Wednesday, January 10, 2018

First Sale & Purchase of Land in Sabah using Bitcoin?



Here’s the front page (9 Jan 2018) of one of our local english daily. It is a real world example of the misconceptions relating to the crypto currencies.

On the face of it, it’s presented as a property transaction done in the crypto currency Bitcoin: the purchaser paid 0.5 Bitcoin for a 1.219 hectare of land. It was mentioned that a Sales and Purchase agreement (S&P) was done and the Memorandum of Transfer also (for registering the change of ownership and the price of the transaction at our government's authority The Lands & Survey Department).

But the details seemed to indicate it was actually purchased at Malaysian ringgit RM40,000. I would presume that figure of RM40,000 (rather than just 0.5 Bitcoin) was also used in the S&P and the Memorandum of Transfer. This is because things like any stamp duty on the transfer and any Real Property Gains Tax (RPGT on the seller) needed a RM value to compute.

Due to the legal laws and regulations we currently live under, the new alternative coins are in transition and are misunderstood.

In that example transaction, you could have used USD instead of bitcoin. If say the land was sold for USD10,000, which is about RM40,000. All the issues mentioned under the Bitcoin scenario, relating to the S&P, Memorandum and RPGT, still apply. So why would we want to have Bitcoin in the transaction?
Is it because some say (as in the newspaper report above) Bitcoin can go higher, perhaps to USD100,000 or even USD1 million? Then Bitcoin just becomes an “investment” meant to generate profit or gain in a present fiat currency. No different from a person currently buying, say the Yuan, with his home currency to make trading profit from arbitrage.

Is it because Bitcoin will take over when the current global financial system (fiat money, central banks with QE printing, governments and corporates and individuals over-borrowed and credit overused, bankers creating more and more debt such as student loans and credit cards and car loans) can no longer be sustainable? What is forgotten is that all the related centralised government controlled rules and regulations (such as property titles in the example  above) have to be replaced with “trustless” versions running on the distributed ledger kept on the blockchain. No more “government” of the current centralised bureaucracy? Don’t forget that one reason for the current centralised and controlled system is for governments to raise tax revenue.

Is it because Bitcoin cannot be controlled by the governments and central bankers? Is this really true at the present time? If the purchaser and seller in the example above were just transferring 0.5 Bitcoin between 2 individuals, then the public and private keys make the transfer anonymous and be perfectly recorded in the blockchain's distributed ledger technology. But doing a transaction involving a real tangible asset that require official governmental approval and recording with an official document like a land title to be issued will defeat the whole Bitcoin premise as anonymous and not subject to the control of the authorities.

Bitcoin (in essence the distributed ledger technology) cannot be looked at in isolation, it can only be fully utilised when all related processes are running on similar “trustless” systems.

The distributed ledger technology must also mean open ledgers, ie copies of the updated ledgers are everywhere on the net. Coins like Ripple are private distributed ledgers kept only in the participating banks. So whenever we hear of a new coin linked to the current fiat system players, eg ACChain SDR coin or the Fedcoin, we need to ask if they run on limited participants private distributed ledgers?

Bitcoin may not even be the ultimately the “winner” in the final conclusion in the future. New variants will always be invented, explored and tried out to handle the inefficiencies identified in current coins. As an example, Hashgraph is held up as a new variant that can avoid the need for the blockchain to rely on the miners as processing nodes. Perhaps this can be implemented when mining is not “economically viable”. I’m no expert, but Hashgraph seems to rely on everyone on the net to process the distributed ledger as gossip. So no one needs to be paid as such for maintaining the finalised copy of the ledger at the end of each round.

I stand to be corrected and would be more than happy to learn more from those more knowledgeable on these issues.

(Draft of my steemit posting)

Monday, October 31, 2016

A Trip Down Under (The Other One ... New Zealand)

In the first week of October, we landed in Christchurch on a balmy spring day ...


 ... with cherry blossoms and ...


 ... still visible effects of the last earthquakes. The remains of Christchurch Cathedral.


The other damaged buildings have mostly been removed leaving a number of empty lots, brightly painted sides of remaining buildings and street art to brighten the mood.


The yet undecided "what to do with the Cathedral?" has led to many art pieces around the cathedral area.


In the meantime there's a Christchurch Transitional Cardboard Cathedral...


... those round tubes are made of cardboard. Hopefully there will be a restored cathedral before them cardboard tubes reach "end-of-life".


Across the road there's an earthquake memorial to the 185 souls lost ...


... one of the young ones,


one of the elder ones,


and those at home and at their offices. After our Sabah earthquake at Mt Kinabalu, the Government did the usual memorial plaque and some locals did a mural at The Kundasang war Memorial.


