Isn't this confusing the fact that in general any mean of transaction, can be used negatively? The nature of which depends of the nature of the currency. But that's not an argument to say bitcoin and crypto are bad as opposed to for example the dollar. Rather this only shows that criminals are much faster at understanding crypto's advantages and adopting it. The "good" use cases will follow when adoption increases and a proper legal framework is implemented.
Gemini is ok, but less volume than GDAX and I'm not sure they have a free type of orders. Also Gemini's interface is personally less interesting for day trading. But to that point GDAX's graphing interface is a bit odd and represents data differently than say trading view.
Trading view is by far the best to check out a coin, see its indicators etc imo.
Still I think it's good to diversify your funds over various exchanges, just in case of a hack.
> For context, the recent move in Paris ends over a century of water privatization. The city seems to have managed fine during that time frame. The focus on consumer prices is emblematic of the problem with public water management. Water/sewer services shouldn't be cheap. Prices should be high enough to adequately maintain infrastructure. Water rates in the U.S. are less than half of what they are in France,[1] and as a result, our water infrastructure is in terrible shape.[2]
> You quote the example of communications, in France by law France Telecom had to expand its network to reach any citizen, whether 10km away from the grid or 10m at no cost for the consumer. This led to a great coverage of the territory and very high access to broadband for most of the population.
>> There is no free lunch. More money spent covering more people means less money invested in improving infrastructure in urban areas.
The point here is that the regulatory authority creates a legal framework which favors investement in the grid, resolving one of the inefficiencies of the market (no interest in paying 2MM euros to connect a person who's distant in the country side), makes investments happen which would never take place under a fully deregulated environment. This addresses issues of digital inequalities which would push actors on investing only on people or products which can yield the higher profits. At term it hurts society.
I'll take your points on the OCED and Akamai rankings, and yes I provided anecdotal evidence, not a lot of time for research :) But my sense is that if you compare speeds delivered to prices paid, consumers are still much better off in Europe. The other point which might be hard to quantify is the little choice US consumers have when choosing their ISP. It's often one or two actors who offer the same speed, price points and whose situation of oligopoly allows them to forgo proper consumer support alltogether (TWC). That is the result of no regulation and I don't see how more of that will benefit consumers.
Regarding the example of France the trend you're pointing out is out of date. After years of water privatization which drove costs up for municipalities and quality down, there's a reversal towards public management of the water supply. Privatization and deregulation pushed the market to an oligopoly of three main actors, Veolia, Suez and SAUR which eliminated competition and pushed costs up for consumers for a worse quality of water. That trend that was before celebrated (and embraced in the US, with Veolia and Suez heavily active there), is now being full on reversed, with measurable benefits for consumers and municipalities.
The US is still lagging behind on that realization and it's a common mistake to think that privatizing water supplies holds benefits for towns and consumers. Most often in these cases, deregulation brings benefits in the short term as private actors compete heavily to win public markets, but not in the long term when the market tends to an oligopoly / monopoly and private actors don't have any more incentive to push on innovation or investments.
The issue of lack of investment isn't a problem of too much regulation, on the contrary. These are markets with very high costs of entry where you need a strong regulatory framework to mandate a couple actors to a large enough market for those investments to be viable. You quote the example of communications, in France by law France Telecom had to expand its network to reach any citizen, whether 10km away from the grid or 10m at no cost for the consumer. This led to a great coverage of the territory and very high access to broadband for most of the population.
Take the example of the US, where internet access costs easily $100 a month, has just a couple actors sharing the market in each city, in a proper position of cartel, and where government regulation is nearly non-existent; and oppose this to most european countries where a 100mb symmetrical connection will cost you 30 EUR.... On the counter, what really disrupted the French Telecom market was the arrival of Free, which offered costs so low Telecoms had to find ways to match their prices.
It's a fallacy to think that these markets don't need regulation, but it's another one to think government can do everything ;)
That's irrelevant, if anything in your example you should compare growth in productivity for bits and for water independently and see if they manage to meet their demands Also water is a much more finite supply.
The point of my example was that as you leave government out of the tap water market and instead of getting more of it, you get less, more expensive and of lesser quality. Economics teach that in some industries, the government and a certain amount of regulation is healthy and good for the market; leaving actors to themselves just makes them tend naturally towards monopolies which then trifle innovation. Communications is one of those markets.
"“Two years ago, I warned that we were making a serious mistake,” Pai said. “It’s basic economics: The more heavily you regulate something, the less of it you’re likely to get.”
Just reading this makes me angry. Has he ever heard of monopolies / oligopolies, or simply the place of government in regulating public utilities.
Apply his quote to water supplies and see what happens.