that check on the spot, and many others for similar causes behind the Iron Curtain.)
Ugh, Barry, that sucks. What is shaking on it even for, then?!
18: Yuck. It shouldn't be that hard to get rid of your car, though, so don't beat yourself up over not taking the first offer. I know you're time-crunched, but at worst, you can take it somewhere like Carmax and be done.
I just read the other day about how Hondas of a certain vintage have become very valuable, basically a sweet spot of bulletproof and no bullshit. 15+ years old though, maybe too much to be informative for you.
Unsold car in the streets, restless nights in the sheets.
I'm just going to comment exclusively in that form from now on, uh, in the streets, something something in the sheets.
Anthem Blanchard, the CEO of Anthem Vault, told Business Insider that "gold is arguably the most trusted store of value of all time,"
This only confirms my long term suspicion that "arguably" is just a fancier way of saying "not".
Well, gold does have a lot of time going for it, so the integrated trust is probably pretty high. But I'd maybe go with... land?
15+ year old Hondas? My '98 hasn't gotten a single nibble since I put it up on Craigslist yesterday, except for some scammer who wanted me to pay to list it with them, too.
27 - Sea shells have an astoundingly long history of use across basically every inhabited continent - especially cowry shells, to the point where the latin name for them is monetaria moneta. But where, I ask you, are their libertarian technomorons? It's deeply unfair.
29 mine is a 2003. And I got that too. They actually called me.
Sometimes I get the eerie feeling that there are some people who get their sick kicks out of stringing along sellers. without any intention of buying anything. I must be getting paranoid.
Grr, probably a mistake to give straight answers, but: All the gold ever mined is 8 months US GDP. Not enough.
Aside from regulating the exchanges that turn bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency) into anything else, there's a technical problem if any one entity controls more than 50% of production. That's currently some shady set of companies with links to Russia for bitcoin. Anything smaller is even cheaper to capture.
Diamond as big as the Ritz, currency market on the fritz.
32 assumes the goal is not crashing the world economy in a crippling depression for the benefit of people who have stockpiled a metal pulled from the earth with enormously negative environmental and political consequences.
32 - If this is, in fact, cryptocurrency -- which I'm not sure that it even is -- it's not at all clear to me how it's supposed to work. Bitcoin works because nodes process blocks in the hopes of getting fresh bitcoins, but if this guy has come up with a proof of work algorithm that generates fresh gold atoms, he's got more important things to do than talk to Business Insider.
Everybody has more important things to do than talk to Business Insider, except the guy who called the cops in 34.
It doesn't actually have to be backed by gold on Earth, does it? We can just start allocating supplies of gold elsewhere.
I really think it's just going to be a digital share in some gold that you buy from the dude.
Bitcoin in the streets, fiat in the sheets.
Bitcoin in the streets, fiat in the sheets.
Fiat Lux!
Bitcoin works because nodes process blocks in the hopes of getting fresh bitcoins, but if this guy has come up with a proof of work algorithm that generates fresh gold atoms, he's got more important things to do than talk to Business Insider.
I assume, without doing any research, that the gold version keeps the public ledger aspect of bitcoin without the mining. The mining is just there to prevent inflation, which is presumably achieved in the gold version in basically the same way as in the gold standard.
Barry, the MO sounds like something I've run across here. It's very possible that they're both savvy car dealers working together, and after they let you stew on it for a bit, you'll get a call from the nice enthusiastic one with an offer that's somewhere between what you shook on and the initial very low offer. If the whole thing really is an act (and again, I experienced something very close to your sequence of events), every part of it has a purpose. The counting out money bit is meant to tie you down to them and make you less inclined to look for other buyers - you practically had their money in your hand already. If I were you, I'd google both of them and see what comes up (I found mentions of my dealers engaging in shifty practices in many car forums).
I got really mad when I had that trick pulled on me, and refused to sell, but eventually, after waiting a while, didn't get a better offer and sold it to another car dealer who offered the same lower price at the start.
31.2 I think that's the plot of The Code of the Woosters.
As far as I can tell the main thing cryptocurrency is good for is purchasing illegal shit online. I've used it to buy weed. It's a little involved, but not particularly hard.
Online gambling is the other major use case. Some ridiculous proportion of transactions on the block chain is wagers and payoffs for various casino and sportsbook websites.