 The Tram Stop. Trams are running around the city center ...


... with a blue one, which is a rolling restaurant.


Hit and Miss; depends on the underlying soil structure I suppose?


Temperate countries are big on gardens and parks. The Botanical Gardens had very impressive trees. Though we also have impressive trees (though mostly in the jungles), its too hot in the tropics to stroll around outdoors.


I did find some impressive scupltures as well ...


.
... though the building seem to have been closed off.


On the way to Ashburton, we stopped at "a lavender and alpaca farm". Actually the usual "Tourists to buy your manukar, merino wool, squaline etc... products here". But I must say the best of the chinese meals we had on the trip was here; both in ingredients and cooking. They only serve meals to the visiting tour groups.


The South Island NZ is high contrast "plains of fields, lakes, mountains and ice peaks" in early spring. Very beautiful landscapes.


A calm reflection.


A sculpture of a collie (memorial to the sheepdogs). Its a fun fact that NZ does not have a single native four legged mammal. There were originally only like 3 native bird species and a bat!


A small stone chapel by the lake (Church of The Good Shepherd) ...


 ... strangely popular with marrying couples doing their pre-marriage videos and photo shoot. Did the chapel appeared in a korean drama???


Mt Cook in the distance.


An impressive imported wildlife! A Himalayan Tahr. Some were brought in 100 years ago. They multiplied till their numbers became destructive to the local environment. Culling reduced their numbers from some 40,000 to a couple of thousand.


There were the usual visits to a salmon farm and ...


a sheep shearing demo. A "hairy" sheep ...


... shorn  and looked positively skinny. Fun fact; if a sheep "escaped" and goes wild for a few years, the wool will continue to grow after pausing each summer (these will be the weak spots in the wool). The sheep may not be able to move (especially after getting caught in the rain) due to the weight of the wool and water.


Wool.


Then off to a place offering helicopter rides. The costliest ones offering a close approach to Mt Cook. All offering a stop on the glaciers for you to play in the snow and a photo op. I have never been in a helicopter (even those offered free for aerial survey of oil palm areas) and was not about to tempt fate.


 

The heliport was a beautiful place. Those of us not taking the heli rides were enjoying coffee and I took some great photos. Mt Cook in the distance ...


... brought nearer ...


... and nearer still ...


... to the summit by my trusty zoom lens.

Mt Cook is called Aoraki in Maori. Another fun fact; according to our NZ tour guide, there is now not a single 100% maori, only mixed.

Of course we stopped at Mrs Jones's Fruit Stall...


Their shop in front of their cherry trees...


... I bought some macadamia nuts (really fresh) apart from the usual fruits.


 Then we were off to Kawarau. The home of the ...


 original bungy jump.


The check-in. Three brave members of our tour group stepped up to the challenge.


Beautiful river. The bungy jump is from the old bridge, the new bridge is in the distance.


The specs for the old bridge.


What 140 feet looks like...


These boys will tie you up well and good ...


... You just have to jump!


After bouncing up and down a few times ...


They will retrieve you.


Then we were off to Queenstown, a very nice lakeside town. The Skyline ...


cable car ride to the top of the hill. What attraction could be up there?


A Restaurant (nice buffet) and ...


a very nice view of the town and lake.

This is how to make money from tourism lah!


Civilised logging; unlike our Sabah Boleh!!!


Mirror Lake. A stop on our bus ride to Milford Sound Jetty.



The reduced light from the reflection made it clearer?


Milford Sound was a wonderful sight.


There were many waterfalls. Unfortunately for us, the sea was rough. So we didn't get to go out of the sound.


So back to Queenstown and to FergBurger ...


where there's always a queue.

Mrs Ferg also had a Gelato Joint and a very nice Bakery (I had a nice Sausage Roll while waiting for our Fergburgers). These were next to the burger joint.


Their burgers were impressive; both in size and taste. Mr Big Stuff and Big Al.


The price list as of October 2016.


We stopped for a day in Auckland on the way home.


Where there was, what else? but yet another Botanical Garden.



Though they did serve a tasty and fancy lunch. My belly pork was nicely rolled up. Crunchy skin with soft melting fats.

Here's your Maori language for the important things. Wharepaku is the toilet ...


Tane is the male toilet ...


Wahine is the ladies toilet. Photo is blurred as I was in a hurry to take the photo before any ladies came out and yelled "Pervert"!!!



The sculpted palms waterfall by the front door.

I can see that the business community in NZ knows what's important is to extract the maximum dollars from the tourists,including  I suppose their own vacationers

We Sabahans must learn from them.