Went back to recheck the article, and it actually references 25 year old Civics going for $4-6k.
Online gambling is the other major use case.
That seems to be a pretty contingent use-case though. No need for it over here, for instance. Unless you wanted to do tax-free betting, I suppose, but then you're just back to doing illegal shit online.
People will still pay good money for a late 90s-mid 2000s Civic SI because it's like the easiest and best car in the world to mod up to the hilt and race. Barry should be able to get decent money for his. BUT if it's too mich of a pain in the ass just take it to Carmax, they'll give you a low end of reasonable price and cut you a check that day.
Can we have a UK election thread? Is the Kidderminster Independent Hospital party in the mix, because if so that's who I'm voting for.
Can we have a UK election thread? Is the Kidderminster Independent Hospital party in the mix, because if so that's who I'm voting for.
Yep.
Nearest Carmax is in Connecticut. What a headache. I have another guy coming to look at it tonight and someone on Saturday but I think I'll just take the other offer I have if tonight doesn't work out and not leave it till Saturday.
Nearest Carmax is in Connecticut. What a headache. I have another guy coming to look at it tonight and someone on Saturday but I think I'll just take the other offer I have if tonight doesn't work out and not leave it till Saturday.
Oh, Barry Freed: I.F. and I used this company for shipping our stuff. Like you, we didn't have much stuff--8 boxes, a little under 2 cubic meters, much of that taken by a bike & a bike trainer. Our experience with the company wasn't great, although 95% of the badness was because they use UPS for the pickups, and UPS is pretty terrible about residential service (between the two of us, I believe we wasted 4 workdays just waiting for pickups; they didn't give a window, and we wouldn't have trusted it even if they had; and more than once they simply didn't show up on the promised day). The upside is that it was cheaper than the full-service alternatives we looked at: something like $1300 vs about $3000. (Partly this is because it seemed like 2 m^3 is the minimum size with the full-service ones.)
The stuff took forever to arrive, but that was partly by design (we asked them to wait until the end of December before sending it on from LA, in order to make sure it wouldn't arrive before we found an apartment).
Sorry, Barry. I hope tonight's version works. That sounds awful, and I don't actually appreciate being reminded that the only thing worse than buying a car might be selling a car.
There should definitely be a UK election thread. It has the potential to be super depressing. This scenario has the potential to be more demoralizing than Bush v. Gore.
Potential, potential, potential. Today still has the potential to be a day of productivity, if only I stopped wasting my time on badly written comments! Christ.
Thanks x.trapnel. That's actually about the same amount of stuff I'm looking to move.
I actually looked at them the other night and did that quote thing they have but it didn't recognize the city of the country I'm going to, even though it's the capital.
It also looked like it was geared towards UK residents.
I'll give it another shot .
I have twice taken crappy, old, barely running cars to Carmax and been given generous offers, one of which I regret not taking. I have no idea how they do with non-junk vehicles.
I may be truly screwed with regard to shipping since the US Navy has just ceased escorting US flagged cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
I'm wondering if they just need to have the mission reauthorized and if this is done as a routine matter or is this likely to go on.
How many US flagged cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz are there, really? I would assume most have a flag of convenience, such as Liberia or the Marshall Islands. And it was a Marshall Islands-flagged ship the Iranians detained recently, though its since been released.
I'd like to third or fourth the request to have a UK election thread. Weird things are afoot. Let's talk about them.
(65 Yeah, I think things are actually calming down for the moment there and it won't be a problem. )
63: Recent experience selling a Mustang convertible:
Used car dealer: Orally offered us $5000 if we brought it back later, but wouldn't put it in writing.
Ford Dealer: lowballed us at $4200 or so, after doing the most thorough inspection of the three, and spotting a couple of problems the others missed.
CarMax: Offered us $5000, cut the check immediately when we agreed.
We could probably have gotten more from a private sale, but we wanted to close the deal that day, since we had parking issues. We would use them again in a similar situation.
I finally sold it last night (or at least, took a substantial deposit and will complete the deal later this afternoon). The transaction went well and had a good feeling about it, just about the opposite of dealing with the couple of d-bags the other day. That's a massive relief. Now to try to find a shipper for my stuff.